Bagatelles: Short Stories

The One That Got Away

"I still remember the day we brought him home, don't you?"

Her brother didn't answer. They lingered by a small, flat marker, its edges curled over with crab grass. A sharp wind sheared the upper branches of the big bur oak that shielded the plots from the parking lot. Margot scrunched her neck into her coat. Nick seemed unbothered.

It was bitterly cold—premature for mid-October—but she was glad of it. Fewer warm bodies pacing the rows. She liked being able to talk without strangers listening in.

Living strangers, that is.

She gave Nick a squeeze with her mittened hand.

"He was such a spaz, crashing into everything, remember? Couldn't keep still to save his life. More Tasmanian devil than dog, wasn't he?"

She looked down at the marker graven with a single, massive paw print. It was hard to reconcile that little puppy with the behemoth he would become. Back then he'd been all limbs and spunk and tiny razor teeth, no pedigree to speak of—mother was a shelter mutt, father a grizzly for all they knew—but he'd grown fast. "Too much dog for you," the plumber had warned them on a call to unclog the kitchen p-trap, wrestling his wrench from the puppy's mouth (by then he was six months old and could bite a chair leg clean in two). Neighbors and relatives would echo the sentiment, too little, too late.

Margot was enamored with the dog, despite the bruises, the bite marks, the leash burns, the bullying. It felt funny to call a dog a bully, but he really was, even more than Nick, who was mostly just guilty of being an older brother—hogging the bathroom, storming about in "moods," dipping her toothbrush in Dial. But that dog hadn't played games. He was a tyrant.

"I set him straight eventually, though, didn't I?" Margot mused. A blast of cold wind whipped her back. She hugged Nick tightly until it passed. He did not protest.

It hadn't been easy. For years the dog outweighed her, even outsmarted her, as she was hardly out of kindergarten when they brought him home. He shredded her mittens, gnawed her shoes, hogged her bed; some nights, he'd relegate her to the foot as though she were his pet. She'd let him do it too, flattered by his preference. Animal honesty was so transparent, so insensitive. He never went to Nick's bed, or their mother's. Only hers.

At first she thought abuse was the due of his loyalty. At home he lunged for the food on her plate, but on the sidewalk he'd lunge at anyone who dared brush her in passing. Her attempts at socializing him were short lived; perhaps it was their presumptive familiarity, but around other dogs his snarls blistered with personal grievance, especially when the offender was smaller and cuter than he was (so, the majority). Her patting them was out of the question, not that she tried. Such was his prevailing canine dogma: only my fleas, only my scratches. Predictability, she quickly learned, was his closest substitute for affection. In many ways, it was more reliable.

A dog didn't just wake up one day and decide it didn't love you anymore. A dog always had a reason.

But it wasn't until the night of the rat that Margot realized she might exploit this pattern. Perhaps exploit was too strong of a word—she never saw herself as his adversary. She would have gladly stayed subordinate, had that been his ultimatum. As it were, the training was still very much on his terms.

It had been a Tuesday, a school night. Margot was up in bed when she heard her mother scream. They nearly collided in the hallway, sister and brother, she in her high-necked nightie and he in his crotch-creased boxers, shouldering past each other down the stairs, clinging to either jamb of the kitchen doorway just in time to brace against the dog surging from behind like a river breaching its levee. He skidded to a splayed halt, ears perked, a menace seeking its shadow. Surely he could smell it.