For Whom the Bells Tinkle

Pretty much everyone in my old universe is sitting in plush padded chairs, watching the screen. This is a serious screening room, not the neighborhood multiplex. The sound of the projector motor starts; the lights dim…

Open on a street in Soho, a wet winter night. A streetlamp illuminates greasy, dark puddles on the pavement. It’s quiet and no one is around. But wait. A shape of a woman comes into view. She’s holding a leash. The dog on its end is small but not tiny. Jaunty. When they walk under the streetlamp, we see that the woman has long brown hair. The dog is white, a Westie, walking to her rhythm, his tail a barometer in the rain. Suddenly, a nearby manhole cover is pushed back and a giant slimy claw reaches out from the dank dark and grabs them. Scream. Shout. Grrr. The claw drags them down into the sewer and pushed back the manhole cover. Cut to the next day. We learn there are monsters in the sewers, killing and maiming. As the plot develops, in classic horror tradition, the murders increase and the monsters become bolder.

But what about the first victims—the woman and her dog? We don’t see them again until about three-quarters into the movie, when the woman’s decapitated head, her long hair tangled in sewage, is found sticking out of a pipe, and the dog, the little Westie, is seen hanging from a meat hook in the sewer.

What does this gruesome scene have to do with love (and this column), you ask? Well, the producer of the movie is my ex-husband and the woman, from behind, is a dead ringer for me. And the Westie? He is my dog, Bob.

As I sit in the screening room, I don’t care much about my head or lack thereof. It is Bob who grabs my heart, little, feisty Westie Bob, whom I cry out for. Bob the dog.

Although I am glad my ex chose to play out his anger on celluloid rather than in real life, my mind nevertheless roils with the idea that he would take it out on our dog, my little baby, and kill him. No, no, no! Unacceptable.

You see, Bob was my alter ego, the personality I could only aim to have.

Let me explain. While pretty much everybody liked me, pretty much nobody liked Bob. (It hurts me to even say that.) The people in the screening room who knew him are probably saying, “Meat hook? A fitting end. Ha! I’d have strangled him myself if I’d had the chance.” Like I said: nobody. You see, Bob was the quintessential yappy little dog and he pretty much bit everybody he met. Always at the ankle, sometimes the calf, if a person was short.

But I loved Bob with all my heart. He was loud, nosy, in your face, needy, a control freak. Hated other dogs. Hated other people. Barked nonstop. Only ate chicken and beef. And did I mention he bit everyone?

But boy, oh boy, did he love me.

The Others (everyone else on the planet) didn’t appreciate the adorable way in which he played with Tinkling Bells—a balding, smelly, furry toy ball attached to one-inch streamers knotted with little bells. It was supposed to be a cat toy, but I never told him. They didn’t see how he clambered up on my chest and put his head under my neck and sighed with contentment, Tinkling Bells half in and half out of his mouth as he began to snore. (I wouldn’t move. I’d turn the pages of the book I was reading with my elbows in the air. I’d watch TV with a stiff neck. No way would I move him until he moved first.) Like I said, he loved me.

But it had to be more than this. How could a dog, just three feet long, with a yellow streak in his white fur as he grew older, mean so much to me? Yes, part of it was my nurturing instinct. Part of it was his being with me in my first marriage when my partner was not. Part of it was the way he played with Tinkling Bells.

But it was more.

Bob was the other me in those early adult years, the confidence I didn’t have, the swagger that said “I’m cool,” the aggressiveness it took to get ahead. Let’s just say that if Bob had been a rock star, he would’ve insisted on blue M&Ms in his dressing room. That was Bob. Me incognito. No wonder my ex had him killed and put on a meat hook.

He’d been the product of a puppy mill. Born in some far-off barn in Iowa, weaned too early from his mother, isolated from his littermates, kept in a cage. He’d had a better chance of getting free from that slimy sewer claw than of being free of early-sown neuroses.

The movie producer husband and I got him when he was four months old from a fancy pet boutique on the East Side. Some kids were playing with this adorable white ball of fluff and almost dropped him. I rushed over and grabbed him before he hit the floor. They say if you save a life you are responsible for that life forever. Guess that was me and Bob.

He was bought on the spot and presented to me as my thirtieth birthday present. I’d always wanted a dog and, and, as far as my then husband was concerned, a puppy would keep me from wanting the real thing, i.e. a baby. Besides a distraction might make me less likely to wonder where he was when he stayed out late (which was most of the time).

It worked. When Bob got kennel cough within a week, I rushed him to the vet and hovered like a mother hen. Chewed up a match? I called the poison center. Diarrhea? A cab downtown to the animal hospital on Easter Sunday morning.

Life with my ex wasn’t good, but then again I didn’t know what a good life with a husband was. Like Bob had once been, I was in a cage, but it was of my own making. Bob’s reaction was to fight back. Mine was to cringe in the corner. If I wasn’t happy, it was my fault, my problem, I had done something wrong. “Why are you doing that?” my husband would ask me (while I was watching TV, eating a sandwich, breathing) and I’d freeze. He’d get a look in his eye, not to hit me, but to spew slimy green claw-like words. (Get the metaphor?). One time, I’d been putting a vinyl in his stereo without asking. Another time I’d been rushing out the door to go to a party and he told me I looked fat. Seriously. Like I said, I was in a cage of my own making and I was too scared to use the key right in front of me. Who else but the ex would have this TV-watching, sandwich-eating, too-loud-breathing (and let us not forget fat) person?

When the claws came out in our apartment, Bob was my refuge. I could take him for a walk. I’d jiggle Tinkling Bells and Bob would come running from under the bed (where he usually stayed when he sensed a fight). I’d put the toy in my pocket, the leash on Bob, and, together, we walked out the door. Those walks revived me. We lived in midtown, and by ten P.M. not many people were around. It was quiet except for the hum of passing cares, the undertow of traffic that makes up every big city. While we waited for the light to change, Bob would look up at me and I would look down at him. Yes, I was there. Yes, he was there. We walked, and, for a little while, the pain seemed more like a story written by someone else. It wasn’t my life, and the ex wasn’t my
husband.

It was fitting that, after ten years or marriage, things ended on another one of my birthdays. We had a fight that ended with my ripping up the birthday cards he’d sent me for my thirty-fifth. I think he wanted to be free for the weekend to see his girlfriend and so he contrived the fight. I was so easy.

So I took Bob and packed a bag and went to my mother’s. I held Bob and cried, and he was there for me.

When I first moved to a studio apartment in Soho (where I would eventually walk Bob near those ubiquitous manholes), my mother agreed to keep Bob for a week while I settled in. Well, actually three days. She couldn’t take it much more than that. (Remember, Bob bit everyone, and no one liked him.)

I was glad she took him. At first, it was a relief to be alone when I unpacked boxes, when I took a walk around the new hood, when I went to find the dry cleaners. I only had to worry about me. Only me! What an experience. No responsibility. But by the time my mother came to the apartment, leash in hand, I couldn’t wait to see Bob. It was as though a piece of my arm had been gone.

When I first got divorced, I didn’t think as far as a serious relationship. Marry again? Unimaginable. I’d broken up with “meat-hook man” after too many years, and I was dating like I was a sixteen-year-old in a thirty-five-year-old body. I didn’t think further than dancing in my studio to music by Christopher Cross (yeah, it was that long ago) blaring on the record player and Bob in my arms, his tongue hanging out, uncomfortable and getting nauseous from the bouncing.

Bob was my litmus test whenever I went out with a new guy. Did he growl at the poor man on our first date? Next! Did the guy ignore Bob like he was a lamp? Sorry, bad cold. Did he tell Bob to shut up? Goodbye for good.

In time, I met the guy I would marry (and am still married to D.J. years later, as of this writing). Bob didn’t bite him, which was amazing unto itself (although he did pee on his boots and the pillow he slept on). But what was more amazing was that this guy actually liked Bob. He thought his attempts to dominate were funny. Funny!

Even more amazing than that, Bob began to like him back. Like blossomed into love, and there we were: a family unit.

Inevitably, as pets are supposed to do, Bob died. In time, we got another Westie and named her Bonnie after Bob. She was as sweet-tempered as Bob was angry, as calm as Bob was fidgety, an angel to Bob’s demon.

But I kept Bob’s Tinkling Bells. I have the little toy still. The bells tinkle just as loudly as they did back then. There’s nothing like first love.