Part 6 (1/2)

Jenny met me at the door and together we stood in the front window watching the drama unfold on the street. Our neighborhood looked like the set from a police television drama. Red strobe lights splashed through the windows. A police helicopter hovered overhead, s.h.i.+ning its spotlight down on backyards and alleys. Cops set up roadblocks and combed the neighborhood on foot. Their efforts would be in vain; a suspect was never apprehended and a motive never determined. My neighbors who gave chase later told me they had not even caught a glimpse of him. Jenny and I eventually returned to bed, where we both lay awake for a long time.

”You would have been proud of Marley,” I told her. ”It was so strange. Somehow he knew how serious this was. He just knew. He felt the danger, and he was like a completely different dog.”

”I told you so,” she said. And she had.

As the helicopter thumped the air above us, Jenny rolled onto her side and, before drifting off, said, ”Just another ho-hum night in the neighborhood.” I reached down and felt in the dark for Marley, lying beside me.

”You did all right tonight, big guy,” I whispered, scratching his ears. ”You earned your dog chow.” My hand on his back, I drifted off to sleep.

It said something about South Florida's numbness to crime that the stabbing of a teenage girl as she sat in her car in front of her home would merit just six sentences in the morning newspaper. The Sun-Sentinel Sun-Sentinel's account of the crime ran in the briefs column on page 3B beneath the headline ”Man Attacks Girl.”

The story made no mention of me or Marley or the guys across the street who set out half naked after the a.s.sailant. It didn't mention Barry, who gave chase in her car. Or all the neighbors up and down the block who turned on porch lights and dialed 911. In South Florida's seamy world of violent crime, our neighborhood's drama was just a minor hiccup. No deaths, no hostages, no big deal.

The knife had punctured Lisa's lung, and she spent five days in the hospital and several weeks recuperating at home. Her mother kept the neighbors apprised of her recovery, but the girl remained inside and out of sight. I worried about the emotional wounds the attack might leave. Would she ever again be comfortable leaving the safety of her home? Our lives had come together for just three minutes, but I felt invested in her as a brother might be in a kid sister. I wanted to respect her privacy, but I also wanted to see her, to prove to myself she was going to be all right.

Then as I washed the cars in the driveway on a Sat.u.r.day, Marley chained up beside me, I looked up and there she stood. Prettier than I had remembered. Tanned, strong, athletic-looking whole again. She smiled and asked, ”Remember me?”

”Let's see,” I said, feigning puzzlement. ”You look vaguely familiar. Weren't you the one in front of me at the Tom Petty concert who wouldn't sit down?”

She laughed, and I asked, ”So how are you doing, Lisa?”

”I'm good,” she said. ”Just about back to normal.”

”You look great,” I told her. ”A little better than the last time I saw you.”

”Yeah, well,” she said, and looked down at her feet. ”What a night.”

”What a night,” I repeated.

That was all we said about it. She told me about the hospital, the doctors, the detective who interviewed her, the endless fruit baskets, the boredom of sitting at home as she healed. But she steered clear of the attack, and so did I. Some things were best left behind.

Lisa stayed a long time that afternoon, following me around the yard as I did ch.o.r.es, playing with Marley, making small talk. I sensed there was something she wanted to say but could not bring herself to. She was seventeen; I didn't expect her to find the words. Our lives had collided without plan or warning, two strangers thrown together by a burst of inexplicable violence. There had been no time for the usual proprieties that exist between neighbors; no time to establish boundaries. In a heartbeat, there we were, intimately locked together in crisis, a dad in boxer shorts and a teenage girl in a blood-soaked blouse, clinging to each other and to hope. There was a closeness there now. How could there not be? There was also awkwardness, a slight embarra.s.sment, for in that moment we had caught each other with our guards down. Words were not necessary. I knew she was grateful that I had come to her; I knew she appreciated my efforts to comfort her, however lame. She knew I cared deeply and was in her corner. We had shared something that night on the pavement-one of those brief, fleeting moments of clarity that define all the others in a life-that neither of us would soon forget.

”I'm glad you stopped by,” I said.

”I'm glad I did, too,” Lisa answered.

By the time she left, I had a good feeling about this girl. She was strong. She was tough. She would move forward. And indeed I found out years later, when I learned she had built a career for herself as a television broadcaster, that she had.

CHAPTER 14.

An Early Arrival.

John.” Through the fog of sleep, I gradually registered my name being called. ”John. John, wake up.” It was Jenny; she was shaking me. ”John, I think the baby might be coming.”

I propped myself up on an elbow and rubbed my eyes. Jenny was lying on her side, knees pulled to her chest. ”The baby what?”

”I'm having bad cramps,” she said. ”I've been lying here timing them. We need to call Dr. Sherman.”

I was wide awake now. The baby was coming? The baby was coming? I was wild with antic.i.p.ation for the birth of our second child-another boy, we already knew from the sonogram. The timing, though, was wrong, terribly wrong. Jenny was twenty-one weeks into the pregnancy, barely halfway through the forty-week gestation period. Among her motherhood books was a collection of high-definition in vitro photographs showing a fetus at each week of development. Just days earlier we had sat with the book, studying the photos taken at twenty-one weeks and marveling at how our baby was coming along. At twenty-one weeks a fetus can fit in the palm of a hand. It weighs less than a pound. Its eyes are fused shut, its fingers like fragile little twigs, its lungs not yet developed enough to distill oxygen from air. At twenty-one weeks, a baby is barely viable. The chance of surviving outside the womb is small, and the chance of surviving without serious, long-term health problems smaller yet. There's a reason nature keeps babies in the womb for nine long months. At twenty-one weeks, the odds are exceptionally long. I was wild with antic.i.p.ation for the birth of our second child-another boy, we already knew from the sonogram. The timing, though, was wrong, terribly wrong. Jenny was twenty-one weeks into the pregnancy, barely halfway through the forty-week gestation period. Among her motherhood books was a collection of high-definition in vitro photographs showing a fetus at each week of development. Just days earlier we had sat with the book, studying the photos taken at twenty-one weeks and marveling at how our baby was coming along. At twenty-one weeks a fetus can fit in the palm of a hand. It weighs less than a pound. Its eyes are fused shut, its fingers like fragile little twigs, its lungs not yet developed enough to distill oxygen from air. At twenty-one weeks, a baby is barely viable. The chance of surviving outside the womb is small, and the chance of surviving without serious, long-term health problems smaller yet. There's a reason nature keeps babies in the womb for nine long months. At twenty-one weeks, the odds are exceptionally long.

”It's probably nothing,” I said. But I could feel my heart pounding as I speed-dialed the ob-gyn answering service. Two minutes later Dr. Sherman called back, sounding groggy himself. ”It might just be gas,” he said, ”but we better have a look.” He told me to get Jenny to the hospital immediately. I raced around the house, throwing items into an overnight bag for her, making baby bottles, packing the diaper bag. Jenny called her friend and coworker Sandy, another new mom who lived a few blocks away, and asked if we could drop Patrick off. Marley was up now, too, stretching, yawning, shaking. Late-night road trip! Late-night road trip! ”Sorry, Mar,” I told him as I led him out to the garage, grave disappointment on his face. ”You've got to hold down the fort.” I scooped Patrick out of his crib, buckled him into his car seat without waking him, and into the night we went. ”Sorry, Mar,” I told him as I led him out to the garage, grave disappointment on his face. ”You've got to hold down the fort.” I scooped Patrick out of his crib, buckled him into his car seat without waking him, and into the night we went.

At St. Mary's neonatal intensive care unit, the nurses quickly went to work. They got Jenny into a hospital gown and hooked her to a monitor that measured contractions and the baby's heartbeat. Sure enough, Jenny was having a contraction every six minutes. This was definitely not gas. ”Your baby wants to come out,” one of the nurses said. ”We're going to do everything we can to make sure he doesn't just yet.”

Over the phone Dr. Sherman asked them to check whether she was dilating. A nurse inserted a gloved finger and reported that Jenny was dilated one centimeter. Even I knew this was not good. At ten centimeters the cervix is fully dilated, the point at which, in a normal delivery, the mother begins to push. With each painful cramp, Jenny's body was pus.h.i.+ng her one step closer to the point of no return.

Dr. Sherman ordered an intravenous saline drip and an injection of the labor inhibitor Brethine. The contractions leveled out, but less than two hours later they were back again with a fury, requiring a second shot, then a third.

For the next twelve days Jenny remained hospitalized, poked and prodded by a parade of perinatalogists and tethered to monitors and intravenous drips. I took vacation time and played single parent to Patrick, doing my best to hold everything together-the laundry, the feedings, meals, bills, housework, the yard. Oh, yes, and that other living creature in our home. Poor Marley's status dropped precipitously from second fiddle to not even in the orchestra. Even as I ignored him, he kept up his end of the relations.h.i.+p, never letting me out of his sight. He faithfully followed me as I careened through the house with Patrick in one arm, vacuuming or toting laundry or fixing a meal with the other. I would stop in the kitchen to toss a few dirty plates into the dishwasher, and Marley would plod in after me, circle around a half dozen times trying to pinpoint the exact perfect location, and then drop to the floor. No sooner had he settled in than I would dart to the laundry room to move the clothes from the was.h.i.+ng machine to the dryer. He would follow after me, circle around, paw at the throw rugs until they were arranged to his liking, and plop down again, only to have me head for the living room to pick up the newspapers. So it would go. If he was lucky, I would pause in my mad dash to give him a quick pat.

One night after I finally got Patrick to sleep, I fell back on the couch, exhausted. Marley pranced over and dropped his rope tug toy in my lap and looked up at me with those giant brown eyes of his. ”Aw, Marley,” I said. ”I'm beat.” He put his snout under the rope toy and flicked it up in the air, waiting for me to try to grab it, ready to beat me to the draw. ”Sorry, pal,” I said. ”Not tonight.” He crinkled his brow and c.o.c.ked his head. Suddenly, his comfortable daily routine was in tatters. His mistress was mysteriously absent, his master no fun, and nothing the same. He let out a little whine, and I could see he was trying to figure it out. Why doesn't John want to play anymore? What happened to the morning walks? Why no more wrestling on the floor? And where exactly is Jenny, anyway? She hasn't run off with that Dalmatian in the next block, has she? Why doesn't John want to play anymore? What happened to the morning walks? Why no more wrestling on the floor? And where exactly is Jenny, anyway? She hasn't run off with that Dalmatian in the next block, has she?

Life wasn't completely bleak for Marley. On the bright side, I had quickly reverted to my premarriage (read: slovenly) lifestyle. By the power vested in me as the only adult in the house, I suspended the Married Couple Domesticity Act and proclaimed the once banished Bachelor Rules to be the law of the land. While Jenny was in the hospital, s.h.i.+rts would be worn twice, even three times, barring obvious mustard stains, between washes; milk could be drunk directly from the carton, and toilet seats would remain in the upright position unless being sat on. Much to Marley's delight, I inst.i.tuted a 24/7 open-door policy for the bathroom. After all, it was just us guys. This gave Marley yet a new opportunity for closeness in a confined s.p.a.ce. From there, it only made sense to let him start drinking from the bathtub tap. Jenny would have been appalled, but the way I saw it, it sure beat the toilet. Now that the Seat-Up Policy was firmly in place (and thus, by definition, the Lid-Up Policy, too), I needed to offer Marley a viable alternative to that attractive porcelain pool of water just begging him to play submarine with his snout.

I got into the habit of turning the bathtub faucet on at a trickle while I was in the bathroom so Marley could lap up some cool, fresh water. The dog could not have been more thrilled had I built him an exact replica of Splash Mountain. He would twist his head up under the faucet and lap away, tail banging the sink behind him. His thirst had no bounds, and I became convinced he had been a camel in an earlier life. I soon realized I had created a bathtub monster; pretty soon Marley began going into the bathroom alone without me and standing there, staring forlornly at the faucet, licking at it for any lingering drop, flicking the drain k.n.o.b with his nose until I couldn't stand it any longer and would come in and turn it on for him. Suddenly the water in his bowl was somehow beneath him.

The next step on our descent into barbarity came when I was showering. Marley figured out he could shove his head past the shower curtain and get not just a trickle but a whole waterfall. I'd be lathering up and without warning his big tawny head would pop in and he'd begin lapping at the shower spray. ”Just don't tell Mom,” I said.

I tried to fool Jenny into thinking I had everything effortlessly under control. ”Oh, we're totally fine,” I told her, and then, turning to Patrick, I would add, ”aren't we, partner?” To which he would give his standard reply: ”Dada!” and then, pointing at the ceiling fan: ”Fannnnn!” She knew better. One day when I arrived with Patrick for our daily visit, she stared at us in disbelief and asked, ”What in G.o.d's name did you do to him?”

”What do you mean, what did I do to him?” I replied. ”He's great. You're great, aren't you?”

”Dada! Fannnn!”

”His outfit,” she said. ”How on earth-”

Only then did I see. Something was amiss with Patrick's snap-on one-piece, or ”onesie” as we manly dads like to call it. His chubby thighs, I now realized, were squeezed into the armholes, which were so tight they must have been cutting off his circulation. The collared neck hung between his legs like an udder. Up top, Patrick's head stuck out through the unsnapped crotch, and his arms were lost somewhere in the billowing pant legs. It was quite a look.

”You goof,” she said. ”You've got it on him upside down.”

”That's your opinion,” I said.

But the game was up. Jenny began working the phone from her hospital bed, and a couple of days later my sweet, dear aunt Anita, a retired nurse who had come to America from Ireland as a teenager and now lived across the state from us, magically appeared, suitcase in hand, and cheerfully went about restoring order. The Bachelor Rules were history.