When the dog drinks, nobody wins.
Me and Rocky really had to work on our damaged master/dog relationship after Mom’s boyfriend got hit by a bus right in front of the house. Me and Mom heard the thud from inside.
I said, “Uh-oh!” and I was right.
I opened the door, then Rocky ran to the body in the street. He pulled the baggie of ham scraps from the boyfriend’s pocket that the boyfriend used to control him with. It seemed kind of callous, but Rocky knew it was his last chance at the ham. He ran that bag behind the house and ate every scrap.
Mom cried pretty hard, so I felt bad too. Crying makes me cry.
Still, it was good to get my dog back after that guy basically stole him from me. It was better than good.
Rocky and me were building the bonds again. Mom didn’t stay sad. I even got a postcard from my Dad and Aunt Velvet, who are on a Very Long Trip to Somewhere Else. Mom says that Dad is a slow learner but that if there’s any justice in this world Dad will learn that you get what you pay for and you pay for what you get.
Lots of people are happier than Mom.
I threw Frisbees to Rocky in the park. He used to love to chase them. Now he walks to where the Frisbee lands. And I found out he is bad at fishing too. Mom says don’t tell him how dog years work. She says a dog is a dog and I have to be realistic.
When we came back from the park, we saw a man carrying boxes from the back of a moving van. I didn’t like it. Mom introduced her new boyfriend, Skip. Skip will be the man of the house and we will have a grand time of it, if we don’t cop an attitude.
Skip pretends to pull quarters out of people’s ears and act like real magic happened. Spoiler alert: he hides the quarters in his sleeve or on the back of his hand or something.
Compared to Mom’s last beau Skip is not so bad. But only when he’s sober. Different story when Skip drinks. Once he was here a couple months Skip was only sober between breakfast and when the noon news comes on, at noon. Mom would go play Bingo and Skip would drink until he couldn’t get up off the couch. Then he would try to explain things to me to fill Substantial Holes in My Education. Sometimes I could tell what he was trying to say.
“Son,” he says.
And I say, “I’m not your son, Skip. I have an awesome Dad. He’s just traveling for work.”
Skip always acts like I didn’t say anything when he drinks. He ignores that last thing I too and says, “Son, many a fine ship has sunk in the gulf between what women say they want and what they really want. You’ll see some day.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask him, because to call a spade a spade, I did not know what he meant.
“For a no-hoper you sure have a great dog,” he says.
And then he gets such a big idea that he sits up even when he already said he wasn’t going to. He manages to get off the couch without me helping.
“I bet ole Rocky here would like to join me for a beer.”
“That’s against the house rules, Skip.”
But Skip grabs a Coors out of the fridge and pours it into Rocky’s bowl. It looks exactly like pee, but Rocky laps it up right away. Skip thinks this is the funniest thing since Jerry Lewis. So he pours another beer in the bowl.
Long story medium, Rocky is like Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde now, Mom picks at skip whenever she loses at Bingo which is almost always. And Dad had to extend his trip because Something Came Up.
Now Skip mixes whiskey with Rocky’s Coors. After enough of that Rocky barrels through the house misjudging doorways and banging into walls face-first. Skip laughs until he wheezes and then he huffs on a ventilator until he is normal again. Normal for Skip, I mean. Sometimes Skip has his friends who Mom calls the Other Drunks stop over and laugh at Rocky with him. I laughed the first time but now I want to take that laugh back, because if you love a dog it isn’t funny to see him hurt his face.
Weird things started happening and Skip said Rocky was to blame. There was a stench coming out of the basement, a bad stench and not a good one. Mom said someone’s been going to the bathroom down there, number two, and we don’t even have a toilet in the basement.
Skip said, “Your boy’s dog might need one of those a-dult diapers.”
I didn’t like how he was smiling.
Another day a pizza delivery guy came with a pizza. Skip argued with him. He said, “I’m not paying for that. I don’t care if it’s the storm of the century out there, you’re on a wild goose chase.” Skip told him that he didn’t order it and I didn’t order it but if he was going to have to throw it away we would take it off his hands for free just to help.
Skip grabbed the pizza and shoved the delivery guy out the door and locked the door and turned up the stereo to super-loud and he said we can’t allow knocking and the yelling interrupt our meal.
“How did that happen?” I asked him.
He strode over and smacked Rocky on the snout with the pizza box. “This flea-bit mutt got drunk and ordered a pizza.”
Back when Rocky was a puppy, he could do anything. So maybe he did make a call.
The absolute very last day Skip was with us was when Mom lost at Bingo last Thursday and then she made a mistake and opened the monthly bills. Pretty soon she was yelling at Skip about what the hell he was thinking to order nudie movies on the pay-per-view at $19.99 a pop. And she isn’t made out of money, which she’s been making clear for years. On like that.
Skip looked at the bill like he’d never seen nudie movies before, which I can tell you for a fact (don’t tell Mom) he knows about.
Skip said, “If you ask me, that dog needs to learn some self-control.”
Mom told him to call U-Haul because it was time to move his stuff in on an even more gullible widow. Then she threw his things in the yard. All of them.
I said, “Mom, you aren’t a widow. Dad’s still alive.”
“Not to me,” she said.
Rocky was sniffing things in the yard and minding his own business.
Skip was leaving. He was a little drunk.
He said, “Another ship sinks in the gulf.”
I wondered how long it would be before Rocky would whine for beer.
–Art by Milan Vopálenský & Esmahan Özkan