Let's Pretend This Never Happened (46 page)

Lisa laughed, and so I pulled out my phone and showed her the pictures of me after getting out of the hospital the next day. I’d added some text to make things more clear:

“Holy crap,”
she said. “That looks disgusting. Okay, I apologize, because I was really sure this was blown out of proportion.”

“Apology accepted,” I replied magnanimously.

“So, where did you even
find
wild dogs?” she asked.

“Oh,”
I said hesitantly. “Well,
‘wild’
is perhaps a strong term.”

She raised an eyebrow.
“Out with it.”

I explained that Mom, Hailey, and I had gone to our uncle Larry’s house so I could meet his new wife, who was sweet and adorable, and who had pet dogs that were ginormous.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve met them,” Lisa said. “Cute dogs.”

“Yes, well, apparently they’ve been trained to
look
very cute and tail-waggingly giddy to see you in order to lull you into coming outside with them so they can chew your bones off.”

“You got attacked by Theresa’s
pet dogs
?
Aren’t they like collies or something?
” she asked in disbelief.

“They’re
animals. Literally
,” I assured her.

She looked at the pictures again doubtfully.

“After eating dinner, I carried Hailey out to the backyard, because she wanted to see the dogs. It was pitch dark, but Uncle Larry was feeding them, so I thought they’d be distracted and Hailey could just look at them. But then one of them jumped up, in an ‘I’m-a-big-dog-and-I-want-to-smell-the-top-of-your-head’ kind of way, and Hailey was squealing in an ‘I’m-a-crazily-excited-and-slightly-freaked-three-year-old’ kind of way, and then I’m suddenly wondering why I’m outside in a ‘These-motherfuckers-are-the-size-of-polar-bears’ kind of way. Larry heard the barking, and settled the one dog down as I was backing off toward the door. But then another dog must’ve thought I was an attacker, because it jumped up and bit me in the arm that I was holding Hailey with. (In an ‘I-would-like-to-pull-you-to-the-ground-so-I-can-chew-your-nose-off’ kind of way.) I knew I’d been bitten, but I also knew that if I screamed for help Hailey would freak out and I might lose my grip on her, so I bit my lip and turned around so my back was to the dog and Hailey was blocked from him. Then I felt another bite on my arm as I slid open the back door and pushed Hailey through. I was afraid that the dog was trying to get at her, since she was squealing with excitement, so I blocked the door with my body to give her time to get farther in, and that’s when the dog bit me in the back. He latched on and yanked, and for a second I thought I was going to fall to the ground, and in my mind flashed all of those news stories about women killed in freak dog accidents. I put my leg back to steady myself and made sure Hailey was safely in, then pulled hard to rip my back out of the dog’s mouth and slammed the door behind me.”

Lisa looked at me in silence for a moment. “
Dude.
Was everybody freaked out?” she asked.

“No. No one even realized it had happened. I swooped Hailey up and checked her out all over, looking for blood and bites that I knew she
must
have gotten, but she didn’t have a scratch on her. It was weird. Then Mom assured me that I was overreacting and that everything was fine, and then she saw the blood and realized that I’d been bitten. Uncle Larry hadn’t even realized what had happened, because I’d been so quiet when it happened. The two bites on my arm were so deep that you could see a bit of fat poking out of them, and on my back you could see the dog’s teeth marks, like some sort of doggie dental impression. I spent the rest of the evening in the emergency room being stitched up, getting a tetanus shot, and wishing I’d had my camera with me so I could send pictures to Victor to show him what he was missing while he entertained clients with lobster dinners.”

“So, what did they do with the dogs?” she asked.

“Nothing. I’m sure if I’d asked them to, Larry and Theresa would have put the dogs down, but they’ve been around Theresa’s kids for ten years with no problem. I think they saw a large, screaming, unfamiliar object approaching their master in the dark and were trying to protect him. Besides, it kind of felt like I’d asked for it. Taking your three-year-old out in the dark to see giant strange dogs while they are eating is bewilderingly stupid.

“Oh, and we’d just eaten, so I probably smelled like KFC.

“Plus,
I’m kind of delicious
. It was like I was wearing a perfume designed to get me mauled. But in a bad way.”

Lisa nodded slowly. “That’s gotta be in, like, our top-ten worst family stories ever.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Okay,” she admitted. “Top fifty.”

“It wasn’t that bad, really.” I explained: “It was kind of a learning experience.”

“Right,” she agreed. “And the lesson was, ‘Dogs eat meat.
People are made of meat.
You do the math.’”

“Okay, that’s not a lesson. That’s a word problem. A really bad one. No, I learned that I could put someone else’s life before mine. I always thought that I would, of course, give my life for Hailey, but in the back of my mind
was always a sneaking doubt that if the time came I wouldn’t be able to physically force myself to go into the burning building for her, or step in front of an angry dog to save her, but that day I found out that I could. It was scary as hell, but in a way it’s reassuring to know I could do it if I had to.”

“Aw,” Lisa replied. “That’s pretty profound for a dog bite.”

“I
also
learned that seeing your own fat poke out of you is disgusting and is good motivation not to eat that third drumstick,” I added. “Oh, and that when a hot doctor comes in to tell you he really wants to ‘irrigate your holes,’ you shouldn’t laugh, because apparently that’s a real thing and not some sexual innuendo. Oh! And when they did it
they found a tooth in my back
.”

“Because it was from your silent twin,”
Lisa said conspiratorially.

“EXACTLY!”
I exclaimed. “Except not at all. It was just a tooth from the dog, because he was so old. But I did immediately tell the doctor that maybe it was a twin that I’d ingested before birth, and I asked him to feel around in my back hole for any human hair or a skull, since I was already numb, but he acted like I was crazy. Probably because I’d laughed at his sexual innuendo.”

“Yeah, doctors hate that,” she added.

“I guess the good thing about getting attacked by the dog is realizing that I’m a little less selfish than I thought I was. Before, the most selfless thing I had done was give all my wishes to Hailey. I see a falling star or blow out my candles and I wish for something for her, but it feels selfish. Knowing that she’s happy is going to make me happy anyway, so it feels like cheating, like wishing for more wishes. Also, it’s not much to give up, considering that every wish prior to having Hailey involved my seeing a unicorn.” I half hesitated in even telling Lisa that part, knowing that once you tell someone your wish it doesn’t come true, but the chances of my seeing a unicorn are slim. Especially since they appear only to virgins, according to unicorn lore. I imagine that if I ever see a unicorn it’ll be one that’s mostly senile and sort of skanky, purposely showing up disheveled and unshowered
just to fuck with the other unicorns, who wish that that unicorn would stop embarrassing them all like this. Harold would be his name, probably, and he’d be a smoker. So I wasn’t giving up much. But getting attacked by wild dogs to protect my child? It was like a nod from the universe. A subtle recognition that
yes
, you
are
a good mother. It was one I was just as surprised to receive as the universe was surprised to give, and I sat there in the hospital room thinking that if I had to give some sort of acceptance speech I would be earnestly shocked and humbled, and I would probably cry the ugly cry, and not just because I was having large gashes sewn up at the moment. I would thank my mother for teaching me to put others first, and my father for unintentionally preparing me to not panic when attacked by large unknown animals. I would thank Victor for not being surprised that I’d sacrificed myself for our daughter, and I would thank Hailey for mindlessly trusting that she was okay in my arms. And then I would nod silently to the disheveled unicorn at the back of the room as he caught my eye and tipped his head at my awesomeness.

“And that was what I was thinking. And also that I needed to find out what kind of drugs they’d given me, because anything that makes you hallucinate proud but chaotic unicorns watching your acceptance speech for being mauled by dogs is okay by me.”

“Wow,” my sister said as I realized I’d been saying all of this out loud. “That’s . . .
totally messed up
. But,” she admitted, “I’ve given up my birthday wishes for my kids too. I guess it’s a sign of being a grown-up. God, imagine what our lives would have been like without Mom wishing good things for us on
her
birthdays. We’d probably be dead by now.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “Although, now that I think about it, maybe Mom wished for our lives to end up just like this. It’s no magical unicorn, but it brought us here, and I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather be. Unless it was the exact same place with an air conditioner.”

Lisa nodded. “I’d fist-bump to that, but it’s too hot to move. So what do you wish for Hailey when you blow out your candles?”

“Can’t tell you or it won’t come true. But I suppose it’s the same sort of
wishes all parents wish for their kids. I wish for her to have love, and just enough heartbreak to appreciate it. I wish for her to have a life as blessed as mine. With her own dead magical-squirrel puppet, and getting arms stuck up a cow’s vagina, and to know the pride that comes with choosing to be mauled by a dog to save someone else. I guess those would be the things I’d wish for Hailey.”

Lisa looked at me quizzically. “Yeah, I don’t think anybody wishes for their kids to get mauled and stuck in a cow vagina.”

“I just mean
metaphorically
,” I added.

Lisa nodded and closed her eyes as she rested her head on the porch chair. “Well, that’s good,” she said absently as she stretched her legs out to bask in the sun. “Because in real life that’s the sort of shit that haunts you forever. Those are the kinds of memories that get seared into your mind for good.”

I looked over at her and mimicked her pose, feeling the sun bake into my bones as I let her words run through my mind. I smiled gently to myself as I closed my eyes and thought,
“My God. I certainly hope so.”

Epilogue

Fifteen years of marriage and one beautiful daughter later, Victor and I are still as mismatched as ever. We fight. We make up. We occasionally threaten to put cobras in the mailbox for the other person to find. And that’s okay. Because after fifteen years, I know that when I call Victor from the emergency room to tell him that I was attacked by dogs when visiting my parents, he’ll take a deep breath and remind himself that this is our life.

I watch Victor almost in wonderment at the man he’s become, now completely unfazed when my father asks him to pull over so he can peel a dead skunk off the road because he “might know someone who could use it.” I see Hailey slip easily between the world of ballet classes and helping her grandfather build a moonshine still.

I see how we’ve changed to create a “normal” that no sane person would ever consider “normal,” but that works for us. A
new
normal. I see us becoming comfortable with our own brand of dysfunctional functionality, our own unique way of measuring successes.

But most important, I see me . . . or rather,
the me I’ve become
. Because I can finally see that all the terrible parts
of my life, the embarrassing parts, the incidents I wanted to pretend never happened, and the things that make me “weird” and “different,” were actually the most important parts of my life. They were the parts that made me
me
. And this was the very reason I decided to tell this story . . . to celebrate the strange, to give thanks for the bizarre, and to one day help my daughter understand that the reason her mother appeared mostly naked on Fox News (that’s in book two,
sorry
) is probably the same reason her grandfather occasionally brings his pet donkey into bars: Because you are defined
not
by life’s imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. Because there is joy in embracing—
rather than running screaming from
—the utter absurdity of life. And because it’s illegal to leave an unattended donkey in your car, even if you do live in Texas.

And when I see another couple, who seem normal and conventional and who
aren’t
having a loud, recurring argument in the park about whether Jesus was a zombie, I don’t feel envious. I feel contentment and pride as Victor and I pause our shouting to share a smug, knowing smile with each other as we pass the baffled couple, who move to give us room on the sidewalk. Then I lean in to rest my head on Victor’s shoulder as he laughs quietly and lovingly whispers to me,
“Fucking amateurs.”