Me Talk Pretty One Day (9 page)

Her interests broadened and she listened intently to the radio, captivated by the political and financial stories, which failed
to engage me. “One more word about the Iran-Contra hearings, and you’ll be sleeping next door with the aliens,” I’d say, though
we both knew that I didn’t really mean it.

Neil was old when she moved to Chicago, and then she got older. The Oliver North testimony now behind her, she started leaving
teeth in her bowl and developed the sort of breath that could remove paint. She stopped cleaning herself, and I took to bathing
her in the sink. When she was soaking wet, I could see just how thin and brittle she really was. Her kidneys shrank to the
size of raisins, and although I wanted what was best for her, I naturally assumed the vet was joking when he suggested dialysis.
In addition to being elderly, toothless, and incontinent, it seemed that, for the cost of a few thousand dollars, she could
also spend three days a week hooked up to a machine. “Sounds awfully tempting,” I said. “Just give us a few days to think
it over.” I took her for a second opinion. Vet number two tested her blood and phoned me a few days later suggesting I consider
euthanasia.

I hadn’t heard that word since childhood and immediately recalled a mismatched pair of Japanese schoolboys standing alone
in a deserted school yard. One of the boys, grossly obese, was attempting to climb a flagpole that towered high above him.
Silhouetted against the darkening sky, he hoisted himself a few feet off the ground and clung there, trembling and out of
breath. “I can’t do it,” he said. “This is too hard for me.”

His friend, a gaunt and serious boy named Komatsu, stood below him, offering encouragement. “Oh, but you can do it. You must,”
he said. “It is required.”

This was a scene I had long forgotten, and thinking of it made me unbearably sad. The boys were characters from Fatty and
Skinny, a Japanese movie regularly presented on The CBS Children’s Film Festival, a weekly TV series hosted by two puppets
and a very patient woman who pretended to laugh at their jokes. My sisters and I had watched the program every Saturday afternoon,
our gasbag of a collie imposing frequent intermissions.

Having shimmied a few more inches up the flagpole, Fatty lost his grip and fell down into the sand. As he brushed himself
off, Skinny ran down the mountain toward the fragile, papery house he shared with his family. This had been Fatty’s last chance
to prove himself. He’d thought his friend’s patience was unlimited, but now he knew he was wrong. “Komatsuuuuuuuuuu!” he yelled.
“Komatsu, please give me one more chance.”

The doctor’s voice called me back from the Japanese playground. “So the euthanasia,” he said. “Are you giving it some thought?”

“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

In the end I returned to the animal hospital and had her put to sleep. When the vet injected the sodium pentobarbital, Neil
fluttered her eyes, assumed a nap position, and died. My then boyfriend stayed to make arrangements, and I ran outside to
blubber beside the parked and, unfortunately, locked car. Neil had gotten into her cat carrier believing she would eventually
return to our apartment, and that tore me up. Someone had finally been naive enough to trust me, and I’d rewarded her with
death. Racked by guilt, the youth in Asia sat at their desks and wept bitter tears.

A week after putting her to sleep, I received Neil’s ashes in a forest green can. She’d never expressed any great interest
in the outdoors, so I scattered her remains on the carpet and then vacuumed her back up. The cat’s death struck me as the
end of an era. It was, of course, the end of her era, but with the death of a pet there’s always that urge to string black
crepe over an entire ten- or twenty-year period. The end of my safe college life, the last of my thirty-inch waist, my faltering
relationship with my first real boyfriend: I cried for it all and wondered why so few songs were written about cats.

My mother sent a consoling letter along with a check to cover the cost of the cremation. In the left-hand corner, on the line
marked
MEMO
, she’d written, “Pet Burning.” I had it coming.

When my mother died and was cremated herself, we worried that, acting on instinct, our father might run out and immediately
replace her. Returning from the funeral, my brother, sisters, and I half expected to find some vaguely familiar Sharon Two
standing at the kitchen counter and working the puzzle in
TV Guide
. “Sharon One would have gotten five across,” our father would have scolded. “Come on, baby, get with it.”

With my mother gone, my father and Melina had each other all to themselves. Though she now occupied the side of the bed left
vacant by her former mistress, the dog knew she could never pass as a viable replacement. Her love was too fierce and simple,
and she had no talent for argument. Yet she and my father honored their pledge to adore and protect each other. They celebrated
anniversaries, regularly renewed their vows, and growled when challenged by outside forces.

“You want me to go where?” When invited to visit one of his children, my father would beg off, saying, “But I can’t leave
town. Who’d take care of Melina?” Mention a kennel, and he’d laugh. “You’ve got to be out of your mind. A kennel, ha! Hey,
did you hear that, Melina? They want me to put you in prison.”

Due to their size, Great Danes generally don’t live very long. There are cheeses with a longer shelf life. At the age of twelve,
gray bearded and teetering, Melina was a wonder of science. My father massaged her arthritic legs, carried her up the stairs,
and lifted her in and out of bed. He treated her the way that men in movies treat their ailing wives, the way he might have
treated my mother had she allowed such naked displays of helplessness and affection. Melina’s era spanned the final dozen
years of his married life. The dog had ridden in the family’s last station wagon, attended my father’s retirement party, and
celebrated the elections of two Republican presidents. She grew weaker and lost her appetite, but against all advice, my father
simply could not bear to let her go.

The youth in Asia begged him to end her life.

“I can’t,” he said. “This is too hard for me.”

“Oh, but you must do it,” said Komatsu. “It is required.”

A month after Melina was put to sleep, my father returned to the breeder and came home with another Great Dane. A female like
Melina, gray spots like Melina, only this one is named Sophie. He tries to love her but readily admits that he may have made
a mistake. She’s a nice enough dog, but the timing is off.

When walking Sophie through the neighborhood, my father feels not unlike the newly married senior stumbling behind his capricous
young bride. The puppy’s stamina embarrasses him, as does her blatant interest in young men. Passing drivers slow to a stop
and roll down their windows. “Hey,” they yell, “are you walking her, or is it the other way ’round?” Their words remind him
of a more gracious era, of gentler forces straining against the well-worn leash. He still gets the attention, but now, in
response, he just lifts his shovel and continues on his way.

A
YEAR AFTER MY GRADUATION
from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a terrible mistake was made and I was offered a position teaching a writing
workshop. I had never gone to graduate school, and although several of my stories had been Xeroxed and stapled, none of them
had ever been published in the traditional sense of the word.

Like branding steers or embalming the dead, teaching was a profession I had never seriously considered. I was clearly unqualified,
yet I accepted the job without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a tie and go by the name of Mr. Sedaris. My father
went by the same name, and though he lived a thousand miles away, I liked to imagine someone getting the two of us confused.
“Wait a minute,” this someone might say, “are you talking about Mr. Sedaris the retired man living in North Carolina, or Mr.
Sedaris the distinguished academic?”

The position was offered at the last minute, when the scheduled professor found a better-paying job delivering pizza. I was
given two weeks to prepare, a period I spent searching for a briefcase and standing before my full-length mirror, repeating
the words “Hello, class, my name is Mr. Sedaris.” Sometimes I’d give myself an aggressive voice and firm, athletic timbre.
This was the masculine Mr. Sedaris, who wrote knowingly of flesh wounds and tractor pulls. Then there was the ragged bark
of the newspaper editor, a tone that coupled wisdom with an unlimited capacity for cruelty. I tried sounding businesslike
and world-weary, but when the day eventually came, my nerves kicked in and the true Mr. Sedaris revealed himself. In a voice
reflecting doubt, fear, and an unmistakable desire to be loved, I sounded not like a thoughtful college professor but, rather,
like a high-strung twelve-year-old girl; someone named Brittany.

My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing
name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves. I’d cut them myself out of orange construction paper and handed them out
along with a box of straight pins. My fourth-grade teacher had done the same thing, explaining that we were to take only one
pin per person. This being college rather than elementary school, I encouraged my students to take as many pins as they liked.
They wrote their names upon their leaves, fastened them to their breast pockets, and bellied up to the long oak table that
served as our communal desk.

“All right then,” I said. “Okay, here we go.” I opened my briefcase and realized that I’d never thought beyond this moment.
The orange leaves were the extent of my lesson plan, but still I searched the empty briefcase, mindful that I had stupidly
armed my audience with straight pins. I guess I’d been thinking that, without provocation, my students would talk, offering
their thoughts and opinions on the issues of the day. I’d imagined myself sitting on the edge of the desk, overlooking a forest
of raised hands. The students would simultaneously shout to be heard, and I’d pound on something in order to silence them.
“Whoa people,” I’d yell. “Calm down, you’ll all get your turn. One at a time, one at a time.”

The error of my thinking yawned before me. A terrible silence overtook the room, and seeing no other option, I instructed
my students to pull out their notebooks and write a brief essay related to the theme of profound disappointment.

I’d always hated it when a teacher forced us to invent something on the spot. Aside from the obvious pressure, it seemed that
everyone had his or her own little way of doing things, especially when it came to writing. Maybe someone needed a particular
kind of lamp or pen or typewriter. In my experience, it was hard to write without your preferred tools, but impossible to
write without a cigarette.

I made a note to bring in some ashtrays and then I rooted through the wastepaper basket for a few empty cans. Standing beneath
the prominently displayed
NO SMOKING
sign, I distributed the cans and cast my cigarettes upon the table, encouraging my students to go at it. This, to me, was
the very essence of teaching, and I thought I’d made a real breakthrough until the class asthmatic raised his hand, saying
that, to the best of his knowledge, Aristophanes had never smoked a cigarette in his life. “Neither did Jane Austen,” he said.
“Or the Brontës.”

I jotted these names into my notebook alongside the word Troublemaker, and said I’d look into it. Because I was the writing
teacher, it was automatically assumed that I had read every leather-bound volume in the Library of Classics. The truth was
that I had read none of those books, nor did I intend to. I bluffed my way through most challenges with dim memories of the
movie or miniseries based upon the book in question, but it was an exhausting exercise and eventually I learned it was easier
to simply reply with a question, saying, “I know what Flaubert means to me, but what do you think of her?”

As Mr. Sedaris I lived in constant fear. There was the perfectly understandable fear of being exposed as a fraud, and then
there was the deeper fear that my students might hate me. I imagined them calling their friends on the phone. “Guess who I
got stuck with,” they’d say. Most dull teachers at least had a few credentials to back them up. They had a philosophy and
a lesson plan and didn’t need to hide behind a clip-on tie and an empty briefcase.

Whenever I felt in danger of losing my authority, I would cross the room and either open or close the door. A student needed
to ask permission before regulating the temperature or noise level, but I could do so whenever I liked. It was the only activity
sure to remind me that I was in charge, and I took full advantage of it.

“There he goes again,” my students would whisper. “What’s up with him and that door?”

The asthmatic transferred to another class, leaving me with only eight students. Of these, four were seasoned smokers who
took long, contemplative drags and occasionally demonstrated their proficiency by blowing ghostly concentric rings that hovered
like halos above their bowed heads. The others tried as best they could, but it wasn’t pretty. By the end of the second session,
my students had produced nothing but ashes. Their hacking coughs and complete lack of output suggested that, for certain writers,
smoking was obviously not enough.

Thinking that a clever assignment might help loosen them up, I instructed my students to write a letter to their mothers in
prison. They were free to determine both the crime and the sentence, and references to cellmates were strongly encouraged.

The group set to work with genuine purpose and enthusiasm, and I felt proud of myself, until the quietest member of the class
handed in her paper, whispering that both her father and her uncle were currently serving time on federal racketeering charges.

“I just never thought of my mom going off as well,” she said. “This was just a really… depressing assignment.”