To Selena, With Love (19 page)

One of the dogs, Max, was about the scariest-looking creature I’d ever seen, a brindle dog with a huge head and jaws that looked like they could crush a truck. As I approached Selena and Margie, that dog opened his mouth, looked right at me, and let out a bark from hell. I swear that the ground shook when Selena walked him over to meet me.

Selena started telling me about Max and the other dog, a female named Brandy, informing me that they were English bull mastiffs. She lectured me on the origin of the breed, what they were like as pets and on and on, as though she hadn’t just seen them for the first time herself. As she talked, I stared at her, thinking,
Oh, no, do not even think what I know you’re thinking, Selena. No way can we handle dogs like these
.

After a few minutes, I went inside to unload the groceries, making the mistake of leaving Selena out there with those dogs. Little did I know that Brandy was pregnant, much less that Selena would tell Margie that she wanted one of the puppies.

Later, I found out from Margie that she’d tried to convince Selena to ask my permission to bring home a bull mastiff, but Selena had said, “Oh, don’t you worry about Chris. He’ll come around.”

A few months later, she surprised me with the puppy, which was already half Selena’s size even though it was just a couple of months old. I looked at Selena and said, “You bought it, didn’t you?”

She ignored my question. “Oh, Chris, look how cute she is!”

“That dog’s going to be bigger than you are,” I warned, but I could feel myself weakening. The puppy was cute and Selena’s enthusiasm was as contagious as her laugh. Plus, it always melted my heart to see her with baby animals, because it was so easy to imagine how it would be one day with children of our own. I had no doubt that Selena would be as amazing at motherhood as she was at everything else.

Selena set the dog down on the ground and we both smiled like proud parents as we watched the puppy leap around. English bull mastiffs are such big dogs that their legs are kind of stiff and they’re extremely clumsy in their early months. It was like watching a colt
in our yard. Now I was in love with this puppy, too. I knew it would be an awesome dog.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s keep her.”

We named that puppy Taylor. What I didn’t know—how many times will I have to confess this?—was that, when Selena went to Margie’s house, she bought not just Taylor, but another puppy, too. She was afraid to tell me, though, so she had Margie hold the other dog.

“She wanted to break the news to you slowly,” Margie told me later.

At the time, all Selena said to me was, “Gosh, I feel so bad for Margie. She can’t find a home for that last puppy.”

Still clueless, I said, “Oh, I’m sure somebody will happen along who wants to buy a dog.”

Selena kept mentioning how much trouble Margie was having selling that last puppy, though, and at last some red flags went up. I knew Selena well enough to realize that she had probably already bought the damn thing.

I came to grips with the idea pretty quickly. What was one more pet? But I didn’t make it easy for Selena. In fact, I did whatever I could to make it harder. Whenever she brought up the subject of the last puppy, I’d just say, “Oh, that’s too bad it’s difficult for Margie. I wish we could help her out, but we’ve already got three dogs, and those mastiffs grow up to be so big.”

Finally, one day Selena just came out with the truth. “I did it. I bought the last puppy. It’s ours, Chris.”

I grinned. “I already figured that out.”

She whacked my arm. “You did? You already knew, and you just let me keep on talking and talking? You didn’t say anything?”

“Hey, a guy’s got to have his fun around here,” I said.

Selena went off and called Margie, who brought the last puppy over to our house. We named that dog Winnie.

As Margie got out of the car with the dog, she said, “Please don’t be mad at me, Chris.”

“Dude, I know how Selena is,” I said. “She doesn’t need any coaxing. She just loves animals that much.”

And it really was fine in the end. Selena and I both loved going out in the yard to wrestle with Winnie and Taylor. They’d jump and drool all over us. They loved to chase us, too, always trying to trip us the way lions trip their prey, by nipping at our heels. Sometimes I took Winnie and Taylor over to the schoolyard on weekends, too, where I’d run with them in a wide-open field, or Selena would walk them around the neighborhood and encourage the kids to come and pat them.

Selena loved playing with all of the neighborhood kids, but there was one in particular she developed a special affection for, a young boy with a squeaky voice named Tim. Tim loved basketball more than anything in the world, and he was a big fan of Michael Jordan.

One day, as we stood around in the yard playing with the dogs and joking with Tim, he announced with something like despair in his voice that he wanted a pair of basketball shoes called Air Jordans.

“My mom’s not going to buy them for me, though,” he said with a sigh.

“Why not?” Selena asked.

“Too much money,” Tim said. “And if I wait to save up for those sneakers, they’re going to be sold out.”

“Tell you what,” Selena said. “I’ll go get you the shoes, and in
exchange, you can help me wash the cars and do things around the yard for a few weeks. Deal?”

She took him to buy the shoes, and you never saw a happier boy than Tim.

You would think that four dogs would be enough for anyone, but one more was about to join our practice family. The band was playing in Houston, and after our sound check for the show, we all went over to the Galleria Mall. Selena and I went our own way there and agreed to meet the band later.

As we were walking around, we passed a pet store and stepped inside “just to look,” as Selena always said—a dangerous proposition, coming from her. There we saw a little firecracker of a miniature Doberman. He was tiny but feisty, really trying to kill this little toy in his pen, shaking it back and forth in his mouth until Selena was laughing so hard that tears streamed down her face.

“I just love him!” she said. “Look at him, Chris!”

“Oh, no,” I said, but I was laughing, too. “That is a pretty cool dog,” I admitted. “If you want to look at him, let’s go.”

In we went. Selena was wearing a long, sheer dress with gauze under layers that went all the way down to her ankles. We carried the puppy into the back room, and that little Doberman was flopping all around in Selena’s arms because he was so excited.

Finally Selena set him down on the floor and the puppy started zipping around our legs. It didn’t take him long before he was playfully nipping at her dress with his sharp little teeth, shaking it from side to side.

Selena didn’t care. She was cracking up. “Look at him, he’s crazy,” she said.

That dog
was
crazy, too. Every time I put my hand down to pat
him, he had to have his nose on my fingers. “I think I’m in love,” I said.

“Me, too,” Selena said. “Let’s get him.”

We bought the puppy and immediately decided to name him André, after André the Giant. As we were heading back to the bus, I suddenly remembered Abraham. “Oh, no,” I said. “What’s your dad going to say about us bringing a puppy on board the bus?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell him,” Selena said.

I fully expected Abraham to jump down my throat and say something along the lines of, “Son, what’s wrong with you? You already have all these dogs. Why do you need another one?”

But, to my amazement, Abraham was an even easier mark than Selena. As soon as she said, “Hey, look what we got,” he went nuts and started talking baby talk to our little dog.

I handed André to Abraham, and you never saw a happier man. The puppy licked his face and Abraham laughed.

They were terrific dogs, and Selena and I were happy playing house and practicing our parenting skills on our furry pack.

It was Selena’s idea to get a dog, but it was my idea to own a pet snake. I had always wanted one, I told Selena one day.

“You want a what?” she asked, incredulous. “But why? You can’t call a snake to come over and sit next to you, and it’ll never lick your cheek or play with you.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just think snakes are really cool.”

Selena was always a good sport. As I started bringing books home about pet snakes, learning which ones were better than others and how to maintain them, she read the books right along with me
and learned as well. Finally, we settled on a ball python, because they were docile snakes that would typically roll themselves into a ball if they were threatened instead of trying to bite. Another plus was that they didn’t grow any bigger than five feet long.

We found a pet store that specialized in exotic pets. They stocked all different kinds of snakes and lizards. I could tell by the way her eyes skittered around to every corner of the store that Selena was trying to pull off acting brave, but feeling jumpy inside.

“It’s okay,” I reminded her. “They’re all in cages and aquariums.”

When one of the clerks approached us, I told him that we were thinking about getting a snake. He and I started discussing pythons. To my amazement, Selena just stood next to me without saying a word—a rare occasion.

I had already acquired a forty-gallon aquarium tank, a heat lamp, heat rocks, and everything else that we needed. When I told the clerk this, he went into the back room and returned with a ball python wrapped around his arm. As soon as Selena saw that, she was gone. She didn’t just walk fast. She ran out the door, then turned around and stared at me from outside the store, big-eyed.

I started cracking up. “It’s okay,” I said, and then she started laughing, too. “Come on,” I encouraged her.

She came back into the store slowly, keeping her eye on that python, which by now had wrapped itself around my arm. The clerk told me all about the snake and its feeding habits—it ate live mice—while Selena stepped a little closer.

Once she looked calmer, I said, “Come on. Check him out.” I held the snake toward her on my arm.

Selena put her arm out. The python went right over to it and
wrapped itself around her arm. She tensed for a minute, then relaxed again.

We brought the snake home in a little sack, kind of like a pillowcase, and put it in our aquarium. Selena was nervous around the snake for a while, but after about a month had passed, she relaxed.

Ball pythons are binge feeders; they’ll eat, then go for long periods of time without being hungry again. A couple of weeks after buying the python, I decided that it had probably had enough time to adjust to its new environment. It was time to buy a mouse and try feeding it.

I went out to the pet store and came home with a white mouse that had little brown spots on it. I had only bought a single mouse, not wanting to have one left over if the snake wasn’t hungry enough to eat two. “You want to watch the snake eat?” I asked Selena.

“Yeah, I want to see it,” she said, which sort of surprised me.

I dropped the mouse into the snake’s cage and we both watched. Nothing happened. Finally we decided to leave the snake alone and turn out the lights.

The next morning, the mouse was still alive. It was in the aquarium drinking the snake’s water and having a grand time scampering around inside that forty-gallon tank, using the snake as a playground.

“We can’t just leave that poor mouse in there, feeling scared all of the time that the snake will eat it,” Selena said. “Let’s go back to the pet store and get him a little cage.”

The next thing that happened, of course, was that we started building a mouse habitat, attaching all of these plastic cages and tubes for the mouse to live in, until we pretty much had a mouse
mansion. Selena named him “Bugsy” because of his big eyes, and talked to him all the time.

One night, Selena was getting ready to go out with Suzette. I was watching television while she showered and did her hair and makeup. I don’t know why, but suddenly I decided that it must be time to try to feed the snake again.

I got up and took the mouse out of its cage, then dropped it into the snake’s aquarium. Nothing happened, so I turned off the light and left the room.

A few minutes later, I decided to check on Bugsy again. I snapped on the light, thinking I’d take the little mouse out of the aquarium and return it to its cage. Instead, I found the snake chowing down; its head was up and just Bugsy’s back feet and tail were sticking out of the python’s mouth.

I started tripping, knowing how upset Selena would be. “Well,” I said to the snake, shaking my head. “You got him. He’s all yours.” I snapped off the light and shut the door again, hoping Selena wouldn’t want to check on Bugsy before she left.

“All right, I’m ready to go,” Selena said a few minutes later.

I walked her to the door and kissed her good-bye. “Love you. Have a good time.”

As soon as she was gone, I ran into the room with the aquarium and turned the light back on. Sure enough, the snake was done: he had a big ball going down his throat.

“Please hurry up and get rid of that,” I told him. “You’ve only got a couple of hours before she gets back, dude.”