Disjointed Memories of Animals

I don't understand people who don't keep animals.  My best friend hates pets, thinks it's disgusting to keep them in the house, and finds it strange that I would do things like take pictures of raccoons and possums.  Excuse me, seeing a possum is a thrill.  I know this can be a cultural thing (Indians think keeping dogs in your house is fucking gross, but have you seen their dogs?), but he's just a white American.  For years, he thought cats are what stink, and not their litter boxes.  The first time he came over to my house years ago, he exclaimed, "I can't smell the cat!"  Yeah bro, because I slavishly empty the box while she watches.

He doesn't even notice animals.  He visited recently and looked surprised and suspicious when my cat jumped onto the couch and sniffed her way over to him.  He leaned away with a vague expression of disgust, then patted her head with his fingers splayed out and said, "I paid tribute to you in your home. You go away now."  Shoo wave.

Something clearly happened to him in childhood.  Something bad.

My dad was the same way.  For years, he endured his partners' pets.  He was neglectful of our dogs, shrieking at them to SHUT THE FACK UP every time they barked more than once, and in his darker moments, he'd hit or kick them for offenses.  I may be lucky that those are the worst memories of my childhood, but they do suck.  He loves to tell a story about how I got bucked off a horse who then primly trotted over to him.  I ran over, crying, kicking up dirt. "Don't hit her!"  "I wasn't going to," he said, shruggingly surprised that I would even think that. "It was your fault."  Then he made me get back on her, because he saw that in a movie.  I shakily endured it for two passes around the pen, then got off authoritatively.  The afternoon at the barn was done.

It's not that he didn't like animals.  He did.  He just didn't treat them well in a consistent manner.  There were always dogs and cats in his house growing up and he and all of his siblings speak wistfully of their black lab, Susie, as though she was a person.  She was the smartest dog of all time, she saved our lives, blah blah blah.  All four of them and my grandma insisted on this, so I believe them, but it was so over the top.  She did apparently save their lives, though.  Two of my grandmother's cats were fighting in the night in the late 60s and knocked over a lamp that had been left on, doutbtless waiting for one of the rotten siblings to come home.  The hot bulb burned into some delicate fabric (likely a doily) and set the couch on fire.  The living room began to go up when Susie ran all through the house, barking, and woke the family up who put out the fire.

She's the only childhood pet he talks about except for the hated cats.  Later, he and my mom had an ugly black poodle named Ty, and I have photos of him putting panties and my toddler t-shirts on Ty and feeding beer to her while he carried her on his hip like a baby.  Ty had just come around one day, so they took her in, but it turned out she was actually someone else's dog, and my mom cried when they had to give her back.

My mom was always picking up stray dogs.  We'd pull over on the way to school or grandma's house and she'd load some dog up and bring it home.  They didn't usually stay long, I don't know why, either she took them to the humane society or found their owners.  She stopped doing that after she picked up a big German Shepherd who was covered in giant green ticks.  I remember them as the size of olives.  My dad came home from work, put his hand over his face when he saw the dog, but immediately named him Rufus.  Rufus would lay on the back patio as I pried the ticks off his body with a butter knife while the neighbor kid winced in horror.  Unfortunately, Rufus attacked the girl down the street while we were playing in the yard one after-school afternoon.  A strange look came over him and he was on her in a second, biting and tearing at her chest.  I just stood there, screaming hysterically.  My mom came running out clutching a cordless phone just as the neighbor kid's dad dashed in through our gate and wrested the dog off her.  She had to have surgery.  I don't know what happened to Rufus and I guess her parents didn't sue us.  After that, my mom had a strict "no screaming unless you are in trouble," rule, and chastised me over and over for shrieking around the yard while playing, because it raised the panic in her throat.  Sorry, Ma.

Sidebar: My dad has come around to loving dogs in his elder state.  Not other animals, but dogs.  He and his common law llorona have had a series of ill-fated pitbulls over the years, the recent best of which was Pinky II (really lazy dog-namers), who died of cancer.  To his credit, he sought formal healthcare for Pinky, but he also did shit like rub her head with olive oil and hang a piece of pink quartz from her collar, because he read it in some mommy blog about treating the spiritual aspect of your dog's cancer.  I mean, whatever makes him feel productive, but this is why the man votes Trump and believes aliens built the pyramids.  He's basically an antivax mama grizzly, but for dogs.  

My grandma's backyard is a literal pet cemetery.  I need to ask my dad who the first animal to be buried there was - it might've been Susie.  [Update: Dad: "I believe that it was a German Shorthaired Pointer in 1969. There were cats that far back also."] My grandma was very pragmatic about animals, as a farm child, so this is surprising.  Then again, farm folk do tend to bury their dead on the property.  To her, cats were for barns, dogs were for passive friendship, but you don't lose much sleep over either one, except in rare cases when they're special.  When I was very young, she had this massive Chesapeake Bay retriever named Arthur.  Arthur was a gross and unfun dog and my cousins and I love to talk about him.  He had lumpy fur in the way of the Chesapeake, and I think he came from the pound.  He was grossly overweight, truly a massive dog, and he would jump on the couch and army crawl into my grandma's lap while she cursed and admonished him for being too big for laps, and certainly old lady laps.  Arthur had various illnesses and a pesky recurrent case of fleas.  She would "dip" him regularly and then slap my hand away when I tried to pet him.  "No honey, he's poisonous right now."  I don't think Arthur was buried in the yard, probably because my dad just said no, it was too damn much.

The reason it was too damn much is because there are two St. Bernards buried back there, and my dad dug both of their graves.  Conductor and Ally.  These psycho dogs were the center of my uncle Mark's heart, even though Conductor hated children (except for Mark's kids) and legitimately rage-charged me more than once when I was under 3.  What did I do?  I've always been hurt and embarrassed that Conductor wanted to kill me.  Mark has continued to buy breeder St. Bernards and they have continued to attack his family, the most recent one nearly tearing his adult son's face off about ten years ago.  They still talk about her lovingly.

Anyway, Conductor apparently had a heart attack and died, perhaps because he lived in Arizona and was a St. Bernard.  Conveniently, he was at over at grandma's at the time.  Mark collapsed, weeping, useless, and grandma called my dad, who sighed and put his shovel in the back of the truck.  He dug a grave for a full sized male St. Bernard where the flower bushes go at the perimeter of the yard.  A while later Ally died, and my dad buried her back there too.  My dad has always been given the manual labor jobs because of his size, always been asked to beat up his siblings' enemies (literally into contemporary times - fyi he won't), and yeah, he does kind of resent it.  Then my cousins started bringing their dead to grandma too, who would point out to the increasingly limited empty spaces in the yard, and they'd bury their cats and dogs and birds and frogs accordingly.  None of my pets are in there because my mom thought their pet cemetery was gross, and there are no places left except for in the middle of the yard anyway.  That would violate the only rule: you don't damage the grass.

My aunt lives there now and I want her to make a map of the graves.

And those are my weirdest pet stories.  Poor old Vaughn died today with his mate Gilby, and it's nice that they got to take that trip together so neither would miss the other.  Vaughn was a little silver runt that I found on Craigslist.  He was living with an Indian family.  When I came over, the mother called out and clapped her ringed hands, "Puppies!  Puppiesss!" and 8 tiny, fat, ear-flapping baby dogs came racing into the room.  I picked Vaughn up and that was the rest of the story.  The first thing my cat Fatima did was slap him in the eye, which squinted for a week.  Despite being treated well (other than by Fatima), he was extremely timid and he was terrified of doors.  I still think my mom or my grandma (it wasn't me) accidentally shut him in a door once, but no one's talking.

Pam and Dean

RIP

Back in the 90s, my dad met someone at work.  He was single after a short and tumultuous marriage with crazy Nancy, the woman who came after my mom.  (I shouldn't be so cavalier with the c-word; she was, but it was "straight up mental illness" as Tracy Jordan would say.)  Nothing to laugh at...

Nancy was a real handful and that's a whole other blog post.  My dad came out of it battered and humbled, but it wasn't long before he met Pam.  Pam was short, beautiful and jovial.  She laughed loud and often.  She was instantly disarming, even to a constantly off-put 14 year old who was no longer interested in being nice to parents' new partners.  Pam was cool, and none of that coolness had burned off as she entered what must have been her early 40s.  How did she retain it?  She just did, because she was just, cool.

Pam was from LA, a big Mexican family with all of the 70s East LA trimmings - brothers who died young from gang-related shootings, other brothers who bought and sold lowriders, an absentee alcoholic dad, allegedly haunted homes where her mom would yell at the spirits to stop turning the lights on because they were driving up the utility bill, and grandmas who practiced santeria behind closed doors with their girlfriends.  She was kind and sympathetic to a silly awkward kid with no allegiances, and she loved David Bowie.  I could listen to her talk for the rest of my life.  And I wish she was still here.

She and I used to stay up late at my dad's house.  Ever the homebody badass, my dad would usually retire to bed before we wanted to on a Saturday night, and Pam and I would sit crosslegged on the couch and watch TCM while she told me about her lively past.  Eventually he'd get up and inform us testily, "I can hear you in the bedroom, you know."  

Pam's ex-husband had dyed his hair blonde-orange after Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth when she met him, but she could never tell her ultra-masculine son about it because he'd be ashamed of his gender-bending dad (it was the 70s! chill, bro).  She told me about record stores in her childhood and how she'd take buses all over LA and then Phoenix to find the elusive European b-sides that she needed to complete her collections, T Rex and the New York Dolls and everything else.  

I still have LPs that she gave me back then, she had range that went somewhere from 70s punk and Euro pre-goth to Fleetwood Mac, and she gave me Thompson Twins and Culture Club albums during my prolonged 80s phase.  She knew something about much of the obscure or "subversive" bands and media I was just discovering and she shared wise or crazy stories with me in a conspiratorial way.  

She never acted like my new discoveries were tiring to her, like I probably would now.  She was an advocate at a time when both of my parents were criticising my new tastes, my appearance, and whatever they thought that would lead to.  She'd roll her eyes and tell me I was fine.



She managed to be a friend and a steadying influence in spite of her quasi-parental status.  When I was most critical of my dad, when I was most critical of the world, she always had something thoughtful to say that I hadn't considered before, and was able to remind me of the inherent goodness of my dumb parents without discounting my feelings.  

And she didn't deny anything - she was critical of the ways of the world too, and confirmed my frustrated kid feelings while reminding me that all manner of life lay beyond.  And she was funny, really funny.  Witty, savage yet still essentially kind, forever irreverent.  I still use some of her old jokes and references.  When my dad tried to make fun of her tastes and life choices, she'd simply say, in a faux deep voice, "Jealous?" I loved her desperately then, and she's still the best person I have ever met.  But she and my dad didn't last, and after that breakup, she met Dean.

Dean died this week.  That's why I'm writing this.

When I first met Dean, I was a little sad.  My dad and Pam had been broken up for a couple years by then, but managed to stay friends as he usually does with the exes.  He was already with La Llorona and I couldn't wait to watch Pam watch her to see what she thought of the new woman.  I disliked LL at that time (want to say "still do" but she ain't the worst person I've ever heard of after this year).  LL was rude and smug and cold, and she didn't want me around.  I was evidence of his past life, which was verboten.  

But I didn't live with him anymore, I was 18 then, and I had to make nice because that's what I was taught to do.  I just wanted Pam back.  What a gracious time his relationship with her seemed after the entrance of the wretched women who followed her.  Couldn't they make amends?  Who wouldn't kill himself to be with someone like Pam?  I would.  We met up with Pam at Dean's house, a tidy, dated 60s ranch-style on the edge of Arcadia.  

I was shocked when I saw him for the first time - tall, robust, like John Wayne if John had been a wall of person.  Dean had a craggy, handsome face, Scottish looking, with a shock of graying hair and icy blue eyes.  He looked like a movie star.  And he was Pam's new boyfriend.  I stopped mourning her breakup with my dad so much because hell, who's gonna compete with that guy.  Dean was one of a kind.  He was old-timey gracious and polite and gentlemanly.  It was hard to look at anyone else in a room where Dean was.

At the time, Dean worked for the Wrigley Mansion.  He was the primary caretaker, maintaining the property year-round, but especially in the summer months when the house was shuttered and the bar, Jeordie's, was more quiet.  The occasion for our gathering was July 4: From the porches of the Wrigley, you could see firework shows from Tempe Town Lake as well as downtown Phoenix.  We went there to enjoy the views, and for the adults to have a few drinks.  I was surprised and pleased to see bats flapping around the upper patios in the dark, because the house was all surrounded by green space, and wondered aloud if they were considered a nuisance to be got rid of at Wrigley.  Dean said they had a place in our ecosystem just like everyone else.  Oh, Dean!  My dad probably would have tried to poison them.

His access to the home and grounds meant we could wander this historic site as we wished, and Pam walked me through the hallways of the former private residence, taking care to point out golden photos of Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis and my other favorites meeting Wrigley family members over the years.  She knew me so well.  She took me through the "crooked hallway" in the master suite, where she believed a haunting existed.  She was pretty superstitious, and believed a ghost lived in my dad's house too.  Well, there was at least one suicide in there, so, yanno maybe.*  La Lorona got drunk and jokingly tried to ally with Pam against my dad and Dean, and Pam just laughed and later told me, "What a party girl."  It was her benign and generous way of dismissing her even though she wanted my dad to be happy with someone, even if it was someone like LL.  Or maybe she just saved her trash talk for other people.  

Dean was a good surrogate dad to Pam's sons, mostly grown but still needing something.  Her youngest boy definitely benefited his traditional-yet-kind-yet-bemused teachings about life.  My dad, by contrast, had challenged them, tried to emasculate them, being jealous of Pam's attention to them.  He was so jealous of her affections that he couldn't understand their importance to her, despite having his own children and knowing they were put in the same situation with people other than their parents.  I'm sorry, and surprised he didn't learn more from her.  

Still, even my dad respected Dean, and he still does.  Still talks about him as an unimpeachable character and general cool guy.  That ain't nothing, as a friend of mine would say.

In later years, when things changed in catastrophic ways, Dean nursed Pam through multiple brutal bouts of cancer.  She moved back in with him after a pre-cancer separation, lost her hair, and he tended her attentively.  I didn't find out about her illness until near the end, and I was devastated.  She was only 50.  FIFTY.  This is no time for Sally O'Malley.  The best person in the world was struck with life-destroying cancer at 50?  What the hell makes sense at that point?  Or any point forward?  We went to her birthday party at her oldest son's house around this time.  She was up and about in a headscarf and I tried to get time with her, but I looked around and quickly realized that the house was filled with people as much or more in love her than I was, and that's a lot to say about a love that starts in adolescence.  I hung back, not wanting to bother her, and she looked tired.

I saw her again in hospice.  Thankfully someone called my dad when she was approaching her last moments, and he called me.  I was in my mid-20s and out with friends when I took his urgent call, when he told me she was dying.  I went home immediately and slept for a few hours before visiting hours at the facility.  When I saw her in her sad hospital bed, it was striking, disturbing, painful and awkward.  She looked small in her hospital bed.  Her close family was all around and I felt like an interloper despite their friendly inquiries.  They had been on watch for hours, days, and finally were bored enough to want to casually engage.  

They kept asking me how I knew her and my explanation sounded so unimportant in the presence of siblings, her mother, her children and the other close people in her life.  I said, "Well, she dated my dad, they met at the city... " Oh, VB's daughter! They tittered among each other.  They remembered him, murkily recalled me as a gangly tween, and how large the relationship had loomed for Pam at the time.  They teased me about how I turned out so nice (lul) with such a dad, and did he force me to lift weights and do push-ups growing up?  I smiled, uncomfortable, while her youngest bantered with her unresponsive body, referring to past personal jokes and massaging her feet.  She was asleep on morphine and I never saw her awake again.

The next night, I drove to her hospice, but instead of going in, I parked by her window and stayed in my car.  I was too embarrassed to trouble the people inside, but wanted to be around.  She had no idea, but it made me feel better.  She was gone soon after, thank god.  That still sounds so sick and wrong, ten years later.  The shock of loss dulls but can occasionally be sharp after a long time, too.  

The funeral in central Phoenix was unreal, her sons so adult looking in their formal dress. The inevitable vulgarity and impersonal nature of the funeral program offended me, of course.  But despite massive effort, I couldn't stop myself from weeping openly in the pew beside my silent dad and La Llorona while she stared googly on, unmoved at the situation. 

The sound of a violent door slam echoed through the church while her brother Manuel spoke at the podium, and he subtly turned his head and said, "Hi Pam," before continuing his speech.  I don't go in for cute "They're with us," shit like that, but then Manuel told a story about how Pam's brothers called her "Slam" in her teen years because she was always pissed at them for something, all these rude gross boys around, punching her or sticking their fingers in her ears or nose in their tiny family home, and she'd go to her room and slam the door as hard as she could, cracking the frame, when she was mad.  How I love her.  How I wish I could have protected her at any stage of her young life.  I would have killed someone.

And now Dean's gone to cancer too soon as well, but at least he lived to his full life expectancy.  I don't know the details.  But I think of his big charming face and smiley light blue eyes, filled with humanity, and I remember what it was like to talk to him. 

Dramatic as it sounds, I don't think there's anyone alive today who remotely approaches the magnitude of Pam or Dean.


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*I guess I wrote this 10 years ago about the alleged haunting of the house on 10th Ave. Don't even remember writing it. Oh age.