Don't Feed The Dogs!

It’s become, he thinks wryly, a predictable ritual. He thinks he can get away with sneaking some extra tidbits to the dogs, and sometimes he does get away with it, but more often she snaps at him “Don’t feed the dogs!”. Well, he’s not feeding them, not exactly. He’s demonstrating his fondness for the poor little buggers, surreptitiously reaching under the table while simultaneously appearing to be absorbed in reading his breakfast paper. They wait there, both of them, under the table. They know the game. When he tries to ignore them, after her imperious bark, one of them will nudge him.

It almost makes him feel like a kid again. The way he felt when he was small, when his mother served something disgusting for dinner and he tried to feed the family dog and even the dog wouldn’t touch it. He’d try to secret the stuff beside him on the chair, hoping his mother wouldn’t notice, and when he excused himself later, he’d scoop the goop into his hand and rush into the bathroom with it, to flush it down the toilet. He had convinced himself his mother never knew what he was doing, but he discovered much later she was aware of it, but chose to permit him these little deceits. Satisfied that he would eat some of it, before beginning the disposal ritual.

With his wife it was the same kind of thing. The dogs were overweight, she’d groan, it wasn’t healthy for them. Didn’t he care? Was he looking forward to disposing of them prematurely? Hardly likely; he was as invested in their good health and longevity as she was, just also wanted to treat them now and again. And they knew; they could smell sausages or bacon on the stove of a morning. Pancakes too, they liked those. She had agreed at first that he could chop tiny bits of pancake or sausage or bacon into those little porcelain bowls she used for them. Her mistake. It wasn’t a one-time thing, it became their week-end ritual. And nothing, now, could dissuade them from their expectations.

She was as resigned to it as he was, but she would make him pay for beginning that ritual, now incontrovertibly set in stone. Until the little dogs received the homage due them nothing would budge them from their begging stance under the table. His wife pretended not to see, as though nothing was happening. But that didn’t stop her from snapping at him “Don’t feed the dogs!”

While he read the papers she was immersed in one of her food magazines, flipping the pages, looking at recipes, ogling the colour photographs, enticing enough to make anyone drool. She was devoted to those magazines, fascinated with the recipes, loved the photographs, but did she ever make any of those things for him? Hardly. With him too it was the same thing “Don’t feed the overweight man”. Hardly overweight. Him? Well, hardly. He could lose five pounds, but at his age why bother?

Food magazines in the winter and gardening magazines in the summer months. Poring over the gardens purportedly in someone’s backyard, but hardly likely. They argued over that, too. These were settings, he told her, no one had gardens like that. They were just temporary props, like Hollywood film sets. The purveyors of those magazines well knew that ordinary people didn’t have gardens like that. It was like the fashion magazines with their slim-to-disappearing models wearing designs that would look ridiculous on most people. They looked ridiculous on the models too, but they could get away with it.

Did she listen to him? Never. Just kept turning those pages. And ordering him not to feed the dogs. They weren’t dogs, they were their household companions. If he called them dogs she would snarl at him, demand he speak of them by their names. But her, if she did it that was all right…

She told him the other day about the last telephone conversation with her kid brother. Kind of cut him down to size, she said, the selfish little egotist. Well, sure Kenny was like that, but he was the youngest of her mother’s brood, thirteen years younger than her, in fact. Little wonder he was spoiled, got used to the idea that anything to do with him was important. She would never forgive her little brother for assuming his wife was fine, just fine. When she was reverting steadily to childhood, and neglecting the care of their two infants. And then when she was institutionalized he raised the kids by himself. Kind of. He did marry their day-care provider.

And the kids, as they became adults, had to fend for themselves anyway, because their dad was too busy after all, to give them the attention they needed, and he didn’t feel they were entitled to the support they wanted, so now he’s bitter that they’ve both moved far, far away, both married to losers he didn’t approve of. She just kind of sorted things out, set him straight. Doubtful when he’ll call again to crow about his latest exploits or complain about the latest slings his most recent publication earned him. But that’s the way his sister is. He’ll get over it.

And that’s the way his wife is, he’ll never get over it. She could be pretty devious. Pretend she knows nothing when she knows everything. And in the process catch him with his pants down. Literally - last week-end, as it happened. He has a habit of walking around in the morning in a tee-shirt, fresh out of the shower, and nothing on below. He’d forgotten to roast coffee for breakfast, and because she hated the smell of roasting coffee, he’d taken it into the garage, for the roasting machine to do its thing there.

She also, as it happens, hates it when he wanders around without any underpants or trousers on. Guess his elderly, lean shanks aren’t too sexy, he’d chuckled to himself often enough. When he went into the garage to retrieve the roaster, sans trousers, sans underpants, suddenly the automatic garage door lifted. He could move pretty fast for a 75-year-old, and he did. He couldn’t be certain that no one had seen him revealed in his glorious nakedness, but hoped that to be the case. Could be embarrassing.

Of course she denied she’d done any such thing. So what was he supposed to do, call her a liar? Ask her about that grin plastered all over her face?

He was ordered not to listen to the news in her presence. She deliberately made herself unaware, ignorant of world affairs. She had no intention, she said, of allowing those disgusting things that happened outside her world to invade her consciousness, she had no need of that kind of rude awakening. So if he wanted to listen to news he had to do it as though clandestinely, in his own house. Clearly, being aware of world affairs had become a subversive activity. He felt hemmed in, ignored, put upon.

She was disinterested in his opinion on anything, and never sought it. When he proffered it he was shut down, like an obstreperous kid making a nuisance of itself, trying to get some attention. When she caught him discussing anything with anyone, she would interrupt, make light of what he’d said, inform whomever he had been talking to that he had become tiresomely verbose, and insult his intelligence in front of anyone at all. He thought he would become inured to that kind of deliberately insidious character assassination - from his own wife! - but he wasn’t. It rankled and puzzled him.

Where was that cute little button-nose with that impish grin who had so captivated him? They’d had discussions back then, and they all revolved around their future together. Here was the future and it wasn’t quite what he had envisioned. A companion in old age. A companion he had, but a more reserved, disinterested one couldn’t be imagined. Why did he put up with it?

At night, she still wore the same silky bed garments she had used to when they were young. Once in a little while she would allow him to touch her, but touch was as far as it went. Anything further was ferociously abnormal, disgusting, and he a dirty old man to even harbour any thoughts that she would want to ‘do it’.

Even his daughters seemed to give him short shrift, following their mother’s example, as though he was already entering the state of senility that would certainly soon overcome him completely, rendering him incapable of responding to even the most basic of enquiries. Nothing he said to them seemed to penetrate their consciousness that he was in full possession of all his marbles, that he was well informed and a good source of information on anything. They were as disinterested in his opinions as his wife. They treated him like an old family dog, with the obligatory kiss on forehead.

Not that it was much different with the grandchildren. No boys, all girls, all following in their mothers’, their grandmother’s footsteps, viewing him as an addendum, an odd-fellow-out in a household comprised largely of females. How, he wondered, did his sons-in-law cope? Were they given the same kind of treatment he was now so long accustomed to? Does it creep up so gradually that no one takes notice, until it suddenly looms of such huge importance because everything else has receded, with retirement?

When did his wife enter the hallowed thought-processes of feminism and begin to regard males, himself included, as oppositional oppressors to womankind? Would it have been any different if they’d had sons, instead of daughters?

He had once confronted her with those questions. Or queries approximating those he posed to himself; putting it, he hoped, more delicately, diplomatically, not wanting to risk one of her volatile outbursts of condemnation of all men and him in particular, as clumsy, stupid victimizers of womankind. He’d thought he had given her a good life, inclusive of his care for her and their children.

Her response had been a blank, uncomprehending stare. A shrug. She had turned away from him, muttering something to herself, something he couldn’t quite make out, but the words “idiot” and “impossible” hadn’t escaped him.

His castle was under siege, and he was only latterly fully aware of it, he thought bitterly to himself. Her concerns restricted to the trite and the trivial, they had few common interests. Is there a ‘naturally’ evolving acceptance of lost autonomy that accompanies old age? How long has this decline beset him? He’s just shrugged it off as immaterial to his well-being, while its corrosive effects on his self-esteem had been gradually, inevitably dissolving his character into a ghostly veneer of the opinionated, self-assured man he once was.

Wait a minute, weren’t old codgers like him supposed to “set in their ways”, with the passage of time become insufferably entitled, graduate from solidly opinion-positive to grumbling misanthropes? When had that stealthy role reversal occurred? He, the self-assured principal, she the docile, unquestioning follower?

His attempts to speak with her, to maintain an element of basic human contact had all been shrugged off. What use was he to her, then? What difference if he left? He thought about it, but never deeply enough to consider it an escape route. What would he be escaping toward? A lonely, isolated life, with a few friends whom he might see on the rare occasion? Discounting those who'd already kicked off, he thought dourly.

He wasn’t a joiner, didn’t belong to any clubs, had been content with his work, his family, his hobbies. Never envisioning a time in the future when the first would be gone, and the rest would somehow slip beyond his grasp.

Nothing seemed to interest him any more, other than the currency of the news. It was what held him to the present, what piqued his interest, while irritating his wife who felt he should have better things to do with his time and his brain. His suggestions that they go somewhere together, find a common interest fell on deaf ears. She had her interests, she was busy and engaged - in things that held no interest whatever for him. And even if they did, she would disallow his ‘interference’ in her sphere.

He had begun lately, imagining himself living in a dingy, low-rent single room somewhere, cooking out of a two-burner portable stove, shuffling off to the nearest grocery store for supplies, reading his daily newspapers, going off for daily walks. She’d never allow him to take the dogs. They were hers, although they were theirs. He would have nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The thought that emanated from his right shoulder into his ear and his consciousness said “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. Its companion, sitting on his left shoulder whispered in response that he had nothing to lose, yet would gain nothing. He had outlived his usefulness, become expendable. He groaned softly, hot tears of regret beginning to form.

A soft hand fell on his shoulder. Warm lips nuzzled the back of his neck, moved to the top of his head. “What’re you thinking, dear?”