met her on a
“Her name is Tuesday,” Matt said, cradling the dog’s head and staring up at Jack in challenge.
Challenge for what? No idea. Only god knew the workings of his son’s head.
“Tuesday,” Jack repeated.
“Yes. Tues for short.”
Yeah, he’d figured. That wasn’t the problem.
“Matty, you’re terrified of dogs.”
“Am not.”
Mm. Right. So they were remembering Matt’s childhood much, much differently then.
“Honey, the first time I took you to get a guide dog, you cried for half an hour.”
Foggy and Karen took that well. If by ‘well,’ you meant ‘collapsed into crooning and accusations of false representation of the facts.’
“Did not.”
“Did to.”
“Did not.”
Jack was not crazy. He was not misremembering this. He was 100% certain that he had had to pick Matt up and carry him outside the guide dog school because he would not settle the fuck down after a singular nose had nuzzled into his hand unexpectedly. He knew this because he’d felt like the worst dad in the world after a of couple of older blind folks and their sighted friends had come up to make sure that he wasn’t abusing his kid.
‘He’s fine,’ he’d told the concerned instructor who’d come out to dispel misconceptions and apologize to Jack. But then the threat of being made to return to the Bad Place had made Matty start wailing and clinging all over again. And it was only through the promises of the older blind folks that Matt did not need a dog to function as a blind person that he’d started to settle down.
Jack should have gotten all those peoples’ phone numbers back then, really he should have. But he’d been preoccupied at the time with feeling like the shittiest parent in the universe.
That made this whole thing a little jarring, as the Matt in front of him had graduated to clutching at the dog like an insult to her was an insult to his own person. So yes. Weird. And very discombobulating. But Jack decided that he was gonna throw this battle.
He was great at throwing battles.
He could win them. He could point out that he knew Matt still wasn’t down with dogs because he’s watched, two days ago, as a chihuahua in a gal’s cart at the grocery store had shocked Matt out of one of his intense fruit holding sessions. Matt had edged away from the yapping with much alarm, and slowly, slowly made his way back to Jack to scowl towards it behind the safety of his shoulder. Jack could also remember that a similar occurrence had happened in the face of three extremely exuberant pugs who were taking up the walkway a week ago.
He could verbally remember both those ever so convenient things.
But he did not. Because he was presently here out of many different forms of mercy and was not terribly interested in picking a fight with his college-educated kid in front of his fellow educated friends. Instead he crouched down and held his hand out to Miss Tuesday who looked at him kind of sadly.
“Hiya friend,” he said.
Tuesday did not budge. She turned and bumped her head into Matt’s hand and, when he didn’t react, pressed it there, waiting for his attention.
“Come here,” Jack tried again.
Nada.
He hummed.
“Guess she—”
“Tues,” Matt said, standing now with the dog’s attention. “Go on.”
Tuesday looked at Jack. Then leaned against Matt’s knee.
“Tues? What’s the matter, girl? Go,” Matt encouraged her. “That’s Dad. We like Dad. Go make friends.”
The dog stared at Jack like he was any other brick wall on the street. Like she couldn’t tell what Matt was even telling her to look for.
“Matty, it’s fine,” he said. “She’s probably--”
“Tues!”
Oh, okay. New tact. Excitement.
“Go on, girl! Go on! Make friends! Go!”
Tuesday watched Matt’s flailing and slowly started to wag her tail.
“Matty.” This kid was embarrassing himself. It was highly unnecessary.
“Go on! You can do it! Look, look, look. Friend. Go make friends. You like friends.”
Tuesday and her wafting plume looked back at Jack, almost like she cared this time.
“Good girl,” Matt encouraged. “Such a good girl. Go, go, go.” He gave her a nudge with his knee and she lost all interest in Jack to stumble and then stare back up at Matt like he’d fucking kicked her. Matt could not see or read doggy expressions, but even he seemed to know the smell of betrayal.
“Tuesday, no. You’re okay. Go make friends,” he said. “Dad, call her.”
Well, alright. Jack patted at his thighs and that got her attention. Her tail wagged again.
“Come here, Tuesday,” Jack told her, “Come here, little one. You’re alright.”
The plume wagged faster.
“Yeah, see? I’m not scary,” he baby-talked her. “Come here.”
She shuffled her paws and took a couple of dancing steps forward and then back, looking back up at Matt. She whined, bless her.
“Go on,” Matt said. He leaned down and unclipped her harness. “Be free.”
Sweet freedom, indeed!
As soon as the harness was off, Tues did a cute little circle around Matt and then went and rubbed her face all over Foggy and Karen and then finally jogged over to smell at Jack’s hands. She wriggled her head under them and panted up at him. She was a beautiful dog. She had a purple collar under the harness and a big, drapey tongue.
Jack gave her back rubs and she decided that that was great and so sunk down under his hands until she was staring up with sad eyes at him from the floor, one paw helplessly hung in the air. Pleading for belly rubs.
Alright, sure. Belly rubs.
Tuesday didn’t really have a let-it-all-hang-out happy face, but she leaned her head back and licked at his knee while he scrubbed at her hairy belly, so he figured that she was at peace. As soon as he stopped, she wriggled up and jogged back over to Matt who had scurried around to hide from her behind the counter. She wagged her plume at his hidden figure.
“No! Shoo!”
More wagging. A head nuzzle. Possible nibbling.
“No, no! Shoo. Go play with Dad.” Matt’s hands appeared around the edge of the counter to shove her back. She waited until the hands were gone and then took two more steps forward and wagged her tail.
“Tuesday, no. Go make friends. I’m hiding.”
Hiding so well.
“Shoo!”
Tues whined.
“Out!”
She made a muffled little half-bark.
“Aigh.”
She took the sound as permission and stepped forward to climb into Matt’s lap. Left her hind legs and tail peeking out from behind the counter.
“You’re such a bad dog,” Matt told her over the sound of jangling tags. “The worst dog. The worst dog.”
Tuesday wagged harder and her back legs started to dance. Nails clattering against the floor.
“Is Tuesday home for good then?” Jack asked, finally standing out of his crouch.
“If you don’t mind,” Foggy said from the couch. “She’s been at my place and I don’t mind her, but Matt’s—”
“The worst dog! You’re the worst dog!”
The baby-talk was outrageous. Jack was 100% sure that that was how he’d used to sound years and years ago with Matt back at the gym. The other guys used to give him no end of shit about his ‘Matty-voice.’ Even if they adopted the exact same tone when baby Matt had been handed over into their arms.
Load of hypocrites. He’d said it then and he’d say it now.
Fogwell had been the worst of them all. He used to play it cool while he picked his way through the benches over to where Jack used to carefully stow baby Matt when he was in the ring. The old man would stand next to Matty’s little carrier for a second and then he’d pretend that Matt was crying, so as to have an excuse to scoop him up out of it. And then he’d adopt his most hard-ass, big-boss coach voice as he stomped around, with Matt tucked up against his giant shoulder.
It had been a task and a half to get past the distraction that was Matt’s cooing and grabbing at Fogwell’s face in order to hear the old man’s demands and advice.
When Matty had finally started to work out how to talk, he’d broken Fogwell’s heart when he told him, “Too big for ups!”
“Too big?,” Fogwell had asked, shattered, “Are you sure?”
“Mm.”
“Sure-sure?”
“Mm! Only daddy ups.”
“Oh, okay.”
And Fogwell had left to go cry at the reception window. And Rudy and Raph and even fuckin’ Bert had grabbed Jack and dragged him to a corner of the gym and told him in no uncertain terms to go reeducate his child for the sake of everyone’s fucking careers. It had taken some very strategic toddler reasoning to convince Matt that non-daddy ups were okay at the gym.
“Fogwell’s a daddy,” he’d said to Matt’s suspicious squint.
“Not daddy.”
“Right, maybe not your daddy. But still a dad—”
“NOT DADDY.”
“Okay, okay. Not daddy, yeah I get that. But a daddy. The old man’s—actually, how about we do it this way? Fogwell’s like a grandpa, yeah?”
“Grampa?”
“Uh-huh.”
Matt hadn’t known what the fuck a grandpa was back then since one of his was long-gone and the other was an inkblot on the face of mankind and it was for that, that Fogwell’s carrying rights were reinstated. It was the first time the family feud had ever proved useful. Probably the last time too if Jack thought about it.
He could ask Matt if it had since proved of any use to him, but Matt had made the mistake of laying on his side in the kitchen and was busy being sniffed at and stood on and checked for injury. Boy was giggling helplessly down there and Karen wasn’t helping by loudly telling Tuesday to ‘get him, get him!”
Meh.
That was enough for Jack. Tuesday was good. Tuesday could stay.
Jack would eventually befriend this dog.