"Have We Met Before?"

Marge wanted a dog. No. A puppy. Marge wanted a puppy. It had been four long months of wallowing in the cold, dark New York winter—trudging through ice and slush, pelted by the sting of freezing rain. It never snowed in the city—not the romantic white flakes that fell in places that had space and green and light. It was four in the afternoon, and there was barely a sliver of day clinging to the grey sky as Marge walked the eight blocks home to her puppy-less apartment after another day teaching ELA at an overcrowded, underfunded public middle school in lower Manhattan. She’d been taking that same walk, at that same time, in that same grey city for seven years. And she hated it.

She hadn’t always hated it. And the city hadn’t always seemed so grey. When she and Bobby were first dating, and she was a new teacher—all full of energy and hope—she would wake up with a smile—so much to look forward to… She would smile through the school day, smile at the administrators, smile with her students, and smile all through her walk home—back to Bobby who would glance away from the tv for a second, smile, and settle back into the couch to wait for Marge to start making dinner. Bobby was a real dick, but Marge wouldn’t admit that yet.  

She would occasionally admit to his being dick-ish when her friends would side-eye her after he’d say something (perhaps misconstrued as) rude at the bar. “You just don’t understand his sense of humor” got her through the first couple of years. The truth was, Bobby didn’t have a sense of humor, and he certainly didn’t have a highbrow, intelligent sense of humor that would confound her friends. That was something else Marge wasn’t ready to admit: Bobby wasn’t smart. He didn’t work; he claimed he was too creative for traditional employment, so he set about creating a Bobby-shaped crevasse in Marge’s couch and watched sports betting shows and had his rich parents Venmo him more money whenever he ran a little low. Yeah. Bobby was rich. And he was absolutely gorgeous. 

Marge had never had a gorgeous boyfriend. Actually she’d only had one boyfriend before Bobby—an awkward, gangly kind of greasy kid she met in her freshmen sociology class. He had said he liked “mousy girls,” and she had smiled. He also said he liked her smile, and that was that; they were dating. They'd meet up for coffee or a slice of pizza, or hang out in his dorm room while he played video games and she didn’t. Marge couldn’t figure out how she felt about him; she just couldn’t seem to express it. She believed in the absolute power of words; and the only word she could come up with for her sociology boyfriend, that really hit, was… “ugly.” How horrible. What a simple, inadequate word with a thousand meanings—really an ugly word—but every time she’d meet up with her boyfriend—ughhh—it would be that word jumping into her head.

Marge would settle for gangly and greasy, and fine—ugly, because girls like her didn’t have a lot to choose from. She couldn’t expect smart and funny and ambitious and good-looking when she looked the way she did, and was as shy as she was, and as utterly off-trend as she was. But after a few months, she did feel she might expect something on that can’t-have-it-all list. See her boyfriend was neither smart, funny, nor ambitious, and the good-looking part… well, no. 

Spending any time at all with him became interminable. He wore sunglasses inside and chewed loudly. He was glued to his computer for hours and hours blowing up buildings and burying bullets between the eyes of virtual terrorists. He talked nonstop, until the moment Marge would attempt to bring something to the conversation; then he would immediately shut up. He always tucked in his t-shirts and absolutely never carried his wallet. In a moment of courage, determination and anticipated triumph, Marge broke up with him. Her heart pounded, her palms sweated, and her voice shook, but she looked him right in the eye (though it was hard to tell exactly with the sunglasses) and told him it would be best if they didn’t see each other anymore. He said “Ok” and asked if she wanted to get something to eat; he was starving.  

Then came Bobby. Six-two, broad shoulders, perfectly dark hair (She called it “chestnut" with zero reference to the actual color of a chestnut.) She just loved the way it sounded almost as much as she loved the way his chestnut hair caught the sunlight. He had big, capable hands and the most perfect, kissable lips she’d ever imagined. And his blue eyes! She told her best friend that one look took her breath away—literally, she couldn’t breathe. No description did those deep blue eyes justice—from now on, they were the gold standard, the supreme comparison—“Bobby’s eyes blue”—sometimes brooding, cosmic, indigo, other times, tropical, turquoise—some kind of sea-turtles swimming in those eyes.  

His dad was a bond broker which meant nothing to anyone but made Bobby unreasonably wealthy. When they met, he had been living in an incredible loft in SOHO with a patio and garden and 20 foot ceilings and windows that went on forever. There was a kitchen packed with stainless steel and red knobs that he never touched. He did keep beer in the fridge. He had a private two car garage with a stunning black Range Rover occupying one space and an elevator that took you directly to his loft. It was insane. And it was his parents’s. Bobby hadn’t shared that with Marge, and he seemed such a perfect fit, she naturally assumed he owned it. Bobby never tucked in his t shirts, or chewed loudly, and not only did he carry a wallet, but often slid a Platinum card out of it and paid for dinner, or coffee, or dessert, at incredible restaurants where he’d made reservations.

When he invited her to his place in the vineyard for a long weekend, she thought they were going to a winery on Long Island. She had been talking about a bachelorette party she hadn’t gone to because who would pay $300 just to get ferried from one glass of Chardonnay to another. That’s when Bobby mentioned the ferry, and Marge realized this was not an ordinary vineyard. She tried to play it cool and said that Martha’s was her favorite Vineyard. Then they pulled up to the three-story, salt-worn cedar-shingled house with hydrangea blooms as big as the moon, and a wrap around porch overlooking the ocean—or was it the bay—and it was true: Martha’s was her favorite vineyard.

There were a few family members who would be in touch now and then, none too enamored with Bobby and likely all having Platinum cards of their own. Marge wondered why his parents didn’t come to visit, or the sister he sometimes mentioned. Mostly it was just the two of them. He was always busy, always on the phone, and never doing anything. Marge’s total infatuation had conveniently closed the door on reality, but doubts and questions began to knock. And the knocking only got louder. His job descriptions kept changing—sports entertainment, managing pro-athletes, franchise financing…. She begged herself not to care, to let it go; what difference did it make what job he did or didn’t have? The door was shut tight, locked against the lonely, familiar, single-Marge life that existed on the other side. 

In the beginning, Marge had assumed she would be moving in with Bobby. It made sense; they spent all their time together and given the choice, not a single soul in the universe would prefer living in the barely one-bedroom that Marge was renting in Alphabet City. It just wasn’t nice. It was fine. It was sort of safe. It was not a loft in SOHO. Even Bobby had entertained the idea of Marge moving into his place. They talked about it casually, no definitive dates, but it seemed like the next move. They had even talked about getting a puppy.  

Around 7pm on the Tuesday after the Sunday when they were discussing their future and their someday puppy, Bobby arrived at Marge’s apartment with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder and a rolling suitcase larger than her bedroom. “Got kicked out” was the three word battering ram that crashed through the door and splintered everything. Marge’s world was overrun with reality.  

Bobby didn’t own any property: the apartment, the house in The Vineyard—just two of a dozen or so properties owned by his parents, Mr. And Mrs. Robert Hillyard, who had insisted that their son “get his shit together” (Bobby’s paraphrase) if he didn’t want to be completely cut off. His parents were renting the loft in SOHO to one of his “shit cousins" for a year, and if Bobby could find and hold a job within that year, he could move back in. Bobby decided his parents were full of shit. Marge decided there was no word more unimaginative than “shit.”

She had put up with Bobby on her couch for close to four years. He continued to be steadfast in believing he could turn his fantasy leagues into a lucrative career, and that he would make more money betting on pro sports than most athletes made playing them. He talked down to everyone, revealed more and more unattractive points of view, didn’t see anything wrong with being “unconventionally employed” and enjoyed an occasional rant over how he, as a straight, wealthy, white man of some privilege, was the ultimate victim of discrimination. They no longer talked about getting a puppy; they no longer talked about much at all. His hair was still chestnut and his eyes were still blue, but Marge was heartbroken to admit that Bobby was ugly.

She had given Bobby a date to be out of her apartment, and went to stay at a friend’s place so she didn’t have to watch him pack up and go. They didn’t argue; neither could muster the energy or ferocity this fight called for, and they had simply given up. Marge had the locks changed, got rid of the 1/2 bag of Tostitos he left on the couch, and went to sleep in her own place again. The next day was cold and grey, but somehow she felt hopeful—maybe she could make it through the school year—make it through winter, and spring, and get to summer. On the first day of summer vacation, she’d get a puppy.

At work she mentioned her plan. Everyone had an opinion—far stronger and more forceful than any opinions concerning Bobby “with the money and the good looks.” This dog was a different story; the muzzles were off: “You have to adopt.” “You have to go to the ASPCA.” “Don’t get a puppy” “Have you considered a senior dog?” “The small ones are inbred, like chihuahuas all have mental problems.” Marge thought the idea of a tiny insane dog was intriguing, and held onto it as one of her better options.

A friend took her to a shelter to show her how sweet and sad the dogs were, especially the older ones. It was dreadful. The dogs weren’t sad; they were depressed, despondent, hopeless. Marge swore some were embarrassed—pleading with their big empty eyes for her to "keep walking, move on, nothing to see here, you’re not all that adoptable either… “ She was scared of the big ones that looked like they’d take her face off given the chance. She knew she shouldn’t have assumed they were mean just because they were locked up. But some of them had been in there too long.  

Marge left the shelter miserable. Her friend was inconsolable, and had agreed to leave only after filling out papers to volunteer weeknights after work. Marge did not fill out any papers. The only thing that cheered her up was thinking about getting a puppy, and she savored the irony of her warped mind. The shelter was not an option though; she would not go back there. She didn’t like the idea of a pet store either—one of those places in the mall with floor to ceiling windows, offering a peek at adorable, bouncy, trendy breeds, shredding up newspapers and wrestling rubber toys. Those stores catered to the impulse buyer. Marge knew that a puppy was not an impulse buy.  

There had to be some nice family in the suburbs with a little yard, raising a new litter of well-adjusted, wonderfully socialized, little pups. They’d consider Marge an altogether ideal dog-owner, and would be so overjoyed that one of their pups found such a happy home. She didn’t need any kind of purebreed and skipped over the offers for Frenchies and Corgis and “Froggies” for thousands and thousands of dollars. She just wanted a nice, family-raised puppy—not too big—big dogs intimidated her, and not too small—not really the mental problems, more because she was afraid she’d sit on it or step on it or completely miss out on the feeling of actually having a dog—might as well get a guinea pig.

Facebook, Craigslist, it didn’t take more than an hour or two to find a handful of listings that seemed to fit. She contacted the first: a family in Westchester with three male puppies available, nine weeks old, raised in their home with their kids and their dachshund/spaniel mix who was the “proud mama” of the puppies. Marge appreciated how they referred to the “ proud mama.” She had decidedly not contacted any of the listings that mentioned “bitch on site.” Rude.

At 6:30 pm on the Monday after the Saturday that she had first reached out to the dachshund/spaniel family, she cuddled her new puppy in a small fleece blanket on her lap, and rode home from Westchester with her friend behind the wheel—the friend who was giving up a Monday night at the animal shelter to do Marge a favor, even though Marge should really be adopting. Marge had gotten everything she would need set up in her apartment: crate, food, bowls, toys, a little collar and leash, and a small, silver, bone-shaped tag engraved with the name “Spencer.” Father of The Bride—the original—was Marge’s favorite movie, and she had harbored a decades-long crush on Spencer Tracy. Spencer had been her someday puppy’s name from the moment she first considered getting one. Now Spencer was home.

Summer vacation that year went by as quickly as summer vacation does every year if you’re a teacher. Marge’s plan to have Spencer a fully-trained, expert apartment-dwelling puppy had descended into a vague hope that maybe he wouldn’t completely destroy the place—chew the heel off of every single pair of shoes she owned, lift his leg and soak every corner of every piece of furniture, or get them thrown out of the building for his regimen of all night, high pitched, hyper, head-splitting yapping. She told her friends he was a handful. Spencer was a disaster.

Most days during that first school year together, she would come home to find he had pooped in his crate and more or less bathed in his own shit for the better part of the afternoon. He didn’t seem to mind.  He didn’t seem to mind viciously snapping at the ankles of anyone who passed by; didn’t seem to mind gnawing the arm of the couch until the bare wood showed, and then didn’t seem to mind gnawing at that. There were splinters on the floor, and bits of plaster in the hall where he had scratched and bitten the walls. She tried strict discipline, tough love, regular love-love, and watched endless episodes of Ceasar Milan. She pleaded with Spencer to watch too, but he turned his back to Cesar and bit the wall.  

Spencer got larger than Marge thought he would. He took up nearly half the couch and wasn’t a fan of Marge occupying the other half. That had always been her half, way before Spencer, but what could she do? She sat in a chair that Spencer wasn’t fond of, and made the best of it. She decided she would make the best of all of it, and walked him when he needed to be walked, played when he wanted to play, fed him when he was hungry, and praised him when he wasn’t totally horrible. Marge dreamed with all of her heart that one day he might cuddle up, put his head in her lap, lick her cheek, or do anything that was dog-speak for “I love you.” She had told Spencer “I love you” about a trillion times since the day she brought him home, but he never answered. This went on for years, and eventually Marge didn’t say anything to Spencer at all—what was the point?  

One evening, sitting in the chair nobody wanted to sit in, Marge had enough of the silence.  She had a question for Spencer and she was going to ask it. When she began to talk, she was surprised by how foreign and loud her own voice sounded in the apartment. Spencer was surprised too. There was a bewildered look on his face that revealed a shadow of recognition, and a vague semblance of comprehension in his eyes. Marge was sure he had heard and maybe even understood her question. She asked him again, "Have we met before?”  She considered that perhaps he was taking his time with an ironic response. Marge settled in to wait for the answer she already had, as Spencer tucked his head into a cushion on the couch and went to sleep.