Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [83]
Tonight we saw the film Iris, with Judy Dench as Iris Murdoch, the acclaimed British author who descended into Alzheimer’s. As we watched Iris Murdoch watch Teletubbies and pee in the living room, I had to breathe deeply to avoid making incredibly loud, humiliating heaving sobs in the theater.
“I’ll take care of you when you get like that next year,” I said, as we left the theater. Although realistically, I felt it was I who would be the one to lose his mind and probably not even when I’m old and have lived a rich, full life. Possibly as early as next spring.
It’s ten-thirty on a Monday night, and Dennis is in the kitchen, lean cuts of pork splayed out on plastic wrap on the floor. He is wearing his suit, and in his left hand he is holding a silver meathammer thing. He places a sheet of plastic wrap on top of one of the cutlets, and he begins to smack it with the hammer. And it’s surprisingly loud. I mean, you would really be amazed by how much sound a filet of pork can make when you place it on the floor and hit it with a hammer.
Before I moved in, Dennis had problems with his downstairs neighbor. The way I understand it is, the neighbor used to slam his door—at all hours. And the sound came straight up through the floor and into Dennis’s eardrums. So he actually had to go downstairs and tell the man, don’t slam your door. And ever since then, they’ve been like two wheaten terriers who see each other on the sidewalk and snarl.
So I was thinking about this as I watched him pound the meat. I was thinking, Any minute, our neighbor is going to come upstairs and tell us to stop hammering into the floor. And I would then have to explain, we’re not hammering. We’re cooking. We’re tenderizing. We’re just doing it on the floor.
Of course, the fact that this is Monday night at ten-thirty and Dennis is still in his suit and now in the kitchen pounding pork on the floor to make me dinner from a recipe in COOK’S Illustrated magazine is testament to his character. I truly, truly feel guilty that I am the only one who gets to have him as my mate.
“I love doing this,” Dennis says when I tell him how sweet it is of him and how guilty I feel that he’s going to so much trouble after working all day. And I believe him, I think he really does love to cook.
I bought him a set of French copper pots and pans, and he enjoys these. The saucepan weighs like seventeen pounds. The endorphins released just from picking the thing up make you drunk enough to think, Snails are great! Bring on the stomach lining!
At midnight, we eat. Our beastly French bulldog watches us for a few minutes, but he is too tired to stare with his typically penetrating gaze, and he goes under the table to become flat. When he is exhausted, he lies down on his belly, all his little arms and legs sticking out straight.
And it was incredible, the dinner. It was one of his best, and this is saying quite a lot because Dennis is an incredible cook.
I washed the dishes, and while I was washing, Dennis went into the other room to lie on the bed. Or so I assumed.
A moment later, Bentley was barking, and I could hear his nails scratching along the floor, like he’s chasing. Or being chased. Then, more barking. It was his play bark, the bark he makes in the mornings when Dennis chases him around nude after his shower.
I said, “No, don’t do that. Don’t get him all excited before bed. We need to wind him down.”
Bentley is the first dog Dennis has ever lived with. We got him together. But I was raised with dogs. So I am our resident dog expert. “Really,” I shouted over the running water, “just put him on the bed and stroke his back, make him calm.”
Dennis called back to me, but I couldn’t understand him. I heard only the one word “he.”
So I said, “What?” The dog’s barking was getting more intense. I was now positive our neighbor was going to knock on the door. First the pounding, now the crazed animal. “Dennis,” I shouted, “don’t get him all excited.”
And Dennis shouted right back, “I didn’t start it. He started it.”
I turned off the water