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Sex and bring his Labrador retriever along?
Think some guy would show up for anonymous How twisted did these two think I was? As I pulled a newspaper out of the box in front of the store, a car arrived—Harold, I presumed—and the girls drove off with him. I wasn’t the only one witnessing the burgeon- ing prostitution trade along Dixie Highway. On a visit, my older sister, dressed as modestly as a nun, went for a midday walk and was proposi- tioned twice by would-be johns trolling by in cars. Another guest arrived at our house to re- port that a woman had just exposed her breasts to him as he drove past, not that he particularly minded. In response to complaints from residents, the mayor promised to publicly embarrass men ar- rested for soliciting, and the police began running stings, positioning undercover women officers on the corner and waiting for would-be customers to take the bait. The decoy cops were the homeliest hookers I had ever seen—think J. Edgar Hoover in drag—but that didn’t stop men from seeking their services. One bust went down on the curb directly John Grogan in front of our house—with a television news crew in tow. If it had been just the hookers and their cus- tomers, we could have made our separate peace, but the criminal activity didn’t stop there. Our neighborhood seemed to grow dicier each day. On one of our walks along the water, Jenny, suffering a particularly debilitating bout of pregnancy- related nausea, decided to head home alone while I continued on with Patrick and Marley. As she walked along a side street, she heard a car idling behind her. Her first thought was that it was a neighbor pulling up to say hello or someone need- ing directions. When she turned to look into the car, the driver sat fully exposed and masturbating. After he got the expected response, he sped in re- verse down the street so as to hide his license tag. When Patrick was not quite a year old, murder again came to our block. Like Mrs. Nedermier, the victim was an elderly woman who lived alone. Hers was the first house as you turned onto Churchill Road off Dixie Highway, directly be- hind the all-night, open-air Laundromat, and I only knew her to wave to as I passed. Unlike Mrs. Nedermier’s murder, this crime did not afford us the tidy self-denial of an inside job. The victim was chosen at random, and the attacker was a stranger who snuck into her house while she was Marley & Me in the backyard hanging her laundry on a Saturday afternoon. When she returned, he bound her wrists with telephone cord and shoved her be- neath a mattress as he ransacked the house for money. He fled with his plunder as my frail neigh- bor slowly suffocated beneath the weight of the mattress. Police quickly arrested a drifter who had been seen hanging around the coin laundry; when they emptied his pockets they found his total haul had been sixteen dollars and change. The price of
a human life. The crime swirling around us made us grateful for Marley’s bigger-than-life presence in our house. So what if he was an avowed pacifist whose most aggressive attack strategy was known as the Slobber Offensive? Who cared if his immediate response to the arrival of any stranger was to grab a tennis ball in the hope of having someone new to play catch with? The intruders didn’t need to know that. When strangers came to our door, we no longer locked Marley away before answering. We stopped assuring them how harmless he was. Instead we now let drop vaguely ominous warn- ings, such as “He’s getting so unpredictable lately,” and “I don’t know how many more of his lunges this screen door can take.” We had a baby now and another on the way. We were no longer so cheerfully cavalier about per- John Grogan sonal safety. Jenny and I often speculated about just what, if anything, Marley would do if some- one ever tried to hurt the baby or us. I tended to think he would merely grow frantic, yapping and panting. Jenny placed more faith in him. She was convinced his special loyalty to us, especially to his new Cheerios pusher, Patrick, would translate in a crisis to a fierce primal protectiveness that would rise up from deep within him. “No way,” I said. “He’d ram his nose into the bad guy’s crotch and call it a day.” Either way, we agreed, he scared the hell out of people. That was just fine with us. His presence made the difference between us feeling vulnerable or secure in our own home. Even as we continued to debate his effectiveness as a protec- tor, we slept easily in bed knowing he was beside us. Then one night he settled the dispute once and for all. It was October and the weather still had not turned. The night was sweltering, and we had the air-conditioning on and windows shut. After the eleven o’clock news I let Marley out to pee, checked Patrick in his crib, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed beside Jenny, already fast asleep. Marley, as he always did, collapsed in a heap on the floor beside me, releasing an exagger- ated sigh. I was just drifting off when I heard it— a shrill, sustained, piercing noise. I was instantly Marley & Me wide awake, and Marley was, too. He stood frozen beside the bed in the dark, ears cocked. It came again, penetrating the sealed windows, rising above the hum of the air conditioner. A scream. A woman’s scream, loud and unmistakable. My first thought was teenagers clowning around in the street, not an unusual occurrence. But this was not a happy, stop-tickling-me scream. There was des- peration in it, real terror, and it was dawning on me that someone was in terrible trouble. “Come on, boy,” I whispered, slipping out of bed. “Don’t go out there.” Jenny’s voice came from beside me in the dark. I hadn’t realized she was awake and listening. “Call the police,” I told her. “I’ll be careful.” Holding Marley by the end of his choker chain, I stepped out onto the front porch in my boxer shorts just in time to glimpse a figure sprinting down the street toward the water. The scream came again, from the opposite direction. Outside, without the walls and glass to buffet it, the
woman’s voice filled the night air with an amazing, piercing velocity, the likes of which I had heard only in horror movies. Other porch lights were flicking on. The two young men who shared a rental house across the street from me burst out- side, wearing nothing but cutoffs, and ran toward John Grogan the screams. I followed cautiously at a distance, Marley tight by my side. I saw them run up on a lawn a few houses away and then, seconds later, come dashing back toward me. “Go to the girl!” one of them shouted, pointing. “She’s been stabbed.” “We’re going after him!” the other yelled, and they sprinted off barefoot down the street in the direction the figure had fled. My neighbor Barry, a fearless single woman who had bought and reha- bilitated a rundown bungalow next to the Neder- mier house, jumped into her car and joined the chase. I let go of Marley’s collar and ran toward the scream. Three doors down I found my seventeen- year-old neighbor standing alone in her driveway, bent over, sobbing in jagged raspy gasps. She clasped her ribs, and beneath her hands I could see a circle of blood spreading across her blouse. She was a thin, pretty girl with sand-colored hair that fell over her shoulders. She lived in the house with her divorced mother, a pleasant woman who worked as a night nurse. I had chatted a few times with the mother, but I only knew her daughter to wave to. I didn’t even know her name. “He said not to scream or he’d stab me,” she said, sobbing; her words gushed out in heaving, hyperventilated gulps. “But I screamed. I Marley & Me screamed, and he stabbed me.” As if I might not believe her, she lifted her shirt to show me the puckered wound that had punctured her rib cage. “I was sitting in my car with the radio on. He just came out of nowhere.” I put my hand on her arm to calm her, and as I did I saw her knees buckling. She collapsed into my arms, her legs folding fawn- like beneath her. I eased her down to the pavement and sat cradling her. Her words came softer, calmer now, and she fought to keep her eyes open. “He told me not to scream,” she kept saying. “He put his hand on my mouth and told me not to scream.” “You did the right thing,” I said. “You scared him away.” It occurred to me that she was going into shock, and I had not the first idea what to do about it. Come on, ambulance. Where are you? I com- forted her in the only way I knew how, as I would comfort my own child, stroking her hair, holding my palm against her cheek, wiping her tears away. As she grew weaker, I kept telling her to hang on, help was on the way. “You’re going to be okay,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. Her skin was ashen. We sat alone on the pavement like that for what seemed hours but was in actuality, the police report later showed, about three minutes. Only gradually did I think to check on what had be- John Grogan come of Marley. When I looked up, there he stood, ten feet from us, facing the street, in a de- termined, bull-like crouch I had never seen be- fore. It was a fighter’s stance. His muscles bulged at the neck; his jaw was clenched; the fur between his shoulder blades bristled. He was intensely fo- cused on the street and appeared poised to lunge. I realized in that instant that Jenny had been right. If the armed assailant returned, he would have to get past my dog first. At that moment I knew—I absolutely knew without doubt—that Marley would fight him to the death before he would let him at us. I was emotional anyway as I held this young girl, wondering if she was dying in my arms. The sight of Marley so uncharacteristically guarding us like that, so majestically fierce, brought tears to my eyes. Man’s best friend? Damn straight he was.
“I’ve got you,” I told the girl, but what I meant to say, what I should have said, was that we had her. Marley and me. “The police are coming,” I said. “Hold on. Please, just hold on.” Before she closed her eyes, she whispered, “My name is Lisa.” “I’m John,” I said. It seemed ridiculous, intro- ducing ourselves in these circumstances as though we were at a neighborhood potluck. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Instead, I tucked a Marley & Me strand of her hair behind her ear and said, “You’re safe now, Lisa.” Like an archangel sent from heaven, a police of- ficer came charging up the sidewalk. I whistled to Marley and called, “It’s okay, boy. He’s okay.” And it was as if, with that whistle, I had broken some kind of trance. My goofy, good-natured pal was back, trotting in circles, panting, trying to sniff us. Whatever ancient instinct had welled up from the recesses of his ancestral psyche was back in its bottle again. Then more officers swarmed around us, and soon an ambulance crew arrived with a stretcher and wads of sterile gauze. I stepped out of the way, told the police what I could, and walked home, Marley loping ahead of me. Jenny met me at the door and together we stood in the front window watching the drama unfold on the street. Our neighborhood looked like the set from a police television drama. Red strobe lights splashed through the windows. A police helicopter hovered overhead, shining its spotlight down on backyards and alleys. Cops set up roadblocks and combed the neighborhood on foot. Their efforts would be in vain; a suspect was never apprehended and a motive never determined. My neighbors who gave chase later told me they had not even caught a glimpse of him. Jenny and I eventually returned to bed, where we both lay awake for a long time. John Grogan “You would have been proud of Marley,” I told her. “It was so strange. Somehow he knew how se- rious this was. He just knew. He felt the danger, and he was like a completely different dog.” “I told you so,” she said. And she had. As the helicopter thumped the air above us, Jenny rolled onto her side and, before drifting off, said, “Just another ho-hum night in the neighbor- hood.” I reached down and felt in the dark for Marley, lying beside me. “You did all right tonight, big guy,” I whis- pered, scratching his ears. “You earned your dog chow.” My hand on his back, I drifted off to sleep. It said something about South Florida’s numbness to crime that the stabbing of a teenage girl as she sat in her car in front of her home would merit just six sentences in the morning newspaper. The Sun-Sentinel ’s account of the crime ran in the briefs column on page 3B beneath the headline “Man Attacks Girl.” The story made no mention of me or Marley or the guys across the street who set out half naked after the assailant. It didn’t mention Barry, who gave chase in her car. Or all the neighbors up and down the block who turned on porch lights and dialed 911. In South Florida’s seamy world of Marley & Me violent crime, our neighborhood’s drama was just a minor hiccup. No deaths, no hostages, no big deal. The knife had punctured Lisa’s lung, and she spent five days in the hospital and several weeks recuperating at home. Her mother kept the neigh- bors apprised of her recovery, but the girl re- mained inside and out of sight. I worried about the emotional wounds the attack might leave. Would she ever again be comfortable leaving the
safety of her home? Our lives had come together for just three minutes, but I felt invested in her as a brother might be in a kid sister. I wanted to re- spect her privacy, but I also wanted to see her, to prove to myself she was going to be all right. Then as I washed the cars in the driveway on a Saturday, Marley chained up beside me, I looked up and there she stood. Prettier than I had remem- bered. Tanned, strong, athletic—looking whole again. She smiled and asked, “Remember me?” “Let’s see,” I said, feigning puzzlement. “You look vaguely familiar. Weren’t you the one in front of me at the Tom Petty concert who wouldn’t sit down?” She laughed, and I asked, “So how are you do- ing, Lisa?” “I’m good,” she said. “Just about back to nor- mal.” John Grogan “You look great,” I told her. “A little better than the last time I saw you.” “Yeah, well,” she said, and looked down at her feet. “What a night.” “What a night,” I repeated. That was all we said about it. She told me about the hospital, the doctors, the detective who inter- viewed her, the endless fruit baskets, the boredom of sitting at home as she healed. But she steered clear of the attack, and so did I. Some things were best left behind. Lisa stayed a long time that afternoon, following me around the yard as I did chores, playing with Marley, making small talk. I sensed there was something she wanted to say but could not bring herself to. She was seventeen; I didn’t expect her to find the words. Our lives had collided without plan or warning, two strangers thrown together by a burst of inexplicable violence. There had been no time for the usual proprieties that exist be- tween neighbors; no time to establish boundaries. In a heartbeat, there we were, intimately locked together in crisis, a dad in boxer shorts and a teenage girl in a blood-soaked blouse, clinging to each other and to hope. There was a closeness there now. How could there not be? There was also awkwardness, a slight embarrassment, for in that moment we had caught each other with our Marley & Me guards down. Words were not necessary. I knew she was grateful that I had come to her; I knew she appreciated my efforts to comfort her, however lame. She knew I cared deeply and was in her cor- ner. We had shared something that night on the pavement—one of those brief, fleeting moments of clarity that define all the others in a life—that neither of us would soon forget. “I’m glad you stopped by,” I said. “I’m glad I did, too,” Lisa answered. By the time she left, I had a good feeling about this girl. She was strong. She was tough. She would move forward. And indeed I found out years later, when I learned she had built a career for herself as a television broadcaster, that she had. C H A P T E R 1 4 An Early Arrival ❉ John.” Through the fog of sleep, I gradually regis- tered my name being called. “John. John, wake up.” It was Jenny; she was shaking me. “John, I think the baby might be coming.” I propped myself up on an elbow and rubbed my eyes. Jenny was lying on her side, knees pulled to her chest. “The baby what?” “I’m having bad cramps,” she said. “I’ve been lying here timing them. We need to call Dr. Sherman.” I was wide awake now. The baby was coming? I was wild with anticipation for the birth of our sec- ond child—another boy, we already knew from the sonogram. The timing, though, was wrong, terri- bly wrong. Jenny was twenty-one weeks into the pregnancy, barely halfway through the forty-week John Grogan gestation period. Among her motherhood books was a collection of high-definition in vitro photo- graphs showing a fetus at each week of develop- ment. Just days earlier we had sat with the book, studying the photos taken at twenty-one weeks and marveling at how our baby was coming along. At twenty-one weeks a fetus can fit in the palm of a hand. It weighs less than a pound. Its eyes are fused shut, its fingers like fragile little twigs, its lungs not yet developed enough to distill oxygen from air. At twenty-one weeks, a baby is barely vi- able. The chance of surviving outside the womb is small, and the chance of surviving without seri- ous, long-term health problems smaller yet. There’s a reason nature keeps babies in the womb for nine long months. At twenty-one weeks, the odds are exceptionally long. “It’s probably nothing,” I said. But I could feel my heart pounding as I speed-dialed the ob-gyn answering service. Two minutes later Dr. Sherman called back, sounding groggy himself. “It might just be gas,” he said, “but we better have a look.” He told me to get Jenny to the hospital immedi- ately. I raced around the house, throwing items into an overnight bag for her, making baby bot- tles, packing the diaper bag. Jenny called her friend and coworker Sandy, another new mom who lived a few blocks away, and asked if we could Marley & Me drop Patrick off. Marley was up now, too, stretch- ing, yawning, shaking. Late-night road trip! “Sorry, Mar,” I told him as I led him out to the garage, grave disappointment on his face. “You’ve got to hold down the fort.” I scooped Patrick out of his crib, buckled him into his car seat without waking him, and into the night we went. At St. Mary’s neonatal intensive care unit, the nurses quickly went to work. They got Jenny into a hospital gown and hooked her to a monitor that measured contractions and the baby’s heartbeat. Sure enough, Jenny was having a contraction every six minutes. This was definitely not gas. “Your baby wants to come out,” one of the nurses said. “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure he doesn’t just yet.” Over the phone Dr. Sherman asked them to check whether she was dilating. A nurse inserted a gloved finger and reported that Jenny was dilated one centimeter. Even I knew this was not good. At ten centimeters the cervix is fully dilated, the point at which, in a normal delivery, the mother begins to push. With each painful cramp, Jenny’s body was pushing her one step closer to the point of no return. Dr. Sherman ordered an intravenous saline drip and an injection of the labor inhibitor Brethine. The contractions leveled out, but less than two John Grogan hours later they were back again with a fury, re- quiring a second shot, then a third. For the next twelve days Jenny remained hospi- talized, poked and prodded by a parade of perinat- alogists and tethered to monitors and intravenous drips. I took vacation time and played single parent to Patrick, doing my best to hold everything together—the laundry, the feedings, meals, bills, housework, the yard. Oh, yes, and that other living creature in our home. Poor Marley’s status dropped precipitously from second fiddle to not even in the orchestra. Even as I ignored him, he kept up his end of the relationship, never letting me out of his sight. He faithfully followed me as I careened through the house with Patrick in one arm, vacuuming or toting laundry or fixing a meal with the other. I would stop in the kitchen to toss a few dirty plates into the dish- washer, and Marley would plod in after me, circle around a half dozen times trying to pinpoint the ex- act perfect location, and then drop to the floor. No sooner had he settled in than I would dart to the laundry room to move the clothes from the washing machine to the dryer. He would follow after me, cir- cle around, paw at the throw rugs until they were arranged to his liking, and plop down again, only to have me head for the living room to pick up the newspapers. So it would go. If he was lucky, I would pause in my mad dash to give him a quick pat. Marley & Me One night after I finally got Patrick to sleep, I fell back on the couch, exhausted. Marley pranced over and dropped his rope tug toy in my lap and looked up at me with those giant brown eyes of his. “Aw, Marley,” I said. “I’m beat.” He put his snout under the rope toy and flicked it up in the air, waiting for me to try to grab it, ready to beat me to the draw. “Sorry, pal,” I said. “Not to- night.” He crinkled his brow and cocked his head. Suddenly, his comfortable daily routine was in tat- ters. His mistress was mysteriously absent, his master no fun, and nothing the same. He let out a little whine, and I could see he was trying to figure it out. Why doesn’t John want to play anymore?
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