As Dog Is My Witness (7 page)

“So you think that if I follow you through your day,
I’ll see whoever’s undoing your work.”

Mahoney nodded. He kept rubbing Warren’s belly,
because the dog was doing his “eye trick,” the thing where he looks
as pathetic as possible to elicit sympathy. It always works, and
I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it myself when dealing
with Abby. “That’s how I figure it,” he said. “And since you don’t
actually have a job . . . 

I raised one eyebrow, a trick I learned through years
of watching Leonard Nimoy on
Star Trek.
“You have a funny
way of asking someone for help.”

“It’s not something I do often,” he admitted.

“True. And I owe you about six thousand times
over.”

Mahoney, who had knelt down to attend to Warren,
groaned as he stood, and threw a melodramatic arm across his brow.
“I just want the nightmare to end!” he wailed, then looked to see
if I was buying the act, which I wasn’t. Warren, who doesn’t deal
well with raw emotion, got up and left the room. Hell, if nobody
was going to rub his belly . . 

“You don’t know from nightmares,” I told Mahoney.
“I’ll soon have to spend a week in this house with Abby’s brother
and his family.”

Mahoney winced and sat down. “Howard?”

“The one and only.”

“No way you could find a business trip to go on for a
week?”

Mentally thanking Leonard Nimoy, I raised my eyebrow
again. “A minute ago, you said I don’t have a job. Now you want me
to send myself away on assignment? Which is it? Besides, I just got
back from a trip yesterday.”

As briefly as possible, I filled him in on the
exciting details of the trip to Hollywood (really Santa Monica),
and my current assignment for
Snapdragon
(really Lori
Shery).

“So you have a rewrite to do that might finally
jump-start your career, plus a murder investigation, plus Howard
and his Yuppie version of a family coming to stay for seven
fun-filled days.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“For a guy with no job, you’re pretty busy.”

“Remarkably so.”

“So, can you follow me tomorrow?” Suddenly, his eyes
looked just like Warren’s.

“Sure,” I said.

B
efore I could start
following Mahoney, however, I had to deal with my children. Ethan
usually beats Leah home from school, since he doesn’t have any
interest in extracurricular activities or social interaction with
other children. In other words, he doesn’t have any school friends
to slow him down.

Today, he lumbered into the house, ignoring the
whines and cries of the dog, who did everything except leap into
Ethan’s arms and beg for attention. Ethan hung his overflowing
backpack on the banister, yelled, “Hi, Dad,” in no particular
direction, and headed for the kitchen, where snacks are kept. He is
his father’s son.

Since I am, unlike Warren, gifted with the power of
speech, I called into the kitchen, “How was your day?”

“Okay.” Given that hearty chunk of data, I walked to
his backpack and opened it, extracting the black and white notebook
that Wilma Coogan, Ethan’s aide at school, and I pass back and
forth every day. Wilma, partial to Ethan as she has proven herself
to be, might not tell me
everything
he won’t mention, but
she’s certainly a better source of hard information than a
twelve-year-old with Asperger’s.

So, it was with a modest amount of surprise that I
turned to today’s page and read, “Hi, Aaron. Ethan forgot his
science homework, and got a zero for the day. He reacted badly, and
threw a pen at Ms. Markowski. Don’t worry—I made sure he apologized
and didn’t get detention.” Wilma then listed Ethan’s homework for
the next day, subject by subject, including the science worksheet
he had apparently failed to bring in that day.

“Ethan!”

He ambled out of the kitchen and into my office,
holding a brownie he’d found in the cabinet. Crumbs landed on his
shirt, and, in a single motion, he wiped them onto the floor,
smearing his white shirt with chocolate. “Yes, Dad?”

“What happened in science?”

He scowled, knowing Wilma had dropped a dime (or,
allowing for inflation, thirty-five cents) on him. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? Throwing a pen at a teacher is nothing?” I
waved my arms over my head and smoothed my hair back like the
primate I was becoming. “Ethan Atticus Tucker
. . . 

He hates his middle name, which was his mother’s idea
(he doesn’t know the only reason it isn’t his
first
name is
because I ran interference for him). Ethan clenched his teeth,
which is exactly what I do when I get angry, and snarled. “I didn’t
hit
her with the pen,” he growled. “Nobody got hurt.”

“Not for lack of trying! Ethan, this is something
I’ve been telling you since you were two, for chrissakes! You
can’t throw things at other people! You can’t hit other people!
You can’t choke other people!
”

“I know, I know . . .  How dare I
belabor the point that he shouldn’t commit violence. “You don’t
have to tell me again.”

“Apparently, I do. And why wasn’t your science
homework done yesterday?”

“It
was
! Why doesn’t anyone
believe
me?” Exasperated, he stomped to the living room couch and flopped
down, causing an audible crack in the frame of the old sofa.

I advanced on him, my temperature rising by the
second, which wasn’t a bad thing, considering how cold it was in
the room. “Do you have enough money for a new couch?” I asked
him.

This caught him off guard, so he answered honestly.
“No.”

“Then don’t destroy the one we already have, because
I don’t, either!”

One way in which AS kids are just like all other kids
is that they have virtually no patience for their parents. Ethan
rolled his eyes and pursed his lips in the universal symbol of
almost-teenagers who know so much more than the people who’ve been
doing their laundry for twelve years. “Oh, give me a break,” he
said.

The door burst open and Leah bounced in, heading, as
she always does, directly for the dog. “Hello, Warren,” she cooed.
“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?”

“Not me, according to Dad,” said Ethan. “He thinks
everything that ever goes wrong is my fault.”

“That’s not true,” I told him, “and you know it.”

He ignored me entirely, which I’ve grown used to.
Ethan sat and stared into the blank television screen as if
watching a fascinating film that demanded his complete attention.
He was actually watching his own reflection, but as a tactic, it
had the desired effect. It annoyed me.

“Do your homework,” I said.

I’d been speaking to Leah, but it was the opening
Ethan had been waiting for. He stood up and faced me with the
blatant, pointless rebellion of youth.

“No,” he said.

Leah, sensing a storm on the horizon, grabbed up her
backpack from the floor and went upstairs to her room, taking the
dog with her.

“No?” I said, eyebrows raised. “What the hell do you
mean, ‘no’?”

“I’m not doing my homework.” He had a smile on his
face that said, “Go ahead. Make my day.” So I did.

I firmly put both my hands on his shoulders. “You’re
going to do your homework, Ethan. And when you’re done with each
page, you’re going to bring it over to me so I can see it, and then
I’m going to watch you put it all in your backpack, so what
happened today won’t happen again.” All the while, I tightened my
hold on his shoulders.

“Ow!” Ethan is especially sensitive to touch, and a
tiny bit of pain produces a reaction similar to what most people
would experience if a cheetah was chewing off their legs. “Stop
choking me!”

Reflexively, I took my hands away. “Choking you?
That’s not choking you. My hands were nowhere near
. . .  As usual, I fell into a typical parent trap:
addressing the side issues and losing sight of the main point. He
still wasn’t doing his homework.

Ethan, rubbing one shoulder as if it were broken,
started to tear up. Walking toward the stairs, he passed his
backpack without removing anything.

“You get back down here, Ethan, and you get your
books. You’re doing your homework. NOW!”

He kept walking.

Normally, I would have let things go until later, but
this was a school issue and besides, I was pissed off. I ran
halfway up the stairs and grabbed him by the arm.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Where do you think you’re
going?”

“To my room . . .  to play video
games.”

I spoke very slowly. “Not until you do your
homework.”

“No.” Defiance had worked for him before. He tried to
turn, but I held his arm tightly.

“If you don’t do your homework now,” I said, teeth
clenched, “I’m going to take the PlayStation out of your room.
Forever!” Parents are constantly making threats they know they
won’t ever carry out, expecting their kids to back down.

Ethan’s eyes widened. Here it came again. “NO!” he
screamed, broke my hold on his arm, and ran into his room, slamming
the door.

Because I’m a total idiot, I followed him. He held
the door closed when I tried to open it. “Ethan!” I shouted.

“You can’t come in! It’s
my
room!”

But I’m bigger and heavier, for the moment, and
stronger. I pushed my way into the room. Ethan, only a couple of
inches shorter than I am, was fully in tears now. I had threatened
his very way of life.

“I’m not kidding, Ethan. Do your homework now, or the
video game goes.” You can’t back down on something like that, or
they’ll never believe you again. And I thought impulse control was
his
problem.

“No!” he said, but he clearly knew he was going to
capitulate, and I knew it, too. I might as well have told him I was
going to break both his legs. For him, PlayStation was what the
world was all about. I knew and exploited it. So much to be proud
of, from just one short conversation.

“Why not?” I finally said. “Why don’t you want to do
your homework?”

He thought about it for a long moment, and cried a
little harder. “I don’t know,” he said. For some fathers, the day
just isn’t complete until you’ve made a twelve-year-old boy sob
like a baby.

“Be sensible. Just do the homework, and then you can
play your game.”

“Okay.” He stood, walked to the door, turned the
knob, and said the most stomach-dropping thing he possibly
could.

“Thanks, Dad.”

He went to do his homework, and I pondered what a
43-year-old man would look like if he were crying. Instead, I went
into Leah’s room and held out my arms. She gave me a Leah hug, the
finest form of therapy on the planet. Okay, second finest.

“Is the fight over?”

I nodded.

“I don’t like it when you and Ethan fight,
Daddy.”

“I know, puss. But we don’t mean the things we say.”
Now, there’s a classy rationalization, huh?

“Warren doesn’t like it, either.” I looked at the
dog, who was sleeping in a corner of the room and didn’t look
especially bothered.

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell,” she said with a maturity far beyond her
years, a matu-rity she’s gained by watching her mother deal with
me. “He came right up to my room, and usually he doesn’t like to
come up here because I close the door.”

“You made your point,” I told her.

“Besides, he whimpers and cries when you guys are
yelling at each other . . . 

“Leah . . . 

“. . .  and he puts his tail between
his legs . . . 

“Leah. . . 

“. . .  and besides
. . . 

Okay, she had me. “Besides what?”

“He told me.”

I looked at her for a long time, wondering if my
daughter was the next Son of Sam, before she burst out laughing.
And after a while, I started to laugh, too.

If your children teach you properly, it is indeed
possible to be a good parent.