He pushed off me and raced around the living room, panting.
Tatum shrugged. “I’ll do everything, I promise. Take him to obedience class, take him on walks ...”
Monster was now humping our couch.
“Monster!” Tatum barked. “No!”
“Tate! Jesus, you couldn’t have waited to consult me?”
“It had to be then or he was going to a kill shelter.”
I sighed. “I’m guessing it’s too late to return him?”
She put on her sheepish fake grin that I was usually immune to. “I always wanted a dog, so please?”
“Don’t give me that grin. It might work on casting directors, but it does not make me weak in the knees.”
She stuck out her bottom lip in her best actress pout.
“Oh God,” I groaned. “Well, that, how can I say no to that?” Then: “You’ll do the work?”
“I’ll do the work.” She held her hand to her heart.
I kissed her on the nose. “Monster stays.”
Then we went to open the wine, and Monster ate our dinner.
This morning, the morning that I’m thirty, Leo stirs and opens an eye, then reaches his arms overhead, nudging Monster awake too. Monster stretches his Jurassic jaws wide open and yawns, then looks at me expectantly. I trudge to the bowl by the back door and scoop in his food from the locked bin. (It had to be locked: we learned this lesson the first week when he tipped over the bag we had lazily leaning against the wall and ate the entire contents, which resulted in yet another emergency trip to the vet, which I absolutely did not have time for, but what was I going to do? Fail at this early test of canine parenting?) Monster bolts from the couch, his back paws stepping on Leo’s face, and gallops toward his food.
“Your dog is a disaster,” Leo says.
“Funny, I was just thinking how he’s kind of exactly like you.”
“Low blow.” Leo pushes himself upright, his hair wild, his eyes bloodshot. “Happy birthday, old man.”
“One day you’ll be thirty, baby brother; don’t knock it.”
“Thirty,” he says, flopping back against the couch, scratching his navel. “Shit, dude, that’s like real adulthood.”
Monster has finished inhaling his food and is back at my feet, spinning his electric tail in quick-fire circles.
“I gotta take him out; want to come?”
Leo shrugs. “Not really.”
“I thought you came out here for the fresh air, for a break from the New York summer. Come on, a beach walk.”
In truth, I know he came out here for more: for permission to ditch his job, to become that surf instructor he’s wanted to be since graduation, for me to ease up and say,Make yourself happy, don’t live in Dad’s shadow.Tatum keeps telling me to say this.Jesus, Ben, he’s had a shitty few years. Let him just be happy.And part of her is right, but we’ve all had a shitty few years—her with her mom, us with my dad, and that’s not an excuse not to grow up, to shirk your responsibilities. God help me, even if that makes me sound like my dad. That doesn’t make it less true.
If I pay for graduate school, Benjamin, I expect an Oscar.I can still hear my dad, as if getting an Oscar were the easiest fucking thing in the world. It wasn’t; in fact, he didn’t even mean that it was. He meant that even if it were the hardest fucking thing in the world, he still expected it. That was probablywhyhe expected it. It rankled me so much back then—his rigidity, his expectations, and yet, how can I point fingers now and say that he was wrong? Not when he pushed me to the success that I’ve become—not an Oscar winner, sure, but on my way, hitching a ride to the next strata in the industry. My dad isn’t around now to do the same for Leo. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I begrudged my dad all those years ago or not, it was up to me now to pass along the message, to ensure that Leo understood that the journey matters just as much as the destination.Go work hard, Leo. Go do your job. Go be an adult.It’s what my dad would have insisted on, so it’s what I insist upon too.
Leo wiggles into his flip-flops, and while he brushes his teeth at the kitchen sink because that’s where he left his toothbrush last night, I check my e-mail. Monster is panting in my lap, his drool running down my thigh.
“Buddy, hold on, hold on, I’m coming.” I pat his head absentmindedly.
I’m about to click out of my in-box and heed Monster’s unrelenting demands when I see a name that jolts me.
Amanda Paulson.
