Issue 42 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

wheel. ''It won't drop any needles on the new carpet," we were told,
but we spent most of the season in the early American family room
with the look-of-brick linoleum floor, the gas-jet fireplace, and the
console television. Christmas Eve, as we always had and always
would, we went south of the river to Marge and Doc's. But that year,
we left early with our packaged dog, fully upholstered in white
curls except for bands of apricot in her ears and brownish clumps of
drying tears accumulating around the corners of her eyes. Gigi was
bound for Park Plaza.
She slept her first night on a blanket in the kitchen, surrounded
by newspapers, whimpering herself to sleep to the ticking of a
Baby Ben alarm clock. We wedged a lawn-chair box into the doorway
of the family room to confine her and her puddles to the
kitchen. The next morning, when she didn't eat, we coaxed her into
trying some raw egg, whipped into a bowl of milk. At first she
seelned canine enough, slipping across the waxed floor in pursuit
or evasion of fourth- and eighth-grade playmates. With all her hair
and some residual instincts, Davis's Gigi Canella Petite Monet, as
she was registered, seemed thoroughly inoffensive, even playful.
But as she grew, she developed the combined genetic weaknesses
of all the scrawny, sickly poodles who were forcibly mated to
Inanufacture the toy species. Gigi was not merely a dog but a purposefully
designed mobile ornament, fully compatible with earnest
suburban living. Not a blank slate at birth, but a living Rorschach,
mirroring our ambitions, our sentimentality, our confused early
60's notions of femininity.
The neutered dog regained her gender in monthly appointments
at the poodle salon. Mom called, "Gigi, want to go bye-bye in the
car?" Slipping and padding her way across the linoleum, Gigi
hurled herself, a nervous comet of white hair, into my mom's arms
for the Buick excursion to the Tapscott Groomers. Gigi returned to
Park Plaza a needle-nosed composite of geometric shapes, sculpted
into cotton balls and toothpicks, like atomic art. A sponge bow
adorned her vertical top-knot, matching ones tied to each of her
ears. A wide ring shaved around her belly gave her an hour-glass
figure. Legs were shorn, the pink and grey bony limbs ending in
white balls, like the one on her tail, just over her naked toes. Her
nails were painted red, alternating red and green at Christmas, and
she smelled of Chanel No.5 near her rhinestone collar. Newly visible,
her eyes were larger, still watering around the shaved bulges
beneath them. On her return, Gigi was meaner, maybe because we
could see her black lips, her red gums, her teeth newly cleaned.
She walked more tentatively, the cool floor annoying her paw pads,
their cushioning gone. "She's almost human," Mom would say as
Gigi minced across the gold carpet in the living room and posed,
front legs crossed, on the brocade sofa. Later, much later in dog
years, she simply refused to walk on uncarpeted floors, whining
from the hallway till we arranged a path of early American throw
rugs across the linoleum to the sliding glass patio door. Soon
enough her bows fell out, her hair returned, and she became a dog
again - but only to begin the process anew as a scented work of
topiary whining from the hall.
Gigi didn't eat dog food, no matter what Euclidean shape it
assumed. Instead, she ate fried haInburger, dutifully drained on a
paper towel, and an occasional ice cream cone: "Gigi weegee want
a dog yummy?" Slipping, clattering nails, soft collisions, red gums
clamping the cone. She didn't chew on the furniture. When life
produced poodle-stress, Gigi would sit and gnaw on her front legs
till they bled. Eventually we purchased special snap-on plastic
casts to save her legs and our upholstery. She didn't shed. When
she began to lose her puppy teeth and we found one under a bed,
we put it in sentimental cotton in an empty Inedicine bottle and
shelved it in the basement. Once trained, Gigi never peed on the
floor. We'd slide open the patio door: "Do you need to do your
job?" One winter night after a recent trimming, Gigi's feet becaIne
chilled in a drift, and she lifted them one at a time until she lay
down defeated in the snow. We collected her, brought her inside,
and put her in the pink, inflated bonnet of my sister's hairdryer till
she stopped quivering. We ordered a sweater for her to wear after
her winter trimlnings.
In the summer, she ran around the yard and even panted. Then
she jumped on top of a chaise longue, Inade of giant pink plastic
bands stretched around an aluminum frame, always forgetting that
her feet pushed through the bands, leaving her stuck to her annpits
in the chair. We made her wear sunglasses, just long enough to snap
her picture with our Polaroid Swinger in a tolerant but uneasy Lolita
pose, legs crossed into perverse poodle allure.
Gigi was never a very popular dog. Yapping at the neighbors
through the chain-link fence, or lunging toward the bay window
with poodle ferocity when the mail came, didn't endear her to her
casual acquaintances. Linda's high school friends, who rarely Caine
past the entry hall, regarded Gigi as a kind of biological satire. In
tie-dyed shirts, John Lennon sunglasses, and wide bell-bottoms,
they were stoned enough to view her with amusement, at best. They hadn't
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