Jacob Fishman's Marriages by Barry Friedman

Author:Barry Friedman [Friedman, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bernhardt Books Inc

Jacob Fishman’s Marriage: A Novel

7. Comet

For a woman who would not handle a salt shaker in a restaurant unless she had first wrapped it in a paper napkin, preferably three or four, to prevent germs, Cindi displayed calm and understanding when cleaning up her dog’s shit that was, Jacob concluded, positively Zen. She got Princess Charlize-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede, half miniature pinscher, half rat terrier, in Lake Tahoe, or so she said, telling Jacob a preposterous story about a circus family that was feeding small animals to their collection of panthers and how this dog, whom she called Princess when she had neither the time nor energy for a full recital of the name she gave it, was given to her outside Steve Wynn’s house in Incline Village by a small man with a big head. There were arguments for which Jacob could simply not summon the energy, and the dog’s backstory was one of them. He told Cindi he was not cleaning up dog shit under any circumstances, a condition Cindi accepted, so when the dog defecated, she would calmly grab two or three napkins, pick up the offending sadness, and flush it down the toilet. As time went on, though, and they had Princess for only a few months, Cindi took Jacob’s reluctance to make an effort with Princess as personally as he took her getting Princess Charlize-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede in the first place, even if she begrudgingly accepted his unwillingness to police their home for dog feces as not entirely unreasonable.

From her diary:

My husband won’t pick up dog shit. The least he can do for not giving me a baby.

“Sorry you have to do this, but, damn, your dog shits a lot,” Jacob told her, as he stood over her and watched her spray the carpet with Resolve.

“It’s not your job. It’s not your job. Don’t worry. I, and I alone, am raising Princess Charlize-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede.”

“You’re raising the dog alone? That’s how you’re going to spin this?” Jacob replied. Nothing grated on him more these days than her using the dog’s full name in casual conversation.

“If you gave me a baby, we could raise it together,” she said.

“The ‘it’ is a problem. You should use the third-person singular—’he’ or ‘she.’ It’s more humane.”

“I’ve said this before, Jacob, but I mean it now. Fuck off.”

Cindi wanted Jacob to love her dog, and Jacob knew that, but there was something about the Fishmans and an inability to extend small favors and kindnesses to one another that made this impossible. Cindi wanted Jacob’s love for Princess to be organic, Jacob-to-dog, not just to placate her, even though Cindi wondered what it would be like to have a husband who did such small favors like love a wife’s pet. And it was because she expected that, because she expected Jacob to love her dog willingly—and because she loved Princess so much, even more, Jacob suspected, than she loved him—that he refused.

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