Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby by Donald Barthelme

Author:Donald Barthelme [Barthelme, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141195773
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2011-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chablis

My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.

My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have it. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, ‘Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?’ The baby says, ‘Momma,’ and she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly, ‘Momma momma momma.’ I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.

The kind of dog the baby wants, my wife says, is a Cairn terrier. This kind of dog, my wife says, is a Presbyterian like herself and the baby. Last year the baby was a Baptist – that is, she went to the Mother’s Day Out program at the First Baptist twice a week. This year she is a Presbyterian because the Presbyterians have more swings and slides and things. I think that’s pretty shameless and I have said so. My wife is a legitimate lifelong Presbyterian and says that makes it O.K.; way back when she was a child she used to go to the First Presbyterian in Evansville, Illinois. I didn’t go to church because I was a black sheep. There were five children in my family and the males rotated the position of black sheep among us, the oldest one being the black sheep for a while while he was in his DWI period or whatever and then getting grayer as he maybe got a job or was in the service and then finally becoming a white sheep when he got married and had a grandchild. My sister was never a black sheep because she was a girl.

Our baby is a pretty fine baby. I told my wife for many years that she couldn’t have a baby because it was too expensive. But they wear you down. They are just wonderful at wearing you down, even if it takes years, as it did in this case. Now I hang around the baby and hug her every chance I get. Her name is Joanna. She wears Oshkosh overalls and says ‘no,’ ‘bottle,’ ‘out,’ and ‘Momma.’ She looks most lovable when she’s wet, when she’s just had a bath and her blond hair is all wet and she’s wrapped in a beige towel. Sometimes when she’s watching television she forgets that you’re there. You can just look at her. When she’s watching television, she looks dumb. I like her better when she’s wet.

This dog thing is getting to be a big issue. I said to my wife, ‘Well you’ve got the baby, do we have to have the damned dog too?’ The dog will probably bite somebody, or get lost. I

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