Dewey: the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World Page 7

  I remember walking out into the living room of our two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot bungalow, which was only a mile from the library. Of course, half of Spencer was only a mile from the library. I looked out the window at the quiet, square houses on their nice square lawns. As in the rest of Iowa, most of the roads in Spencer were perfectly straight. Why wasn’t life like that?

  Brandy tottered up and nuzzled my hand. Brandy had been with me since I was pregnant with Jodi, and the dog was clearly feeling her age. She was lethargic, and for the first time in her life she was having accidents on the floor. Poor Brandy. Not you, too. I held out as long as I could, but eventually I took her to see Dr. Esterly, who diagnosed an advanced stage of kidney failure.

  “She’s fourteen years old. It’s not unexpected.”

  “What should we do?”

  “I can treat it, Vicki, but there’s no hope for recovery.”

  I looked down at the poor, tired dog. She had always been there for me; she had given me everything. I took her head in my hands and scratched behind her ears. “I can’t afford much, girl, but I’ll do what I can.”

  Several weeks of pills later, I was sitting in my living room with Brandy on my lap when I felt something warm. Then I realized it was wet. Brandy was peeing all over me. I could tell she was not just embarrassed; she was in pain.

  “It’s time,” Dr. Esterly said.

  I didn’t tell Jodi, at least not everything. Partly to protect her. Partly because I didn’t want to acknowledge it myself. I felt as if Brandy had been with me my whole life. I loved her; I needed her. I couldn’t bring myself to put her down.

  I called my sister, Val, and told her husband, Don, “Please come by the house and pick her up. Don’t tell me when, just do it.”

  A few days later I came home for lunch and Brandy wasn’t there. I knew what that meant. She was gone. I called Val and asked her to pick Jodi up from school and take her to dinner. I needed time to compose myself. At dinner Jodi could tell something was wrong. Eventually Val broke down and told her Brandy had been put to sleep.

  I had done so many things wrong by this point. I had tried to treat Brandy’s pain. I had left her to die with my brother-in-law. I hadn’t been completely honest with Jodi. And I had allowed my sister to tell my daughter about the death of the dog she loved. But my biggest mistake was what I did when Jodi came home. I didn’t cry. I didn’t show any emotion. I told myself that I needed to be strong for her. I didn’t want her to see how much I hurt. When Jodi went to school the next day, I broke down. I cried so hard I made myself sick. I was so distraught I couldn’t even drive to work until the afternoon. But Jodi didn’t see that. To her thirteen-year-old mind, I was the woman who killed her dog and didn’t even care.

  Brandy’s death wasn’t a turning point in our relationship. It was more a symptom of the gulf developing between us. Jodi wasn’t a little child anymore, but part of me still treated her like one. She also wasn’t an adult, but part of her thought she was all grown up and didn’t need me any longer. Even as I realized, for the first time, the distance between us, Brandy’s death pushed us further apart.

  By the time Dewey arrived, Jodi was sixteen, and like many mothers of girls that age I felt we were living separate lives. Much of that was my fault. I was working very hard planning the library remodeling I had finally pushed through the city council, and I didn’t have much time to spend at home. But it was her fault, too. Jodi spent most of her time out with friends or locked in her room. Most of the week, we interacted only at dinner. Even then we rarely had much to talk about.

  Until Dewey. With Dewey, I had something to talk about that Jodi wanted to hear. I’d tell her what he did; who came to see him; whom he played with; what local newspaper or radio station called for an interview. A few staff members alternated feeding Dewey on Sunday morning. Although I was never able to get Jodi out of bed for those Sunday-morning visits, we’d often drop by the library Sunday night on our way back from dinner at Mom and Dad’s house.

  You wouldn’t believe Dewey’s excitement when Jodi walked in that library door. The cat pranced. He would literally do flips off bookshelves just to impress her. While I was alone in the back room cleaning his litter and refilling his food dish, Dewey and Jodi played. She wasn’t just another person spending time with him; Dewey was absolutely crazy for Jodi.

  I’ve said Dewey never followed anyone around, that his style was to retain some distance, at least for a while. That wasn’t true with Jodi. Dewey followed her like a dog. She was the only person in the world from whom he wanted and needed affection. Even when Jodi came to the library during work hours, Dewey sprinted to her side. He didn’t care who saw him; he had no pride around that girl. As soon as she sat down, Dewey was in her lap.

  On holidays, when the library was closed for a few days, I brought Dewey home with me. He didn’t like the car ride—he always assumed it meant Dr. Esterly, so he spent the first couple minutes in the backseat on the floor—but as soon as he felt me turn off Grand Avenue onto Eleventh Street, he bounced up to stare out the window. As soon as I opened the door, he rushed into my house to give everything a nice long sniff. Then he ran up and down the basement stairs. He lived in a one-floor world at the library, so he couldn’t get enough of stairs.

  Once he ran his excitement out on the stairs, Dewey would often settle in beside me on the sofa. Just as often, though, he sat on the back of the sofa and stared out the window. He was watching for Jodi. When she came home, he jumped right up and ran to the door. As soon as she walked in, Dewey was like Velcro. He never left Jodi’s side. He got between her legs and almost tripped her, he was so excited. When Jodi took her shower, Dewey waited in the bathroom with her, staring at the curtain. If she closed the door, he sat right outside. If the shower stopped and she didn’t come out quickly enough, he cried. As soon as she sat down, he was on her lap. It didn’t matter if she was at the dinner table or on the toilet. He jumped on her, kneaded her stomach, and purred, purred, purred.

  Jodi’s room was an absolute mess. When it came to her appearance, the girl was immaculate. Not a hair out of place, not a speck of dirt anywhere. Put it this way: she ironed her socks. So who would believe her room looked like the lair of a troll? Only a teenager could live in a room where you couldn’t see the floor or close the closet door, where crusty plates and glasses were buried under dirty clothes for weeks. I refused to clean it up, but I also refused to stop nagging her about it. A typical mother-daughter relationship, I know, but that’s only easy to say after the fact. It’s never easy when you’re going through it.

  But everything was easy for Dewey. Dirty room? Nagging mother? What did he care? That’s Jodi in there, he said to me with one last look as he disappeared behind her door for the night. What does that other stuff matter?

  Sometimes, just before turning in for the night, Jodi would call me to her room. I’d walk in and find Dewey guarding Jodi’s pillow like a pot of gold or lying over the top half of her face. I’d look at him for a second, so desperate for her touch, and then we’d both start laughing. Jodi was silly and funny around her friends, but for all those high school years she was so serious with me. Dewey was the only thing that made our relationship lighthearted and playful. With Dewey around, we laughed together, almost like we had when Jodi was a child.

  Jodi and I weren’t the only ones Dewey was helping. Spencer Middle School was across the street from the library, and about fifty students were regularly staying with us after school. On the days they blew in like a hurricane, Dewey avoided them, especially the rowdy ones, but usually he was out mingling. He had many friends among the students, both boys and girls. They petted him and played games with him, like rolling pencils off the table and watching his surprise when they disappeared. One girl would wiggle a pen out the end of her coat sleeve. Dewey would chase the pen up the sleeve and then, deciding he liked that warm, dark place, he’d sometimes lie down for a nap.

  Most of the kids left just after five when thei
r parents got off work. A few stayed as late as eight. Spencer wasn’t immune to problems—alcoholism, neglect, abuse—but our regulars were the children of blue-collar parents. They loved their kids but had to work extra jobs or extra shifts to make ends meet.

  These parents, who came in for only a moment, rarely had time to pet Dewey. They worked long days, and they had meals to prepare and houses to clean before falling into bed. But their children spent hours with Dewey; he entertained and loved them. I never realized how much that meant, or how deep those bonds were, until I saw the mother of one of our boys bend down and whisper, “Thank you, Dewey,” as she tenderly stroked his head.

  I figured she was thanking him for spending time with her son, for filling up what could have been an awkward and lonely time for him.

  She stood up and put her arm around her son. Then, as they were walking out the door, I heard her ask him, “How was Dewey today?” Suddenly, I knew exactly how she felt. Dewey had turned a difficult time apart into common ground; he was her road back to so much of what she had left behind. I never considered this boy one of Dewey’s close companions—he spent most of his time goofing off with friends or playing games on the computer—but clearly Dewey was having an impact on his life beyond the library walls. And it wasn’t just this boy. The more I looked, the more I noticed that the ember that had ignited my relationship with Jodi was felt by other families, too. Like me, parents all over Spencer were spending their one hour a day with their teenagers talking about Dewey.

  The staff didn’t understand. They saw Jodi and Dewey together and thought I’d be offended that Dewey loved someone more than me. After Jodi left, someone would usually say, “Her voice sounds just like yours. That’s why he loves her so much.”

  But I didn’t feel jealous at all. Dewey and I had a complex relationship, one that involved baths, brushings, veterinary visits, and other unpleasant experiences. Dewey’s relationship with Jodi was pure and innocent. It was fun and good times, uncomplicated by responsibility. If I wanted to put a Vicki spin on their relationship, I could say Dewey realized how important Jodi was to me, and that made her important to him. I could even stretch to say that maybe, just maybe, Dewey understood the significance of those moments the three of us shared, how much I missed laughing with my daughter, and he was therefore happy to throw himself over the chasm and serve as the bridge between us.

  But I don’t think that was it at all. Dewey loved Jodi because she was Jodi—warm, friendly, wonderful Jodi. And I loved him for loving my daughter.

  Chapter 10

  A Long Way from Home

  In Hartley, Iowa, where my family moved when I was fourteen, I was a straight arrow, the head student librarian, and the second smartest girl in my grade, after Karen Watts. It was all As for Vicki Jipson, except in typing, where I got a C. But that didn’t keep me from having a reputation. One night I went with my parents to a dance in Sanborn, a little town nine miles from Hartley. When the dance hall closed at eleven, we went to the restaurant next door, where I promptly passed out. Dad took me outside for some fresh air, and I threw up. The next morning at eight thirty, my grandfather called the house and said, “What the hell is going on over there? I heard Vicki was drunk in Sanborn last night.” The cause turned out to be an abscessed tooth, but there was no beating a bad reputation in a small town like Hartley.

  My older brother, meanwhile, was considered one of the smartest kids ever to attend Hartley High School. Everyone called him the Professor. David graduated a year ahead of me and went to college a hundred miles away in Mankato, Minnesota. I figured I’d follow him there. When I mentioned my plans to my guidance counselor, he said, “You don’t need to worry about college. You’re just going to get married, have kids, and let a man take care of you.” What a jerk. But it was 1966. This was rural Iowa. I didn’t get any other advice.

  After graduation from high school, I got engaged to the third boy I’d ever dated. We’d been going out for two years, and he adored me. But I needed to get away from the microscope of small-town Iowa; I needed to be out on my own. So I broke off the engagement, which was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and moved to Mankato with my best friend, Sharon.

  While David went to college on the other side of town, Sharon and I worked at the Mankato Box Company. Mankato Box packaged products like Jet-Dry, the dishwashing liquid, and Gumby, who was a star at the time. I worked mostly on Punch and Grow, a container of potting soil with seeds attached to the lid. My job was to grab potting soil containers off a conveyor belt, snap on the plastic lid, slide them into a cardboard sleeve, and put them in a box. Sharon and I worked side by side, and we were always singing goofy lyrics about Punch and Grow to the tune of popular songs. We would get the whole line laughing, the Laverne and Shirley of Mankato Box. After three years, I worked my way up to feeding the empty plastic cups into the machine. The job was more isolated, so I didn’t get to sing as much, but at least I didn’t get filthy from all the potting soil.

  Sharon and I developed a routine, which happens with line work. We would get off work exactly at five, ride the bus to our apartment for a quick dinner, then hit the dance clubs. We’d stay out, dancing our toes off, until they shut the dance halls down. If I wasn’t dancing, I was usually out with my brother David and his friends. David was more than my brother, he was my best friend, and I can’t count the number of times we stayed up talking about our lives. If I stayed home, which was rare, I’d put on a record and dance, all alone in my bedroom. I just had to dance. I loved to dance.

  I met Wally Myron at a dance club, but he wasn’t like the other guys I’d dated. He was very smart and very well-read, which impressed me immediately. And he had personality. Wally was always smiling, and everyone with him was always smiling, too. He was the kind of person who would go down to the corner store for milk and talk to the clerk for two hours. Wally could talk with anyone about anything. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. I say it to this day: Wally was incapable of intentionally hurting anyone.

  We dated for a year and a half before getting married in July 1970. I was twenty-two, and I got pregnant right away. It was a tough pregnancy, with sickness morning, noon, and night. Wally spent evenings after work out with his friends, usually riding motorcycles, but he was always home by seven thirty. He wanted a social wife, but he would take a sick wife if that meant a baby on the way.

  Sometimes one decision changes your life, and it doesn’t have to be one you make yourself—or even know about. When I went into labor, the doctor decided to speed the process with two massive doses of Pitocin. I found out later he had a party to attend, and he wanted to get this darn procedure over with. I went from three centimeters dilated to crowning in two hours. The shock broke my afterbirth, so they put me back into labor. They didn’t get all the pieces. Six weeks later I hemorrhaged, and they rushed me back to the hospital for emergency surgery.

  I had always wanted a daughter named Jodi Marie. I had dreamed about it from a young age. Now I had that daughter, Jodi Marie Myron, and I was dying to spend time with her, to hug her and talk to her and look into her eyes. But the surgery knocked me flat on my back. My hormones went haywire, and I was racked with headaches, insomnia, and cold sweats. Two years and six operations later my health hadn’t improved, so my doctor suggested exploratory surgery. I woke up in the hospital bed to discover he’d taken both ovaries and my uterus. The physical pain was intense, but worse was the knowledge that I couldn’t have any more children. I had expected a peek inside; I wasn’t prepared to be hollowed out. And I wasn’t prepared to enter sudden and severe menopause. I was twenty-four going on sixty, with scarring through my gut, regret in my heart, and a daughter I couldn’t hold. The curtain came down and everything went black.

  When I came around a few months later, Wally wasn’t there. Not like he used to be, anyway. That’s when I noticed, suddenly, that everything meant drinking to Wally. If he went fishing, it meant drinking. If he went hunting, it meant drinking. Even motorcycle
riding meant drinking. Before long, he wasn’t showing up when he promised. He would be out late and never call. He’d come home drunk, and I’d say, “What are you doing? You have a sick wife and a two-year-old child!”

  “We just went fishing,” he’d say. “I had a couple too many. It’s no big deal.”

  I’d wake up the next morning, and he’d be gone to work. I’d find a note on the kitchen table. I love you. I don’t want to fight. I’m sorry. Wally could never sleep, and he would stay up all night writing me long letters. The man was smart. He could write beautifully. And every morning, when I saw those letters, I loved him.

  The realization that your husband is a problem drinker comes suddenly, but the admission takes a long, long time. Your insides tie themselves in knots, but your heart refuses to understand. You make explanations, then excuses. You dread the ringing of the telephone. Then you dread the silence when it doesn’t ring. Instead of talking, you throw out the beer. You pretend not to notice things, like money. He always comes through, but only when the cupboard is bare. But you’re scared to complain. What are the chances, you think, that it will get worse instead of better?

  “I understand,” he says when you mention it. “It’s not a problem. But I’ll quit. For you. I promise.” But neither of you believes it.

  Day by day, your world gets smaller. You don’t want to open cabinets for fear of what you’ll find. You don’t want to search the pockets of his pants. You don’t want to go anywhere. Where’s he going to take you that doesn’t involve drinking?

  Many mornings I found beer bottles in the oven. Jodi found beer cans in her toy box. Wally was waking up early every morning, and if I dared to look out the window, I could see him sitting in his van drinking warm beer. He didn’t even bother driving around the corner.

  When Jodi was three, we went to Hartley for my brother Mike’s wedding. Jodi and I were in the ceremony, so Wally had free time on his hands. He would disappear and not show up until late at night, when everyone was asleep.