The children wanted a dog. I was seven months pregnant and hyper-vulnerable to anything precious. Smelling my weakness as only children who want something can, they took me to a pocket-sized pet store on Lexington Avenue "just to show me" the baby bulldog. It was kismet. The bulldog seemed to recognize me immediately, as if maybe she had been my faithful sidekick in a prior life. Or even a favorite niece. She danced in her cage, yipped playfully, winked. I was melting.
Like a steamship in a cloth coat, I made my way to the end of a narrow aisle where a saleswoman had been watching us.
"Does she shed?" I asked, pointing to the dog, who was making googly eyes at Scott.
"Like a mother you-know-what," said the saleswoman shaking her head.
She wedged herself between me and a row of dog food on my starboard side and leaned into my ear.
"Don't do it," she whispered. "She's cute now, but that's not the right dog for you. Those bulldogs, they slobber like crazy. And I don't know how she'll be with a baby. You got your hands full as it is," she said, looking pointedly at Scott, who at that moment was pretending to be a dog sniffing the children's pockets for treats.
"This isn't the first time you talked a pregnant woman out of a dog, is it," I said knowingly. "Thank you."
"I've had four kids myself," she said, then disappeared behind the fish tanks.
I ushered the children out. Emma began her negotiations: "If we don't get a dog this year, then maybe for my birthday," she began.
"Look, I love dogs. But we are about to have a baby. Can we just wait and see how much fun your baby brother is? If he's not that great and you still feel like you need a dog, we'll re-evaluate."
"Okay," said Emma. "Let's pencil in a discussion for next Halloween."
Henry thankfully has proven highly entertaining to his brother and sister. Not only can he fetch, but he licks their noses, rolls over on command and loves them with abandon. Halloween passed without discussion of a dog, although I was prepared to put Henry in a puppy costume if necessary.
I thought I had dodged the doggie bullet.
And then Scott and I attended a silent auction and cocktail party to benefit Quinny's tony nursery school.
The crowd was glittery, women in double-digit-carat diamond rings sporting a rainbow array of the season's It bags and men in bespoke suits. I was wearing a Betsy Johnson dress several seasons too tight, Aerosole boots and a handbag I got for free with a subscription to W ten years ago. Scott's suit was rumpled from playing with the kids and his tie was cocked at a funny angle because, according to another class father, his knot was too small.
On empty stomachs, we had three quick glasses of wine and perused the auction items. We dutifully bid on Quinny's class project and ribbed the parents of one of Quinny's classmates who were tipsily bidding on a Donnie and Marie Osmond Broadway Christmas show package.
I love a silent auction and I admit that I have had problems in the past with drinking and bidding. I've had good luck - a lovely party at a gym for Quinny and all his classmates, and bad - a portrait of a woman sprouting green wings and standing on Saturn that no one gets but me, which is now in Scott's mother's basement and a giant oil painting hanging in our living room that my mother says looks like snakes crawling through a pillory. (I see a circus.)
Scott was keeping a close eye on me when I saw it: the grand prize of the auction, a Jeff Koons puppy vase donated by the artist himself. The opening bid was a couple thousand dollars under market and no one had bid yet.
Not only do I have a problem with drunk bidding, but I am convinced that one of these days I will strike it rich. Easily. Like, by purchasing some great piece of art that googles in value. Although my mother would disagree, I fancy myself as having an eye for art.
Thus, the Koons Puppy Vase.
"Let's bid," I urged Scott. "Please!"
"You are nuts," he said. "No one else bid on it. What do you know that they don't?"
"I know that the market value is 50 percent higher than the opening bid," I said sagely. (A class mother had told me this.)
We had another glass of wine.
"I can't believe I'm even considering this," Scott said. But he has his own weakness. He has never said No to me. And so in his spidery scrawl, he wrote down our names on the clipboard next to the Puppy Vase.
I danced in place happily. Suddenly, the glittery parents grew silent. The school's crown jewels of parents had arrived, Donald and Melania Trump. They air kissed their way around the auction items until they came to my dog.
The Donald picked up the clip board.
"Don't you dare bid on my dog," I hissed into his cotton candy hair, somewhere where I thought an ear would be.
"Or maybe you're too smart to bid?" I added, suddenly doubting myself. He smiled at me the way you smile at small children or really old people and replaced the clipboard.
"Walk away," I said to Scott. Maybe the dog wasn't such a good idea. It was incredibly expensive. And The Donald didn't seem to think it was such a hot investment.
A young father with a beautiful blond wife walked over to the dog.
I could read her lips. She was either saying, "I want it for Sophie's room," or "This weather is doom and gloom."
He picked up the pen next to the clipboard.
I tugged on Scott's arm. "Look at that guy! He's taking our dog!"
They were probably ten years younger than us. The man was at least a foot taller than Scott and the woman was so thin she seemed vaporish. And they were looking at our dog with what I can only describe as entitlement.
Scott strode purposefully over to the clipboard and outbid him.
The man picked up the pen and outbid Scott.
Scott outbid him.
They went back and forth like this until the lined page was almost full. Finally Scott strode up to him and said in the gravelly tough-guy voice I fell in love with: "I'm not gonna stop."
The tall man scribbled his name again, looking defiant. Scott immediately wrote our names under his.
The man walked up to me. "Enjoy your dog in good health," he sneered.
"You betcha we will!" I answered.
"You beat him!" I said to Scott. "We won the dog!"
"Elise, how are we going to pay for this?" Scott asked, looking suddenly serious. "You do understand that we are easily the poorest people in the room and we bid on one of the most expensive items."
"We'll pay for it out of my retirement account," I answered brightly. After all, I had quit my job so I actually am retired, at least for now. And what better investment than a one-in-3000 dog vase?
"This is what happens when our pathologies collide," Scott said fondly, tousling my hair.
Up until that moment, I had thought about the combination of our pathologies in bleak terms - the dark spells we had, how we could lose one another, or worse, sometimes hate what we saw.
But this puppy vase, excessive and ridiculous as it was for a couple of pikers like us, is evidence that even our pathologies might be able to play nicely together.
It will also be a reminder of what I love in Scott, that scrappy Staten Island kid whose not afraid to play in anyone's sandbox. And who can't say no to me.
"We have a new dog," we told the children when we got home. "And whoever breaks it is going to public school," Scott added.
