“How in the hell did you sleep through this?” Shelly asked moments later, looking around groggily.
“Do you see Chunk anywhere?” I asked her. She opened the closet door and found Chunk hiding in a corner. The fact that Chunk was able to open and shut a closet door was just another confirmation that I was dealing with my mother.
Meanwhile, Gary was rolling around in his own feces like a one-eyed gambler. “What are we going to do?” I asked Shelly.
“I don’t know. I’m putting him in his crate.”
“Do we have any medical slippers?” I asked, trying to figure out how I was going to navigate my way through the room without stepping in shit. I carefully got out of my bed and onto Shelly’s shoulders to descend down the stairs back to Shelly’s room, where I spent the rest of the night.
When our cleaning lady, Mabel, arrived the next morning, I apologized to her and explained how her day was going to play out. “Grande accidente upstairsee. Pero, no bueno. Grande oopsie whoopsie,” I explained.
“Oh, Gary,” Mabel squealed. That was one of the incentives of naming him Gary—hearing Mabel say it over and over throughout the day. She pronounced it with a wide Mexican “a” and sounded like a special Olympian every time she said his name. “G-A-A-A-R-Y, you are such a good boy, G-A-A-A-R-Y.”
Gary had more energy than a hamster after an eight ball and chewed up anything he could get his mouth around. He ran through the house, knocking anything and everything over, and he was somehow able to jump on top of the kitchen counter from eight feet away.
He was seven weeks old when they brought him home and he weighed ten pounds. The next day he was twelve pounds, and a week later he was twenty. His feet were too big for his body, so not only did he knock everything over, he constantly ran into walls and fell down the stairs. The rate he was growing combined with the lack of control he had of his own body was a recipe for disaster. He once ran down the hill in my backyard so fast his entire body flipped through the air when he tried to stop himself and he ended up doing a front handspring right into the pool. I was on my way to a friend’s movie premiere and had to jump in fully clothed to rescue him.
Needless to say, he got to safety long before I did, and by the time Shelly got home from work, I was sitting on the steps of the pool in a Dolce and Gabbana dress and heels, soaking wet, with mascara running down my face. I could barely take care of myself, and now I had somehow convinced myself a mountain dog would be a great addition to the family.
Jacks was nicer to Gary than Chunk, but after letting Gary gnaw on his face for three days straight we had to get Jacks a cone for his head, because he looked like he was decomposing. Gary was a nuisance with incredibly sharp teeth.
“Do you think Gary is stupid?” I asked Shelly one day over a Chinese chicken salad.
She breathed deeply. “I will say… that I do not think he is smart.”
Shelly repeatedly reminded me over the first few months that Gary was a puppy and we needed to remember that. She also said it would be sad for us as professional adults to not be able to handle a third dog. “We’ll look like failures,” she told me, then asked, “Who would we give him to?”
“Molly?”
“Molly would be good.”
“But we have to wait at least six months, Chelsea. He is a puppy. It can take dogs up to a year to calm down.”
Six months, five area rugs, two jackets, and thirteen pairs of shoes later, Shelly and I took all three dogs to the doggy park in our last attempt at assimilation. We had been sending Gary to doggy kindergarten every day, where they tried to exhaust his energy by strapping a weighted belt onto him and putting him on a treadmill.
On our way to the dog park, we stopped at a Starbucks for coffee and left the dogs in Shelly’s car with the two back windows halfway down. Gary was sitting in the front seat.
When we returned, Gary was gone. Chunk and Jacks were sitting in the backseat looking guilty and relieved.
“Oh my god!” I screamed. “Where the fuck is Gary?”
“Jesus Christ! The doors were locked!”
“Well, he didn’t unlock the door,” I told her. “He’s not Edward Scissorhands.”
“Chunk may have.”
“Don’t blame this on Chunk!” I snapped at her.
“You go that way and I’ll go this way!” she barked back.
We scrambled in opposite directions around the parking lot until we heard a loud crash and looked to see a minor two-car collision. Gary was standing to the right of both cars with his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging, looking as clueless as ever. At this juncture, he had grown to be one hundred pounds, yet he had managed to slip his body out of a window that was opened ten inches.
When Shelly and I returned home that night, we filled two large glasses with vodka and agreed that Gary was tearing us apart. It would have to be couple’s therapy or an outside adoption for Gary.
My cousin Molly got Gary the very next day, and my dog walker, Oscar, cried the day Gary left. “I really love that crazy dog,” he told me. So a week later, when Molly returned Gary, citing similar damage to her house, I asked Oscar if he would take him.
“I don’t have a yard for him to run in,” he told me.
“I’ll buy you a house with one.”
“What about when I’m here walking the other two dogs?” he asked.
“We’ll send him to doggy day care.”
“Where will the house be?”
“Wherever you want. I don’t care. Please, Oscar. I’m begging you.”
And that was the end of Gary living at our house.
Brad knows how painful the experience of Gary and my failure with him was and is to me. I thought him evil for reminding me of such a horrendous time. One believes one can share stories with friends and loved ones as confidants. It is disappointing when these so-called confidants use these stories against you.
“You’re a real asshole, Brad, you know that? I tried to love Gary, but something was wrong with him. He’s with someone who loves him now. Isn’t that the most important thing?”
“I believe that to be true. But money and fame have infantilized you. You can’t even take care of a dog.”
“Gary was ‘special needs,’ Brad. He is safer now in his new home. Had he stayed with me, I would have ended up accidentally barbecuing him.”
“That’s my point.”
“Technically, I still pay for Gary’s education and all his expenses, so there’s that.”
“Great, so you’re his benefactor.”
“That’s a lot more than I can say for you. You don’t even have a dog.”
“You’re getting a little out of touch with reality, and I fear you are in danger of losing not only your mind but your fan base. And on top of that, the poor dog has to run around being called Gary for the rest of his life? Was that really necessary?”
“That may be true, Brad. But your baby will most likely grow up and not only be a latchkey albino but also resent the fact that you only vacation without him. At least I have the decency to take Chunk with me.”
“We’re getting off topic, Chelsea. Chunk has traveled the world. It might do him some good to take a rest.”
“He’s traveled the country,” I corrected him.
“Do I need to remind you what happened last year during this same winter holiday in Telluride?”
The main problem with working on a television show for so many years is that the writers become like your family. Whether you like them or not, you have to hang out with them, and a familiarity develops in which everyone knows everything about each other and nothing is off the table, because like in any family it’s hard to get fired.