I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship Read Free Page B

air coming from her nose. We shook her awake when she seemed to be too quiet. We smiled when she would howl and then immediately quiet upon hearing our Daffy Duck–meets–Kathy Griffin impressions.
    Only when I could no longer use my keyboard at work without flinching in pain and Gary could no longer blow-dry his hair did we remove our fingers and move Marge from crate to our bed, where we cooed and sang, and, slowly, began to create an even bigger cast of characters to entertain Marge—and one another—each of whom used a virtual pre- Avatar language, a bizarre lexicon understood by only the three of us.
    Soon, it became the only language to which Marge would respond.
    I began compiling this language, and its many terms, which we termed “Marge-ese”:
    Potty-pee = Go tinkle!
Potty-poo = Go poop!
Bites = Food
Nink-nink = Water or Drink your water
Git-um-good-ums = Eat your food
Seepy weepy = Time for bed
Wuboo! = I love you
Stinky-winky-woo = Time for a bath!
    In addition to Ne-ne, Connie, and Trixie, we added Maria (which was Marge’s given name, a sassy, sexy, but bitter Penélope Cruz understudy); Sasha (a proud but poor Russian woman forced to beg for bread); Anastasia (a rich European who only shopped in Prague, but secretly loved to down Sliders at White Castle); and Ms. Betty Lou Tuttlesworth (a bedraggled secretary who could never speak up for herself and whose boss used to always drop his pencil for her to stoop over and pick up).
    Over time, our Marge-ese dictionary and cast list were given to friends and relatives as well as our vet, so they could communicate with our dog, understand her. But no one really took us seriously. That is, until Gary and I went on our first vacation since adopting Marge, and we gave our dictionary to the kennel where Marge was staying.
    Three days into our stay in Puerto Vallarta, we received a call saying Marge had yet to eat, drink, or even sleep since we had left.
    â€œAre you speaking her language?” we asked. “Or doing a character?”
    â€œUmmm, we tried,” the owner said, more than just a hint of malice in her voice. “We’ve tried to get her to play with other dogs, but she doesn’t seem interested. And we’ve tried hamburger and rice, and special biscuits. She’s not responding to anything. Except cartoons on TV. She’s just looking around for you.”
    â€œPut us on speaker,” Gary said.
    And, in the high-pitched, cartoon voices only she could understand, we told her to eat, drink, and potty. Which continued the next four days.
    I thought of Xena, our puppy trainer, while trying—but failing—to relax in Mexico. She was right. We had created a nightmare. One, now, that would never end.
    From that point on, Gary and I really never left Marge. Whenever we traveled—vacation, book tour, holiday—Marge was there, riding in between us. And if she couldn’t go, Gary’s parents—who were nearly as neurotic as we were—babysat, following our dictionary, word for word, performing characters left and right, as if they were doing improv on a Japanese game show.
    Marge eventually—as dogs do—leapfrogged us in years. She is now thirteen.
    She has seen us through our early thirties into our mid-forties. She has developed gray hair alongside us. She gets stiff after exercising. And, for nearly a decade and a half, this eighty-plus-pound mutt has lain—day in and day out—on my feet, as I wrote and tried to make sense of the world via words, my own language.
    After four books, Marge is still the first person to hear what I write—yes, I read to her in falsetto—and she listens more intensely than any other reader or fan I’ve ever known.
    Marge has helped shepherd me and Gary through a sea change of triumphs and traumas: a move to the woods of Michigan, a career as a full-time writer, along with the loss of my mother to cancer, and the loss of Gary’s