April 22, 2008:
Escaping the Happy Meal

In Brooklyn, our refrigerator was home to the imitation Idaho potato, sticks of Parkay, and the lone liter of Schweppes ginger ale. One summer, my mother and I subsisted on bags of potatoes cooked every which way one could fix a potato. We cut them into wedges and fried them on the pan. We boiled them. We baked them. We cooked them in a wok we found discarded on the street. When we were flush from peddling our wares on Thirteenth Avenue, or when my mother made a few extra dollars in tips at the run-down luncheonette, the spuds were side dishes slathered in butter and sour cream — minor accoutrements — to the main course of chicken legs crackling on the skillet. Those nights we were delirious, feigning prosperity; we gnawed our chicken to the bone. The sound of our chewing was symphonic, resembling something on the level of church. We would leave the potatoes cold, skins undone, at the edge of our plates. Leftovers for another day, for the inevitable day that hunger was as normal a state as breathing.

Fancy food was reserved for the holidays; we feasted on tough cuts of beef, a wedge of wilting iceberg lettuce, an overripe tomato drowning in mayonnaise dressing. Fresh legumes and butcher meat — what extravagances! Never did we imagine ourselves the patrons of artisanal cheese, drinkers of cabernet, connoisseurs of cured meats. Watercress was not in our vocabulary. Fine food did not exist in our cabinets, which were stocked with bland, packaged food, pillaged from bodegas and discount stores....

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His apple-minder. His right-away, all-day companion. One day Fup showed up and simply reinvented his world. Like a lightning strike, or overnight snow.

Bandit groped for a straightforward explanation that he could share with the cats. There was no shame in admitting it, but he knew he'd be teased all the same.

On Fup's third day in Boring, Bandit brought her to the park. The city cat, a source of unparalleled local intrigue. No point letting gossips rule the day.

"She works in a bookstore?" the mountain dog whispered.

"Works?" the Lab asked. "Or mooches?"

How soon the dogs gave up resisting. Acceptance proved easier. Fup didn't so much assimilate as she became part of the scenery. Asked nothing of them. Just three days had passed before each morning found both mountain dog and Lab vaguely hoping she'd be there come afternoon.

But that first day at the park: Eventually Bandit mingled with the neighborhood dogs. Not until he felt comfortable leaving Fup on her own did he lope across the muddy field — she practically begged him to get on with it; to let her be, and let himself be.

"What kind of name is Fup?" the wiener dog was quick to inquire.

"What kind of name is Oscar Meyer?" Bandit replied.

"A nickname is what kind. My given name is Rusty."

"Whatever."

The sun ducked in and out of low clouds.

The Lab bowed to the mountain dog while the blue heeler gnawed his own tail — fleas. Bandit looked for Fup across the field and didn't see her. His stomach slipped.

An instant passed before she took shape in the apple tree.

Her apple tree, it would become. He spotted her there, as natural as dusk, reclining in a crook of trunk and branch.