World's Fair by E. L. Doctorow Page B

stupid dog had gotten into. Pinky had also enlightened our lives one day by giving birth to three or four puppies on Donald’s bed, an event I peeked in at from the doorway and could accommodate with brief glimpses. Little squirming pups were coming out of her backside. She attended to everything with her tongue. Her ears were flat and her demeanor uncharacteristically solemn, and as each moving creature emerged she licked it and licked it and, in the same manner, herself and the bedspread, like the most responsible and decorous of dogs. Something my brother called the afterbirth she consumed in its entirety. I had not quite worked out the concept of procreation. It was not a matter in which anyone in my family thought I needed instruction. I was amazed that my mother was not angry at the mess Pinky was making. In my mind materials from the inside of the body were abhorrent to one degree or another; I included puppies. Yet a big shallow box was found and made into a nursery with shredded newspaper, and the dog Pinky, now given the astoundingtitle of Mother, retired there to nurse; and eventually the puppies were placed.
    All of this was in the nature of a lifelong commitment, my brother argued. Pinky to us and we to her. How could we kick out our dog at this point in all our lives together? Was nothing sacred? Other less drastic measures might be taken. Perhaps he could vacuum the entire house every day. Yes, he would be prepared to do that! Maybe Pinky could spend more time out of doors. He could train her not to run away. She might be kept in the cellar. And so on.
    Donald was skilled in disputation, he was a good student and was able to call up all manner of appeals from the fields of science, ethics, and psychology, but none of them seemed to work. “It’s not fair,” he said in what I thought was his most trenchant remark, “it’s not fair that an entire family should lose its dog just because one baby pipsqueak gets a runny nose.” Nevertheless he seemed to believe that there was still time, still room for negotiation, and perhaps my parents did somehow give that impression. Even as he rehearsed me to make a passionate protest of my own, which I was earnestly prepared to do between sneezes and eye-watering coughs, Donald was talking to his friends to try to get one of them to keep Pinky. His idea was that with the dog gone, were I to show continuing signs of allergic hysteria, then it would be proven not to be Pinky’s fault and she could be brought back home. In any event, he went off to school one morning, and while he was gone my parents struck: With the help of our family friend, the dentist Abe Perlman, who lived across the street, my father took time off from work so as to transport Pinky to a place he insisted was the closest thing to an ideal existence for a dog, a place called the Bide-A-Wee home. Here Pinky would be cared for and have other dogs for friends. After a day or so she would not even miss us. I was very nervous about this and insisted on hugging the dog even though that might bring on an asthmatic attack. I asked for full particulars about the Bide-A-Wee home, I wanted to accept its credentials at face value because I didn’t want to be a sniveling wheezing sissy all my life. I did not miss the heavymeaningful glance between my father and Dr. Perlman, nor the barely concealed smirk on that man’s face as he assured me the dog would be loved even more where she was going than in our house, but I decided to believe everything would be all right. I did not think that was possible, but still stood, irresolute and uneasily pacified, on the sidewalk as they drove away in Dr. Perlman’s Plymouth with Pinky sticking her head out of the window because Dr. Perlman’s driving made her carsick, just as it did me.
    When Donald got home from school and found no Pinky, and heard my report to him, he became enraged. His green eyes grew large. “You believed that baloney about the Bide-A-Wee home? They