But Honey, I Can Explain! Read online

  Because she’s such a sweet and loving creature, it’s always broken my heart to see Beauty denied the joys of motherhood. She, who would be the most attentive and tender mother in the world. When I suggested we remedy the situation, Dan didn’t see my point, at all.

  "She’s a dog, Amy. She’s a wonderful dog, and a great pal, but she doesn’t have a biological clock, and she won’t miss what she doesn’t know about. She doesn’t need a litter of puppies, and God knows, neither do we!"

  Dan is a man. Which is why I married him, but being a man, he just doesn’t get it. He's got all the wrong hormones, and obviously didn't realize how cruel it would be to refuse Beauty the right to exercise her biological imperative. When I accused him of caring more about his wallet than he did our beloved pet's happiness, Dan reacted like men always do—unreasonably.

  "Yeah, I know,” he said wearily. “I’m an insensitive clod and a male chauvinist pig, but here’s the bottom line, kiddo and I advise you to listen carefully. No puppies! Hell, we’re still paying off that overpriced OB who delivered Emma, and we sure as blazes don’t need to add a damned OB for dogs. Watch my lips. No puppies! No way!"

  "But think how wonderful it will be for the kids," I said brightly, "watching Beauty give birth."

  He grimaced. "Great. Now, poor Beauty gets to be an ‘After School Special’? For God’s sake, Amy, why don’t you just go out and rent a damned video? Besides, our kids already know too much about sex. Last week, I found Michael reading an old ‘Penthouse’ in the bathroom." (Michael is eight, but precocious.)

  I adore Dan, but on occasion, he can be very close-minded. Most of the time, he’s a generous, kind-hearted guy, willing to see my side of things, and we've always made important family decisions as absolute equals. On this issue, however, he was wrong, plain and simply wrong! Anyone who knows about these things will tell you what a healthy, heartwarming experience it is for children to nurture a newborn kitten or puppy. It’s a glorious opportunity to witness the miracle of birth, to learn responsibility and compassion, and to better understand their place in nature’s grand scheme. (Okay, I think I may have gotten all the above crap on "Little House on the Prairie." It sure doesn’t sound like me.)

  And so, because I never listen, and because I'm sometimes about as bright as Beauty, I decided to overrule Dan and take matters into my own capable hands. The very next day, after Dan had left for work, I began looking for a doggie dating service. Even as I leafed through the phone book, though, a tiny little voice at the back of my very tiny little mind was reminding me of that unattractive sound a doubled belt makes when it makes contact with a bare butt, and what it feels like not to sit down for two days running. But, true to form, I didn’t listen. I’ve had discussions with my more intelligent self many times in the past, and the dumber self almost always wins.

  I read somewhere that you can’t really remember pain (which explains why some women like myself agree to go through labor three times.) It’s like amnesia, sort of. I can usually recall with unpleasant clarity the details of every spanking I've ever gotten, and I would not like to repeat even one of them. But the actual sting, the physical sensation of a hairbrush or belt on my rear end always seems to elude me when I most need to be reminded. Which is why I keep doing what I keep doing.

  The whole puppy business was a good example.

  When I sat down with Beauty and explained about her upcoming liaison with Mr. Right, she watched my face intently, drooling in her adorably dim-witted way and wagging her tail cheerfully. Sort of like she does when she knows you’ve got a package of chicken livers on you somewhere. She didn’t seem particularly interested in the details of her very first gentleman caller, though. She just continued to chew on the leg of the dining table in that sweet, stupid way of hers, unaware that her virginity was in peril.

  As the hour neared for Beauty’s first blind date, I chose not to mention the upcoming event to Dan. When she became pregnant, I was sure he’d be as thrilled as I was. Well, almost sure. Men are funny that way. You know how it is. Sometimes, when you do things for their own good, they don’t always react the way you expect, right?

  Beauty turned out to be a bit of a tease, and getting her properly deflowered took a couple of dates, for which I picked up the tab, of course. Going Dutch apparently isn’t done in the dog world. Her dream date was undeniably handsome, with a glorious full coat of rich auburn brown and those mournful, drooping eyes characteristic of his breed. And he was certainly ready and willing to perform (although he seemed to find the male kennel attendant almost as attractive as he did Beauty.)

  "He’s just feeling his oats," the kennel guy said, trying to extricate his lower leg from Prince Rheingold’s amorous bear hug. Rheingold kept thrusting away, apparently quite taken with the attendant’s muscular calf. His name was "Prince Rupert Rheingold III." I wouldn’t make this up. That was his name. (I'm referring to the dog, of course. The attendant’s name was Larry.)

  "Maybe he's still uncertain of his sexual persuasion," I suggested, trying to lighten the mood and relieve the first date tension. "Are you sure he likes girls?" Larry didn’t laugh, and gave the humping dog a smart swat on the muzzle—apparently to discourage premature ejaculation. At seven hundred bucks a pop, Rheingold's bodily fluids were worth more than my car.

  "Take my word for it, lady," Larry crowed, "this big fella's all guy!" He pointed proudly to Rheingold's rampant pink weenie. "Just take a good look at the balls on him! That bitch of yours just don't turn him on. She sick or somethin'?"

  Resisting an urge to kick Bernie in his own pink weenie, I explained patiently that Beauty’s hair follicle condition was long-standing but completely noncontagious, and since Larry didn't wasn't about to lose my seven hundred dollars, he dragged the reluctant sperm donor over to Beauty and made the proper introductions. The romance didn’t begin especially well, though, because when Beauty became aware of Rheingold’s impure intentions, she whirled around and attempted to tear his throat out.

  "No one likes a tease, you naughty girl!" I chided. I felt like a lunatic, but I was eager to get the deflowering over, and Rheingold looked like he might be having second thoughts. "There’s a name for girls like you, you know!" The surly kennel attendant, who had no apparent sense of humor, began dropping broad hints that poor Beauty was to blame for the dating debacle. Like a proud mother whose chubby, near-sighted daughter has just been stood up on Prom Night, I leapt to my baby’s defense and retorted that in my opinion, "Rupert of Rheingold" could use a couple of pointers on the subject of foreplay. And then, while the attendant and I bickered back and forth over whose fault the mismatch was, love seemed to blossom, and the two principals began going at it like overwrought newlyweds.

  Beauty’s very first tryst may not have been romantic, but her fecundity was not in question. It wasn't long before the vet called with the glad tidings. Our beloved pet had made a hole-in-one, so to speak. Beauty was with child!

  I thought of all sorts of cute little ways to tell Dan about the coming blessed event, but none of them seemed exactly right. (I ruled out a baby shower when I visualized my living room full of neighborhood dogs, all depositing gifts, here and there.) It didn’t really matter how I put it to him, of course. I was going to get a spanking of phenomenal proportions, no two ways about it. With a sigh of resignation, I trudged into the den where he was working and dropped my bombshell in one breathless sentence.

  "Okay, Dan, I decided that I may as well just come in here and tell you the truth so you can go ahead and hang me up by my thumbs and flog me black and blue or whatever you're going to do and get it over with while the kids are at your Mom’s so they won’t be traumatized for the rest of their innocent young lives by the spectacle of their beloved father going berserk, and by the way Beauty’s pregnant and I did it," I said. That was it, all in one breath—verbatim.

  Dan looked up from what he was doing.

  "What?"

  I repeated it, or at least the basics. Dan peered at me fo
r a moment over the tops of his reading glasses. I hate when he does that, because I can almost see the tiny little wheels in his head, thinking and planning what he’s going to do to me when he gets me naked.

  "What?"

  All this confusion was too anticlimactic for my taste, so I sat down, probably for the last time that week, and spoke slowly, adding a few of the details that I knew Dan would want to hear. Details that would add to my eventual sentence, but honesty is the best policy, right?

  "A few weeks ago, I took $700 out of the savings account to pay a St. Bernard breeder to get Beauty knocked up, and it took, so if you want to…well, whatever, I’ll understand, but just remember that you’ll be stuck raising the kids and a litter of puppies all by yourself. Try to keep all this in mind while you’re stringing me up from the ceiling, okay?"

  My husband has a great sense of humor, and can usually be counted on to see the humor in any situation. But now, after my wildly funny little speech, he wasn’t even smiling. I was doomed.

  Dan generally gets the physical part of these sessions done with before he asks me for all the gory details of whatever mess I’ve made, and this occasion proved to be no different. I shouldn’t have confessed right there in his office, of course. If I’d been thinking straight, I would have remembered that old adage about real estate. (It's all about location?) Dan goes to a lot of conventions, you see, where the various manufacturers hand out these eighteen-inch-long, very wide, very fat wooden rulers with stupid advertising slogans printed on them. He’s got a drawer full of the damned things, and he’s discovered a real good use for them, the nature of which you've probably already guessed.

  He didn’t hang me from the ceiling, probably because it would have taken too much time. Dan was in a hurry. He bent me over his desk, yanked my jeans and panties down, pulled one of the dreaded rulers from the drawer and let me have it. I was glad the kids were out of the house so I could howl. The damned rulers hurt like bloody hell even when Dan was being nice, and tonight, he was obviously in no mood to be especially nice about anything. For less important stuff, he’ll usually give me maybe a dozen really good swats and let it go at that, but this time, he was obviously hell-bent on setting me on fire, and he just kept smacking. I’m usually very proud and stubborn about begging him to stop, but tonight, I finally hollered "uncle." He stopped, thanks heavens, but when I got up and touched my backside, I could tell from the radiating heat that he’d been very, very thorough.

  "I’m sorry I didn’t tell you," I said morosely.

  Dan wasn’t buying my sincere act. "It’s a little late to be sorry," he said. "I ought to whale the living daylights out of you."

  "I think you just did," I groaned, trying to pull my pants back up.

  "Not even close," Dan growled, but he put the ruler back in the drawer, which made me feel a little les nervous. Dan has been known to provide an instant replay when I get too cute. "Now, sit down and talk about puppies. How many, and when."

  "I can’t sit down, thank you," I said curtly…a bit too curtly for Dan, who reached down and started to reopen the drawer.

  "Sit!" he ordered.

  I sat. I winced, but I sat.

  Dan sat down too, and looked at me, daring me to move. "Start at the beginning," he instructed, but when I’d finished telling him the whole thing, he didn’t look any happier about it, and I kept a wary eye on the drawer.

  "When is she due?" he asked, and I told him.

  "There is some good news," I began hesitantly. "Are you interested, or had you rather just stay mad at me?"

  "I’d rather just stay mad at you," he grumbled. "But go ahead and tell me the good news, and for your sake, I hope it’s very good news. I’m just aching for another shot at your ass, tonight."

  "The puppies could make us a lot of money," I began. "I researched the whole thing, darling. St. Bernard puppies, even pet quality, can cost about five or six hundred dollars, maybe even more. We can keep one pup, so that Beauty will be happy, and sell the rest to nice people."

  "And then we have two monster dogs to eat us out of house and home, is that the plan?"

  "You wouldn’t take her last puppy away from Beauty, would you?" I asked morosely.

  Dan sighed. "No, of course I wouldn’t. Don’t make me into the bad guy, here. I love her, you know that."

  I jumped up and kissed him, because, as you can obviously see, he's not only a knight in shining armor, he's an absolute prince—when he doesn’t have a ruler in his hand, anyway.

  For several days, once the kids found out about the coming event, our home was the scene of endless celebration. Amanda, our five-year-old, volunteered her white canopied bed and Little Mermaid bedding for the labor and delivery, and wailed when Dan nixed the idea. Alex, our eight-year-old budding Donald Trump, worked out a plan wherein he could sell cuddling time to the children in the neighborhood for a small profit. Emma, our eighteen-month-old, simply laughed with delight until she peed on the rug, which is pretty much her reaction to everything at this stage.

  Even Dan seemed to cheer up a bit. He began working on an enormous barn-sized doghouse in the backyard to accommodate mother and puppies until their eventual adoption. He was still a bit snappish around me, and I was very careful to stay on his good side when he had a hefty wooden shingle or a paintbrush in his hands. I've had my bottom warmed by a lot of less obvious things when Dan was looking for an excuse.

  Toward the end of the week, I got a phone call from the breeder I had used. He had some "unpleasant news." It seemed that there was a "small problem" with Prince Rheingold’s paperwork. I (being hopelessly stupid) leapt to the conclusion that poor Rheingold had entered the country illegally, without a green card.

  "No, it’s not that," the voice said dolefully. "It’s the dam."

  "The dam what?" (I am almost as knowledgeable about dog breeding as I am about quantum physics.)

  I’m not especially proud to admit that my first selfish thought when I hung up the phone was to hurriedly hide anything that could be used as a flagellation implement, such as the wretched rulers, and every clothing brush, bath brush, or hairbrush on the premises. (Dan likes brushes.) My second thought was to take the car, start driving, and put as many miles as possible between Dan and me as I could. This was definitely the sort of news you would prefer to deliver by phone, from a city far, far away.

  Rheingold’s mother, despite her blue blood and sheltered upbringing, had turned out to be nothing but a lying little slut, all 165 pounds of her. The bitch was apparently given to hanging out in doggie singles bars with other low types, and had screwed a piece of canine trailer trash of unknown origin. When she got knocked up, though, she skulked home and conned Rheingold’s good hearted and unsuspecting Dad into thinking the little bastards were his. When some of Rheingold’s last offspring turned up with characteristics untypical of the breed, a blood test confirmed the worst.

  The kennel was sending me a check for $700, and their apologies.

  As if my day hadn’t already been a nightmare, the vet called with the results of the ultrasound. Beauty, a first-time mother, had won the puppy jackpot. Ten puppies, maybe more, all of excellent size, and moving robustly. If we couldn’t find ten suckers dumb enough to take them off our hands, we were going to have over two thousand pounds of adult mongrels digging up our small back yard.

  On the back porch, Beauty napped peacefully, her massive head resting in a pool of spittle, oblivious to her looming predicament—an unwed mother of ten sucking, squalling infants, and only eight nipples.

  That evening, when Dan came home and heard the news, he gave me a brief but intense impromptu spanking, which I will call, for future reference, the AKC spanking—as opposed to OTK Spanking.

  "You didn't even check out the breeder’s credentials with the American Kennel Club?" he asked in disbelief. "Did you ask for references? Did you even see this Rheingold mutt's papers, or any of his other pups?" Dan asked a lot of excellent questions that night, but the answers didn't make
him happy.

  Finally, he sat down on the edge of his desk and threw his hands up in frustration.

  "Where the hell did you find this damned kennel, Amy, in the damned Auto-Shopper?" His last question, and the only one for which I had a real answer. I had found the "breeder" on a bulletin board at the drugstore, on a hand-written three by five index card.

  Dan doesn’t usually spank me for mistakes, or even for stupidity. This one, he explained, as he lowered my underwear to my knees, was for lying to him. (Yes, in a well-intentioned effort to allay Dan's anxiety over the puppy mess, I had sort of led him to believe that I’d contacted the breeder through the AKC.) As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

  He used his hand, as he tends to do when he’s in a hurry and can’t wait to get at me. On these occasions, he just yanks my panties down, dumps me across his knee with no ceremony and blisters everything in sight. Dan can be a tough cookie when he wants to be. In under a minute, my rear end looked like a ripe tomato. After landing a couple of final well-aimed swats to the absolutely sorest part of my rear end he could find, he dumped me on my feet…with a warning. "Never, NEVER do something like this again without telling me! Got it?"

  I got it.

  In the next few weeks, Beauty simply blossomed. You’ve always heard that old thing about pregnant women becoming radiant and seeming to glow? Well, my own pregnancies have never been like that. I generally just throw up a lot and get fat, but the changes in Beauty were absolutely amazing. Her hair filled in until she looked like she had a sort of nicely trimmed crew-cut. Her tufts disappeared into her new growth, and before long, she actually began to resemble a dog. Beauty was almost pretty…not beautiful, maybe, but definitely almost nearly pretty.

  "It must be the hormones," Dan observed. It was either that, I agreed, or God making it up to her for all her ugly years.

  Labor began on the day of Michael’s big soccer playoffs, so I told Dan to take the kids and go ahead, while I waited at home with the nervous, slobbering mother-to-be. I had arranged to get our vet on the phone in case things went awry, and the van sat in the driveway, ready to whisk Beauty to the hospital if necessary. "Don’t worry about us," I told Dan cheerfully. "The vet says the first labor can take hours. You’ll be back in plenty of time."