Zoo

on the back burner but his career. He was tenured, secure in his career, with a CV thick as a phone book. He had written academic books and several popular books on gorillas, and had been awarded a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He was the toast of intellectual circles—but as his career floated higher and higher into the ether he had been spending less and less time with his wife, Adrianna, and his son, Christopher Robin. He was growing distant from his family, and Christopher was growing up without him. He was even neglecting his teaching, sloughing off most of his classes on TAs.

For all its pain and horror, the mauling and his grueling recovery had saved him, in a way—it brought him back down to earth. Yes, he now wears sunglasses in public, and his potential career as a foot model is shot. But he can still teach. Although certain positions are off the table, he can still make love to his wife. He can still fry bacon.

All things considered, Groh thinks, lifting a steaming mug of coffee to his surgically reconstructed lips, he is a relatively lucky man.

Groh folds a strip of bacon into his mouth and switches on the radio beside the sink. The needle’s zeroed in on some nattering morning talk show, and he paws around the dial until he lands on some classical music. Verdi. That’s better. He hears the clink of crockery against the marble counter of the kitchen island and turns. His twelve- year-old son mumbles a good morning as he tilts a box of Lucky Charms into a cereal bowl. He’s a handsome kid, currently brown as a nut from hours of outdoor play at his summer day camp.

“Hey, kiddo,” Groh says. “Cease and desist with the Charms. I made us bacon.”

“Bacon and what?” says Chris, turning on the MLB Network on the kitchen TV. He mutes it, letting his dad’s Verdi score the recap of the Braves losing to the Orioles the night before.

“Bacon and bacon so far,” Groh says, opening the fridge. “How about an egg?”

“Can I have bacon with Lucky Charms?” says his son, staring at the screen.

“I don’t know. Would your mother let you do that?”

Adrianna is in Baltimore for a few days with her elderly mother, who just had her gallbladder removed.

“Are you nuts? Hell no,” Chris says.

Groh smiles as he brings over the steaming pieces of swine.

“Then have at it, boy,” he says. “She’ll be home soon.”

Groh makes his way across the floor between the kitchen and the front door when he hears a truck pull up outside. He glances out the window and sees that it’s a Lawn Doctor truck in front of the neighbors’ place across the street. A couple of childless yuppie lobbyists who pull down some long green, apparently, judging from their matching Beemers. They certainly aren’t landscapers. Crabgrass and brown spots mottle their sickly lawn like mange. Hence the Lawn Doctor truck.

When he turns from the window, Charlie II is looking out the open front door, panting as he spies with him on the neighbors through the glass of the storm door. Groh galumphs back toward the kitchen on his cane, patting the dog on top of his sleek, brown, dopey head. A flurry of shiny red cartoon hearts is floating out of Charlie II’s expression.

“Okay,” Groh says, scooping up his keys with a jingle from the kitchen counter. “I’m off to work. You’re on your own for another hour, Chris. Mom left Nana’s already and will be here to take you to camp. Love you.”

“Dad, wait. I almost forgot,” Chris says.

Groh watches his son ransack the backpack dangling from a hook on the wall by the front door. He fishes something from the bag and hands it to him—what looks like a red-and-white plastic necklace.

“It’s a lanyard. I made it at camp yesterday,” says Chris. “I thought it could hold your sunglasses, you know, like, around your neck, when you’re working or something. I made it red and white for the Nats.”

Groh looks at it, then at his son, his one eye threatening to fog up.

“Hey, thanks, kiddo,” Groh says. “It’s awesome. Are the Nats playing tonight?”

“At home. Versus the Diamondbacks. Seven tonight. Strasburg’s starting.”

“You want to go?” Groh says.

“What? To the stadium? Heck, yeah!” says Chris, slapping him a high five.

Lucky man, Groh thinks again as he pats his son on the shoulder and then steps into the garage.

Chapter 55

“HEY, CHARLIE. WANT some bacon?” Chris says to Charlie II when his dad is gone. “Hear that, boy? The Nats game. Stephen Strasburg throws like a hundred miles an hour.” He heads back into the kitchen. The dog’s claws click on the floor tiles behind him.

No one in the family loves Charlie II more than Chris. They’ve practically grown up together, having been “pups” at the same time. The family has moved three times, following Charles’s new jobs, and each time, Charlie II was Chris’s best friend until he managed to make human friends. Chris remembers how hard it was to make the dog stay home when he went off to play with his friends. Charlie II would whine in sadness, his eyes forlornly watching Chris from the window as he left the house. And if Chris looked back, he might not be able to leave. To not be with Chris seems to be the hardest thing for the dog to do. They are close as brothers.

Chris kills the Verdi on the radio, turns up the volume on the TV, and zaps through the channels with one hand, searching for ESPN. With the other hand he picks up a slice of bacon from the grease-dampened paper towel and offers it to Charlie II under the counter.

A hot shock of pain in his hand. Chris drops the remote.

“Hey!” He yanks back his hand and looks at it. Charlie bit him. There are puncture marks in his hand.

“Ow! What the fuck? What’d you do that for?”

Chris looks agape at Charlie II, standing beside him in the kitchen. The piece of bacon lies untouched on the floor tiles. Something is—something is not right. There is some weird look in the dog’s eyes—some knowing, almost angry glaze in them that Chris has never seen before. Charlie begins to growl. His jowls flap against his teeth, spit percolating deep in his throat. The eighty-pound Labrador crouches, coiling back, the fur bristling high and stiff as steel wool on the back of his neck. He is growling, sounding like a guard dog, his teeth bared, a gloopy white thread yo-yoing from his lower lip in a pool of saliva.

“What in the hell? What’s wrong, boy? Stop it. It’s me. What’s wrong with you?”

It looks like one of his eyes is messed up. Charlie’s head keeps jerking to one side, as though he were a boxer shaking off a punch. Something is wrong.

Charlie curls in on his hind legs and lets loose with a string of the loudest, most threatening barks Chris has ever heard him make. He sounds like a junkyard dog warning off intruders, not the family pet he’s known more than half his life. Charlie is in a rage—lungs heaving up quick, loud, guttural barks that sound like “WAR-WAR-WAR- WAR—WAR!”

That’s it. Chris gets scared. He panics. He tumbles from his chair and starts running. He feels Charlie’s hot breath on the backs of his knees, hears jaws snapping behind him.

The closest door is the hallway pantry. Chris dashes inside and slams the door, and feels the whump and rattle of Charlie throwing his weight against it. He leans with his back against the pantry door, holding it shut.

On the other side of it, Charlie smashes his body into the door, the thing shuddering on its hinges under the impact. Charlie scrabbles his toenails at the door, clawing and barking, heaves himself into it in manic thumps, seemingly wanting to rip him to ribbons. In all the years they have owned the dog, he’s never sounded like—like a wild animal.

He’s gone crazy, Chris thinks. He saw it in his eyes. The dog is off his rocker. He no longer seems like Charlie II. He is something else. Another dog entirely. A bad dog.

He feels himself beginning to cry. In the hallway, he can hear the dog skulking in circles, still rumble-jawed, occasionally sneezing, occasionally breaking into a fresh wave of furious barking.