Is For Life: Chapter Sixteen: Socially Unacceptable Behavior

Chapter Sixteen

The Avon lady was due that morning, Shelly had left nine pounds fifty on the coffee table so that Julie wouldn’t have to wait around when she called.

‘Opps, Shelly May. Oops.’ She dried her hands on a tea towel and went into the lounge. Sammy was sitting at his computer desk with his back to the room. Carthenage looked guilty, his ears were down and his tail was between his legs. ‘Oops, Shelly May,’ Sammy repeated in his monotone without even turning around.

‘What is it, Sammy?’ Shelly asked, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice and failing.

‘Cathenage eating Shelly May’s money. Oops.’

‘Oh God, are you sure? She went to the coffee table to find the five pound note ripped up on the carpet, two pound coins lay beside the confetti. Cathenage, trying to make himself small, snaked under the table. She heard his tail thumping nervously against the floor. He was showing the whites of his eyes, he knew that he’d done wrong.

‘Samuel May is sure. One five pound note, two pound coins, one fifty pence piece. Sure. Oops.’

‘Did he swallow any?’

‘Sure, yes, sure, two pound coins and one fifty pence piece. Swallowed, sure, all the way down, gone, swallowed, oops.’ He continued typing, his fingers flying over the keys as he spoke.

‘Jesus, Sammy, and you just sat there and let him?’

‘Samuel May said “No Carthenage. Bad dog.” Shelly May not leave one five pound note, four pound coins, one fifty pence piece lying around if she does not want Carthenage to eat one five pound note, four pound coins, one fifty pence piece.’

‘But you didn’t think to get up off your backside and stop him?’ She’d physically dragged Carthenage out from under the table and had forced open his mouth hoping that the money might still be sitting on the dog’s tongue. ‘What’s this,’ she said to him, pointing at the money, ‘You bad dog.’ Carthenage looked miserable.

‘Carthenage not bad dog,’ Sammy adopted Shelly’s voice and mimicked her telling him that puppies chew things and it’s our responsibility to put things out of his way.

‘Rules change, Sammy. When it’s my money he’s eating, trust me, he’s a bad dog.’ She growled the last two words in Carthenage’s direction before having a hopeless look around the floor for the missing money and then she sighed. ‘Damn, I suppose there’s nothing for it but to ring the vet. If the stupid dog’s got it stuck, he might need an operation.’

‘Not stupid dog, stupid Shelly May.’

‘Oh, shut up, Sammy, you’re really not helping.’ Sammy ignored her advice and continued to give his opinion.

The veterinary assistant put her through to speak directly to the vet. He said that there shouldn’t be a problem and that the money would probably pass naturally through the gastrointestinal tract and be processed normally. However, he couldn’t be sure and suggested that, because of the size and shape of the fifty pence piece, she should bring Carthenage in for an X-ray. He explained that they had a walk-in surgery that day and as it wasn’t an emergency she might have to wait some time. Great, she thought, that’s my day gone down the Swanee and it’ll cost me a fortune to boot.

It couldn’t have happened on a worse day, Saturday, the surgery would be packed and Sammy was home from school. She rang around to try and get a sitter for him. Joan was at work with a client. Pauline answered her phone while sitting in the hairdresser’s chair. She had a burnished gold colour on her hair, apparently, and Brenda, next door, was out and not answering her phone. Shelly had no choice but to take Sammy with her.
The waiting room wasn’t as bad as Shelly had expected, there were only three owners before her, A Stafforshire bull terrier, two retrievers and a cat in a box.

Carthenage remembered the vets from having his vaccinations. He knew where they were before Shelly had even opened the door and the smell of disinfectant hit them. She pulled on his lead and Carthenage braced his front legs, stiffened his back ones and flatly refused to move. He tried to sit down on the threshold and Shelly had to drag him across the floor. He was nine months old and already a big dog. He shook like a jelly and whined like a baby. All eyes had turned towards them as they walked into the practise. Sammy had his epilepsy helmet on, instantly signalling his difference. The retriever woman gave Shelly a simpering faux-sympathetic smile. Shelly reminded herself how damned annoying politically correct people are.

She signed Carthenage in and took a seat as far away as possible from everybody else, but after motioning Sammy to sit down it only left one vacant seat between her and retriever woman.
She saw them looking, all of them, the receptionist included. She saw how they judged Sammy and pitied her. She was used to it and one thing she didn’t do after bringing up a handicapped child was get embarrassed by the ignorance of people. Depending on her mood sometimes it annoyed her, mostly it just amused her.

Staffy woman tried to talk to Sammy, she spoke to him as though he was a two year-old. ‘Is that your doggy? He’s lovely isn’t he?’ Sammy’s only reaction was to bring his hands up in front of his face and to set them free to flutter. The woman turned her attention to Shelly. She was a talker and clearly felt the need to tell her the story of Tyson’s sore paw. Shelly wished that she’d shut up so that Sammy could adjust to the noise and the voices. But she had a right to speak, Sammy didn’t preclude that.

He didn’t like people looking at him. There were too many pairs of eyes in the room, all risking their thinly veiled glances at different times. One would look away as another of them invaded his space. His eyes were to the top right of his line of vision, standard, but he wasn’t immune to the looks and the tension. He moaned. It began in his throat as a small keening mewl and grew. Maybe his own noise shut out all the noises in his head, who knew. Soon he was putting on a show of his full vocal range, screams, yelps and screeches, mewls, howls and growls. Oh boy, thought Shelly, he’s on form today.

She didn’t say a word to calm him, didn’t try and comfort him; he already had too much noise in his head. Her voice would only be another sound. His hands fluttered, his body rocked and he raised his fist and hit himself at the side of his face. Shelly calmly took hold of his hand and held it firmly down in his lap, still without speaking to him.
Cat woman was doing her very best to become invisible when Shelly caught her eyes straying to Sammy and met them with a cool gaze. Shelly could see her discomfort in the way that she shifted her buttocks on the seat. You wouldn’t last two minutes, love, she thought. But, if she’d had a child like Sammy, in all probability, she’d have had to.

Sammy was threatening a fit. That was fine, there was a large surface area on the floor, nothing much to hurt himself on. She did wonder how many diseased dogs had peed and how well it had been cleaned recently, but Sammy wasn’t a snob, he’d had fits in worse places. His noise had reached crescendo.

Retriever woman gathered her dog leads and rose, moving to the other side of the room to sit beside Staffy woman who was only too glad to let her in. Solidarity, though she tried not to let Shelly see her small smile of understanding for Retriever woman’s discomfort. She had to be seen to be PC. Tyson strained at his lead to sniff the backsides of the retrievers and Carthenage, forgetting his abject misery in all the excitement, stood up and gave two curt barks towards the three dogs at the other side of the room.

Sammy can certainly divide a room, thought Shelly, it was a them-and-us room now, them, squashed on a row of seats at one side, and Shelly, Sammy and Carthenage with a row to themselves on the other.

The receptionist leaned over her desk, ‘Mrs May, if you’d be more comfortable waiting in your car; I’ll call you when it’s your turn.’

Shelly thought about it. She almost said yes to protect Sammy from the tension. But then she thought about what John would say if he was with them. There’s no way that he would ever allow Sammy to be ostracised to make things more comfortable for other people.

She smiled, coldly, ‘No, we’re fine here, thank you.’ She leaned down and stroked Carthenage. ‘Quiet you,’ she said to the dog before adding pointedly, ‘your socially unacceptable behaviour is going to get us thrown out,’

A man with two cat baskets left the surgery. Not surprisingly, Staffy woman gave up her turn and waved Shelly ahead of the queue.

Way to go, Sammy, she thought as she grabbed her dog, her son and her dignity and walked through to see the vet.