A Chinese Bar Mitzvah, Barry Rachin [online e book reader .TXT] 📗

The widower, Mr. Chen took his dog for a walk in the park bordering the athletic field. The shiatsu, Wei-shan, seemed out of sorts, sitting listlessly on her haunches with a befuddled expression as he strapped on the harness. Fifteen minutes later as they passed a slender birch tree near the Little League diamond, the dog's front legs buckled. Wei-shan lurched forward on her chest and rolled over. The hindquarter shuddered spastically - once, twice - and the body went limp. The bulgy, dark brown eyes remained open, while the pink tongue drooped perversely coming to rest on the fresh-cut grass.
Mr. Chen crouched down beside the stricken animal and laid a hand on the dog's turgid belly. Nothing. There was no movement, no sign of life whatsoever. The fur was still relatively warm but then, it was late summer with the temperature edging up on eighty degrees. The dog was gone.
By now a crowd had gathered. "What’s happened here?" An off-duty policeman, who was umpiring second base, pushed through the crowd. "Do we need an ambulance?"
Mr. Chen was slumped over the dog with his hands pressed to his eyes crying softly. "That won't be necessary," a woman said in a hushed voice. "His dog died."
The home plate umpire, who had temporarily suspended play when the commotion occurred, blew a sharp blast from his whistle and resumed the game.
Mr. Chen pulled himself together. He washed his face at the water bubbler and a sympathetic bystander gave him a wad of Kleenex so he could blow his nose. "The attack,,, it seemed so sudden." It was the same woman who spoke to the off-duty police officer.
"The dog was always so healthy and full of fun." Mr. Chen felt his composure cracking and paused until he could speak again. "I'll have to make arrangements to dispose of the body."
"There's a lovely pet cemetery overlooking Narragansett Bay in Tiverton. Each grave has its own tombstone or marker. Needless to say, some or more elaborate than others." The woman's overly solicitous tone only compounded Mr. Chen's misery. She took a step closer and placed a hand on his shoulder. "My brother-in-law had his collie, Rusty, cremated; he keeps the remains in a place of honor on a fireplace mantle."
"I appreciate your kind words." Given his rather limited financial resources, Mr. Chen would probably opt for mass burial - whatever arrangement proved cheapest.

"Hey, mister. About your dead dog…" A freckle-faced boy wearing a Tedesco's Supermarket T-shirt was slouching near the home plate backstop. The youth, who had a catcher's mitt wedged under his armpit, was gesturing frantically. "He ain't dead no more."
Sure enough, Wei-shan was sitting upright with her head on the ground. The pinkish tongue had retreated back behind the crooked front teeth. The animal, which still wasn't moving or doing much of anything, was very much among the living. Placing a hand under the dog's stomach he lifted her. Wei-shan hardly flinched. She lay nestled on his forearm like an inanimate object. They went home and Mr. Chen plopped himself down on a throw rug in the living for three hours rubbing the dog behind the ear and feeding her sips of tap water until the stricken animal, like some ill-fated character in a Greek tragedy, finally drifted off to sleep. Maybe it was the late-summer heat that caused the unfortunate episode. Pets were just as vulnerable to bad weather as humans. But the way Wei-shan keeled over, like an over-the hill, punch-drunk prize fighter kayoed by a crunching uppercut, didn't suggest heat stroke or any fleeting ailment.

  

Ida Goldfarb called her son at the animal hospital. "I met an oriental man, Mr. Chen, in the park. He has a sick dog but can’t take the animal for treatment because he’s living on a fixed income and is hard up for cash."
"What breed?"
"A shiatsu - jet black with a wispy gray goatee. Very cute." There was a slight pause. "Aren't you going to ask the dog's name?"
"I was getting to that."
"Wei-shan, which means ‘great and benevolent’ in Mandarin. It's a male name but Mrs. Chen, who passed away a few years back, never confirmed gender before choosing."
"What exactly is the matter with the dog?"
Mrs. Goldfarb told her son what had happened. "Have your friend bring the dog by the office tomorrow in the late afternoon."
"He's not my friend. I don't even know the guy." She hung up the phone.

  

The following day, Mr. Chen arrived at the Brandenberg Animal Hospital in the late afternoon. Robert placed a stethoscope on Wei-shan’s narrow chest. "Dog's got a heart murmur... about a three."
"Three what?"
"Three out of six … a moderately-severe heart murmur." He handed the instrument to Mr. Chen, while continuing to hold the metal disc in place.
Kathunkish. Kathunkish. Kathunkish. Kathunkish.
Yes, sure enough, tailing away from the diastole was an ominous, raspy sound that didn't belong. "Three out of six," Mr. Chen handed the stethoscope back. "How bad is that?"
"The condition is manageable with medication." Robert placed the dog on a digital scale and waited until the numbers settle. "Dog's got to lose at least eighteen ounces, and I'm going to give you some medication. We will need to see Wei-shan back here in two weeks for blood tests to check chemistries and bilirubin." Robert scribbled notes in a manila folder and then brought medication from an adjoining room.
"This pill," he held a pale yellow tablet not much bigger than the head of a pin in the palm of his hand, "is Salix, a diuretic to drain excess fluid. A half hour after you give her the pill, the dog will need to go outside to pee, so plan accordingly."
"And the other?" Mr. Chen took the plastic container from the doctor's hand and held it up to the light.
"Enacard – it's an ACE inhibitor to regulate the dog’s pulse.” The older man seemed muddled by the technical jargon. “It lessens the workload on the heart and also decreases fluid retention. The dog gets a half tablet of both twice daily." Rummaging about in the supply cabinet, he located a surgical scalpel fitted with a rounded, number fifteen blade. Robert shook one of the pills out onto the counter. Placing the blade across the score line on the tiny pill, he pressed down gently and the chalky tablet spilt apart into equal portions. “There’s a two-month supply - a hundred and twenty pills.”
Mr. Chen scooped up Wei-shan in his arms. “I don’t receive my social security check until the beginning of the month.”
“I’ll send a bill,” Robert lied.
“And the pills?”
“The cost will be included in the statement.” He would forewarn the receptionist to dead file Mr. Chen’s billing invoice and write the expense off as a tax loss. “For now, the dog can stroll about the yard as best she can. When her strength returned, Wei-shan might become more adventuresome but no more trips to the park.” He ran his fingertips over the dog’s abdomen and around the hips kneading the roll of excess flesh. “Two tablespoons of moist food twice a day - that's all she gets until the weight comes off.
“How much is she now?”
“Eight pounds four ounces,” Robert replied. “The dog needs to slim down to seven-two."
"Over a pound … that's almost a tenth of the dog's body weight."
Robert shrugged and glanced away. “Until we reduce the workload on the heart, there’s always the chance of another attack like the episode the other day.” Hypoxia - that was the textbook term used to describe what happened to Wei-shan at the athletic field. The dog's stressed-out heart couldn't pump sufficient oxygen to the vital body tissues and the pet collapsed, fell momentarily unconscious until the condition stabilized. “One more thing: every time you feed her table scraps, you’re just killing her with kindness.”
“No. I won’t do that anymore,” Mr. Chen said remorsefully.

  

A week later Robert's sister, Naomi, showed up unannounced on a Wednesday evening. He had just showered and was getting ready for bed. A brown-haired woman with bowling pin calves, Naomi had been reasonably pretty once. Just barely. Sandblasted with a profusion of freckles, her fleshy face had lost its earthy appeal, and, in its place was a callow harshness that set Robert's nerves on edge. “I stopped by Mom’s apartment earlier.” Naomi’s tone was acidic. “She was in the living room when I arrived sipping that Bigelow English breakfast tea she favors.
“That’s nice.”
“A Chinaman, Mr. Chen, was sitting on the sofa also drinking tea with his ratty little dog curled up on the Persian carpet.”
“Wei-shan.”
“What’s that?”
“The dog’s name. It’s Chinese. He didn't offer the English translation.”
“It seems Mother ran into Mr. Chen in the park and invited him back to her condo.” Naomi glanced distractedly about the apartment her hazel eyes never coming to rest on any particular object. “The Oriental didn’t feel comfortable leaving the decrepit beast cooped up alone in his muggy apartment with no air conditioning, so mother graciously suggested that he bring the pet.”
“The dog’s quite sick.”
Ignoring the remark, she scowled with her head tilted at an angle. Robert noted that, over the years, Naomi's freckles had grown more pronounced, resembling an epidemic of chocolaty liver spots. “The Chinaman said you wouldn’t take any money for either the examination or pills. I wasn’t aware you took charity cases.”
In the kitchen the dishwasher shifted from the wash to rinse cycle. Robert wanted desperately to go to bed, to be fresh for morning surgery. He had an operation - a beagle bitch riddled with mastitis - scheduled for eight o’clock. The biopsy had come back benign, nothing more than a massive invasion of fatty lipomas. He would open her up from the pelvic area to the top of the sternum and clear away everything on the left side, wait a few months and repeat the process on the right. It was a gamble. Even though oncology was negative, the root problem could be hormonal, since the dog had never been spayed. That sticky issue would also need to be addressed.
The previous week he sliced a cauliflower-like papilloma from the left leg of an eighty pound mastiff. The tumor was situated just below the skin. The dog would be sore for a week or two. The bulldog with aggressive rhabdomyosarcoma on Monday wasn’t so lucky. A hopeless case, the animal had to be put down only hours after the exploratory surgery.

"I just read a biography of the English writer, William Somerset Maugham," Robert deflected the conversation. “Are you familiar with Maugham's novels?”
Naomi, who taught ninth grade English, stared at her brother dully, trying to decipher his intent. "Of Human Bondage, The Razor's Edge… I don’t see what that’s got to do with the Don Juan Chinaman."
Robert sat down on the bottom riser of the stairs leading to the upper level. "Mother's morbidly shy. Even when we were children, she could never hold her own in social situations. Before Dad died she had few close friends outside his social circle." Robert spoke in a plodding, unhurried manner, and it was unclear if he was addressing his sister or carrying on a private monologue. “W.S. Maugham was socially inept. He stuttered and felt inadequate in public. His homosexual lover, Frederick Haxton was an extrovert, a glib and witty conversationalist. Without Haxton's clever tongue,