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StumbleUponA New Pet and a Split-Up
"Helen! Helen!" Anabel screamed from the bathroom. "Come quick! It's a pig! You got a pig!" "No, I didn't," Helen called back, still unwrapping a stocking stuffer. She sounded just slightly disappointed. "I got a tiger." Eight-year-old Helen, her nine-year-old twin sisters, Anabel and Eliza, and her two-year-old brother, Angus, had gotten nearly life-size stuffed animals for Christmas. "Helen! This is a real one." At that, the rest of us ran to the bathroom. There, huddled in the farthest corner of the shower, quivered an eight-week-old piglet with a bright red ribbon tied around his neck."Santa finally brought me a pig! I knew he would," Helen yelled, edging ever so slightly away (Helen has been animal-phobic ever since a German shepherd knocked her over at age two). The pig chose that moment to sprint past our outstretched arms, out of the crowded bathroom, headed for the Christmas tree in the living room.
He raced around and around it as if searching for the earth it should have been growing in. As we quietly sat on the floor, the fuzzy little thing sniffed and snorted his way to each of us. He made a few tight circles, just like a dog, then collapsed on the floor with a loud sigh -- his skinny legs stretched fore and aft.
"What are you gonna call him?" Eliza asked.
Helen looked at the pig for a moment, reached out a tentative hand, and as she gently touched his back for the first time, answered, "Treader."
My wife, Lisa, and I smiled at each other for what seemed like the first time in nearly a year.
We're not sure how Helen's obsession started, whether it was from reading Charlotte's Web at too young an age, watching Babe on the VCR night after night or an especially poignant moment at the county fair, but on her fourth Christmas, lip quivering, Helen sat on Santa's lap down at the boatyard in Rockport Harbor (Santa always visits mid-coast Maine by boat) and announced what she truly wanted.
"Ho, ho, ho," Santa replied, "and do you want a stuffed one or one of those new electronic ones?"
Helen stared up at him like he'd lost his mind. "I want a real pig," she said, "a really real one."
For four years Helen kept asking. She even petitioned the Easter Bunny, who, to his credit, never gave in. As a result, she received toy pigs, pig candy, pig clocks, even pig costumes, but never the real thing.
Meanwhile, her chances grew slimmer and slimmer without her having a clue. Thanks to my desire for built-in bookcases and top-notch replacement windows in our 1845 Maine farmhouse, we had renovated ourselves beyond our means. The ensuing debt, coupled with everything else that can stress a relationship, drove my wife and me apart.
In the early summer of 2005, after 13 years together, we decided to split up and to sell our house. I took an apartment in town, and Lisa rented a small house that not only banned farm animals but even the family dog.
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