Read Online Oogy The Dog Only a Family Could Love by Larry Levin - Free Book Online

suspect that we were not the birth parents. For example, because Jennifer is so petite, it was not unusual for another mother to comment, “But you’re so small! Was it hard having twins?” “No,” Jennifer would answer. “It wasn’t.” People we had never met before asked Jennifer how she had lost the weight so quickly. “It wasn’t really a problem for me,” she would respond serenely. We decided very early on that it was no business of strangers that the boys were adopted; that was something they could tell people if they wanted to. Initially, I had felt some urge to tell people, which I now think represented some attempt to distance myself from fatherhood. But as time passed, and the overwhelming experience proved to be one of joy and marvel at the bounty with which we had been blessed, my reluctance, born of the fear of failure, faded. The very labor of nurturing paid immeasurable dividends, and after several months, after my head had stopped whirling at what had happened and I had accepted it as part of my life, I became their father, and all our lives were joined. There was nothing to distinguish me from them.
    Watching their personalities emerge was a constantly rewarding experience. They were home for only a few weeks before they earned nicknames. Noah became “the Professor” because he was so contemplative. He seemed constantly to look at things as though he were trying to figure out what they were, what they were supposed to do, and how they went about doing exactly whatever it was they were supposed to accomplish. Dan was nicknamed “Jarhead” because of his bald, round dome and absolute determination, his commanding sense of bravado.
    The first time I heard the boys giggling uncontrollably, I sensed that it was a sound I had never heard before or made. As it turned out, everything about the way the boys grew up would be different from my own childhood experiences.
    When I was three years old, my sister, Susie, died of leukemia. She was two years older than me, three years younger than my brother. I have only two memories of her.
    One is of our father holding her in his arms in the alley behind our house, on a block of semidetached houses in West Philadelphia. It is a hot summer day, and our dad is using a handkerchief to shoo away a yellow jacket that has been buzzing around Susie and frightening her. She is crying, and he is speaking soothingly to her. Since in reality he proved to be powerless to protect her, I guess that it is understandable why I hold on to this.
    Susie is not present in the only other memory I have of her. She is in the hospital, dying. She may already have died. It is a Sunday morning. My parents and I, accompanied by my aunt Esther, have driven to the hospital from our house. Another aunt is home with my brother. The car is suffused with an aura of grim resignation; there is only one inevitable conclusion to the events of the morning. I am too young to be admitted to the hospital, so I sit outside in the car alone. I do not to this day understand why my parents even brought me. I remember a black steel fence and a massive yellow brick building visible from where the car was parked on the street. I remember Aunt Esther coming to the car, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, to say that Susie had died.
    In the house I grew up in, there was only one picture of Susie to be found — just one picture for as long as we owned the house, which was another twenty-three years. It sat on the piano along with a number of other photos of different family members, events, gatherings, and occasions. This one photograph showed a beaming little face with dimples and two long, golden braids. I would look at the picture for minutes at a time, trying to get to know the girl in it, but it never felt like anything more than a picture. The little girl had been my sister, but the photograph could have been of anyone. There was no connection.
    My parents seem to have assumed that my brother, being