There’s no limit to what a man might do to save his marriage.

Coming from rather typical American moral stock, I was at first resistant to my wife’s suggestion. We’d been married for some 15 years at that point, and I was under the grossly mistaken impression that we were both satisfied.

We’d always been intimate and supportive of one another, and though I’d recently come out of a full-blown nose dive, until the moment those words fell out of her mouth I’d never have considered opening our marriage.

In retrospect, the signs were obvious. I’d catch her all alone with her smart phone late at night, three glasses of wine into a lonely living room bender. Walking in, I’d notice her clumsy attempts to minimize whatever screen she was looking at, and then her embarrassed effort to avoid eye contact.

Twice, I found her in the laundry room, whispering excitedly into the phone, flushed, animated in a way I hadn’t seen in years.

Yet, it seems I have much capacity for denial. The emotional conversation, one I’ve tried these last few years to forget, took place on our back porch one weekend evening just after the skies had ripped open and rain scoured the stained plastic roof of our carport.

For the third time that day, I caught her staring at me, her head tilted just so in quiet exasperation, her eyes burning a hole straight through my forehead. I knew the time had come.

Struggling to keep my emotions in check, and hoping that the harsh sound of the rain hammering above might cover any hitch in my uneven voice, I stammered: “So is this it, then? Is this how it ends?”

No, I found out. This is how it begins.

First, the waterworks. She felt disconnected, alone much of the time while I was at work, caught in the momentum of one day piling on another with very little anymore to excite her, to lift her up out of life’s vicissitudes,

She wanted to fall in love again. Feel the chemical sizzling of an attraction satisfied. It’s not that she wanted a divorce, or to break up our family of so many hard-fought years. She was simply missing something, and she couldn’t go on like we had been, pretending all these years to be complete.

She wanted a dog.

Behind my back, she had laid detailed plans. An appointment had even been made at Miranda’s Rescue south of Eureka, where Shannon Miranda keeps his menagerie of broken dreams.

Obviously, I was stunned, reeling from the revelations that came so easily to her. A dog? With fur? What about the expense, the furniture, our kids? What kind of dog? Is it going to sleep on the bed? Will it bark? The drive south was a blur of emotions, our white sedan crammed full with our three children, my suddenly exuberant spouse, myself and, ignored by all, my wounded ego.

Here’s where I am forced to admit my mistake.

Watching my wife walk the green mile in front of Miranda’s dog kennels, carefully observing the manner and behavior of each animal as they slobbered for love, yowled at the possibility that freedom might finally be at hand, I was struck again for the thousandth time by her poise, her loving disposition. Even if it had to be shared.

Finally, in the last kennel, my wife slowed to a stop. There, calmly in her cage, regal in her gray, brown and black coat, sat Lila.

From where we sat in the car, I could feel the connection. It was if a massive charge of static electricity were suddenly blooming, and the hairs on my arms and neck sprang upright. Instant soul mates.

A Queensland Heeler mix, Lila had been incarcerated in her cage there in the Eel River Valley for an interminable six months. Of all the dogs she examined that day, Lila was the only one who displayed any class. She didn’t hop around, flash her puppy dog good looks, suggestively wag her shapely tail, or demean herself in any way. Rather, she blinked twice, tilted her head, and seemed to nod.

Yes, ma’am. You’ve found me.

The adjustment, I have to say, was easy. Lila is loyal, loving and courageous. There’s seldom a day when she doesn’t rise at first light to run the perimeter of our little homestead, securing the safety of her human family and maintaining the integrity of her adopted fiefdom.

She was born with tiger blood, like Charlie Sheen. She’s charged a family of foxes, several full-grown blacktail deer, a pack of thieving raccoons, several skunks and even a black bear that immediately fled for cover.

As for our kids, she guards them as if they were her own. If they play outside, she’s on duty — lurking on the sidelines with a keen eye on every movement of grass or tree limb, ready in an instant to flush any unwelcome guests.

Often at night, cued by the sad melody of Sarah McLachlin’s “Arms of an Angel,” our eldest child will call out into the dark, searching for his best friend: “Lila!”

There are challenges, of course. Lila hates a bath, and holds a grudge. After we’ve wrestled her still and gone through the miserable motions of lathering up her heavy coat and rinsing her off, she’ll hide for hours under our son’s bed, sulking and licking the sickly floral scent off her once proudly pungent coat.

Only after much cajoling, and a shower of compliments on her now glossy locks, will she emerge.

For my part, I admit to some lingering jealousy. Late at night, again, I sometimes stumble down the stairs to find the two of them, both the women in my life, sprawled out together on the sofa, basking in the quiet peace of one another’s company. My wife will whisper to Lila, gently caress her chest hair, and snap photo after photo to post on Facebook.

Indeed, in those moments, I long for more chest hair.

###

James Faulk is a writer living in Eureka. He can be reached at faulk.james@yahoo.com.