CHABLIS Donald Barthelm

My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.

My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have it. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” The baby says, “Momma,” and she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly, “Momma Momma Momma.” I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.

The kind of dog the baby wants, my wife says, is a cairn terrier. This kind of dog, my wife says, is a Presbyterian like herself and the baby. Last year the baby was a Baptist—that is, she went to the Mother’s Day Out program at the First Baptist twice a week. This year she is a Presbyterian because the Presbyterians have more swings and slides and things. I think that’s pretty shameless and I have said so. My wife is a legitimate lifelong Presbyterian and says that makes it O.K.: way back when she was a child she used to go to the First Presbyterian in Evansville, Illinois. I didn’t go to church, because I was a black sheep. There were five children in my family and the males rotated the position of black sheep among us, the oldest one being the black sheep for a while while he was in his D.W.I. period or whatever and then getting grayer as he maybe got a job or was in the service and then finally becoming a white sheep when he got married and had a grandchild. My sister was never a black sheep, because she was a girl.