‘Good Intentions’ by Nancy Ludmerer

When Drew announced our move and promised Hanna a dog, his intentions were good. He speculated that a six-year-old would mourn the mid-year loss of her school and her friends as much as I mourned leaving my job and my friend, who really was just a friend, no matter what Drew suspected. But when Hanna crept downstairs to the chilly living room of our new home on Christmas morning, she found, instead of a puppy, two hamsters hard at work, noses to the wheel. They looked like twins, each in his cage — to avoid squabbles, according to the pet store guy. He had shown Drew a whitish mark like a number eight on one hamster’s forehead; that one was Henry the Eighth. The other hamster, Roy, screwed up his face a lot, which made him look owlish. 

Hanna was an exceptionally polite child. She hid her disappointment. When she asked who Henry the Eighth was, Drew said, “a guy, a king, with a lot of wives.” That evening, after she was in bed, Drew said, “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

When I got up later and shuffled into the hall in my flannel bathrobe and wool socks to pee, I heard her sniffling in her room. She was girded by stuffed animals on all sides. No bears, no rabbits, no kangas, lambs, or kittens. Only dogs: Snoopy, Lassie, Scooby-Doo, McDuff, and a velveteen dachsie that Drew referred to disparagingly as ‘sausage dog’ and pretended to eat with mustard, causing Hanna, in happier times, to scream with delight and dismay. 

The same way Drew craved a house in the country, Hanna craved a dog. But when it came to it, Drew decided puppies were natural born homewreckers. Not that he loved hamsters. “They’re slightly disgusting, aren’t they?” he commented, a few weeks after Christmas. One morning, the hamsters’ cages had been moved to the basement. “Out of sight, out of mind,” Drew said cheerfully.