The anteater we named Boat. He was gray and looked soft, but his hair was sort of prickly. He wouldn't sit in your lap. He climbed the furniture and made an unpleasant clicking sound.
All in all Boat wasn't a bad pet. We trained him to use the litter box and he took care of the cockroach problem, for the most part. We'd take him on walks through the neighborhood. Our neighbors moved to the other side of the street.
On a rainy Wednesday, Boat was struck by a garbage truck. He'd slipped out the front door and run out into the street just as a garbage truck was rumbling past. Poor Boat! His skin split and the red and pink stuff rose and spilled out with a consistency like spoiled milk or pudding. I used the shovel to chop him up into little pieces that would fit down the sewer.
After Boat, we got a parrot named Feathers. We tried to teach her to speak, but she wasn't interested. She never made a sound. Even when she spread her wings, she was silent. We fed her popcorn kernels.
One day she flew out our window and into the window of the row house across the street. That family kept her. At night with the windows open, we could hear Feathers singing. The boy played the piano, and the mother, father, daughter and Feathers would sing along. Ragtime, mostly. We would pass Feathers on the street while she was being walked and she would stare right through us.
After Feathers, we got a child named Corl. We had Corl the regular way -- intercourse. We were quite astonished how much Corl came to resemble us. He inherited his mother's tendency to lie and my own intensely guarded personality. He made few friends, and those few he made he would break off relations with quickly.
Corl was an obedient child. When we asked him to clean his room, he cleaned his room. When we asked him to paint the bathroom, he painted the bathroom. But we began to discovered that whenever he followed an order, he would couple it with a little act of sabotage. He would do the dishes, but he would always break one glass. He would take out the trash, but he would always drop one gob of raw meat on the doorstop to attract dogs. He would retrieve the clothes from the dryer, but then he would take a big swig of kerosene so we had to bring him to the hospital, and then when the doctor said he was fine as long as he didn't vomit, he would vomit the moment he stepped out of the car back at home and we had to drive all the way back.
One day when Corl was seven I came home from work to see Corl walking down the street with a suitcase in his hand. Where are you going, I asked, and he told me he was playing a game with a friend down the street. We didn't hear from him for weeks. He sent us a letter telling us he was in Mexico and that he was fine and that he would write soon, and we didn't hear from him again after that.
After Corl, we had nothing for a while, and then the cockroaches came back and we got a second anteater named The Grantmaker. He was a faithful companion and brought me my slippers and newspaper every morning as soon as my alarm went off.
The Grantmaker liked sunning himself in the window. He liked it so much a cockroach would often scuttle across the floor and he wouldn't even move. We scolded him for this and he looked genuinely hurt and would sulk on top of the towels on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. Then when you'd go in there to look for a shirt, he'd jump out at you, limbs outstretched, making a kind of screaming sound. He thought it was a game. He licked my face and curled up at my feet. Because of his long tongue, in fact, he could do both at once.
Ultimately we didn't care much for The Grantmaker. He lacked a certain something -- the spark of personality we recognized in Boat and Corl. We dropped him off beside a public pool and just fuckin drove off. He watched us go, wondering what this game was. Ultimately, if I were asked to rank them, I would rank them:
4. Feathers
3. The Grantmaker
2. Corl
1. Boat
I tell people this and they say things like, how could you, how could you rank an anteater over your own flesh and blood? Well, I could pretend I liked Corl better than Boat. I could say I felt a kinship with Corl, because it was my semen that got the ball rolling, so to speak, but I would be lying. Would that be better? For me to lie and say I liked Corl the best? Well I won't.
But it's not that I won't lie that people have a problem with. It is the idea itself, that I would ever rank an anteater over my own offspring. To which I say: Corl was difficult, and dull. Boat was dull too, but he was also a surprise, and he was easy. In short, he was not like us. And besides, there is a certain special feeling you'll always carry for the first. Those who come after may surpass him, in looks or intelligence or achievement or humanity. But when you have four things you see how you'll feel -- you'll find yourself willing to trade all the other three combined for a chance at just a few more years with the first. You'll wish you could collect all the pieces you shoveled down the sewer and glue them back together and get your first back again.
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