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swatted. Smack, smack, smack. He slapped my shoulder.
    My mother had to tell him, “John, he  made  that card for you.” These were the words that suddenly made him stop hitting me. And all of a sudden, he was not mad anymore. It just drained away exactly like water from a sink, leaving behind not one drop. And he took the drawing and said, “Oh, that’s very good.”
    The sudden change stunned me more than the slapping had. Plus, I could tell he thought the card was dumb. My mother made him like it, that’s all.
    When the dog came up to him he reached down and stroked her on the back. I stood back and watched this, dumbfounded.
    “Yes,” he said, in a much kinder tone than he ever used with me, “you’re a good, good dog.” He scratched behind her ears.
    It wasn’t fair because, the dog didn’t even know. She hadn’t waited all day like I had. She just slept. She didn’t even care. It was so unfair.
    But it got me thinking.
    And the next time he opened the door, home from work, I met him with black construction paper ears, a black construction paper nose, a black construction paper tail, which he couldn’t even see.
    When he walked through the door it took him a moment to notice that there was something different about me, something paper and canine. And then he complained, “What’s that mess on your face, son?”
    I turned right there and scampered away from him on my hands and knees then sat in the kitchen, beneath the table. I lapped water from the dogs’ bowl and curled up in Cream’s spot near the sofa.
    I realized that I enjoyed the view of the house from this perspective. It was entirely new.
    It was like living in a new house. I saw the undersides of tables, walked through the tangle of chair legs. It would be good to be a dog, I thought. You would feel safe surrounded by all of these leggy objects that never tried to run away.
    I wore the ears and nose and tail while I sat at the kitchen table and my mother took a picture of me.
    I didn’t smile. My mother thought having my picture taken would cheer me up. It usually did. Cameras seemed to have a druglike effect on me, greatly improving my mood on the spot. But I was sad because I was losing against the Arms. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get past them and get to my father. They were always in the way, busy swatting and batting.
    He shuffled painfully into the dining room, placing his black briefcase on the teak dining table. Then he walked like always over to the credenza, also teak, and poured himself a drink, filling the glass all the way to the top.
    I crawled into the room and reached above my head for the briefcase on the table. I unsnapped the clasps and opened it. I hunted with my fingers for the Certs breath mints that I knew were there. Usually spearmint but sometimes he carried bloodred cinnamon Certs, which tasted to me like Lavoris mouthwash and were, therefore, entirely irresistible. But after my father watched a news report about the dangers of red dye number two he stopped buying cinnamon Certs and Lavoris and everything red, saying they would give us cancer. But my mother continued to chew her slender sticks of red Trident gum. My mother did not trust Walter Cronkite. My mother trusted only her psychiatrist.
    Until now, I’d always assumed the Certs were something special, just for me. A little surprise my father brought home, to make me happy. So when I discovered that the pack was already opened, a mint or two missing, it puzzled me. Normally, I would take the mints and eat them all and the next day, there would be more. And now, some were missing.
    It dawned on me then that they had never been a treat just for me. They were  not a little surprise  my father brought home just for me. They were his mints and I ate them so he had to constantly buy more.
    I understood that instead of being a treat for me, the Certs had been a mild compromise for him. By letting me believe they were a special something, just for me, he