“I looked at all the caged animals in the shelter…

The cast-offs of human society.

I saw in their eyes love and hope, fear and dread, sadness and betrayal.

And I was angry. “God,” I said, “this is terrible!

Why don’t you do something?”

God was silent for a moment

And then He spoke softly.

“I have done something,” He replied.

“I created You.”

                                      -Jim Willis

​PREFACE

     

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     My father pulls his Mercedes up in the driveway next to mine, and Meg starts barking.  I look up from my heat healer and check the time -- he's fifteen minutes early, as usual.  He lives an hour away from me in Connecticut, and I guess he raced here.  Anxious, discontent, wanting to flee my mother. 

     I crawl out of the heat healer which I bought for my arthritis, and I’m lightly covered in sweat. I’m wearing sweatpants that have holes in them and a warn out t-shirt. I wanted to be clean and showered and presentable by the time he arrived, but no such luck. I look as horrible and as warn out as I feel and I hardly care. That’s when you know it’s bad, when you stop caring.

     “Daddy, daddy,” I sing, wrapping him in a big hug. He enters the house and Meg is barking up a storm and she doesn’t know who he is.

     He’s wearing a baseball cap and a preppy Champion green wind jacket, and he pawns the dog off of him. “Don’t have the dog jump on me, please Julie, come on.”

     ‘Julie’ is what he calls me when he’s mad. And he has plenty of reasons for being mad, first and foremost for the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt he paid off when I finally landed in Connecticut. I had lived in three different states in three years after Covid when I left Los Angeles and it has been three hellacious years.

     “Dad, how are you?! I’ve missed you!” I reach up to kiss him and Meg jumps all over him, excited and enamored. But my father is holding a paper cup with coffee in it and I can’t wrap my arms around him. Plus, Meg is coming between us, trying to tear us apart.

     “Julie, the DOG!” my father says again. “Don’t let him rip my jacket!”

     It’s a her but she looks like a him because she’s a big black German Shepherd. I watch as she reaches her tan paws up on him, and I giggle because she’s getting so big and she’s such a love bug.

     “Meg, get off Gramps! He’s tired; he just had a long drive.”

     Meg starts panting and turning around in circles. She knows when I’m happy and I’m happy now; I am so glad my father came to visit me.

     “Where’s the coffee?” he asks.

     “Dad, relax, I just got out of the heat healer. I need to take a shower; you’re early.”

     “Put the dog out!” he exclaims.

     “Okay, I’ll put her out for a minute while you get settled.”

     I reach for the cable that’s stuck in the ground outside so Meg can roam the front yard. I don’t do this in the mornings because the trash man comes, the mailman, and the Amazon guys. She hates the Amazon guys. Plus, she’s like Houdini, she can wrestle out of her collar and run off which she is known to do.

     Luckily, I live on a dead end street in a tiny house, so it’s not that bad. Yet. Although we’ve had had some incidents.

     I get my father situated in a comfortable wicker chair where I handmade the cushions with fresh organic cotton and threw out that toxic crap that comes from China. It’s like sitting on a cloud and I hand him the remote control for my massive TV. I tune it into CNBC and make my way into the shower.

     “How was the drive, Dad?” I call. “I’ll be right out, just need a quick shower. I love you!” I repeat. “I am so glad you’re here!”

     I clean myself and put on lipstick and a pair of yoga tights and a clean white t-shirt with a flannel shirt over it. It’s June but still freezing in Connecticut and the weather here blows. It’s one of the many things I loathe.

    I attach hair extensions onto my massive pile of blond hair and I put a big bow in my hair. I look pretty. I will always be pretty, I think, as I stare at myself in the mirror looking at my inviting green eyes which don’t even require makeup. Though people rarely see me because I am always isolated and alone. I guess I like it this way.

     I make my way out to the living room and my father seems more relaxed than he was when he arrived.

    I bring the dog in but keep her attached to my desk so she can’t pawn at my father. I start making the coffee and she’s staring at him, and then she looks back at me. It’s like she’s asking, “Are we good, Mom? Are you okay with him being here?” I pat her head, assuring her that everything is okay. Still, she is on high watch.

     I grind the coffee beans and as I do, my father is rushing me. “I just want you to warm up my cup,” he says. “Put it in the microwave.”

     “I’m making fresh coffee, Dad. I don’t have a microwave.”

     At eighty-four years old, he is still in a hurry. I don’t know where he thinks he’s going. Life, when not working, seems to come to a complete stand still. I took disability at 55 for my arthritis and life just seems to be an endless series of ground hog days with watching the stock market, waiting for a crash so I can pay off my father, and trying to start a new life.

     As the espresso comes pouring out of my new machine in these tiny adorable espresso cups that I just bought, I place them on a silver tray and carry them to him.

     “No! I don’t want espresso, that’s too strong. My stomach! Just hot coffee.”

     “Oh, okay, Dad, hang on.”

     I return to the coffee machine where I am brewing a pot. It is not coming out fast enough, and I’m getting flustered. There are coffee beans and opened coffee bags all over my counter and I like everything neat and clean and everything is looking sloppy and unacceptable for my father.

     Meanwhile, the dog is getting frantic picking up on the bad vibes. She starts jumping around and barking, pulling on the leash attached to my desk. She rarely barks unless she sees somebody at the house which looks like a security threat. And she can’t stand all my neighbors.

     “My darling!” I coo.“ That’s Gramps! That’s my father! You don’t have to yell, my little love poo poo, ooooh, I love you so much!” I get on my knees and kiss her face as she keeps one eye on my father. Watching.

     “Come and sit with me,” my father orders, as if he’s already planning his escape out of here.

     “Okay, dad, let me pour your coffee.” I bring his coffee cup to my machine and put milk in it. When I bring it back over to him, he complains it’s too much milk and now the coffee is cold.

     I throw it out and start again, wasting a lot of coffee. Coffee is expensive, but once I make it just right and pour a cup for me, I sit down in the chair opposite him. “How’s it going, Dad? I’m so glad you came.”

     “Yes,” he replies. “It’s so peaceful here.”

     “Yes,” I agree. Peaceful and boring. I don’t say that. He is well aware how much I don’t like Connecticut and how I want to return to LA, but he absolutely won’t have any of it.

     “How’s Mom?” I ask, wishing I didn’t the second the words fall from my lips.

     He rolls his eyes and says, “Fine.”

     My mother is a real piece of work; an angry, bitter, abusive woman who loves to torture me and my father. She loves my younger sister who is the pet. And it has always been this way.

     “She has so many health problems,” he mumbles.

     “I know, Dad, but why won’t she let me help her? That’s why I’m here. To help. To be of service,” I remind him.

     “She doesn’t need you now,” he says, as he’s done a million times.

It’s not that she doesn’t need me, she doesn’t want me. I don’t say this because it pains my father to see me in pain and my mother causes me nothing but that. He thinks his money is the antidote to my pain, but it’s not. Our Mercedes outside glisten in the sun through the big windows and he asks, “How’s the car?”

     A reminder he just bought me that.

     In outright cash. “It’s great, thank you, Dad,” I say humbly. “I love it.”

     And I do. Mercedes makes an incredible car. And it’s a grand improvement from my 1999 C class that I practically drove into the ground.

     “Good,” he says.

     And as I watch him, he looks tired, distant. Defeated.

     “Julie,” he begins, “that dog, you know, she is tying you down. You can’t go out, you can’t do anything.”

     “Dad,” I say in her defense, “she is my service dog. Remember, I have arthritis?”

     “Julie, come on, she is like a ball and chain. You haven’t met anybody, you don’t have any friends. You don’t go out. You just stay with the dog all the time.”

     “Dad, we go out everywhere! We go to the beach, we go on walks. We’re fine.”

     I look over at Meg. Now she’s trying to wrangle out of her leash again. I get up to bring her some water hoping she’s not thirsty. She kisses my face as I bend down, and I pet her for relief. She knows I’m stressed now, and she’s not happy. She starts barking.

     “I don’t know how you do it with that dog!” my father yells.

     “Dad, what are you talking about? Meg is no trouble. She is a dream boat.”

     “Put her in the cage!” he orders.

     Suddenly, my childhood flashes before me. When I was distressed, it was “Go to your room!” When I got older, it was, “Put her in private school.” When that didn’t work, it was, “Put her in therapy!” And when that didn’t work, it was, “Send her out of state to live with her grandparents!” Finally, I escaped at eighteen and never looked back.

     Until now.

     “Dad, remember in the first few days when I got the dog, I thought of giving her back!? Do you remember?! And then I get a text out of no where from mom. Do you remember what she said?”

     He looks at me and shakes his head.

     “She said, ‘If you even think of giving that dog back, we will disown you.”

     “Oh, please,” he replies, “And when did you ever listen to her?!”

     “What are you talking about, Dad, I always listen to her! I do nothing but try to please her!”

     And there it is. My words hang in the air.

     Now Meg is really upset and I relent and put her back outside. “Just stay out here for a few minutes, okay, darling?” I say. “You can come back inside in a minute.”

     I leave the front door open so I can keep my eye on her and turn back to my father. He stares at CNBC not saying anything to me.

     “Dad, we’re doing the best we can. We are happy, we are safe out here in Connecticut, and we are waiting for the market to crash so we can buy that second home in Florida. Right, Dad? Aren’t we going to Florida this winter?”

     I am fresh out of cash and can’t bear another Connecticut winter and surviving on my $2661 monthly disability checks hardly accounts for a vacation home, let alone basic living expenses for me and the dog.

     “Yeah, yeah, sure, we’ll go to Florida this winter…”

     I can’t tell if he’s serious or trying to placate me.

     The plan in leaving LA and coming to the east coast was to become a homeowner. But housing has been sky high and we won’t buy at these inflated prices. Furthermore, I shouldn’t need my father to acquire housing especially after he just paid all that debt. I’m starting to feel overwhelmed and like a loser, and I’m getting a headache. “If only my screenplay sold in LA, Dad, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

     “Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” he mumbles and even I can hear the disappointment in his voice.

     At this, the mailman arrives and Meg starts barking again. She is never outside when he comes and she starts going crazy.     She’s going absolutely ballistic, jumping up and down on the cable and she pulls it so hard, I worry it’ll come out of the ground and she’ll escape. I wouldn’t blame her for trying to escape this drama right now.

     I get up and call out to her, “Meg, calm down, sweetie.”

     She doesn’t listen. In fact, she is getting more and more riled up the closer the mailman comes. “Meg!” I call again.

     The mailman arrives to the front of the house and Meg twists her neck and wrangles out of her collar, and she escapes! She chases after the mailman and goes right up to his truck and starts jumping on it.

     The mailman stops and I slip on shoes and run outside. “Meg, Meg!!” She is not coming towards me and she is going berserk. The mailman remains stopped until I can get a hold of the dog. I run back inside and grab her leash and ball. “Dad!” I cry, “Help!! The dog has escaped!” But I think my father has gone into the bathroom and I race back outside.

     “Meg! Come back!” I throw her ball in the opposite direction of the mailman and she chases it.

     “I’m sorry about that,” I say to him and run off to chase the dog. She is running in circles around the dead end street and thinks this is fun and a big game. “Dad!” I plead, “Grab the treats on the counter!”

     But he never comes out and as the mailman drives off, Meg chases him down the street. She is so far out of sight and she can run so fast, my heart is racing. “MEGGGGGG!!!!”

     I pray to God that she does not get run over. Cars go so fast down our street and that dog has no fear.

I don’t see her and I don’t hear her, and as I’m running, panic sets in. A neighbor in an SUV passes me and shouts out his window, “I just saw your dog!”

     I keep running.

     In this moment, my life flashes before me. If anything happens to this dog, I wouldn’t survive it. She’s my responsibility. If I ever have to witness her in any pain or suffering, it break me into a thousand little pieces and I wouldn’t bounce back from it.

Ever.

     “MEGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!”

     I suddenly realize how happy I have been with this dog. How, for all her trouble and work, she has been the best thing to ever happen to me.

     She has given me a purpose, a routine to my day, and a love that I have never known. Please, God, let her be okay.

I run around the corner and there she is, alive and coming straight towards me. Her big red tongue sways from side to side and she’s got that devil’s look on her face.

     I exhale a huge sigh relief and I quickly glance at her legs to see if she is bleeding or limping. She looks fine.

     She runs with me towards the house and when she gets inside, she’s panting and crazed. “What happened out there?” I ask. “What happened, MEG?!”

     My father comes out of the bathroom and says, “Put her in the cage!”

     I want to SCREAM. “This is our house, Dad! This is Meg’s home. She lives here! She comes first. I am not putting her in the cage!”

     Meg retreats slowly into her cage and plops down. I bend down to see if she is okay again. She looks fine.

I go outside to face my father. “From now on, we can only talk weekly, okay?” he says. “No more emails, no more texts. Forget your mother. She’s not going to come around, okay?”

     “Okay.”

     “Hang in there for six more months. In December, we’ll get a rental in Florida and go for the winter. You can use the time to look around and see if you want to buy something.”

     “Sounds good.”

     Meg comes out of the cage and sits down in front of my desk. I sit down beside her. She’s shaking. “Are you okay, darling?”

     When we sit beside one another, we are the same height. She looks at me and kisses my face, and I throw my arms around her giving her the biggest bear hug I can. I squeeze her tight and don’t let go, burying my face in her fur, “I love you, my darling. I love you.”

     ​​

H E D G E D

@copyright Citygirl Juliana Jones 2025 💕💋

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CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOS OF MEG, THE LOVE BUG !!!!!!!

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Read where it all began:  LEAVING SANTA MONICA FOR FLORIDA

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