Pooh laid very still in the grass behind Girl’s closed eyelids, white fur sticky with red Jell-O-like goo. His front paw gave a reactive twitch as his brain stopped firing.
Girl’s dog at Mother and Stepmother’s house, Wimpy, had died that year of cancer. When Wimpy took her last breath, her whole body arched up, her head and tail reaching toward each other to form a circle with her prone body. Mother, Stepmother, Girl, and Brother sat around the dying dog and cried. When Wimpy’s body arched up, Girl thought she was trying to lick her and had reached out to touch the dog’s black muzzle. “Don’t touch her,” Stepmother yelled. The dog had been Stepmother’s before they formed a family. Girl wondered if a dog that had been shot made the same death arch or if it fell where it stood and lay there twitching. Mother had explained that the paws still moved as the energy left the brain. It didn’t mean the dog was dreaming of running. All the doggy dreams were already gone.
Would there have been splatter? Did he shoot him at point-blank range? Did her grandfather call him, and did Pooh run up happily, expecting a good ear scratching, just to have a cold muzzle pressed into his fur? Where would her father have buried him? The beach would be easiest to dig up. They had a handyman who lived in a cabin down by the water, part of the permanent house staff. Maybe he had helped Father dig the grave. Girl had dug holes lots of times before. Digging in grass meant first you had to stand on the shovel and sort of jump on it to bite through the plant fibers, then cut out a big square of lawn and set it aside. You had to push through rocks and tree roots, pinkish-white worms wriggling in brown soil. Sand was easier to dig up—as your shovel bit deeper the darker wet sand gave way easily, the bottom of the hole softening with water. But beaches were impermanent. The tide might unbury the dog, letting birds pick through the sand and hair to get at the soft bits. Girl wouldn’t risk the beach, if it were her dog. Girl would choose the grass, even though it would take longer. She wasn’t about to ask her father what he chose, though. Father always said that it wasn’t lying if it made the story better. Girl didn’t want a better story—she wanted a true one.
conversation with wife #5, stepmother #2, circa 1986
Father had separated from #Five the summer before Girl turned fourteen. He had fallen in love with the new youth minister at church. #Five was Girl’s second stepmother and Girl had never liked her much. #Five was ugly and mean. She was tall with short, permed hair and dark, snaggly teeth. Girl never knew what her father saw in #Five. The house they lived in had been #Five’s house before they married, so Father was the one moving out. Girl had never liked the neighborhood of tiny, charmless houses. The fact that Father hadn’t lived in that part of the city before they married, even though it was walking distance to both his office at the hospital and the airstrip where he kept his plane, told Girl that it must be an inferior neighborhood. Girl was glad he was moving, even though it was unfair that she had to spend her vacation helping him pack. At thirteen years old, Girl had better things to do.
Girl was taping up boxes of books in her father’s study when #Five walked in and sat in his wheeled office chair. It was wood and didn’t have a cushion. She didn’t spin, not even a little. Girl would have spun or at least rocked from side to side. Who sits in a rolly chair and doesn’t wiggle at all?
“There’s something you should know about your dad. I think you are old enough,” #Five said. Girl didn’t know why #Five thought they needed to have this bonding talk now, the day before the moving van came. No matter what she said, it wasn’t going to make Girl like her all of a sudden.
“When your dad was little, maybe six or eight, he crawled into bed with his sister, Anne. She was just a few years older, and they were touching each other, the kind of experimenting all kids do. It didn’t mean anything—just natural curiosity.”
“Uh-huh,” Girl replied. She remembered a version of I’ll show you mine if you show me yours with her own brother, when Girl was five or six, but Girl would never tell #Five about that. The memory made her squirm.
“They say that experimentation is natural at a certain age,” Girl replied. It was what the book about puberty and sex that Mother had given her said, anyway. Girl put more books into a box so she wouldn’t have to look at #Five.
“Well, anyway, Grandpa Doctor walked in and caught them. He figured your dad was too young to be held responsible, but Anne should have known better. So he
