I peek around the corner into the kitchen; Lily is lying on her side in her own bed, home base, exactly as I placed her a good thirty minutes ago. I retreat into the bedroom and shut the door and hold the invoice for another five minutes. I reach for my cell phone, still on the charger next to the bed, and dial the number for nonemergencies. It seems wrong, but I can’t bring myself to dial the other. The numbers are too jagged.
“Animal Surgical and Emergency Center. Is this an emergency, or can you hold?” A woman’s voice. Cheerful.
I look at the invoice and again at my phone. Didn’t I dial the nonemergency number? I did.
“I can hold.”
The longer I hold, the longer it’s not real. The longer I don’t have to assign words to the purpose for my call. Yes, I can hold. Put me on hold forever. I’ll live here, set up camp in your phone bank. It has to be better than this. It has to be better than where I am.
There is no hold music. Just a faint yet deafening hum. It could be the blood in my ears, in the swollen capillaries that feed my ear canals.
“Thank you for holding.”
My tongue is thick. “I can hold.” I’m vaguely aware this is the wrong thing to say.
But it is the right thing to say.
“How can I help you?”
I inhale. I exhale.
“My dog. She has a . . . mass.” I don’t say octopus. “It’s on her brain. It causes her seizures. She’s on medication. They’re not going to operate. We’ve decided not to operate. I think she has dementia. I don’t think she can stand up. I don’t think she’s there anymore. I think this is the end.”
I’ve wadded the invoice into a ball in my sweaty hand. It reminds me of a trick my granny taught me when I was a boy that involved crinkling the paper wrapper of a straw, then wetting it with a drop of water and watching it expand and writhe like a worm. I could almost perform the same trick with this scrunched paper and my sweat. Almost.
My granny is gone.
My childhood is gone.
Magic is gone.
I inhale. I exhale. Again.
I make two false attempts at speaking, each time my voice cracking between words.
My words are gone.
I bite my tongue hard and it finally enables me to speak.
“Who do I speak with about youth . . . ?”
Confusion on the other end. “About youth?”
I compress my diaphragm and force the word out. “Euthanasia.”
10 A.M.
The woman on the phone asked when we would be in and all I could manage was “today.” I sit on the floor next to Lily and I transfer her gently into my lap.
“What do you want, Tiny Mouse? If you could have anything.”
Lily does her best to cock one eye, but you can tell that she’s in pain. After a beat she gingerly licks her chops.
“You probably want chicken and rice, don’t you, Bean? Well, chicken and rice is for when you’re sick, and you’re not sick, you’re perfect. You’re just in pain, is all, and the pain is almost over, so you can have whatever you want. Something even better.”
Lily nods, and her chin flops over my knee.
“Anything. You name it.”
There are heavy weights pressing down on my lungs. It’s almost impossible to draw breath. And when I do the oxygen is leaden with a barbed pain.
“I know!” I’m barely holding back tears. “Peanut butter. How about peanut butter?” I vaguely remember aboard Fishful Thinking asking her what she would like first upon returning home. Peanut butter was the answer. “You always liked that best.”
Lily doesn’t protest, so I slowly get up and carry her to the cabinet and I get the peanut butter and this time we sit down at the kitchen table. Carefully, I remove the lid. The jar is almost new, and I hold it under her nose and it takes a long time before she reacts, but then she finally recognizes the sweet scent of peanuts and sugar and oil. Slowly she lifts her head. Slowly she starts licking the air. Slowly I move the jar to her chops so that she makes contact with her prize.
“Take all that you can. You can have the whole jar if you want.”
She makes contact with the peanut butter, but she’s so weak she doesn’t ingest much of it. Essence of peanut butter. I put a little on my finger and let her have that. I remember the feel of her tongue when she was young. Soft and rough all at once. How she would get in these trances licking my hand and how they would go on endlessly until I rebooted her like a computer that had
