Twelve and a half years ago.
Lily finishes the peanut butter on my finger and returns to the jar, where she continues to lap at it until she doesn’t anymore. Then she puts her head down and makes moist smacking sounds, but eventually those stop, too.
“Good girl,” I say.
Jenny and I once talked about how we manage to live despite the knowledge that we are all going to die. What’s the point of it all? Why bother getting up in the morning when faced with such futility? Or is it the promise of death that inspires life? That we must grab what we can while there is still time. Is it the not knowing if today is the day that keeps us going?
But what if this is the day? What if the hour is here?
How do you stand?
How do you breathe?
How do you go on?
11 A.M.
I get dressed in clothes that I would normally never wear outside the house, but I don’t care. I wrap Lily in a blanket in case she becomes incontinent again. We stand in the kitchen, and I wonder if she knows this is the last time she’ll see it. If she knows this, if she understands, she doesn’t make a big deal of it. I, on the other hand, can’t help it. This was her home for ten of her twelve-plus years.
There on the floor lies her empty bed. There in the bed is her paw-print blanket. There in front of the sink is the morning sunny patch she likes to lie in. There is the rack where we keep the pots and pans, the one that would swallow red ball, the one I’d find her stuck beneath trying her best to retrieve it, just haunches and a wagging tail. There is the vinyl breakfast booth; an understudy for her bed that was occasionally drafted for afternoon naps. There is the closet door that hides the garbage can, the door she would bat with her paw when she thought I’d been hasty in throwing decent food away. There is the drawer that houses her toys, the one she would give expectant looks to when she wanted to play. There was the pen that confined her for twelve weeks as she slowly recovered from surgery. There is the metal tin that holds her puppy chow and there on the floor is her bowl that twice a day gets filled. There is the back door she would guard with the menacing bark of a German shepherd whenever anyone came near. There is the mixer I used to make the batter that became her home-baked birthday cookies. There is the stove she would hit with a clang after her eyesight was gone. There is the corner she would stand and bark into once dementia had set in.
There is red ball sitting untouched on the floor.
Frozen.
Lifeless.
Still.
Noon
We enter the animal hospital through the sliding doors and it’s the same as I remember and the woman behind the desk asks if she can help us (she doesn’t ask if we can hold) and I stammer, “I called earlier,” and she nods and flags down a passing coworker by putting her hands on her shoulders.
She whispers to her friend.
The second woman ushers us into an examining room and tells us the doctor will be in shortly. When she leaves she closes the door behind us, sealing us in.
I sit with Lily on the only chair. It’s cold.
The clock on the wall has no second hand and I look at it for what feels like three minutes before I see the minute hand move once.
It’s quiet. Not much is going on in the middle of a Thursday.
Thursday is the day that my dog Lily and I set aside to talk about boys we think are cute.
“It’s Thursday, Bean. On Thursdays we talk about boys.”
Lily does the thing where she lifts an eyebrow, but otherwise remains perfectly still.
“How about we go old school: young Paul Newman, or young Paul McCartney?”
Lily sighs.
Q: What sound or noise do you love?
A: Puppies sighing.
My voice cracks.
“I gotta tell you.” I tip my head back to keep my tears from falling on Lily. “I don’t think there was anyone more handsome than a young Paul Newman.”
Footsteps outside the door. Please don’t come in. Please go away and leave us be. Please go away forever.
They pass.
“Butch Cassidy. Cool Hand Luke. Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
The clock ticks off another minute. And then several more.
I want to run, but my feet are encased in cement, glued to the floor, the lower half of my body paralyzed, like Lily’s was when last we sat in this hospital.
More footsteps. They come to a halt.
A hand on the doorknob.
The opening door.
A woman in a white lab coat enters. She smiles warmly, but not too warmly. She already knows what’s happening.
“Who do we have here?” she asks.
I pinch my finger until it hurts. “This is Lily.”
The woman produces a stool from underneath the examining table, wheels it beside us, and takes a seat.
“What’s this on Lily’s head?” She places three fingers under Lily’s chin and raises her head very gently to get a better look.
“That’s the octo—” I start to say, but stop. Enough is enough. “That’s her tumor.”
The veterinarian takes a pocket light and shines it in Lily’s eyes. There is no real response.
“Is she blind?”
“Yes. The tumor has taken her eyesight. And just about everything else.”
She runs her other hand gently over the mass and slowly lets Lily’s head rest again in my lap.
“She has seizures. Bad seizures. And I think dementia. And this morning she looked at me like she was . . . done.” This is the last I can say before I have to fight to speak, to do battle for each individual word. “I want you to take her. I
