by R. L. Maizes
In the morning, Clem showers and walks Blue, while La La stays behind with Black. When Clem returns, he asks for the engagement ring.
What La La wouldn’t give to travel back to a time before she decided to steal for Zev. Since that’s impossible, she considers pretending she lost it, so Clem can’t give it to Naomi over a glass of wine, while telling her the story of his grandparents. She retrieves the silk drawstring bag from her jewelry box. She could say she sold it to pay Zev’s attorney fees. Taking the ring from the bag, she puts it on. But there are some things you can’t steal, and a relationship is one of them. She puts the ring back.
When she holds out the bag, Clem grasps it, but she doesn’t let go. Not right away. Not until he tugs three times and says, “La La.”
“I guess you want to give it to Naomi.”
“I don’t know about that.” He shoves the bag into his pocket.
Maybe there’s hope after all. “Anything new on the blog?” she says.
“I haven’t been checking it. We’ve been pretty busy with other things, haven’t we?”
La La pulls out her phone. “Look at last night’s post.” She reads the account of a stray dog that was hit by a car in Manhattan. A team of vets operated on him for free, saving his life. The surgery lasted for four hours and one of the vets missed his plane to Paris. He was supposed to start his honeymoon. “Maybe it’s a sign. That Black is going to be okay.”
Clem pulls organic oatmeal and a package of Medjool dates from his overnight bag. “A sign, huh?” He boils water and pours in the oatmeal. It’s La La’s favorite but, like Black, she has difficulty swallowing. When it’s ready, she forces down a few spoonfuls, scraping the rest into the trash when Clem isn’t looking.
22
Eyes half closed, La La goes through the motions in the veterinary clinic, her thoughts with Black. Feeling dizzy, she wobbles in her clogs. She cuts a terrier’s claw too short, hitting the quick. Pain shoots through La La’s index finger. The animal squeals, and blood drips from the nail. The owner of the terrier, an elderly woman whose hands form permanent fists, demands that Dr. Bergman fire La La.
“It happens,” Dr. Bergman says, as La La checks the clock on the wall to see when she can return to Black.
“Not to my dog.” The woman stomps from the room, her pet tucked under her arm like a football.
In surgery, La La hands Dr. Bergman tissue forceps instead of bone forceps and is slow to suction. He dismisses her from the procedure, finishing the sutures himself.
At the end of the day, he sits her down in his office. A thank-you card from a grateful pet owner stands on his desk. La La can no longer imagine herself in practice. She can only picture the time she has left with Black. She waits for the doctor to fire her.
Dr. Bergman rubs his forehead. “How’s Black?”
La La describes the dog’s condition.
“Listen carefully,” Dr. Bergman says. “The good guardians rarely tell me they put their animals down too soon. Often, they tell me they waited too long. This is something you can do for Black.”
“I can’t.”
“Take time off, spend it with him, make some decisions.”
She slips out of the clinic without saying good-bye.
She wants only for Black to go on living. His tail still bats the floor when she enters a room. His pulse slows when she strokes his head. But he’s shrinking. His flesh strains to cover his bones, which cling loosely to one another and can’t support him. He sleeps much of the time and is confused when awake.
“The doctor’s right, don’t you think? Maybe it’s time to put him down,” Clem says that night.
Steadying herself against the back of the couch, La La makes her way to Black. His breath comes in noisy, rattling gasps. Touching him, she feels the outline of his skeleton. She’s lost weight, too. Her pants drape from her hips; her shirts inflate like balloons when the wind catches them. She’s lethargic and her head constantly aches.
Clem stands over them, kneading his neck. “He’s suffering,” he says, but La La already knows that. Nevertheless, she clings to memories of Black when he was well. The dog used to thank her for every meal by licking her palm. On walks, he would pause if she or Clem or Blue fell behind. Once, he guarded an injured jay—snarling when Blue tried to mouth the bird—until Clem returned with a box.
When they visited the shelter, Black would comfort dogs who had been abused, approaching with sidelong glances and patience until the animals relaxed. They were scampering in the yard by the time he left. He slept next to La La during the weeks she had him, snoring almost as loudly as Clem had.
What, La La wonders, will happen to Blue without his friend? Who will bite his neck in play, follow him across fields, and lead him home?
Devoting themselves to Black, La La and Clem are a couple again. As if she never deceived him. Until Naomi calls. Then Clem steps outside, and La La counts the minutes, wishing she could hear their conversation, wanting to know if Naomi makes him laugh, if he is himself or someone else with her.
Clem runs a washcloth around the dog’s ears and feet to cool him, hooks him up to IV saline so he doesn’t dehydrate. These are things La La should do, but as Black deteriorates, she grows sicker, too. She’s convinced that what she feels is more than empathy this time. That, like Black, she has cancer. Afraid to confirm the diagnosis, she avoids doctors. They wouldn’t believe how she got it, anyway. No one would, not even Nat, certainly not Clem, who says she must have the flu. Because her illness is following the course of Black’s, she’s afraid if she euthanizes him, she’ll die.
23
Three days pass. Black’s legs become paralyzed. La La’s legs stiffen, too, and she moves with difficulty. Sitting on the floor, she massages his limbs. His headache is worse. The tumor must be growing larger.
Clem begs. “It’s wrong. No creature would want to live this way.”
La La ups his pain medications, gabapentin and tramadol, until the doctor says they can’t increase them any more.
“You’ve got him so drugged all he does is sleep,” Clem says.
“But he’s alive.” La La’s speech is slurred.
“Barely.”
Unaware, Black soils his bed and himself. As La La struggles to clean the mess, Clem takes the bucket from her.
Later, when Clem leashes Blue, Black attempts to join them but can’t rise. At night, Black cries, awake. La La stays up with him, struggling to hum tunes that used to soothe him, “This Old Man,” and “The Farmer in the Dell,” until she collapses, her head on his fur.
The next day, Clem cooks bone broth and scrambled eggs for Black. Blue must think it’s a holiday, but Black won’t touch the food. La La brushes Black’s fur, but he doesn’t open his eyes. She tells him stories, her words running together. “Remember when we went to the shelter and you were the only one the Doberman would let near and then he cried when you were leaving? I wanted to bring him home, but Clem said two were as many as we could handle.” The dog blinks and La La imagines he’s remembering.
Black whimpers through another warm night. La La curls on the floor next to him, her head throbbing, dozing only as dawn lightens the curtains. When she wakes, the dog is gone. The couch is empty, except for folded sheets. She checks the kitchen and bedroom, Blue following her, but she doesn’t find them. Looking outside, she sees Clem loading Black into his car.
Through an open window she screams, “What are you doing?”
When Black is settled, Clem says, “It’s time.”
“Were you just going to drive off?”
“Could you not shout?”
“I’m coming.” La La approaches the car in the T-shirt and underwear she wore to sleep.
“I took him outside and he passed out,” Clem says.
La La looks at Black, lying in the back seat. Although awake now, he stares straight ahead, the knowledge in his eyes gone. “You were just going to go? Without asking me?”
“I was going to wake you
and give you a choice, to come or not. But I’m taking him. I love him, too. I can’t watch him suffer.”
“You think I like it?”
“I think you’re afraid the world will be too empty without him. But you have Mo and Blue and all the other animals who need you, and Nat and Dr. Bergman, and I’m here, too.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know.” She climbs into the passenger seat, her thighs sticking to the vinyl, the temperature already in the eighties.
Clem slides behind the wheel. “Aren’t you going to put clothes on?”
“I’m scared if we euthanize him, I’ll die.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“It does with me.” She pauses, winded. “You know I’ve always experienced what animals feel. Now that Black is dying, something new has happened. I think I’m dying, too.”
“You’re not dying. Look at Black. I’m not an animal empath, but I can see there’s nothing left to him. But you’re still here, every bit of you, as sick as you feel.”
La La observes the dog she has always known as Black and senses nothing but a weakly beating heart, pain radiating from his head, and the tumor that thrives. Everything that made Black himself is gone, especially the love he offered so freely to her and Clem and Blue.
* * *
While La La dresses, Clem loads Blue, and then they drive to Dr. Bergman’s clinic.
“You’re doing the right thing,” the doctor says, squeezing La La’s shoulder. He arranges Black on soft, worn blankets. After giving them a chance to say good-bye, Dr. Bergman administers the two shots that take Black’s life. When the dog is gone, La La presses her face to his body and hangs on to his fur. Blue sniffs him and howls, the sound nearly rending a hole in the clinic. Kali clips some fur, deposits it in a plastic bag, and hands it to La La. She tells them they can pick up his ashes later in the week, but La La can’t bring herself to leave. The staff tend to other patients. La La breathes in Black’s smell, the most beautiful she has ever known, and soon to vanish.
Clem presses his forehead to Black’s. “My boy.”
A post-op dog cries, but La La can’t tell what surgery he had. When a cat yowls, La La can only guess why. Her chest throbs with the ache of losing Black, but as to the rest of the animals in the hospital, her body is silent, as silent as it’s been since before she was rescued from the lake. When the black dog summoned her back from the depths, he changed her, allowing her to experience what he and other animals felt. Now that Black’s gone, her empathic ability seems to be gone, too. Which leads her to wonder, Was it Black himself on the lake that day? But it can’t be. Seventeen years have passed. He’d be too old, wouldn’t he? And maybe it doesn’t matter whether the dog she saved was the one who saved her. She couldn’t have loved Black any more than she did whether he rescued her or not.
Not feeling the animals’ pain brings a measure of relief. La La stretches her arms without constraint, trying her new independence, and breathes easily. But with the freedom comes emptiness. Who is she without her connection to animals? How will she treat them? And don’t the animals need someone like her? She remembers the boy, sitting in the closet, kittens on his lap. Perhaps it’s his turn. Once upon a time, Dr. Bergman said there were others, too.
In the waiting room, La La sees worry on owners’ faces, and hope, and grief. She used to miss all of that. A woman touches her heart, perhaps having seen Clem carry Black in.
On the ride home, she can’t feel Blue’s sadness, though it shows in the downward tilt of his muzzle and the tuck of his tail. It’s strange to be shut out. Clem’s lips are pinched, his cheeks, pale. She wonders how he can drive.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“No,” he says, a tear spilling over and running down his cheek.
La La’s cancer symptoms have disappeared.
* * *
La La returns to work the next day because if she doesn’t keep busy, she’ll think of nothing but Black. Without her empathic abilities, she must rely on a physical examination of each patient and observations—hers and the owner’s—to understand the animal’s condition. At times it’s like trying to make out an unfamiliar room in the dark.
Owners comfort their pets in the waiting room, holding them, offering them treats. They lean in to hear Dr. Bergman’s every word and ask for reassurance, even when they must know the doctor can’t give it. Love is a perilous thing. In the clinic it causes more pain than joy, though of course there are reprieves. Relief softens an owner’s body, relaxes her face. It’s all new to La La, and exhausting.
That night, for the first time in weeks, Clem doesn’t come over. The next night is the same. She has no right to expect otherwise, yet it’s too much on top of losing Black. She and Clem worked so well together, nursing Black, La La hoped Clem would see they were meant to be a pair. That he would forget Naomi and forgive the past.
She wanders through the house, Black’s presence nowhere and everywhere, in his blanket, freshly laundered, his collar and leash, in a photograph of the dogs wrestling the day she and Clem brought them home. Clem is in the picture, too. Isn’t it time he stopped judging her?
Though Blue stays at her side, it’s not enough. Not knowing what else to do, she closes her fist around a crowbar. She hasn’t pulled a job since Black fell ill. It’s Wednesday, a bad night for a burglary. Even if people go out, they don’t stay out. But she needs something to fill the emptiness Black and Clem have left, even if that something is a watch or a necklace. Her fingers caress a wrench before she drops it into her duffel.
* * *
La La knocks at the entrance to a dark split-level home, then knocks some more. She waits but doesn’t hear anything. She tries again, wanting to be sure the home is empty, and is about to walk around back, when a woman speaks from behind the door. “Yes?” she says, hesitantly. When La La remains silent, the woman calls out, her voice tight, “Who is it?”
I’m lost, La La had intended to say if someone came to the entrance. She’d memorized an address a block away to give the homeowner. But the fear in the woman’s voice rattles La La.
“I think I have the wrong house,” La La stammers, and she hurries back to her car. Driving away, she thinks of Dr. Bergman’s daughter, afraid to sleep at night or to live alone since her apartment was robbed. She pictures Dr. Bergman, stricken when he told her. Like the owner of the parrot when she described what it meant to have her mother’s necklace and the memories that accompanied it stolen. La La didn’t understand their anguish at the time, didn’t appreciate the terror she had caused, but she does now.
Her face prickles with shame. Staring through the windshield at the empty street, she thinks about loss, what she’s experienced and what she’s inflicted on others. She turns toward home.
An owl calls to its mate, but the night is silent in reply. Whether the bird suffers, La La can’t say.
Back in her house, she opens a heavyweight garbage bag and tosses in crowbar, wrench, lockpicks, the box of veterinary gloves, the baseball cap and glasses, the infinity scarf and duffel bag. Everything she needs to commit a crime. She drives to a dumpster two miles away and discards the garbage bag, believing her separation from that life is complete.
The next day she trades the Mercedes for a Honda.
24
Fall semester begins, and La La returns to school. Mourning Black, she is sometimes forgetful and always tired, but she’s also glad to be back. She develops an interest in cancer treatment, not only because the disease took Black, but also because it’s the number-one killer of dogs. Later in the year, she’ll apply for postgraduate work in veterinary oncology.
The shorter days keep La La home in the evenings, but it’s okay because she wants to catch up on all the studying she missed. Watching a video on her tablet about how to perform a biopsy, she’s startled by banging at the door.
“Police!”
Mo’s ears shoot back, and she flattens hersel
f on the couch. Blue dashes from the room. It’s eight o’clock at night, and La La wears sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She drops the tablet on the chair without bothering to switch it off and peers through a window. Two officers stand at the door. “Yes?” she says, as she opens it.
“We have a warrant to search the place,” the older one says. Below thick lids, his eyes scan La La, the room, and the blaring iPad. His partner hardly seems old enough for the work. His cheeks flush, and he blinks too often.
La La asks to see the warrant. Items the police can look for include a crowbar, other burglar’s tools, and a long list of possessions she’s taken from homes, including the engraved yin-yang pendant. Her heart begins an unsteady beat as she hands the document back.
“Take a seat,” the officer says.
La La sinks into the overstuffed chair, pulls the iPad out from under her, and tosses it toward the coffee table, missing. It thumps onto the floor. She can’t remember if when she changed from her scrubs, she put the yin-yang necklace away or left it on the dresser. Either way, the police will find it. It’s the only thing connecting her to the burglaries, but it’s probably enough, the date engraved on the back identifying it as the stolen one. She’d worn it so often under her clothes, she’d begun to think of it as hers and neglected to dispose of it with everything else. Her knee bounces, and she quiets it with her hand.
The officers search the front closet. They enter the bedroom, and she hears them open and close drawers. They talk to one another, but she can’t make out what they’re saying. In the kitchen, they dig into cabinets, rustle items in the refrigerator and freezer. Blue returns and squeezes next to her on the chair. Though he’s too big for that, she’s glad to have him near.
The police take their time. Thinking about her visits to Zev in the state prison, La La wonders if the women’s prison is as dull and depressing. Whether the guards are as short-tempered. She supposes Clem will care for Blue if she’s sent away, but who will watch Mo? The cat is too old to keep getting shuffled from home to home.