Beatrice, the sweet woman who might have been on the north side of eighty had been working at the hospital for decades as a vet tech. Lala had met her many times because Beatrice was a volunteer at Dogs of Love, the rescue group whose board of directors Lala served on and for whom Lala was one of the main benefactors.
When they walked in with an urgency that Lala was trying to keep on a less-than-hysterical level in her mind, with Lala cradling Yootza like a baby and David holding all the doors open for them, Beatrice jumped up from behind the reception desk where she had been waiting for them.
“X-rays and blood?” she asked rhetorically as she gently took Yootza from Lala.
“Yes, please,” David said. “We’ll wait here until you can get him into an exam room.”
Everyone on the staff stopped by to share hugs and care while Lala and David sat in the lobby. The tests were rushed, and David was able to look at the x-rays shortly after Yootza was brought into a room for them to sit with him. Lala peered at the photographs of her little fellow’s insides while she held him on her lap and bent in half to give him almost constant kisses on his precious little head. David studied the x-rays with one of his colleagues, a young vet from England who was interning in the States. Lala waited for the two men to decide something.
“We’ll try draining it,” Dr. Elias Scollan said. David nodded.
Dr. Scollan smiled at Lala. “Is it okay if I take him with me for a little bit?”
“Of course,” Lala said. She kissed Yootza again many times, and then handed him to the kind young man.
“I’m going to go with Elias, okay?” David said. “And then I’ll come right back and we’ll talk, okay?”
“Of course,” Lala said. “Thank you so much, Elias.”
Lala took out her Kindle and tried to read the novel about a love that lasted decades after beginning in a tiny seaside village in Italy and ending with the old man and old woman finally brought together again. She had been enjoying the story via this device that she had resisted for as long as she could—because she loved the feeling of actual books so much—but finally decided she liked because it was light and thus a fine adjunct to actual books when she was leaving the house for long or short trips.
She always bought a lot of actual books, and she also bought the Kindle version of every book she was reading, and she found that she was now reading more than she ever had before, which had always been a lot anyway because there were few things Lala loved as much as reading, and really nothing she loved more.
She couldn’t make out anything on the screen of the Kindle. Whatever the words were, they didn’t seem to be actual English. She tried to sound them out phonetically, but that got her nowhere. So she closed the Kindle and took out her phone to look at all the photographs. She found the folder that had images of her dogs, and she looked at all the images she had snapped of actual old photographs she had taken of Yootza when she first got him, so that she could have electronic images of those photographs with her all the time via her fancy and modern phone. The old photographs showed a senior dog, but one that wasn’t quite old enough yet to have his face entirely covered by grey fur, as Yootza’s was now. And then the door opened and David came back in with Yootza.
David placed the little dog back on Lala’s lap. Yootza looked very sleepy, and his entire tummy had been shaved.
“Sweetie, here’s what we’re dealing with,” David said. He sat down next to her and put his arm around Lala’s shoulder. “Yootza has a lot of fluid around his heart and in his lungs. That means his heart isn’t working the way it should. My fear is that he has cancer, and I’m afraid the blood tests seem to support that. So we’ve drained the fluid and we need to see how long it takes for the fluid to come back. If it doesn’t come back today, I think that means we can take him home for a few days and keep him comfortable so we can all say good-bye. I’m so sorry, Lala.”
Lala put her head on David’s shoulder.
“I should have known. He’s been different. He hasn’t been adorably grumpy like he always is. I should have known something was wrong.”
“No, Sweetie, if anyone should have known, I should have.”
“Nuh uh, you’re the best, David. We’re all so lucky to have you.”
He really is, Lala thought. We really are.
“I’m afraid I’m going to start keening,” Lala said. “And that will scare my little Yootza, so I can’t do that, but I don’t want to leave him, so can I babble? So I won’t start crying?”
“Sure, sweetie,” David said. “Do whatever you want. Whatever you need.”
“While you were gone, I was looking at photos of Yootza and I kept thinking about how quickly things can change. Sometimes for good, other times for ill, of course. Like I happen to meet James Lancaster and he’s a publisher, and suddenly I’m a published author and they’re making a movie of my book.”
“A very successful published author,” David said. He kissed the top of Lala’s head. Lala suddenly started giggling.
“Oh, god, honey, it’s going to be one of those things where I’m laughing and the next thing I know, I’m crying in a very loud and unattractive way, and I really don’t want to scare little Yootza. I suddenly had this image of Terrence on the phone in New York in our minuscule apartment where we were so happy. He had gotten some kind of notice from our health insurance carrier and it was signed by Alvinia S. Baxter, so he called the number on the notice and he asked for Alvinia S. Baxter, and when I hear this I can’t stop laughing because he felt compelled to say her middle initial because, who knows, maybe they also had an Alvinia F. Baxter working there.”
Lala could barely get the words to this memory out to share it with David because she was laughing so hard and she was trying so hard not to cry, so she’d get stuck on one word and keep repeating it until she somehow managed to move to the next one. As a result, a story that should have taken a minute or two was now well into its seventh sixty-second segment.
“And I’m remembering that, and I’m also—all the time that I’m remembering, I’m simultaneously thinking about my poor little Yootza and how ephemeral life is. It’s like you look in the mirror, you look away and immediately look back, and I’m sorry, was that massive GASH of a wrinkle there on my forehead five seconds ago? Everything can change in one instant. For good or for ill. Like with Terrence. He seems fine. It’s just that his stomach is bothering him, and I’m sure it’s an ulcer at worst, and then I hear the words ‘Your husband has a growth on his stomach’ from his doctor and it’s all over. My life as I knew it then was effectively over.”
Lala had gotten herself so worked up in the disjointed telling of these vaguely overlapping tales, she hadn’t noticed that David had gently put his hand on Yootza’s chest and had been running it over the dog’s stomach and back to his chest again, carefully feeling the long undercarriage of the dachshund. At the same moment when Lala finally saw that he was doing this, she heard Yootza’s labored breathing.
David picked Yootza up and walked to the door of the exam room.
“I’ll be right back.”
Everything happened so quickly, Lala didn’t have time to panic even more than she already was. She sat in her chair, not moving, just staring at the closed door until David came back. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been gone. He didn’t have Yootza with him. David sat down next to Lala.
“He’s got more fluid around his heart and in his lungs, sweetie. And if we drain it again, it’ll come right back. He’s having a hard time breathing. If we take out the fluid, it’ll come right back again. I’m so sorry. We have to decide what to do.”
“Geraldine and Monty love him,” Lala said. “So do Stephanie and Chuck. And Thomas. I don’t think Thomas’s new girlfriend has had a chance to form an opinion yet. We have to let them come here to say good-bye.”
David called Geraldine. She came right over with Monty and Step
hanie and Chuck and Thomas. Yootza had been brought back to the exam room and Lala was sitting on the floor next to the large, soft bed that David had placed there for Yootza to rest on.
Geraldine got down on the floor next to them and hugged her adopted niece and her niece’s little dachshund. She stayed there next to Lala and Yootza while Monty and Stephanie and Chuck and Thomas bent down to hug Lala and give Yootza a gentle little rub on his dear little head. And then they all left the room to wait in the lobby of the hospital while Lala and David said their final good-byes.
Lala lay flat on the floor and put her head next to Yootza’s. David had two syringes ready. Though Yootza was already dozing much of the time, the first injection would let him drift off completely to sleep. And then, as Lala knew from having helped so many precious animals pass from their far-too-short lives, lives far too short even if they were passing in their old age, the second injection would, as she always told herself, set her precious boy/girl free.
“I love you so much, my sweet little Yootza,” Lala said over and over.
When it was done, David got down on the floor next to Lala and Yootza. Lala put her head against David’s chest and buried her nose into his shirt. She realized for the first time since Yootza’s crisis had begun that this was the first beloved pet she had lost since Terrence died.
She turned her head so David could hear her.
“I don’t think I could get through this without you, David. I don’t know what I would do without you. I can’t bear to even imagine it.”
Lala and David slept, or tried to sleep, on the couch that night, with the television on and with Petunia, Chester, and Eunice crowded into the space on the cushions with them. Lala was on her left side, draped over David’s torso and legs. Their beagle, Petunia, was squished with not a fraction of an inch to spare in the triangular space behind Lala’s bent knees. Chester, their very large former racing greyhound, was on the other side of David, wedged between David and the back of the sofa. Eunice, the wrinkled borzoi/Shar Pei mix, was draped over Lala’s head like a large, furry shawl.
It had been a long time since the space surrounding Lala felt so empty.
Lala and David could tell that the dogs missed their brother. Everyone was uncharacteristically quiet. They would all fall asleep for a bit, then wake up in staggered shifts. Someone would try to change his or her position and quickly realize that the effort alone, nevermind the completion of the actual action, would be highly disruptive of the extremely tentative equilibrium they had achieved on that couch.
Darn, Lala thought, I really have to pee. Oh well, maybe later . . .
She dozed off and woke up a half hour later to the sound of David and the dogs snoring and the low-volume narration of a wedding gown alteration crisis on Say Yes to the Dress.
I’ve seen this episode, Lala thought. They’ll be able to fix the neckline in time. She’ll look gorgeous at her wedding. It will all work out in the end. Please, god, let that dress be a metaphor for life. Mine, specifically. Darn, I’m really hungry. Maybe I can move my legs really slowly . . . Nah, maybe later . . .
When Lala woke up the next time, David was sitting propped up by many of the couch cushions. The dogs were all awake and were staring very intently at the large bowl of potato chips that David was enjoying.
“How did you all move around so much without me noticing it?” Lala asked. “Do we have any white wine? Of course we have white wine. You want a glass? Not you, Petunia. I’m talking to Daddy.”
Lala shuffled to the kitchen and brought back a bottle of Pinot Grigio swathed in a flexible ice wrap, and two glasses. She filled both the glasses and balanced hers as she cuddled with David on the couch. They sipped and crunched and watched a syndicated episode of Law and Order.
Lala kissed David’s shoulder because it was the closest thing to her head and because she loved him.
“I miss his platypus feet. I miss the way they used to wap, wap, wap against the hardwood floors when he walked.”
“Man, those paws of his,” David said. “Mitts. Like hams, they were. Such a wonderful boy. Such a grumpy, wonderful boy.”
“Don’t die before I do,” Lala said before she let herself consider the comment. “Promise?”
Lala got the clear sense that David was trying very hard not to make a big deal out of what she had just blurted.
“I promise,” he calmly said.
Liar, Lala thought. I love you for lying to me.
“Look!” Lala said. “I love when this show does an outdoor shoot in our beloved New York City. Central Park! Let’s go to Central Park together soon, okay?”
“Okay,” David said.
Lala grabbed a handful of chips and shoved them all in her mouth at once.
“Eating my feelings,” she sputtered through the crunching.
“Watch out, honey,” David said. “You don’t want to make yourself choke from voicing subtext that pretty much didn’t need to be spoken. We all get it. Petunia really gets it. She eats her feelings all the time.”
I love you, Lala thought.
Lala and David eventually got up off the couch and moved into the kitchen, where David made a big bowl of pasta. Lala went to feed the dogs and gasped when she pulled four food bowls out of the cupboard. David quickly took Yootza’s bowl away from her and put it in a bottom drawer before she could fully freak out.
They took the pasta back to the living room after the dogs inhaled their dinner, and the dogs joined them in repose on the sofa. A classic episode of Saturday Night Live was playing on the television.
Wow, Lala thought, a reference to Nixon is always funny. And tragic. What a metaphor for life. I think. I may never have fully understood what the word “metaphor” actually means.
“Honey?” Lala said.
“Yes?” David said.
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll go to Dogs of Love and see which animal we’re going to adopt next?”
“Sure,” David said. “If that’s what you want, we’ll go tomorrow.”
Lala had said that because that was what she always did, right away, when one of her beloved pets passed. She always opened her heart to another animal that needed a home. Because there were so many animals that needed homes, and she felt sure that the dog that had passed wanted her to share with another dog the family that he had been such a treasured part of. And so Lala opened herself to having her heart broken again and again; sometimes sooner, when she adopted a really old animal, and sometimes later, if she adopted a slightly less old animal.
And she reflected on that fact of her life as she thought of the prospect of adopting another animal now that Yootza had died, now that her first dog had died since she lost Terrence.
Not this time, Lala thought. I can’t.
“You know what, Honey?” Lala said. “On second thought, it might be too soon for me. I think I might have to wait.”
That was the first time in Lala’s adult life of rescuing animals that she had ever said those words.
Eventually they all got into bed that night, and Lala managed to get in a few fitful hours of sleep. She was surprised to find the next morning that she didn’t feel as tired as she expected to.
I’m going to take that as a sign from the universe, Lala thought. I’m not sure of what. Maybe a sign that I should take all this sadness and be energized by it? Maybe. I better give it a try and see.
David had woken up earlier and left her a note saying that he had taken the dogs out for a morning walk and had fed them their breakfast before heading out to meet a colleague with whom he would be teaching a seminar at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, his alma mater.
“How did I sleep through all of that?” Lala asked Petunia and Chester and Eunice. Lala was especially amazed that she hadn’t been woken by her beagle’s baying, a foundation-shaking aural onslaught that occurred whenever Petunia thought that there
was something—anything—going on anywhere near her that involved food of any kind.
Petunia’s definition of “food” included, as Lala had come to discover over the years, any grotesque thing on the sidewalk or in the grass that wasn’t a rock.
“I slept through all of that,” Lala continued. “Maybe I slept really, really, really deeply and intensely. For a short amount of time, but in a freakishly restorative way. Maybe me feeling peppy right now isn’t a sign from the universe.”
Lala looked over at her three beloved dogs, who were sleeping on their beds in the living room. Her three dogs, who had very recently been a four-pack.
“Well, sign from universe or no,” she said, “I’m going to bring more joy into the world, starting right now. In honor of Yootza.”
Lala picked up her cell phone and hit the number for the veterinary hospital. Beatrice answered.
“It’s Lala.”
“Ohh, sweetie. How are you?”
“Sad.”
“We’re all so sorry.”
“Thanks. You are the best. All of you. Listen, I want to pay for people who come to the hospital and might not be able to get their pets the care they need because they can’t afford it. Can we figure out how to do that together? Can I take you out to dinner so we can figure that out?”
Lala heard the catch in Beatrice’s voice when she answered. She knew they were both trying not to cry.
“I’d be honored,” Beatrice said.
“Thanks. How’s tomorrow night for you?”
“Perfect.”
Lala’s next call was to her aunt.
“Is Monty home?” Lala said.
“He’s playing handball and then going for a schvitz at his club.”
“That man is so vibrant,” Lala said. “So that means we can have a Gals’ Day, yes? I know you know I’m not asking because I think we need permission from our partners, right? Partners sounds like such a stupid word in this context. I didn’t know how to mash your husband and my boyfriend into one collective noun off the top of my head. David’s busy all day, and I just didn’t want Monty to feel left out if I needed my beloved auntie to myself for a few hours. Spa?”
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