Earnest

by Kristin von Kreisler

  Later that night, Jeff brushed his teeth and avoided looking at the eyelashes of the whales cavorting on the shower curtain. They irritated him. He washed his face, stepped into his flannel pajamas, and went into the bedroom. He turned on Mr. Ripley’s lamp, a ceramic owl with a burlap shade sticking out of his head.

  Lying in the half circle of light cast on Jeff ’s pillow was a cow’s hoof that Earnest had not yet finished chewing. Only he could have set it there, though he’d never brought anything but himself to bed before. At first Jeff thought Earnest had meant the hoof as a bread-and-butter gift to say, Thank you for the steak.

  Then Jeff decided that Earnest had wanted to leave a message. He might have been pointing out, I’m sorry for gnawing on your drafting table. I meant no harm. I couldn’t help myself. Or he may have wanted to tell Jeff in the only way he could how important Jeff was to him. The cow’s hoof might simply be saying, I love you, man.

  Though Jeff did not know Earnest’s intentions, he did know that he loved his dog. More than anything. People may disappoint you, but Earnest never would, he thought. Jeff found him in the living room, not far from the site of the drafting table massacre. “Thanks for the cow’s hoof, Buddy. Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Dr. Nilsen was smiling when he came into the exam room. He washed and dried his hands and threw his paper towel into the trash. When he looked down at Earnest, his smile faded and his forehead creased. “Earnest, you’ve lost weight.”

  “Seven pounds according to your scale,” Anna said.

  “That’s worrisome.”

  Dr. Nilsen squatted down and handed Earnest a biscuit. Though he took it politely, he set it down uneaten and turned his head away. I’d rather not.

  “He’ll hardly eat anything,” Anna said. “Yesterday he licked my ice cream cone, and this morning he ate a piece of cheese. But he won’t look at his kibble.”

  “So you’re holding out for the good stuff, are you, Earnest?” Dr. Nilsen asked. “We’ve always had to worry about keeping your weight down, not fattening you up.”

  Dr. Nilsen quickly checked Earnest’s gums and teeth. He took his temperature and looked into his ears, then coaxed him to stand and prodded his belly. “He seems okay except for his weight.”

  Anna laced her fingers together. “I took him to the library for his reading session with the kids. He always loves it, but he lay there in a funk.”

  “He’s like that all the time?”

  “Lately, pretty much. Do you think he could be upset?”

  “Sure. Earnest is emotional. His feelings are transparent. He could be telling you he’s depressed.” Dr. Nilsen leaned against the sink and shoved his hands into his lab coat’s pockets. “Anything stressful going on at home?”

  Anna had dreaded that inevitable question. Of course, there is stress at home. And there was no pill to cure Earnest of Jeff and Anna’s split, which was Earnest’s problem, she suspected. Today’s trip here was to confirm it.

  Anna explained that Jeff had moved out, and they were sharing custody of Earnest. “I think maybe he doesn’t like going back and forth between us.” She glanced at her loafers’ stitching. “He might be grieving for his former life when he was happy.”

  “That makes sense. You’ve got a sensitive animal here,” Dr. Nilsen said. “Any chance you and Jeff will get back together?”

  “No way. Never.” Anna fired off that edict. “We’re definitely mad at each other.”

  “Earnest’s picking up every bit of it. If you’re sure you won’t reconcile, you’ve got to find a way to help him feel better,” Dr. Nilsen said. “Can you take him out together and pretend you got along? You need to show him nothing terrible has happened and his world is still secure.”

  Taking Earnest anywhere with Jeff felt like a prison sentence. But Anna could not let her beloved dog pine himself into a skeleton. “I guess if Jeff agrees, we could take Earnest for a walk.”

  “That’s worth a try before we put him through a lot of tests,” Dr. Nilsen said. “Look at things from his point of view. He may feel like he’s failed because he hasn’t kept his pack together. Seeing his family disintegrate is a real hardship for a dog. His world’s fallen apart.”

  Guilt. “You think a walk is enough?”

  “It’d take more than one. You and Jeff need to get together every week till Earnest starts eating again. He needs a lot of attention right now.”

  Weekly walks would be forced marches, but she was willing for Earnest’s sake. “I don’t know how Jeff is going to respond.”

  “He’d do anything for Earnest. If he hesitates, have him give me a call,” Dr. Nilsen said. “If Earnest stops taking treats, bring him here right away so we can x-ray him and do a blood panel. And bring him in if the walks don’t work. You don’t want him to get too thin.”

  Dr. Nilsen held out his hand to Earnest for a shake. As he offered his paw, for the first time in days Earnest brightened. Though he may not have understood Dr. Nilsen’s prescription, he seemed to pick up concern and goodwill.

  “As a vet, I sure wish breakups never happened. Believe me, they take a toll.”

  Guilt again. It gouged large chunks out of Anna’s heart.

  Before Anna turned the key in Vincent’s ignition, she told herself, Get it over with. You have to do it for Earnest. You can’t put it off.

  She got out her cell and texted Jeff:

  Dr. Nilsen says we should walk Earnest together. Saturday @ 3? Broken Arrow Park?

  She hesitated. The screen’s bright blue “send” crooked a finger at her and beckoned, Press me. When she still hesitated, the button shook a fist and urged, You are a lily-livered wastrel if you won’t take this step for Earnest. You know what’s right.

  Anna inhaled and steeled herself. She pressed. The text flew through the ether to Jeff.

  There. It was done.

  CHAPTER 28

  Jeff rested his elbows on the picnic tabletop and looked around Broken Arrow Park. Anna was nowhere to be seen. She’s probably late just to hassle me, he thought. She wants me to shiver in the cold. If it rains, she’ll really be happy.

  When something plopped on the grass behind him, he turned around. Earnest was hovering over his stick, begging for another throw. He stared at the stick, then at Jeff, then back at the stick. Earnest’s eager eyes said, Oh, please, please! We’ve only played fetch for half an hour. That’s not enough!

  “Okay.” Jeff picked up the stick and threw it into the empty Little League diamond, and Earnest tore after it, a blond streak across the grass.

  A Native American village had once been located on this very spot. It was surrounded by meadows, beyond which was a dense wood of evergreens and maples, their autumn leaves now shed. The park was called Broken Arrow because of early Suquamish skirmishes here, but you’d never guess that anyone had fought in such a peaceful place. Joggers ran on the gravel path around the park’s perimeter. Children, bundled up against the cold, played on swings and slides. P-Patch gardeners dug up shriveled vegetable plants and put their plots to bed for winter.

  Externally, all was calm. Internally, Jeff felt uneasy, on guard. He did not look forward to seeing Anna. He’d answered her text with a single word: Fine.

  That had been as much as he could bring himself to say when his warm feelings for her had blown away like so much dust. Earnest was the only reason he’d agreed to meet. If Dr. Nilsen thought Jeff and Anna should walk their dog together, he was willing. Whatever it took for Earnest.

  After a dozen more stick throws and impatient glances at his watch, however, Jeff considered leaving. Finally, Vincent sputtered into the parking lot. Earnest pricked his ears and dropped the stick at Jeff ’s feet. When Anna opened Vincent’s door, Earnest dashed to her before she jumped to the ground.

  He wagged his tail and yipped. Oh, you’re here! You’re here! He pressed against Anna’s knees.

  She bent down and kissed his forehead. She was always leaving lipstick prints—and Jef
f was always washing them off. Now he’d have to do it again when he and Earnest got back to his apartment. Anna was inconsiderate. One more strike against her.

  Jeff took his time sauntering across the grass. When he reached Anna and Earnest, he did not say hello. He did not smile. He stood there, wooden, his feet planted in the parking lot’s gravel.

  But Earnest sprang to life. No one could have missed his joy that the two people he loved most were together. He ramped up his yips to ebullient cries. His ears flapping, he circled Anna and Jeff again and again as if he were lassoing them together and staking out his family’s boundary. He leapt in the air and rolled in the grass, then pranced around them, swishing his tail.

  Earnest’s pure, innocent rejoicing tugged at Jeff. It was contagious. How could he not get into the spirit of joy when his best friend was so happy? Jeff fell to his knees, grabbed Earnest, and wrapped his arms around him. Anna kneeled down and hugged him too. Across his back, her arm brushed Jeff’s. His forehead grazed hers. Soon their petting hands touched; and when Earnest wriggled, they accidentally petted each other. Their breaths mingled into one exuberant cloud.

  As Earnest whined and wiggled, Jeff’s and Anna’s eyes met. He smiled at her as warmly as the old days. When she smiled back, she glowed. But then Jeff pictured the twitch of Mad Dog Horowitz’s rodent whiskers and remembered signing away half his right to Earnest. Jeff drew back into himself, a clam slamming his shell closed. The softness around Anna’s eyes hardened.

  Their play was over. The curtain fell on The Importance of Loving Earnest and rose on The Iceman Cometh. Without looking at each other, Jeff and Anna got to their feet. Jeff attached Earnest’s leash to his collar.

  “Come on, Earnest.” Jeff would talk with his dog but damn well not with Anna.

  Though Earnest obeyed, his mood shifted. Obviously, he had picked up Jeff and Anna’s huff, and he did not approve. Disappointment radiated from him as he walked stiffly between them down the gravel path.

  “I want to tell you something,” Anna said.

  “Fine.”

  “When I picked up Earnest last Monday, he was filthy. You’d taken him where he’d stomped through mud, and his fur was stiff with saltwater.”

  “So?”

  “So I was late to work because I had to take him home and bathe him.”

  “What a shame,” Jeff said.

  “You’re being snarky.”

  “So what?”

  Earnest raised his head and gave Jeff and Anna a shriveling look. He curled his lip, and for the first time ever, he growled at them. He hooded his eyes as if the very sight of them annoyed him, and he let them know in the harshest terms, Your scrapping is intolerable. You are the rat finks of the Western world.

  Earnest stepped off the path and walked on the grass as far away from Jeff and Anna as his leash would allow. His stand on the matter of their barbs was irrefutable when he lifted his leg and drowned the thorns of a Nootka rose bush.

  “Dr. Nilsen said we should act like everything’s fine so Earnest will feel secure.” Anna’s words sounded irritated, flea-bitten.

  “How can we act like everything’s fine when it’s not?”

  “We should talk.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” Jeff said.

  “I don’t have anything to say to you, either.”

  Jeff wanted to tell Anna to take her hornets’ nest of anger elsewhere. But he decided if she wanted talk, he would give her talk. He would fill the air with words so Earnest might think they were conversing and he would feel better. No problem.

  The first words that came to Jeff were from the Gettysburg Address, which his sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Watkins, had made him memorize—and which would be imbedded in his brain forever. He began: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

  “All right!” Anna seemed to understand his ploy. “London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down.”

  Like our relationship. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.”

  With contempt, Anna rolled her eyes. “Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day.”

  “We are met on a great battlefield of that war. . . .”

  “No kidding,” Anna interrupted. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

  “That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

  “Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet. Along came a spider and sat down beside her.”

  Earnest, being a perceptive and intelligent dog, looked at them like they were lunatics. He yanked them off the path to a rhododendron bush, under which he found a sniff-worthy molehill. But Anna and Jeff stayed stuck on Grudge Mountain.

  CHAPTER 29

  One evening after Joy and Lauren had gone home, Anna stayed late with Earnest to get ready for Thanksgiving. As usual when a holiday approached, Grammy was on her mind. Tonight Anna was remembering Grammy’s favorite motto, “Waste Not, Want Not,” because it had inspired the Thanksgiving bouquets Anna planned to make.

  Grammy had taught her to piece old clothes into quilts and braid lavender stems into wands for birthday gifts. She and Anna had picked up neighbors’ windfall apples and turned them into sauce. They’d gathered fir swags and pinecones in the woods for Christmas wreaths. “Free gifts are everywhere. All you have to do is find them,” Grammy had said.

  If there were ever a time when Anna needed free gifts, that time was now—when her savings were dwindling, Christmas expenses were looming, and her wholesale floral supplier had sent a cringe-inspiring bill. To save money on arrangements, Anna had been drying Queen Anne’s lace she picked on roadsides, magnolia leaves that old Mr. Webster let her cut from his tree, and every flower that didn’t sell in her shop. On walks in the forest with Earnest, she’d collected pinecones and pods to tuck into bouquets. For vases, Anna had hollowed out small pumpkins left over from Halloween, and bought pitchers and mugs from the New to You Shop.

  Now all she needed were gourds for centerpieces and she’d be set. She roused Earnest from his lily pad and drove to Thrifty Market, where she left him in Vincent with a promise to buy him people crackers. Since his last walk with her and Jeff, he’d deigned to pick at his kibble, but he’d not yet returned to his vulture days. He’d let her know he wanted treats.

  In the market, Anna rolled a grocery basket to the pet supply department. Late in the day close to Thanksgiving, Thrifty Market was packed, and shoppers zoomed along the aisles like kamikaze pilots. She dodged and wove to the back of the store, grabbed Earnest’s people crackers, and moved on to the produce, where she picked out gourds in primitive shapes that seemed to have to do with sex and war: torpedo, phallus, belly dancer, fertility goddess, and pregnant hand grenade.

  Since she was near Thrifty’s flower stand, she aimed her basket down the aisle to check out her competition, though the skimpy selection had never rivaled hers. She expected shopworn African violets in plastic pots and weary irises clumped together with rubber bands. But when she turned the corner, she froze. She felt as if this year’s Mr. Universe had whomped her on the back and knocked the breath from her.

  An entire alcove of the store had been transformed into a new “Floral Department,” spelled out in gold letters nailed to the wall. Containers of vibrant long-stemmed flowers were lined up below shelves of sumptuous plants and brightly colored vases. Anna’s eyes moved from roses and carnations, to tulips and lilies, to mixed bunches, tastefully designed. Off to the side was a sleek chrome counter, behind which a newly hired florist filled orders. An eagerness to please seemed to float through the upscale air.

  Clearly, Thrifty Market was giving Anna a run for her limited money. The owner was kicking her while she was do
wn. If Earnest had not been waiting for his people crackers, Anna would have left her basket in the floral department and fled. But she could not disappoint her dog. She reminded herself to breathe as she made her way toward the three grocery checkers at the front of the store. Her hands cold from shock, she got in line. She looked around.

  Of all the countless nights she’d come here—and after the floral department ambush—wouldn’t you know that this would be the night when Jeff was moving through the line to her left? And wouldn’t you know that when he reached the pretty blonde checker with the bouncy ponytail, he beamed at her? His smile never faded as she lifted orange juice and bananas from his basket and her long red nails punched in the costs on her register.

  Gimlet-eyed, Anna watched the woman lean toward Jeff and hang on his every word. As he gazed at her, the outside edges of his eyes slanted like they did when he focused on an attractive woman. When she spoke, he laughed too loud. He was flirting! How could he?! Anna turned her head to keep from seeing more, but then she looked back, an iron file helpless against a magnet.

  She may be mad at Jeff, but she had not gone blind, and he was still an attractive man. It took no more than the sight of him to resurrect the pleasure of his arms around her, the solidity of his chest, and the shelter of his broad shoulders. But she would not let herself dwell on his assets. No, sir! Not till hell froze over.

  Anna told herself that there were other good-looking men in the world. More busses would come to her station, more cookies would appear in her jar, along with more tools in her shed. If there were more fish in the sea, Anna would not settle for a shark—and that was what Jeff was. A shark! Rather than dwell on his broad shoulders, she would think of sharp killer teeth.

  However, as Anna carried her torpedo and hand-grenade gourds through the parking lot, Jeff’s laugh and the upscale air from the floral department seemed to waft through Thrifty’s door behind her. What had she done to deserve tonight’s double whammy? Well, she would not let either whammy gnaw at her. Definitely not. Still, by the time she reached Vincent, her spirit had shriveled like brown edges on the leaves of an unwatered plant.