by Martin Clark
The next morning, first thing, Brett slid off the bed, went to his suitcase and cartoonishly shuffled and windmilled clothes until he finally located a piece of paper. “Ah. Found it. Here you go: My last try on the last day. My eleventh-hour petition. I had the whole panel done last week. All negative for embarrassing diseases. Because we’re lawyers, I brought the proof with me in case I needed it. I thought maybe that’s why you’re avoiding sex with me.” He grinned, folded the paper into a haphazard plane and tossed it toward her. It rose quickly, a nose-up burst, then lost height and momentum and pitched to the left and augured into a pillow on the side of the bed opposite her. “Consider it evidence of my bona fides where you’re concerned. You realize I literally had to give blood for the test? How about some bonus points and gold stars for the effort? A glowing letter in my permanent file? A morning of serious romance?”
“All that for me, huh? Pretty darn selfless. And what could be more romantic than STD results?” She unfolded the report and glanced at it. “Sad to say, I woke up with a…well, anyhow, a problem. I’m not used to so much sex—well, so much, you know, sex like we had, with, uh, your hands. The infernal sand, maybe. And drinking. All the drinking couldn’t help.”
“Seriously? Are you all right?”
“It’s just, uh, cystitis. If you have to know. You’re mostly to blame.” She’d hoped to come off as glib and droll, but didn’t. “Not really. I’m only kidding, okay?”
“Sorry.” He sat on the foot of the mattress. “Bummer. I’m guessing this doesn’t bode well for my remaining prospects. Our last few hours here too.”
They took separate flights in Atlanta, Lisa to Greensboro, Brett to Roanoke, and by the time they left each other, she was sick and glum and her crotch pained her even more, the hurt an emphatic rebuke, and she really didn’t know what to say to Brett when he kissed her goodbye, right there in the busy airport amidst the hurry and swirl of strangers. The light was harsh and indifferent. The trapped air smelled of too many scents at once.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.” He slid his arm around her waist. “Are you going to be able to manage? Want me to walk with you to your gate?”
“You’re a sweetheart. I’ll be fine. I’m just worn out.”
“How should I get in touch?” Brett asked. “I’ll probably have wicked withdrawal. The DTs for a couple days.”
“E-mail,” she said, not facing him, distracted, already heading in another direction, anxious for the shuttle and a different concourse and the flight home, rolling her small suitcase along with her, the bag poorly packed and lopsided, a threat to tip over even on the smooth, level floor. She fell in with the foot traffic and never looked back over her shoulder, never considered turning around.
—
Five miles from her farm, Lisa eased the Mercedes onto the shoulder of the road and switched off the ignition. She bowed her forehead until it rested against the arc of the steering wheel. Stopped there near a scrub sourwood tree and a clump of briar bushes, she wept, the regret and remorse she’d numbed on Saturday morning now raging and febrile, almost to the point she was disabled, an invalid. She cried and cried and wiped snot on her bare wrist, and when she finally gathered herself enough to consider traveling to her house, she looked through the windshield and noticed she’d pulled over beside a pasture, several acres enclosed by rusty strands of barbed wire, the brown wire sagging and lackadaisical and tacked to mismatched fence poles, the first spring weeds starting to sprout at the bases of the poles.
A black and white cow and her calf stood along the fence watching her. Two kids on Japanese motorcycles sped by. Lisa lowered the car window and inhaled fresh air. A minivan passed, followed by a tractor-trailer. The cows continued to stare, occasionally flipping their tails, the mother jawing a fescue cud, simple, contented beasts with no more than a handful of thoughts and instincts in their docile skulls.
She didn’t know how she would walk through the door and face Joe. She had reasoned out her decision as much as was possible, and she understood the aftermath would be difficult. She’d tried to imagine it, dissected it in her mind, weighed and assayed, debated it for weeks, but the choice now seemed plainly foolish, her cure and fabulous antidote not even quality snake oil, her grand escape a dumb-ass detour, and she felt like a fucking dunce and an idiot and, worse, a tired, implacable cliché, because, sitting there on the side of the road, sobbing and sick, she wanted the weekend erased, realized she loved her husband and her small-potatoes hick life and all her mundane altars, and she was afraid she could never fully correct her mistake and reclaim the substantial marriage she’d bartered for a flash-in-the-pan pittance. At least she hadn’t screwed Brett. At least she’d realized her error early, had mostly escaped the high-roller champagne and beautiful ocean view and kept the damage to a minimum.
Short term, the best she could accomplish was to quit bawling and snubbing and drive home and act as if she had some sense and vow to treat Joe extremely well, so that’s what she did, except he was gone when she arrived. There was no note or explanation, even though she’d called before leaving the Bahamas to let him know her flight schedule. Now a cool, prickly sweat was coating her. She was worried Joe had somehow discovered her adultery and packed his bags. Her hands trembled. A streak of sunburn on her calf seared her leg. She yelled for the dog, then hurried outside and shouted his name. Searched the barn and found only the cats. Brownie was missing, too. Inside the house again, she called Joe’s cell and heard it ring in the den. She peed and it stung, worse than several hours ago.
There was nothing else to do—she lit a smoke and sat miserable at the kitchen table, too frazzled and distraught to cry anymore, picking apart possibilities, flicking ashes into an empty glass, mired, speculating, hog-tied by her own reckless choices.
I deserve every last bit of this, she thought. And then some.
The cigarette was almost down to the filter when Lisa’s BlackBerry played the chorus of “I Wanna Be Rich,” and she snatched the cell off the kitchen table and clicked on, rushed a “Hey, M.J.” before the phone reached her ear.
“Welcome back,” M.J. said. “How come you didn’t answer my call while you were gone? Saturday morning? I left you a message. Must mean either really good news or really bad news.”
Lisa stubbed out the butt on the inside of the glass and dropped it into the dead ashes at the bottom. “Listen, I’m sick over this. I’m at the farm, and even before I left the Bahamas I knew I’d screwed up, and now I can’t find Joe.” Her voice ruptured on the last few words. She was barely able to finish her husband’s name. “I got home, and he and Brownie are missing.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“So what happened in Nassau? Was the guy an ogre or something? A gherkin penis? Cheapskate? Ghoulish yellow toenails? Toupee you hadn’t uncovered? What?”
Lisa laughed and cried at the same time. “No. No, Brett is top-drawer all the way around. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better man.” She hunted up another smoke from her purse. “But I never should’ve done it. It was a huge mistake. Awful. Plus I’ve got cystitis and ache like a two-buck hooker. I’m just miserable because of the whole stupid decision, and, I mean, you know, certainly Joe couldn’t have found out, right?”
“I don’t see how.”
“Just idiotic,” she sobbed. “I’m so angry at myself.”
“Well, I kinda tried to warn you,” M.J. chided her.
“No you didn’t. You let me borrow your phone.” She lit the cigarette.
“That’s my job, right? Part of my best-friend duties once the decision is made. But, yeah, I guess I wasn’t exactly trying to confiscate your passport. You seemed so blue and sad.”
“The worst of it is that I thought it through and planned it. How could I have misjudged things so severely? It was great at first, but the regret sort of starting creeping in, I kind of knew, and by the time we left each other in Atlanta, I mean, jeez…”
“This is a little more significant than a chicken leg and a bellyache, okay?”
“Just trying to make you feel better. It’s a similar principle on a different scale. That’s my point.”
“I can’t imagine where Joe and the dog are.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s probably nothing. Maybe they’re out for a walk.”
“His truck isn’t here, M.J. Joe would’ve left me a note. He’s very considerate like that. And he wouldn’t normally leave here with me traveling. Especially since I’ve been gone for the entire weekend.”
“Well, look at the bright side: Now you know. You realize you love Joe. You won’t be moping around and wondering. Black-clouding your friends. This, in a certain sense, made your marriage better. Showed you how valuable it is to you. It’s a net positive. My advice is to drink lots of cranberry juice and start taking great care of Mr. Stone. Put it behind you. Bury it. Lesson learned. Valuable instruction.”
Lisa exhaled a jet of smoke. “No wonder you sold all those backhoes and chain saws.”
“Never sold a chain saw.”
“Don’t you dare breathe a word of this to anyone. Ever.”
“Duh.”
“And so we’re clear, we never had complete sex. No intercourse.”
“Hardly seems fair—if you’re going to feel this guilty and sick, you should’ve at least gotten to enjoy the full crime.”
“I’ll mail your phone to…oh, wait, damn, Joe’s truck is pulling in the drive. Gotta go.”
Immediately, Lisa could tell Joe was distressed. Tense. Bothered. His face was ratcheted tight, and his movements—stepping from the truck’s cab, closing the door—were precise and determined. She was quickly through the hall, den and mudroom but stopped well short of her husband, stood a few feet outside the entrance to their house, tentative, her thoughts mush, her bare arms folded across her chest, no coat or sweater.
“Are you okay?” she asked. He had pivoted toward the pickup’s bed. “What’s the matter?”
“Brownie’s sick, Lisa.” Joe was striding toward the tailgate. “I had to take him to Greensboro. The emergency-fucking-room for animals. Not a single damn person you can raise in Henry County on a Sunday. I tried every vet here and in Stuart, and all you get is a recording telling you to take your emergency to the twenty-four-seven hospital in Greensboro. I even called Dr. Withers at home, but he didn’t answer. So I loaded Brownie in the farm truck and off we went. I didn’t have any other choice. Sorry I wasn’t here.” He gestured at the bed. “Can you help me?”
Lisa teared up and both hands reflexively covered her mouth. She started walking with her fingers still guarding her lips. Already enervated and jumbled and sickly, she swayed into the side of the truck, briefly lost her balance and brushed a fender before she reached Joe, and when she dropped her hands, her lungs were misfiring, needed two or three pulls to suck down an effective breath. “Oh god, Joe. What happened?” She leaned across the tailgate, inspected the dog. “Is he alive?”
The dog was flat and listless on a quilt, a white bedsheet draping him and secured at the edges with strips of silver duct tape so it wouldn’t blow away during the ride. Brownie’s neck and head were curved at an extreme angle, stretched abnormally, the muscles and tendons flaccid, as if he’d turned to rubber and was somehow stuck in the midst of a big, heavenly howl.
“He was when I left Greensboro. I stopped and checked twice, and he was hanging on.” Joe jerked the handle and lowered the gate. “I heard this awful racket coming from the back porch, something beating against the house, and I go out there and poor Brownie was slobbering and convulsing. He was on his feet, but he was having a seizure. At first I thought he was rabid, that’s how it seemed, especially because he wasn’t able to focus. He didn’t recognize me or act like I was there. He was glassy-eyed. He collapsed but finally came around. Seemed better. Recognized me. Even though I knew different, I hoped maybe it was something he’d eaten or just a passing moment. Then it started again.” Joe clambered into the truck and pulled away the sheet. Brownie didn’t move or respond.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, looking at Joe.
“He either has a brain tumor or liver complications. His blood tests showed very bad liver readings, so that’s most likely the problem. We need to take him to our vet in the morning. The doc in Greensboro sedated him so he’d quit thrashing and suffering.”
The dog weighed at least eighty pounds, but Joe knelt and forked his forearms underneath him and effortlessly scooped up the deadweight. A single stride put him at the end of the tailgate, Brownie utterly limp, his head dangling from the crook of Joe’s elbow, his paws slack and purposeless. Joe crouched down from the truck, awkwardly extending one boot and then the other onto the ground, encumbered by the dog the whole time. Lisa scrambled to gather the quilt and sheet and trailed them into the den, where she made a pallet on the floor and Joe laid their pet near the center of the bedding.
As soon as Joe was finished and upright, Lisa hugged him and pressed the side of her face into him, felt the hard jut of his clavicle, and she cried and sobbed and said “This is terrible” and “I hate this” and “I shouldn’t have ever left you two.”
He patted and kneaded her back and assured her it wasn’t her fault. “Brownie’s a tough old hombre,” he told her while she was buried in his chest. “Let’s see what Dr. Withers has to say in the morning.”
Lisa sat down beside the dog, her weight on her butt, her legs straight in front of her and rigid. She rubbed his muzzle, neck and belly and repeated his name in a gentle voice and told him he’d be fine, better than new. She watched his slow breathing, could see the shape of his smaller ribs through his fur when he exhaled and flattened out. He sighed and opened a filmy eye for a second, licked his lips but lost his tongue so that it lolled pink and dry from the side of his mouth.
Joe brought in a kitchen chair and joined her. She told him the trip to Nassau had been mediocre, and she wished she’d stayed home, especially now. She thanked him for taking such good care of her and Brownie. She told him she loved him and had since she’d first met him. She rested her head on his thigh and knee and said she was lucky to have such a remarkable man, almost cried again but didn’t. She inquired about fixing them a meal. “Maybe it’s antifreeze or some poison,” she added clumsily and too quickly after asking about supper, no transition at all. “Did they check for that?”
She realized her husband of two decades sensed there was more in the mix than simply Brownie’s poor health. He didn’t mention it or try to coax the other, mysterious disturbances to the surface, but she knew he was aware her grief was unnatural, a slot too high on the scale, her haggard expression and worried, red eyes too deep-set and entrenched to have been so recently birthed.
“Yeah. They checked.” Joe peered at her. “Are you okay?”
“Sure.”
She spent the night there beside the dog, sharing his quilt and the hardwood floor und
erneath, and around midnight rolled and dragged him to a different spot and sopped up a damp circle of urine that had leaked from him. At daybreak he was more alert and able to stand, and he ate a raw Jesse Jones frank for breakfast, but soon after he looked at Lisa and canted his head and wobbled slightly—an unbalanced hop he clearly didn’t anticipate—and seized up again, his jaws spasmed wide open, his gaze congealed and distant, his legs locked and forced stiff and fast away from him as if every bone were expanding by several inches, his skeleton bulling its way free through skin and fur. He fell onto the kitchen floor, his full weight slamming the tile. Wet, choking sounds formed at the rear of his mouth and wouldn’t quit. Lisa was scared and heartbroken, even afraid he might bite her, but she knelt and stayed beside him while spit dripped from his mouth and puddled near her painted toes.
Together, they drove him to the vet’s office. Usually, Brownie barked and scuffled and dug in fierce with his front paws and hunkered low and doggedly resisted the threshold to the clinic, but he was so spent and so infirm that Joe had to carry him into the waiting room, where he lay on the floor wrapped in a clean new blanket, eyes closed, his head and bushy tail poking from opposite ends of the cloth cocoon. An elderly woman clutching a solid white cat and a man with a stitched and bandaged basset hound were also waiting.
Dr. Matthew Withers was a lean, happy-go-lucky man with a devilish, graying Vandyke beard. He was thorough and compassionate with his animal patients. After he helped Joe guide Brownie onto a silver metal examination table, he shook his hand and told them he was sorry about Brownie’s circumstances. He put on pale latex gloves and started looking the dog over.