Lily and the Octopus

by Steven Rowley

  A woman welcomed us and did her best to allay our fears; Lily and I were both apprehensive. “Is this Lily? Welcome, Lily. I think you’re going to love the other dachshunds here. Their names are Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.”

  Lily turned to me. “Are they the other puppies whose names you didn’t know?”

  “That’s right. Except now I do know their names. They are Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.”

  “They are not Harry and Kelly and Rita?”

  “No, they are Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.”

  Lily considered this for a moment before adding, “My mother’s name is Witchie-Poo.”

  I scooped up Lily and balanced her on my arm. “They don’t need to know that.”

  The woman took the canvas tote from my shoulder that held Lily’s blanket and food. I repositioned Lily so her paws were on my shoulder and I could whisper in her ear. “I’m coming back for you. In a week. Don’t ever think I’m not coming back.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “In seven sleeps. I am coming back for you.”

  I kissed her on the top of her head and sat her on the ground. I handed her leash to the lady, so that she was now in control of my dog. “C’mon,” she said. “I’ll introduce you to Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.” Then she turned to me. “She’ll be fine.”

  I nodded. I knew this. But also not. Would she? Be fine? Lily stood and turned back to look at me and we both swallowed the lumps in our throats.

  The lady opened the gate to the smaller dogs’ pen and I caught a glimpse of the other three dachshunds. Two of them were long-haired, and one was short-haired like Lily. I imagined the short-haired dachshund to be Sadie because she had a dappled coat and looked most different from the other two, who just happened to look like Sophies. All three greeted Lily with wagging tails.

  HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! I’M! SADIE! I’M! SOPHIE! I’M! SOPHIE! DEE!

  Lily paused before her tail started to wag and she entered the pen. Once inside she disappeared in a blur of paws and tails and ears as the gate closed behind her. The last thing I heard was her distinctive bark.

  I’M! LILY!

  In my car I broke down in ridiculous sobs.

  How does she know I’m coming back? How does she know I didn’t just give her away?

  Because she trusts me.

  Just as I should trust Jeffrey. There’s a perfectly rational explanation for that text. I want to play means poker. I turn to Jeffrey and his laptop is back open with his earphones plugged in. I’ve drifted. I made a fuss about his watching TV and then promptly checked out.

  I take a deep breath and try to reengage, tapping him on the shoulder, pulling the earbud out of his left ear. “We each have a few days before we have to be back to work. How would you feel about going to San Francisco?”

  I wait for him to react. I wait for his body to physically reject the spontaneity. I wait for him to keep the sunshine out, to make an excuse as to why he has to stay in Los Angeles, something to cover this “playing” with Cliff.

  But instead he simply smiles and says, “Okay.”

  Backbone

  My cell phone rings in an ominous way, sounding almost flat, the way it does when you know something is wrong before you answer the phone. I fumble to retrieve it from my pocket and the call almost goes to voicemail before I can answer. There’s no time for anything to be amiss; we leave for Meredith’s wedding in the morning.

  It’s Jeffrey. “Something’s wrong with Lily. You need to come home.”

  I look at my watch. It’s a little past three o’clock in the afternoon and I am more or less on my way home anyway. I’m just leaving the grocery store and the last thing on my list is to pick up our suits for the wedding from the dry cleaners.

  “Can it wait thirty more minutes?”

  I think of all the things that might be wrong with Lily. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Neither pleasant, but neither the end of the world. Too many treats from her Christmas stocking. Limping? She once had a thorn in her paw, like the old fable involving Androcles and the lion. It took some gentle prodding to get her to sit still long enough to remove the craggly thing. Bleeding? Bleeding is easy—just apply pressure. Jeffrey can be an alarmist. Whatever it could be can probably wait.

  “She can’t walk. You need to come home now.”

  When I burst through the door I find Lily in her bed in the living room with Jeffrey sitting on the floor beside her. Lily looks frustrated and concerned when she sees me, and she doesn’t get up and her tail doesn’t wag. The new red ball from her Christmas stocking sits motionless on the floor. Her inability to greet me in her usual way all by itself makes my stomach drop.

  “What’s going on, you two?” I almost don’t want to know the answer. In eighteen hours we are supposed to be on an airplane again.

  “Let me show you,” Jeffrey says.

  He gingerly lifts Lily out of her bed, in the heedful way he did the first few months we were dating, before they bonded, before he was confident in the proper way to do it. He places her squarely on the floor and the back half of her body immediately wilts, her hind legs splaying sloppily to one side. They just give way underneath her.

  My heart sinks to depths normally reserved for my stomach, and it becomes difficult to think or breathe.

  I kneel on the floor next to them and tuck one hand under Lily’s muscular chest and one hand under her soft belly. I stand her up again, supporting her with both hands. I almost don’t dare to let go.

  “Stand for me, Lily.” I say it like a hypnotist giving a directive to an entranced person under my command. When I let myself remove the hand under her belly, her toenails scrape on the hardwood floor as her legs once again slip to the side. “C’mon.” This time I’m pleading. “Stand up for me, girl.”

  Again, when I let go, the awful slithering of toenails on wood and the total wilting of legs. She almost tips over entirely before I catch her at the last second.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” Jeffrey replies.

  “Something happened,” I insist before adding, “What have you done?”

  “What have I done?” Jeffrey is shocked.

  She was my dog long before we ever met, and while she has become his dog, too, over the course of our relationship, they don’t have the same bond. He does not treat her with the same attentiveness (or, truthfully, the same permissiveness), and when he’s displeased with her behavior he is always the stepparent absolving himself of responsibility by throwing his hands up and calling her “your dog.” This can’t really be Jeffrey’s fault, but I wonder just the same.

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  I stare at Jeffrey. Am I accusing him of something? Even in this moment I’m forced to wonder if my assertion is about Lily or the text message. I don’t know. But I can feel Lily tremble in my hands, and I know immediately now is not the time. “No. No, of course not.”

  “I hope not.”

  “I’m not.” I placate him while I place Lily back in her bed, where at least she’s supported by the cushiony sides. “Just watch her while I call the vet.”

  When I get our veterinarian’s voicemail it dawns on me that it is now four o’clock on New Year’s Eve. I immediately dial the first animal hospital I can find a listing for, even though it’s on the west side of town. When I explain the situation, they insist I bring her in right away. If they can do anything for her, there’s a short window in which it can happen, and that window is rapidly closing.

  I hang up the phone, grab an old blanket, and wrap it around my girl. I lift her carefully, and nod to Jeffrey. “Let’s go.”

  In the car we hit a red light that I know to be a long red light and I burst into sobs. My choices now, as I see them, are either having a dog with wheels for hind legs or, possibly, letting her go. Without warning, without moving or standing or crouching, Lily poops into the blanket on my lap, and my sobbing becomes inconsolable. She’s dying, my baby. Right here in my
lap.

  The light turns green. I yell at a distracted Jeffrey to “Go!” and he steps on the gas and in the chaos I find a doggie litter bag in my jacket pocket because doggie litter bags are in all of my jacket pockets—I have a fear of being caught without them. I clean up the blanket as best I can and drop the sealed bag near my feet. I know this bothers Jeffrey, but he doesn’t say anything, and really, what other choice do I have? We both crack our windows for air.

  Jeffrey makes decent time across the city, and when I see a sign that says Animal Hospital I make him stop even though the address does not match the street number I’ve scribbled down on the back of a Target receipt. I must have transposed some numbers in haste.

  Inside, the waiting room is small and hot and chaotic and I worry about having a panic attack. The nurse hands us a clipboard with papers to fill out and I push it back at her and say, “There is no time for paperwork.” Jeffrey apologizes for my outburst, which annoys me, and he takes the clipboard and a pen. There is only one free chair and he takes it so he can write. I lean in an empty doorway and cradle Lily in her tattered swaddling. Soon a doctor materializes for a consultation, and when I explain the situation she tells us that we actually want the surgical hospital that’s across the street and two blocks down. Tick tock, tick tock. Precious moments wasted.

  As we turn to leave, a woman who looks like the Log Lady from Twin Peaks (although I’m the one holding the log in the form of a paralyzed dachshund) grabs my arm and says, “Whatever they tell you, don’t kill your dog.” I want to tell her to fuck off, but I’m frozen speechless in my tracks and tears start to well. “She can still have a happy life if you let her.” Instantly this woman is my everything.

  I nod and my eyes overflow with moisture, but Lily does not attempt to kiss my tears and the part of my brain that knows I can’t waste even another second unfreezes me and I’m out the door.

  Jeffrey tears into the parking lot of the surgical center, cutting off several cars at my urging. Inside they are expecting us, the last doctor having called ahead on our behalf. A surgical technician pries Lily out of my arms and they rush her behind a swinging door. Before I can protest, she is gone. No one offers us paperwork. No one tells us to sit. No one tells me not to kill my dog. Lacking anything else to do, we stand in the middle of a large, sterile room, surrounded by anxiety and tragedy, with nothing to look at but our feet. There’s free coffee, but it’s probably awful, and I know that I can’t drink black swill when the rest of the world is sipping golden New Year’s champagne.

  After a short but interminable wait we’re ushered into a private examining room. Lily is not there. There are two seats, so we sit. We fidget until a veterinarian enters. She has blond hair and a kindly face and looks too laid-back to be a surgeon, but has such an authoritative air of command that I wonder if she served in the military. Based on Lily’s neurological signs, she is most suspicious of a ruptured intervertebral disc and wants to perform a myelogram to determine the site of the herniation.

  I don’t know what a myelogram is, and I know I don’t have time to educate myself beyond the context that it is some test to detect pathology of the spinal column.

  “And then what?”

  “And then, pending the results of the myelogram, Lily’s best chance of walking again is surgery.”

  “Surgery.” I’m taking this in as fast as I can.

  “The sooner the better.”

  Apparently there is no time to think. “So, we’ll know if surgery is the way to go after the myelogram?”

  “In all honesty, I would make that decision now. She’ll already be under anesthesia for the myelogram, and if it does indeed reveal a ruptured disc, it’s best to perform the surgery right then and there.”

  “So you need a decision now.”

  The doctor looks at her watch. “Yes.”

  Decisions. Lately they’re not my strong suit. I think of the ways recently in which I’ve felt paralyzed myself. Should I quit my job to freelance full-time as a writer? Should I talk to Jeffrey about the doubts I have in our relationship? About the suspicious text message he received? Could Lily and I start over again on our own?

  “And how much does spinal surgery cost for a dog that is mostly spine?” The doctor crouches in front of me and offers a half-smile. She doesn’t need to tell me things I already know: that this is always a risk with the breed. That purebred dogs come with these health issues, as they’ve been genetically mutated for purpose or show.

  “All together, everything—anesthesia, myelogram, surgery, recovery—we’re talking about six thousand dollars.”

  Now it’s me who is left immobile. Six thousand dollars. I look at Jeffrey. I think of dwindling savings. Of having just paid off all my credit card debt. Of vacations that might not be taken, retirement accounts that won’t get contributed to, of having to push my dreams of writing full-time back another year.

  “It’s your call,” Jeffrey says. “I can’t make this decision. She’s your dog.” Your dog.

  I want to punch him. I want to punch everyone, except maybe the doctor who can save her.

  “Why don’t I leave you to talk it over for a moment?” The doctor stands, and before I know it I’ve grabbed the sleeve of her lab coat.

  “She has a ball. It’s red. Red ball. She loves it. She’ll play with it for hours—tossing it, chasing it, hiding it, finding it. She’ll play until she’s out of breath, and even then she’ll take it to her bed and fall asleep on top of it. She is alive when she’s playing with that ball. If she …”

  I can’t even finish the words. Jeffrey places his hand on my shoulder as I’m reduced to tears again.

  “If she can’t … play with that ball anymore, then I don’t know what kind of life there is left for her.”

  The doctor turns to me. She’s not unmoved, but she’s seen people wrestle with this decision before and there’s nothing so special about me.

  I continue through gasps and swallows of oxygen. “I don’t want you to think I’m a horrible person. That I would let money even become a part of this decision. It’s just I don’t know what her life would be if she can’t play with that ball.”

  I plead with my eyes. Fix her! Save her! One nod is all that I need, and she studies me before giving it. She has heard me, and she’s trying to communicate something. “I’ll be outside in the hall.”

  It’s not even necessary for her to go. “Will you be the one performing the surgery?”

  “Yes.” Another nod. She’s telling me Lily will walk again. She’s telling me she knows this, but legally can’t say it because of ridiculous reasons like malpractice insurance. So she’s telling me without words, in the way that hostages blink secret messages in videotapes that evade detection by their captors.

  I look at Jeffrey, who once again says, “I can’t make this decision.” At least this time he adds, “But I will stand by yours.”

  I look back at the doctor. My heartbeat is in my ears. The room is hot and smells like medicine. The fluorescents blink angrily, asking to be replaced. My head is spinning, but with adrenaline, not with dizzying thoughts. Now is when I have to start making decisions. Now is my time.

  I stand tall with my hands by my sides and now I’m the one who speaks with authoritative command.

  “Do it.”

  We’ll Take a Cup of Kindness Yet for Auld Lang Syne

  We leave the animal hospital as soon as I agree to the surgery. They almost insist on it. Since it’s New Year’s Eve, they are running with a limited staff and don’t want to assign any of their already sparse resources to oversee a hysterical person in the waiting room. If the surgery goes well, they don’t need me insisting on seeing her or overseeing her recovery. And I would. I would be like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment: “It’s past ten. My daughter is in pain. I don’t understand why she has to have this pain. All she has to do is hold out until ten, and IT’S PAST TEN! My daughter is in pain, can’t you understand that! GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOT!” I
f the surgery does not go well, I guess they don’t want that scene to play out in their waiting room, either.

  So we go home. Jeffrey stops to pick up Chinese for dinner and I stay in the car and call Trent. He is already at some New Year’s party and I can’t communicate the enormity of what is happening and I get frustrated and just hang up. Alone in the car, and without really thinking, I call my mother. While the phone rings, I think about how every conversation with her feels incomplete. About how we talk around the perimeter of things, but never about the things themselves. What will this call accomplish? Why do I still need my mother? As soon as I hear her voice I start crying, and I hate myself for it because if she’s not going to give me what I need, then why bother to call her, being needy.

  “Well, of course you’re upset, she’s your baby.”

  Huh? I’m not surprised that she offers sympathy, I am just surprised at the “of course.” Growing up, we had four dogs. Not all at once, but over the course of eighteen years. None of them were my mother’s babies; she had two human children and that was quite enough. The “of course” is all I need, and I no longer feel ashamed. Of course I’m upset. Of course I’m feeling lost. Of course I have emotions. She’s my baby. Even my mother can see that.

  When we finish speaking, I call Meredith. It’s hard when talking to my mother not to spill the secret, not to share the added stress of having to attend a wedding, but I keep Meredith’s confidence intact.

  Meredith is wholly supportive. “We’ll change your flights, have you on standby, get you a return flight home right after the ceremony—whatever you need us to do. And, of course, we’ll cover any costs.” Hearing Meredith’s voice makes it easier. “But if you think you can, please come.”

  I pick at some General Tso’s chicken and poke at a steamed dumpling, but I don’t have much of an appetite for anything other than vodka. We are supposed to be at a party thrown by our neighbors in the unit of our duplex above us; I send Jeffrey upstairs to give our regrets. The dull roar of the party is constant, and at times laughter bubbles over, reminding us that life is continuing outside of our anxiety, that seconds are ticking off the clock, marking the end of an old year and the start of a new one.