To focus, I think of how dogs are witnesses. How they are present for our most private moments, how they are there when we think of ourselves as alone. They witness our quarrels, our tears, our struggles, our fears, and all of our secret behaviors that we have to hide from our fellow humans. They witness without judgment. There was a book once about a man who tried to teach his dog to speak a human language, to help him solve his wife’s murder. It said that if dogs could tell us all they have seen, it would magically stitch together all the gaps in our lives. I try to witness this moment how a dog would witness it. To take it all in. For the rest of my family, this wedding will be a gap in their lives, and I need to do my best to fill it.
The ceremony is perfect for my sister and her new husband—all business, no flourish. Nothing about the bride as property. No one to give her away, no mention of them being man and wife, no mention of a Christian god that none of us really believe in. They are both attorneys. The law is their church. When the judge unites them he says, “By the power vested in me by the State of California, I recognize you as married.” And just like that, as quickly as it began, the ceremony is over.
I wander to the third floor, with its peripheral balconies, to take some photographs from above. Really, I need a moment to breathe. I want to call the animal hospital, but I don’t. They won’t do what I want them to do, which is to put Lily on the phone. In her drugged-out state, on sedatives and painkillers, she won’t talk much to me anyway. Below, Meredith and Franklin descend the central staircase and I capture a lovely shot of them holding hands. I snap another of Jeffrey leaning on a marble pillar looking relaxed and handsome.
After the wedding, we head back to the Fairmont Hotel and I excuse myself to the lobby bar. The same asshole is there, playing the same piano. I purchase a bottle of Veuve Clicquot from the bartender and get him to give me six glasses. We pop the champagne back in Meredith and Franklin’s room and I toast the newlyweds and Meredith makes a round of phone calls to break the news to my family. They go down like this: everyone is shocked, everyone offers heartfelt congratulations, and after each call she hands the phone to me. And then I get the brunt of it.
“Did you know about this?”
“How long did you know?”
“Did you put her up to this?”
“You didn’t tell me?”
“Why were you invited?”
“Is she pregnant?”
In everyone’s shock, they forget to ask about Lily. I just sip my champagne and roll with it as best I can. But inside I’m wondering why on the day of my sister’s union more people aren’t thinking about me.
My mother is on the phone last. She’s on the verge of tears; I can hear it in her voice. She would have liked to have been here. I think she’s especially hurt that Franklin’s parents were in attendance. She doesn’t see my having been the ambassador for our family as adequate balance. And she’s right. There is no one equal to a mother.
“Meredith looks really happy,” I say into the phone, trying to defuse some of my mother’s sadness. Should I have been more insistent with Meredith?
“I wrote a check for one thousand dollars and put it in the mail,” my mother says, but I’m not sure she’s talking to me.
“Excuse me?”
“For Lily’s surgery. I’m sorry that I don’t have more to contribute.”
Now it’s me on the verge of tears. “You didn’t have to …” I start, but I stop. It’s an incredible gesture and instead of protesting I should just be grateful. “Thank you.” I think it comes out audibly.
After the calls I snap a few more pictures of the newlyweds in front of their enormous window. The top floor has a stunning vista of the city and the bay, and I frame them with Alcatraz far in the distance, just over my sister’s shoulder. This is my silent statement about marriage. Or maybe about my own relationship with Jeffrey.
When are you back?
Afterward, we pile into cabs that race over the city’s famed hills at enormously inappropriate speeds to Howard Street to dine at a restaurant called Town Hall—the perfect bookend with our earlier errand at city hall. Town Hall is housed in a much simpler structure, brick instead of marble, red awnings instead of a dome. The sun has dipped below the sweeping hillsides and the air has turned cold. Inside, the exposed brick and modern chandeliers are warm and welcoming. I’m offered a seat between Jeffrey and Franklin’s mother.
“I’m sorry about the way we’re dressed. I was supposed to pick up our suits from the dry cleaners before we left, but my dog, Lily, had to have emergency surgery. On her spine. We found her partially paralyzed, you see, and this will hopefully allow her to walk again, but it’s too soon to tell if she actually will.”
I have no idea how much English Franklin’s mother speaks or if she’s understanding any of this, so I grab the water glass in front of me and drink until it’s empty. Eventually my sister’s new mother-in-law nods and I take that as an invitation to continue.
“I’m really nervous. Scared, if I’m being honest. I’ll never find another dog like her. She’s so funny. The things she says sometimes, they just crack me up. She’s really good with a joke.” Franklin’s mother blanches, and it’s then that I wonder if she really understands more English than she lets on.
“Anyhow, tomorrow we can bring her home and I worry if I’m up to the task of her care.” I look down and fold the napkin in my lap a few different ways until I can’t stretch the assignment any longer.
Franklin’s mother adds a quiet “woof” and offers me a warm smile. I think she understands my plight.
It’s a funny thing to worry about at a wedding dinner. Being up to the task. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. I’ve never taken these vows before, nor do I know if I ever will. But I have felt them in other ways. I feel this duty with Lily. To stand with her in sickness, until she is able to stand on her own four paws again.
After dinner, Meredith, Franklin, Jeffrey, and I retire to the Top of the Mark, a rooftop bar across California Street from our hotel. At night, the buildings around us twinkle like the night sky; in the distance the Golden Gate Bridge is dappled with tiny, shimmering headlights. Meredith pulls me aside to a quiet corner at the end of the bar.
“Are you happy?”
“For you?” I ask. “Of course!” I look across the room at Franklin, who is telling Jeffrey an animated tale.
“No. Are you happy?”
I’m not sure how to answer her truthfully. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been watching you this weekend.” Meredith takes the cocktail menu from my hand and sets it down on the bar.
“I keep dwelling on this text message. I can’t get it out of my mind.”
“From who?”
“From no one.”
“No one sent you a text message?”
“No one sent Jeffrey a text message.”
Meredith looks at me, frustrated. “This isn’t the punchline to some Family Circus cartoon, is it?”
“I’ll tell you some other time. I have to get through this thing with Lily first.”
“Lily will be fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” Meredith puts a hand on my shoulder, but I don’t say anything in response. “Don’t use Lily as an excuse to ignore your own happiness.”
“I’m not,” I protest.
“Speak up for yourself.”
“I do!”
“No, you don’t. We were raised the same, remember. I know you better than you think I do.”
“Oh, really,” I say with a smirk. “Did you know I was about to do this?” I swiftly kick her in the shin. Payback. I hope no one sees and thinks she just married an abuser.
“Ow! Actually, yes.” Meredith rubs her shin while looking up at me. “You have to communicate your needs to get them met. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Bartender!”
Meredith sneers. “Not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
We bring
champagne to Franklin and Jeffrey, and I offer a final toast. “Wishing you all good things in your life together.” Short. Simple. To the point. I look at Meredith, relaxed in her ivory gown. My sister is all grown up. I’m grateful we did our growing up together.
When we get back to our room, this time it’s me who changes our itinerary and books us two seats on the first morning flight out. There will be no lavish brunch with the newlyweds, only airport coffee and whatever they serve on the plane. If we’re lucky there will be a very quick goodbye before we sneak off to the airport.
I crawl into bed and let the day wash over me. As exhausting as it has been, our San Francisco adventure in many ways has been a small oasis of calm. I think of myself floating on the barge that sails the Tonga Room, swaying to Dan Fogelberg or Sheena Easton or someone who in the parallel universe of the Hurricane Bar is still popular.
I turn out the light.
Darkness.
The hard work of healing begins.
Squeezed
Squeeze,” I say.
“I am squeezing,” Jeffrey replies.
“Squeeze harder.”
“I’m squeezing as hard as I dare.”
“Well, you’re not squeezing her right, then.”
“Do you want to trade jobs? Because it’s easy to just stand there and hold a flashlight.”
“Not the way you keep moving.”
Jeffrey gets annoyed and he lets go. He stands up and hits his head on the outcropped tree branch above him.
“Look out for that branch,” I say, completely unhelpfully. I know this will enrage him, but I feel entitled to say what I want because I’m scared.
I hand Jeffrey the flashlight and crouch down next to Lily, who cowers on the gravel in the harsh puddle of light. I place my hands as the vet instructed, on either side of her under her abdomen, and I squeeze her soft bladder, in and back, in and back. Nothing. The light glints off the staples that run the length of her back. She’s laced up like a football.
“Anything?” Jeffrey asks.
I tip her up and look underneath for any evidence that she has peed. “Nothing.” I run through the steps again. “The doctor said it feels like a water balloon?”
“Yes. Like a water balloon. About the size of a small lemon.”
Lily’s abdomen does feel like a water balloon. Soft and squishy. Expressing her bladder was not something I had steeled myself for on the flight back from San Francisco. I thought I had prepared mentally as well as I could. I drank coffee instead of liquor. I stayed awake instead of sleeping. I made a shopping list for all the things we would need on the back of a napkin: a pen to keep her quarantined to a small area, blankets so she wouldn’t slip on the hardwood floors, toys that would keep her mentally engaged without exciting her physically. Treats—healthy ones, so that she wouldn’t gain weight during the inactivity of recovery. Carrying added pounds would just be additional stress on her spine.
Learning to express a dog’s bladder, however, was not on that list, despite how obvious it seems to me now. The vet who discharged us laid down a weewee pad on the cold metal examining table and showed us just how it was done. She made it seem so effortless, I assumed I had understood the lesson. Turns out I was wrong. We haven’t been able to get her to pee since we left the hospital.
“My poor girl. The indignity of it all.” I hoist Lily in the football carry that was demonstrated for us, supporting her hindquarters, careful to avoid the tree branch above. “Let’s go to bed.” Frustrated, Jeffrey switches off the flashlight. I know this means she may release her bladder in her sleep, in our bed, but we’ll just have to get up and change the sheets. There’s no squeezing her any harder.
Inside, I set her down on a blanket and she stands upright. I’m amazed by this progress, even though she can’t yet walk. She can stand, unsteady though she is, and that in itself is a huge accomplishment. For now, that’s enough. I read the instructions again on Lily’s red prescription bottles and select a Tramadol for pain and a Clavamox to ward off infection and seal them into a pill pocket. She gobbles up the treat.
“Monkey, look at you. You’re standing.”
“My name is Lily.”
“I know it is.” I rest my hand on the top of her head, and her eyes blink heavily. She is only seven, but for the first time she looks old. A strip of bare skin runs down her back where the staples are. She looks sad, disrobed of her mahogany fur.
“What happened to you?”
Lily seems to concentrate on remembering. “I don’t know. I woke up and I couldn’t walk.”
“You scared me.” I cup her head in my hands and she looks like a nun in a wimple.
She licks her chops for any remaining flavor from the pill pocket. “I know you put medicine in those things.”
“I know you know.” Then I add, “The medicine will help you heal.”
Lily considers this. “Can I have my red ball?”
I gently lift her up and study her Frankenstein scar. It’s like she’s now assembled from two different dogs: the puppy who will always want to play, and the senior dog who must come to understand her limits. I make her a promise: “Soon.”
I place Lily gently on a layer of towels in our bed, nestled safely between Jeffrey and me, and the pain pill and the toll of the day knock her out within minutes. Sleep comes fast for me, as well. It’s almost impossible to believe that when I woke up this morning I was in San Francisco.
I dream of the beach where Lily would run off-season when she was a puppy. In my dream she runs and runs, not getting anywhere fast. There are other dogs, bigger dogs, and she wants to run near them but not with them; she’s slightly intimidated by their size and the sand they kick up with their paws. Her whole body is a compression spring that launches her with each step into momentary levitation. Her floppy ears bound upward with each gallop, sometimes floating there in the wind as if someone has put them on pause. When she comes back to me I know they will be flipped backward, pinned to her head and the back of her neck. I spend half my life restoring that dog’s ears to their factory setting.
THE! SAND! IS! SO! SQUISHY! UNDER! MY! PAWS! AND! LOOK! HOW! VAST! THE! OCEAN! WATCH! ME! RUN! WITHOUT! MY! LEA—
Before she can say leash, a wave sweeps in and engulfs her delicate paws in a strand of slick seaweed and a look of terror washes over her face.
SERPENT! SERPENT! SERPENT!
She turns and hightails it to drier sand, closer to the dunes where the last of the tall grass waves. Immediately, her nose picks up the scent of a dead crab. She rips off a leg and runs with it in her mouth off into the distance until she is no more than a speck on the horizon.
In the morning, Jeffrey and I dress quickly and immediately take Lily outside. We set her on the grass and again she is able to stand. She even attempts an excited step or two, looking not unlike Bambi but with shorter legs, before I can calm her to keep her from overexerting herself. “Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.”
Jeffrey looks to intervene but I shrug him off. This is my job. This is my moment. I will not be a coward, I will not be afraid. I will not be someone who can love only so much. I will not be someone who is not whole or fully present when things get tough. I will not let others do the heavy lifting for me. I will not be distracted by a text message. Wringing the piss out of this dog I love—this is my Everest. This is on me.
I tuck Lily’s hind legs under her and settle her into her usual crouch, legs slightly splayed like a frog’s. From behind her I reach under her abdomen and feel for the water balloon, for the soft squish the size of a lemon. When I find it, I take a deep breath, gird myself, and squeeze. Up and to the back.
I don’t know what’s different in the morning light—the fullness of her bladder, her willingness to do her part, my fearlessness brought on by the dawn of a new day, the dream of her running, the desire to see her run again. Whatever it is, when I squeeze up and to the back her tail rises to that familiar forty-five-degree angle that makes it look like a missile about to launch an
d slowly she starts to pee.
“She’s doing it! You’re doing it!” I’m so excited I almost let go. But I don’t. I continue to squeeze.
Lily is startled by the sensation and overwhelmed with relief. Jeffrey pumps his fist and we both break out in smiles.
“At last,” Jeffrey says, relieved.
“Ha-ha!” I am triumphant.
Lily attempts to stand and I realize I can stop squeezing. I gently guide her over the puddle of her making.
“You did it, Bean.” Everything else fades away.
I’m the happiest I have ever been.
Suction
Monday
The octopus sits in his usual perch as Lily and I make our way to the veterinarian’s office. We skirt the construction around LACMA because no one in Los Angeles knows how to merge. Lily sits as she always does when I drive, in my lap with her chin nestled in the crook of my left elbow—the arm I try in vain to steer with as I downshift with my right. She looks up at me, annoyed, whenever we actually have to make a turn. The octopus hasn’t said anything this morning. He doesn’t have to; the echo of his voice rings hauntingly in my brain. He’s getting bigger by the hour.
The waiting room is small and dark and cramped, the brown linoleum floor is peeling in the corners, and any available breathing room is filled with shelves of dietary pet food and supplements with names like Rimadyl and Glycoflex. I’m not sure why I still go to this vet, other than that it’s close to my house. This is a pattern in my life I need to rethink: Jenny the therapist, this dumpy veterinary office. I will say there are new doctors here who are better than the last rotation, who disappeared suddenly after some unflattering Yelp reviews.
I find a seat on an empty bench made of wood and wrought iron. It makes me feel like I’m waiting for a trolley. The shelves tower over us, which would be our doom in an earthquake, but also mercifully provide at least the illusion of privacy. Veterinary offices can be a grab bag of emotions. Cats are always frightened and in crates, their owners equally skittish. There are happy dogs here for simple things like checkups, excited to be out in the world and scenting the lingering promise of a biscuit. There are nervous dogs who hate the vet under any circumstance. There are sick and injured dogs with fretful owners who may bark and lunge and bite. There are owners leaving with no pets, having just received some kind of devastating news. And then there’s us. People with dogs with octopuses on their heads. We, apparently, are the worst of the lot. Since we are too horrific and deformed to look at, others who pass through give us a wide berth.
Lily and the Octopus Page 7