The Exact Same Moon

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  I’m “TV Girl.” One of Pat’s friends put it that way, she said, “Can you call that TV Girl for me?” And see, I don’t want to be TV Girl. It’s bad enough that I’m the one who brought the gift of Dish Network to Scenery Hill. This is not the reputation I had hoped for.

  “Well, did you tell Pat I’d stop over later?” I say to Alex.

  “Yep—and then George got on the phone and wanted to know if I saw Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? last night.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “I know.”

  “What have we done to George?”

  “I know.”

  “He’s turning into a couch potato!” Pretty soon he won’t have any stories to tell. “I feel like I’ve brought a disease to Scenery Hill. I’ve ruined the place with TV!”

  “I don’t think it’s that bad.”

  “Well, I feel bad,” I say, bending over and tapping Skippy’s front hoof. He surrenders it quickly, lifting it into my awaiting hand. “But Pat is not, I want you to know, stuck on the Food Network.”

  “No?”

  “No, she just keeps setting up her Favorites menu wrong, to where all she puts on it is the Food Network.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll set her straight.”

  “Yeah.” I’m carving the mud out of Skippy’s hoof, careful not to disturb the fleshy “frog” area. Who knew such big animals required such tender care? It makes you wonder how they did in the wild. Hmm.

  “You nervous about tomorrow?” Alex asks.

  “I was just talking to Skippy here about that,” I say.

  “Oh?”

  “Skippy does not, for his part, want me to be a mother of five.”

  “Well, Skippy usually gets what he wants.”

  “I do want to be pregnant, though.”

  Alex looks at me. He’s standing here picking out burrs from Maggie’s tail. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you actually say that out loud.”

  “I think it’s the first time I ever did.”

  “Well, good for you.”

  “Well, I don’t feel pregnant.”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to feel anything yet.”

  “I think I should feel something. Maybe a craving for pickles. Or ice cream with anchovies.”

  “I think that only happens on TV,” he says, as if TV Girl could possibly need any pointers. I’m finished with Skippy’s hooves, so now I’m giving his rump a good scratch. His sweetest spot of all. His reward. He’d be drooling now, if mules drooled.

  “I was wondering,” Alex says. “Do you think we should have told that social worker you might be pregnant?”

  “There was really nothing to tell,” I say. “If the test is positive, I’ll call and tell her then.”

  “It probably won’t change anything.”

  “Well, if there’s four—”

  “There’s not going to be four,” he says.

  “No.”

  “And I’m sure plenty of people get pregnant while doing adoption paperwork,” he says. “I’m sure it happens all the time.”

  “I suppose. But probably a lot of people then stall the adoption, which we’re not doing.”

  “No.”

  “Anna,” I say.

  “Anna,” he says.

  It’s become a kind of password. A way of showing our commitment to bringing this baby home, no matter what happens.

  Even so, I can’t say I’d advise pursuing adoption and pregnancy at the same time. This is not a frenzy I would recommend to anyone. Right after we did the embryo transfer, I had to rush home and start organizing closets. The social worker was due for the first of our three home-study visits, and I was determined to have a clean house.

  The morning of the visit, I cooked applesauce, I chopped up apples and added sugar and cinnamon in an attempt to fill the kitchen with the smell of Home. Then I worried that the smell might not make it all the way back to the family room, where we were going to sit for our little chat, so I went down to the basement and got a fan. I was plugging in the fan in the kitchen, aiming it at the back of the house, when Alex came in and said, “What in the world are you doing?” And I explained about the smell, about the reach, and he told me to sit down and he unplugged the fan and he rolled up the cord and he took the fan back downstairs.

  I was nervous! I’d never been visited by a social worker before. I’d never had to put my domestic self out for review. It is not my most developed self. My inner Martha Stewart is not what you’d call a fully actualized identity.

  And I had the cosmic complexity of four embryos inside me to worry about.

  And it was raining.

  And so the social worker pulled up in her white car, and that white car was covered in mud from our driveway, and I sat there looking out the window, filled with mud regret like gravy on top of my embryo regret, and I watched her walk up the walk through the rain, watched her feet dance around the puddles. She had short hair and a bright blue coat and friendly shoulders, and the moment she got in the house I began my apologies. For the rain. For the gray sky. For the ruts on Wilson Road. For the way the kitchen is not yet renovated. For the lightbulb that is out on the porch. For the way the cat sleeps on the satellite dish receiver despite the fact that I have provided him with a perfectly good cat bed.

  “You seem nervous,” she said. “Please don’t be. This is not an investigation. This is a … warm-and-fuzzy. You know? I’m just here to help you bring your daughter home.”

  And right then and there I calmed down.

  “Anna,” I said. “We’re going to name her Anna.”

  “Let’s sit down and talk about Anna, shall we?” she said.

  And everything, all the worry and regret and anxiety, it all went away in an instant, if only for an afternoon. Anna. Anna has been my air. Anna has been my rock. The social worker stayed for a few hours, asking us questions about everything from our childhoods to our views on parenting. Afterward Alex said I did great, and I told him he did great, too. Well, we passed.

  Back here in the barn, as we begin to put away our mule- and horse-grooming stuff, I tell Alex that I’m taking Sparky to the Humane Society tomorrow.

  “Oh?”

  “The one up in Washington,” I say. “I called. It’s a no-kill shelter. They said they’d take him. He’ll have a much better chance of finding a home from there.”

  “Oh,” Alex says, looking off into the woods, where the beagle’s odd bark is still filling the valley. He seems almost disappointed. But I could very well be projecting that.

  A-roo! A-roo! A-roo!

  The squeaking brakes of a runaway train. Definitely.

  It’s Friday. They said they’d call with the results of the pregnancy test sometime after three o’clock.

  It’s noon now. Three o’clock. Then it will be official.

  In the meantime I figured I’d get the unofficial results. On the box it says this home pregnancy test is ninety-nine percent accurate, so I’m giving it a try, I’m going for the sneak preview, I’m peeing on a stick, I’m peeing for five seconds on the Wide Absorbent Tip.

  Blue line means no, blue line plus pink line means yes. In three minutes. The directions say wait three minutes.

  I go into the other room to put on the TV, because three minutes is a long time to wait, and you’ll see a pink line in anything if you look hard enough at it.

  On TV a man is cooking eggs. That’s funny. That’s funny for a number of reasons. First of all, how come my TV is on the Food Network? I never watch the Food Network. It’s Pat’s favorite channel. Could her remote somehow be in cahoots with my receiver? No. For heaven’s sake. Come on, TV Girl, don’t get paranoid.

  But—eggs? Oh, for heaven’s sake. He’s whipping up an omelet. Poor eggs. Poor chickens. All those poor chickens. I am glad I’m not a chicken. Eggs. This is my year of eggs.

  Has it been three minutes? Probably. But maybe not. Let’s just sit here patiently and see what he’s going to do with these sautéed mushroom
s.

  Duh.

  He’s going to throw them in the eggs.

  I don’t really know why the Food Network is so popular. Seems like a lot of predictable story lines to me. Then again, maybe it’s not a very popular channel. Maybe it’s just Pat. And she has George with all those stories to entertain her. Or she did. I’ve ruined George. He’s probably discovered Wheel of Fortune by now.

  My brain is kind of idling in neutral here. Is it three minutes? I’m sure it’s three minutes. What-ever. Well, I have to go look. I’ve given my ovaries one good fighting chance. I’ve given God all the help I could muster. Maybe too much help.

  But I want the pink line to be there. I want it just like all those people in the waiting room at the fertility clinic wanted it, the waiting room with the big fish tank with all those beautiful, bored fish.

  So here we go.

  Okay.

  Um …

  The pink line isn’t there. But the blue line isn’t either. What the hell does that mean? Blue line in square window means no, blue line plus pink line in round window means yes. But what about no lines in no windows?

  Blank. Just … blank. That’s all I’m left with.

  I can’t believe this.

  I go back to the Food Network. I plop myself on the couch and watch the man drop parsley sprigs on his omelet. What a fine omelet. Yes, indeed.

  I could run out and get another home pregnancy test. Maybe that one was defective? Maybe the Wide Absorbent Tip didn’t absorb? Well, never mind. The clinic is going to call me after three. I can wait until three. Three hours. No big deal.

  I have work to do. I have a lot of adoption paperwork to do. I have bills to pay. I have an awful lot to do. I have to take Sparky to the Humane Society. Is he even around? I look outside. Oh, that is so cute. He’s curled up with Wilma on the porch. He’s got his beagle head resting on Wilma’s substantial hip. That is so cute. I go out to the porch.

  “Hey, Spark,” I say. “Maybe I should give you a bath before you go.”

  He looks at me. He looks at me with his droopy eyes as if to say, “Well, that’s profoundly stupid.” And “You don’t think I’m going to get pretty stinked up pretty fast at the pound?”

  Yeah, but. “If you start out smelling clean and looking good, you’ll have a better chance,” I say. Oh, he’ll make someone a fine pet. I wonder if I have to disclose the fact that he’s not house-trained.

  “Come on, Spark. Let’s get you all cleaned up, okay?”

  I lead him to the basement and lift him, ugh, into the laundry tub. God, for a little beagle he weighs a ton. “Looks can be deceiving, Spark. You are one densely muscled canine.”

  I wonder if this dog has ever had a bath. He doesn’t seem to mind the water. He’s got his tongue out, trying to lap it up as it pours out of the faucet.

  “Pee-you!” I’m saying. “You stink, Spark. Whew! Just what is it that you roll around in out there in those woods?”

  I hope this shampoo is strong enough to de-stink a dog that stinks this bad. I’ll bet his coat will come up shiny, though. I’m scrubbing. I’m getting a good lather here. Sparky has his eyes closed, he’s limp as a water balloon here in this tub, totally surrendering to the beauty treatment. “Good for you, boy. Good for you.”

  What a sweet dog. You can learn a lot from a dog like this. This is one serene dog. This is a dog that has surrendered.

  I wonder why surrender is so difficult. I wonder why we have to yank and pull and push at life to behave our way. Maybe we can’t help it. Maybe it’s the essence of our human-ness. It’s the little bit of God in all of us.

  I’m standing here fighting it. I’m standing here fighting my own human-ness.

  Well, I suppose surrender isn’t surrender if it’s a fight.

  This is so messed up.

  It’s better to be dumb. It’s better to be a dumb dog limp as a water balloon in a laundry tub. It’s a more honest life.

  I’ve rinsed Sparky about six times here, and I guess this is as good as he’s going to get. He’ll smell better once he’s dry, I’m sure. Wet-dog smell is not good under the best of circumstances. “Pee-you!” I’ve got him out of the tub, on the floor, and I’m trying to get as much of this water out of him as possible because I know as soon as I let go, he’s gonna do a dog shake.

  “Okay, boy,” I say. “Feel better?” I take the towel away. He looks around, moves one step forward and then … wap, wap, wap, wap! His long ears fly back and forth as he shakes, flying like he’s some kind of doggy helicopter readying for takeoff.

  When he stops, he stands here with his shoulders hunched up and his tail between his legs and an expression that says, “What in God’s name just happened to me?” or maybe “Where are all those good smells I collected?”

  “Down the drain, Sparky,” I say. “A lot of you just went down the drain. But trust me on this one, okay? It’s better. It’s better.”

  It’s cold out so I’m not about to put him back on the porch, plus I don’t want to risk him rolling in more stinky stuff, so I find Marley’s old dog crate. I bring it upstairs to my office, throw a blanket in. “Here you go, boy,” I say. “You stay here.” He enters the crate with little fuss. He curls up on the blanket. He seems to like it just fine.

  Even though they said “after three,” I was sort of expecting the phone to ring at three o’clock on the dot. Which it did not. It’s now four o’clock. This is ridiculous. How long does it take to read a damn pregnancy test? I get out my three-ring binder, look up the number, and call.

  I am put on hold.

  I am on hold for several minutes.

  “Well, we have nothing here,” the nurse says when she finally gets back on the phone. “The lab was supposed to fax us, but it looks like they didn’t.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Well, I have no idea,” she says. “Why don’t you call them and ask?”

  Jeez.

  She gives me the number. I dial. I get a recording saying the lab is out to lunch. At four o’clock? I call the clinic back.

  “Oh, they must be closed for the day,” she says. “I guess we won’t know till Monday then. They’re not there on weekends.”

  Hang on a second. Everyone just hang the hell on. I tell the woman. I tell her, woman-to-woman, I say, Look, I really need to know.

  She gives me another phone number for the lab.

  So I call that number. A woman answers. I let out a big sigh. I ask her if she has my test results. I can hear her rustling through papers. “Oh, here you are,” she says. “Yes, this is you.”

  I ask her to please tell me what the results say.

  “Oh, I can’t do that,” she says. “It has to go to the doctor.”

  I am now sweating. I am actually sweating.

  “Fax it,” I say. “Fax it to the clinic, please.”

  “We already did,” she says. “I don’t know why they’re saying they don’t have it.”

  “Fax it again,” I say. “Please fax it again.”

  I call the clinic back. “They will fax it again,” I say. “Please call me with the results as soon as you get them, okay? Could you do that for me? Could you please?”

  “There is something coming through right now,” she says. “There is a fax coming through right now.”

  “Oh.”

  “This is you,” she says. “Yes, I think this is you.”

  “Oh.”

  “And it’s …”

  “Yes?”

  “No,” she says. “It’s—well, it’s, I mean that’s a very low number. Very low.”

  “Well—maybe I just need to stay on the progesterone for a few more days,” I say meekly.

  “No,” she says. “If the number is this low by day fourteen, I’m afraid it’s no. Definitely no.”

  I hang up.

  My stomach is big and hollow and low. I sit down.

  I look at Sparky. He’s sound asleep. In fact, he’s snoring.

  “It’s no,” I say to him. “The a
nswer is no.”

  I call Alex. I tell him it’s no.

  “No, as in zero?” he says.

  “Zero,” I say.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “At least it’s not four. I’ve been saying for days now that zero is better than four.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s okay. I’m okay. Really. It’s no big deal.” I tell him I have to go.

  “I’m coming home,” he says. “I’ll be home in about an hour.”

  “Good, then.”

  “Would you like to go out to dinner?”

  “We’ll see. I’m going to go take Sparky to the pound now. I could use the drive.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I don’t think—”

  “I gave him a bath,” I say. “He really looks great.”

  “I don’t think you should take him today—”

  “You think I should put a red bow on him or something?”

  “Honey, I really don’t think—”

  “I’m not putting that dirty collar back on, if that’s what you’re suggesting. I gotta go. Hurry home, okay?”

  “All right.”

  “Bye-bye. I love you.”

  I put a red bow on Sparky. Oh, he looks divine! He looks like he’s going to a red tie event! You know, now that he’s all cleaned up, he looks a lot younger. I don’t think he’s nearly as old as we thought he was.

  He rides in the front seat, beside me. He’s a remarkably calm car dog. He really does not seem to mind much in life.

  “Sparky, I think I am going to have to disclose the information about your not being house-trained,” I’m saying as we head together down Route 40. “Because if your new owners don’t know, and then you pee on their carpet, it won’t go well for you, you know. It just won’t.”