Traps

by MacKenzie Bezos

  The dog is still barking. On either side of them, house upon identical house is lined up impersonally in either direction. Jessica can see that along the hairline of Dana’s close-cropped hair there is moisture, but her face is placid, utterly calm.

  Jessica says, “So, okay. That’s good, then. Um … so what I wanted to ask you is … to the extent possible, at least … just on this trip I’d like to … Well, for starters with the dog, I mean, I’d sort of appreciate it if …” Jessica is astonished and jealous and annoyed all at once that Dana’s face is so unreadable. It seems a feat of strength to betray so little emotion. She presses on, “I mean even if things change, even if photographers show up or are already waiting in the neighbor’s house or yard, I’d prefer to be alone. When I go back there to get the dog. Without you, I mean. Even if it means they get a better shot of me going into the yard.”

  “Certainly. I’ll wait right by my car,” she says, and she stands there unmoving. Her eyes flick to the right and then to the left and then settle on Jessica again.

  “Thank you,” Jessica says, still unsatisfied, as if she had hoped her own motives might be revealed to her by Dana’s reaction. What is she expecting to encounter in her father’s yard? Why is she so desperate to face it so completely alone? But Dana has revealed nothing, and Jessica realizes that the moment has come. There are no tasks that stand between her and what she has come all this way for, whatever that turns out to be.

  She sets off for the corner and Dana lags behind her, just as she asked her to, and as she rounds the bend, there in the otherwise unbroken stretch of perfect houses is her father’s—pink stucco with a beveled bay window like the others, but marked by the oddly foreboding moat of churned brown soil. Frozen half-submerged in its surface, like sacrifices or weapons borne by visitors who have come before them, are the palm sapling in burlap and the skid loader listing to one side. Jessica pauses on the sidewalk. Then she takes a step, and her father’s yard receives her sneaker like the ashy surface of the moon. There is a brown wood gate to the left of the house, a break in the pink stucco wall that separates her from the backyard. It gets larger as she crosses, as do his windows. When she is within grasping distance of the latch something occurs to her. She hesitates and takes a step to the side to peer in through the glass.

  What is she hoping for? Perhaps a bit of magic—the flash of insight that comes with a peek into a crystal ball—but what she sees instead is first her own reflection, so familiar and unwanted it chafes at her. She blocks it out impatiently, cupping her hands on either side of her eyes against the glass, but what this reveals is a space almost like a motel room in its impenetrable anonymity. Beige couch. Brown coffee table. Wing chair. Neither shoddy nor expensive. Even the houseplant by the door a minor mystery. It could be a sign he has tended something in the years he has misused her, but just as easily it could be fake. She cannot tell from this distance, and she will never know.

  In the wake of each of his mercenary stunts, she had been first outraged and then reflective, finally obsessive. Sleepy-haired over coffee, sautéing onions at the stove, lying in bed with a hand clapped over her eyes, she interjected into the easy marital silence a long memory of her eighteen months living with her dad, stirring the details, sifting them like sand for some clue. Akhil was always patient, listening and watching her with his kind eyes, not even speaking, but she knew what this meant. She responded as if he’d spoken. “Really?” she said. “He’d be off your list? You’d stay away from him? No racquetball or coffee date for him? I thought you said I’d be happier if I accepted my family for what they were.”

  “I did, and I meant it,” he said mildly. “But that means you stop trying to make them into something they’re not. You don’t attach your happiness to their changing.”

  “So that means hating him?”

  “No, it means not hating yourself for not being able to change him.”

  “Okay, fine but—” she said, still lost, still none the wiser; how could something that was so clear to him be so opaque for her? “But why can’t I be with him and not try to change him?”

  “Because he’s a grizzly bear of a man. A bumblebee. You don’t hate them for what they are, but you keep your distance.”

  Grace barks again, and Jessica steps away from the window and unlatches the gate to face the scene of her journey’s first trial: an empty swimming pool, like a tomb, surrounded on all sides by more churned brown soil, and at the far side a dirty white dog tethered by a chain to a pallet of paving stones. Nearby in the dirt is a mound of dry kibble spilling from a torn-open twenty-pound bag and an orange bucket that says HOME DEPOT across the side. A green hose snakes over the stucco wall and into the bucket from the next yard. The neighbors’ walls on all sides are buttressed by a row of high trees—dense Leyland cypress, almost a hedge of it—to block the view of this ragged yard, and although there is no way for Jessica to be certain of it, it is the case that there is no one hiding in among the needled branches. She has what she asked for. She is truly alone.

  She lets the gate click shut behind her. Grace doesn’t look toward her or change in her pattern of barking as she approaches. Jessica’s footing in this soil is unreliable, and she has to wheel her arms for balance and the chasm of the dry white pool looms, tipping and rising in her peripheral vision as she draws near, watching the dog bark, and bark, and bark, at her father’s vacant house. Even when Jessica reaches her, stopping five feet from where she has stationed herself, straining at the end of her tether, the dog seems not to see her, and Jessica sees that the whites of her eyes are clouded over like the skins of steamed dumplings. Jessica waves her arms. She claps her hands. Nothing. At last she breaks the ziplock and pulls out a piece of bacon, and as she crushes it in the palm of her hand, the dog finally flinches. She begins to growl.

  There is a quick release on the chain attached to her collar. Grace’s eyes are unfocused on a point in the sky to the right of Jessica, and her black lips are curled back showing an ugly row of teeth and speckled gums. Jessica takes another step forward, just three feet now from the dog at the end of her tether, and she tosses a few bits of the bacon into the dirt at the dog’s feet. Grace stops growling and snuffles for it, biting up a mouthful of soil with each scrap, chewing and swallowing sloppily and then sniffing the air again. Jessica takes another step forward and holds out the last slice, her hand trembling. Grace sniffs the air, and then, so suddenly she has no time to withdraw, lashes out and nips her hard on the hand. Jessica stumbles backward and looks down. Two little puncture marks, the blood welling. She covers it with the cuff of her sweatshirt and looks with astonishment at the old dog who is growling and looking right through her with cloudy eyes.

  “I’m right behind you,” a voice says.

  Jessica turns. There in the dark churned soil, a heavy pack on her back, is Dana.

  She says, “Do you know if she’s current on her shots?”

  Jessica looks down at the puncture marks. The skin around them is beginning to swell and darken. She shakes her head. “I think I surprised her. She seems deaf and blind now.”

  “Were you trying to feed her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. A reason to bite besides rabidity, I mean. Rabies is really rare around here anyway, but it’s worth considering.”

  Dana crouches in the dirt and opens her giant backpack and finds it full of things Jessica needs. She takes out a half-liter bottle of spring water and what seems to be a white matchbook, which she thumbs open to reveal the kind of tiny sewing kit they give away at hotels. She takes out a needle and punctures the top of the bottle.

  The dog is still growling.

  “What are you doing?” Jessica says.

  “I’d like to irrigate it quickly. To reduce the chance of infection.”

  Jessica pushes up her sweatshirt sleeve and gives Dana her hand. Dana grips her fingers gently as she squeezes the bottle, projecting a fine jet of water at the bite marks. She holds their joined hands low to k
eep the splash from spraying them in the face, and Jessica steals a glance at Dana’s eyes and mouth, which have that same inscrutable look she wore when Jessica told her she wanted to approach the dog without protection, and Jessica knows that Dana is thinking something about what has occurred, she does have an opinion, and even so she is washing Jessica’s hand. She looks back down at them where they are joined together.

  When the bottle is empty Dana sets it back in her backpack and swabs Jessica’s hand with a clean piece of gauze.

  “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” she says.

  “No,” Jessica says. “I mean—wait.” Her hand is throbbing a bit, and it is puffy and blue, and Dana is inches from her, holding it, seeing it tremble and swell. Although at home she might have received all the help she needed through the filter of Dana’s black-and-white quarter-screen views, here now in her father’s yard there is no choice but to expose herself fully. The object of her dread has taken shape. This is what she was trying to avoid by making Dana wait on the curb.

  “I mean, I’m not sure I’m ready. To visit my dad. I might want to wait a bit. Not for anything specific, even, I’m sorry, but I can’t even tell you how long it might be.”

  “To the Emergency Room, I meant.” She points to Jessica’s hand. “You should get that examined. Tested for nerve damage. Evaluated for rabies prophylaxis.”

  Jessica feels lightheaded. Something else is bubbling up inside her. Another layer of embarrassing secret longing revealing itself to her. Something more she’ll have to share.

  Dana is sealing the used gauze in a clean ziplock. She tucks it into her pack.

  Jessica says, “But what about Grace?”

  “She’s tied up pretty well.”

  “But Animal Control is coming.”

  “I doubt anyone else will come back here and get hurt before they can get here.”

  “No—” Jessica says. The dog barks again, higher and sharper. Jessica’s uninjured hand floats trembling to her forehead. She says, “I’m worried they won’t try to find a home for her.”

  Dana stands. “Probably not. Not with a bite history.”

  “I’m worried they’ll just put her down.”

  “They use pentobarbital. It’s an anesthetic, so it puts them to sleep before it kills them. It’s totally painless.”

  “But I want to take her.”

  Dana switches gears seamlessly. “Certainly. I’m pretty sure they allow owners to observe when they do it, and I’d be happy to discuss that with them for you, but it would be safer to have them transport her and then meet them there.”

  “No, I mean—” Jessica has no choice but to say it. “I mean I want to take her home with me. I want to try to keep her.”

  Dana blinks, and Jessica sees that finally she has done it. She has done exactly what she feared. She has given Dana a full peek into her deep well of irrational, emotional, tortured, contradictory, past- and future-bound secret needs. And Dana is shocked. It is the longest Jessica has seen her pause for anything. She begins to believe Dana is stuck; that she has finally frozen her by giving her a set of irrational ends with unimaginable means—a Sophie’s choice of her two prime directives, assist and protect. Even for Jessica they are contradictory—Would she bring this angry dog home to her daughters? What is it that she wants?—but there it is. She knows only that she does not want to leave the dog behind, and she has let Dana see this. She has shown her this bit of insanity. Perhaps Dana will stand here in her father’s unfinished yard forever; perhaps her head will explode.

  But suddenly Dana nods and says, “I can help you with that,” and takes off at a jog across the spongy yard, holding her cell phone up to her ear.

  Jessica cannot imagine what she will do. She has left her backpack behind, and Jessica eyes it now lying in the dirt. Its top is open, and inside it Jessica can see a roll of duct tape, a set of tiny screwdrivers, the tops of half a dozen ziplock bags—so simple; so capable; Jessica envies her her bag of separately bagged tools. Her hand is throbbing a bit under the cuff of her sweatshirt, and she feels hot, but the feeling is not unfamiliar to her. She thinks it could be the bite, but just as easily it could be shame. Over expecting the dog to greet her. Over having a father who leaves a dog to rely on the charity and self-preservation instincts of peace- and sleep-starved neighbors. Over getting caught injured by her own needs in her father’s yard. It has somehow also to do with being famous, as if instead of a professional accident this too were a choice, and a laughably arrogant and shortsighted one, given how uncomfortable it has made her.

  Grace lies down suddenly in the dirt. The hair on her muzzle is a different white, almost gray, and her heavy breath troubles the dry layer of soil, scattering it, setting it rolling. Jessica can hear a car door chuck open and shut, and Dana returns, carrying—what on earth?—a rubber-backed carpet mat from the floor of her Suburban.

  She reaches into her backpack and withdraws a roll of duct tape. She wraps the mat around her left arm. She says, “Can you hold this in place a second?”

  Jessica is astonished by how relieved she feels to be given such a simple instruction, to have something so physical and uncomplicated to do. She pinches it shut with her left hand while Dana tears off a strip of duct tape. They make an awkward job of it, both of them one-handed, but they manage to tape the mat tight around Dana’s arm.

  Dana reaches into her backpack again and takes out a ziplock bag of neon green zip ties—extra large, for baling bundles of cable or pipe. “Do you still have some mobility in your right hand? Does it feel okay when you open and close it?”

  Jessica clamps her fingers open and closed. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Here’s what I want you to do. I’m going to feed her my left arm, and when she bites down, I’m going to grab her muzzle with my other hand. When I tell you I have full control of her mouth, I’m going to ask you to step in with the cable ties.”

  She hands the bag to Jessica and takes a step forward. Grace stays where she lies, and for a moment it seems Dana might be able to grab her muzzle with a bare hand before the dog even notices her, but when she draws close enough to reach out, Grace springs to her feet. Dana thrusts out the wrapped arm, and Grace strikes it with her teeth, bouncing once before sinking them into the car mat so hard it buckles. Dana is quick, pinning her muzzle with her free hand and then wrenching her padded arm to get a second hand free and encircle the snout completely. Grace thrashes and Dana straddles her hindquarters and sits on her, bringing her down hard in the dirt. Her turds lie all around them. The dog’s breath is loud and wet through her nose. She growls once between Dana’s tight-closed hands.

  “Ready?” Dana says.

  Jessica winces.

  Dana says, “Put one of those zip ties right between my two hands.”

  “But how will she drink?”

  Grace scrabbles her paws under Dana’s weight, straining to stand, but she doesn’t get very far. “Easy, girl,” Dana says. To Jessica she says, “I called Velasquez and asked him to meet me at the hospital with a basket muzzle, and then we’ll clip off the ties. They can drink through a basket muzzle.”

  Jessica is still wincing. “Won’t it be hard not to cut her?”

  “Once we’ve got the basket on, I can reach through the holes and peel her lips back easily. You’ll see.”

  “Okay,” Jessica says. She holds a cable tie limply between her two hands. The blood on her hand is smeared, just tinting the puffy wound pink. “Okay.” She steps forward and fits it around the dog’s snout, slipping the tip through the eye and then tightening it with a slow, heartbreaking series of clicks.

  “Tighter,” Dana says.

  “But how will you cut it then?”

  “I can peel her lips back. It will be easy, I promise. But if you don’t do it tighter, she’ll push it right off with her paws.”

  Jessica pulls it tighter.

  Dana removes one of her hands. “Let’s do a few more.”

  Jessica winces as she tightens each
one. She has to do four before Dana finally lets go of the snout. Right away the dog buries her nose in the soil and scrapes at the ties with her paws, just as Dana said she would, puffing loudly. The two women stand watching, Dana with her hands on her hips and Jessica covering her wounded hand with her sleeve. When it becomes clear she cannot remove them, Grace lies down and whimpers. Jessica’s lip trembles, and she bites it to hold back tears. She has always been a sensitive woman, prone to unseemly swells of feeling and tearful sentimentality, and while it has made her a good character actress, Jessica knows, it has also made her quite easy for her father to con. The lip biting doesn’t help though. It rarely does. The tears fall and Dana sees them. Jessica begins to cry a little harder; she can’t help it. There are more tears, and there is snot she wipes with an ugly sound, and Dana can see and hear all of it standing there beside her, and still nothing changes in the yard.

  Then Dana walks past her, past the dog, to the pallet of pavers where the dog’s chain is tethered, and, like a character from mythology, Dana lifts a stone to free it. She drags the chain behind her and comes forward to take the dog by her collar and lead her. When Grace tries to stand she struggles a bit, making clear her age and the pain in her joints, but she does not pull away from Dana at all, or thrash. She follows meekly, with her head bowed now, and so does Jessica, staring up at her father’s house behind Dana and the dog.

  When she nears the gate Dana stops short. “Wait here. I’ll go out ahead to check the area and get her secured in the car.”