The Dog That Talked to God

by Jim Kraus

  So the house had a mortgage. Rather, I had a mortgage. I have more money than many widows, I am sure. I had some retirement money, maybe $50,000, in a 401(k) account that I couldn’t get to until I turned sixty-two. But I didn’t have all that much cash in savings.

  In the western suburbs of Chicago, where I lived, real estate taxes were high enough to feel onerous, and I wrote a check out for just over $10,000 in real estate taxes last year alone. That would be enough to deplete most of my savings—that’s how little remained.

  All of a sudden, I began to feel afraid again, nervous and anxious—just like I was the days after the accident. At first, I imagined that my royalties and advances from my books would be enough to maintain my lifestyle. But thanks to Marcella’s assessment of my literary future—well, that may be wishful thinking at best. The writer’s newsletter . . . I enjoyed doing it, but in reality, it broke even at best. Unless I could come up with a way of doubling or tripling its circulation, I suppose I would have to consider shutting it down. I hated to see that eventuality on the horizon. Looming on the horizon would be a more apt description.

  So how much money would I need for my date with Brian? Fifty dollars would be the maximum. I would order the chicken, drink water with the meal, eschew dessert, and have more than enough for the rest of the week—provided I didn’t do more than a half dozen runs to Starbucks.

  Rufus sat up in his chair and sort of snorted and barked, as if asking me to go outside. He did this often. I would let him out the back door, he would run down the steps, run around the bottom deck, then run back up the steps. I blamed myself. I always gave him a treat when we came back home. He didn’t have to go out. He simply cadged treats from me.

  So we walked to the back door. I went outside with him. The air was cold, bracing, and it helped clear my head. I heard his nails clicking on the bottom deck, shuffling through the leaves that weren’t raked from this fall. I looked out over my smallish domain and felt an inordinate wave of sadness, or melancholy, wash over me.

  I’ll have to give all this up. There’s no way I can continue to live here and have enough money to live on. If I stay, I’ll have to work. And I don’t know if I can do that.

  Even now, I hesitated. Not that I was reluctant to work—far from it—I simply didn’t want to have to tell my story over and over again. And I would be branded the “widow lady” of the office. I just didn’t think I could do that. Not yet, anyhow.

  Rufus scrambled up the steps. I gave him his treat and I sat in the sunroom, Rufus beside me on the sofa, staring blankly into space, wondering what was to become of me.

  Maybe Rufus might shed some light on my dilemma.

  Maybe I should ask God what I should do.

  I would ask him—but he and I aren’t really speaking these days.

  That night, a full moon rose over a very chilled landscape. It had not snowed in Illinois yet, or at least not in DuPage County, but it was cold enough to do so. I bundled up and checked The Weather Channel before we left. No wind. That meant I could make do with just the hood of my coat and not ruin my hair with a thick wool cap.

  Not that I had much of a coiffure to be ruined.

  Rufus snorted a few times. I should take him to a dog allergist, probably, but after reviewing my finances, odds were good that he would have to learn to live with it.

  “Rufus,” I asked, well aware of the absurdity of it all, “should I think about selling the house?”

  We lived in a big house: four bedrooms—five, really, if you counted my office, which could be legally called a bedroom since it had two closets—and four bathrooms (one in the finished basement, which had its own small kitchen and bedroom.) Two-and-a-half-car garage. Way too much space, of course, for just me and the dog. Big square footage meant higher tax bills and higher utilities and higher insurance.

  By selling, would I be admitting some sort of failure?

  If the house sold for what I thought it might, I would have maybe . . . I don’t know . . . another $50,000 profit? Or does the Realtor take more than 5 percent?

  “I dunno,” Rufus responded. I have heard that tone before. Dispassionate, maybe. Or uncaring.

  I didn’t like it.

  “So God doesn’t care if I need to sell the house?”

  Rufus did not break stride.

  “I don’t know much about houses. You do need shelter, right? We both do.”

  I nodded, then realized that Rufus could not see me nod.

  “But is this a good time to be selling a house? Will I make enough money on it? Doesn’t God claim to provide?”

  Now, my tone grew snippy. I didn’t think Rufus was all that savvy when it came to someone being snarky or mean or insolent. But, then again, maybe he was.

  “Doesn’t God care?” I asked again, this time nearly to mostly impatient. “Isn’t he supposed to care for the sparrows? Isn’t he supposed to care for the least of them? Am I not as important as some stupid, insignificant sparrow?”

  Why should I have to give everything up? I didn’t allow some crash to take the only two people whom I really loved. I certainly did not ordain the accident—for some stupid greater good.

  Rufus stopped in his tracks and stared up at me as if he was trying to gauge my mood, looking at me with those dark, expressionless eyes, trying to decipher what I thought. I think I was being pretty transparent.

  He bent to nip at an itch on his front paw. Then he spoke.

  “I don’t think this is a question for a dog. Or God. It seems wrong. Like you want God to help you make money. You need shelter. And you have shelter, don’t you?”

  I didn’t want to answer him. I didn’t want to talk to him. And I didn’t. And he didn’t get another treat during the walk and only one when we got back.

  I’m not sure if he knew whether I was mad at him or someone else.

  It didn’t really matter.

  I spent all of Saturday morning cleaning the house. When Jacob was still alive, we hired a cleaning lady to come in once a week for half a day. It felt marvelous to come home to a recently cleaned house—mopped floors, dusted blinds, scrubbed bathrooms, gleaming appliances.

  Now, all that cleaning was my responsibility.

  Rufus followed me from room to room as I worked, often lying down in the doorway, his eyebrows moving back and forth, as he watched me work. Most of the house did not get that dirty. My bedroom and bathroom were the only two rooms upstairs that I used, but I felt obligated to vacuum all the other rooms, and dust when the dust became so obvious that I could no longer ignore it.

  Rufus complicated the act of vacuuming. He had determined, early on, that the vacuum cleaner posed a threat as an evil machine, and he did his best to try and protect me from its nefarious ways, barking and lunging at the head of the unit, trying to bite it, or gnaw at it, as I maneuvered it along the carpet. If I stopped and took the head off and approached Rufus with only the silver tube, as the machine inhaled great whooshes of air, he would run off to another room, cowering. But as soon as I put the head back on, he would begin to stalk.

  I could just shush him away with a hard word, and he would stop. If I was in a hurry, or feeling unfriendly, I would do exactly that. Otherwise, I would let him feel heroic and a noble defender of our home and hearth.

  I dusted the empty rooms upstairs.

  John’s bedroom was not empty, exactly. The bed remained there, and the desk, the nightstand, the bookcases. But soon after the accident, I could no longer bear to see all the reminders of his short life, so I went to a self-storage facility, bought two large bundles of medium-sized storage boxes, and packed up virtually everything in his room, and—sweating and crying and cursing—had carried each taped box up the rickety, pull-down stairs into the attic. And there the boxes remained, unseen and untouched. I had remade his bed with a neutral set of sheets, and a neutral bedcover. I left his camp picture on his nightstand.

  Even now, when cleaning, the room nearly empty and devoid of personality, I would sit on the be
d and weep, missing everything about him, missing his smile and his scent and his odd, off-kilter humor.

  Today, I just hurried through the room, vacuuming whatever dust had settled on the floor since the last time, Rufus growling and snorting at the vacuum cleaner, making the house a safer place.

  I spent nearly an hour in the kitchen; cleaning out the refrigerator required most of that time.

  My refrigerator is food purgatory. I make too much of something, or bring home half a sandwich from a lunch out, or deliberately make enough for two meals. What usually happens is that food stays in the cold and dark until I throw it out. I should save a lot of anguish and chilled space by tossing it out in the beginning. I seldom eat leftovers.

  I know, I know, I’m not rich and I should use up all that I have. But I can’t. Something about the congealed nature of old food.

  Rufus would gladly eat it all. I tried that once with three pieces of fish that I had left over from an all-you-can-eat fish fry. (I didn’t get extra to take home, honest. They brought me seven pieces on the first go-round, and I had that many legitimately left over.) Anyhow, I fed one to Rufus that first night, which he ate with great enthusiasm. I repeated it the second night; same Rufus result. The third day told another story. I am sure his canine stomach had not been designed to handle processed fats, and the result caused me to scrub floors for another two days. Rufus looked terribly chagrined at his malady, and slunk into his cage after each episode. Of course, I could not be angry. I had been at fault. And he graciously only got sick on the hardwood floors, rather than the few area rugs on the main floor.

  Today, I tossed out a bunch of white containers and some condiments whose expiration date lay two years prior to the current year, and disposed of the contents of a few Tupperware containers whose surface had become a seventh-grade biology project on mold growth. I tried not to inhale while doing so, thinking that I may have concocted a lethal strain of blue bacterium that the world has yet to experience.

  I’m sure I didn’t, but “squeamish” is my middle name.

  It isn’t, of course, and mold was about the only thing I really find to be disgusting.

  That and spiders.

  Rufus doesn’t like spiders, either. Some bugs he would chase and eat if I didn’t yell at him to leave them alone. Not so much with spiders, though.

  Then I sprayed all the stainless steel appliances with cleanser, wiped, and sprayed again with Windex. My cleaning lady, when she worked here, said the two-step process was the best technique for doing away with all streaking.

  I put the vacuum cleaner away, straightened up the pillows and throws in the family room and the sunroom, and squared up the several piles of magazines that I would one day go through and clip out all the really good recipes, as well as make notes on all the wonderful places to travel to, books to read, and music to experience.

  I knew I was kidding myself, but one’s ability to delude one’s self is infinite.

  You know who said that originally? Sandy Koufax, the star pitcher of the . . . . I don’t remember what team. Out in California. A Jewish ball player. And he said that about pro athletes hanging on too long. He quit at the top of his game. Yes, I know I said I wasn’t a sports fan, and I’m not, but my father and Jacob were both rabid fans. It connected them.

  And now I saved magazines that I would never read, and cleaned a house to impress a man whom I would not invite inside.

  Crazy, isn’t it?

  I’ll be honest here. I am not sure about that. I did not think that I would invite Brian back to the house. I told Ava that. I would imagine that she told Dr. Tom and he may have relayed the information on to Brian for me.

  There would be no “Would you like a cup of coffee?” at the door.

  Not now. Not after this date.

  But a question remained: why am I cleaning like a madwoman? If he’s not going to see the house, who cares if it’s dirty or not?

  Rufus followed me as I put the bucket of cleaning supplies back into the laundry room closet. He also expected a treat, because that is where I kept them and he had begun to expect a treat every time I went into the room.

  I can be a sucker for a sad face.

  I looked at the clock in the kitchen.

  It was 2:15.

  Brian said he would pick me up a little after 5:30. I had told him that would be fine. I had more than three hours to obsess about getting ready.

  I hoped that the early hour was not because he wanted to take advantage of the early bird specials.

  But I had an uneasy feeling that it was.

  The next morning, Ava forced her way into my house.

  That may be a harsh description, but it is what she did. She used her emergency key to let herself in before I woke up. Rufus barked and squealed. I heard that from upstairs. Of course I remained in bed. Or rather, had remained back in bed. I had been up at 5:00, had taken Rufus for a walk, came back, and crawled back into bed. That did not happen often.

  Never, actually.

  And not because I was tired from the night before.

  Ava rattled around in the kitchen, making enough noise to wake me again. She called up after a few minutes.

  “It’s me, the burglar,” she said. “You’re almost out of cream.”

  I figured she could navigate the kitchen fine on her own for a few more minutes and I took a shower—a quick shower—but I wanted to be awake for her interrogation.

  And I knew that I would be getting an interrogation. Thankfully, I had not seen any church ladies at the restaurant, nor did I see anyone who would have been likely to have known Bernice. Most of the ladies there were much more stylish.

  But now I’m being catty.

  The hot water on my skin, pulsing against the bare nape of my neck, felt particularly delicious this morning.

  Perhaps I was regaining a bit of my sensual side . . . hidden for these last few years.

  Who am I kidding? I was never that . . . sensual.

  Was I?

  Jacob and I had a rich life together, if you know what I mean. Jacob could be so gentle and patient, and . . . well, at times, adventuresome. I mean, I am a literate, literary-minded person who likes words. Jacob could use words with devastating effect on me. Whispering in my ear all sorts of intimacies.

  I spun the faucet to cold . . . or less warm, actually.

  I allowed myself to be carried away, and I did not want that to happen.

  I dressed in shorts, despite the cold. Longer shorts, and a baggy, thick sweatshirt from the University of Pittsburgh, my alma mater—not an original sweatshirt; that one would have faded to tatters years and years ago. This was a replacement model. And I am pretty sure it was at least one size up from the one I wore back then. Time does take its toll.

  I brushed my hair back, still wet, put on Jacob’s slippers, and padded downstairs.

  Ava held her coffee cup up as I entered the kitchen, as if saluting a returning hero.

  I did not speak, but busied myself making my first cup of instant-brewed coffee. I had one of those fancy one-cup-at-a-time coffeemakers that was really expensive, with the little tubs of individual coffee that cost ten times as much as my cup of standard grocery store instant. (The fancy machine had been a gift from my agent, when literary fortunes were apparently much better than they are these days.)

  Ava remained remarkably poised and patient, sipping little bated-breath sips as I bustled around. Only when I sat in the chair opposite her did she find her voice.

  “So . . .” she said, drawing out her words to an almost leer, “how was it? Or should I say, how was he?”

  I could have risen to her bait. I knew what she meant, what she implied. And I know that she liked to grab my dainty, prim, golden chain and give it a hard yank now and again, just to see what I would do.

  Nothing, apparently, this morning.

  “I had a nice time,” I replied. “Brian was very nice. And Ki’s was very nice.”

  I watched as Ava’s eyes narrowed, like a
snake looking at a frightened baby bird abandoned on the ground. Only Ava’s tongue wasn’t forked.

  Ava meant well, I think. She did like prodding and poking. Maybe it made her feel better about herself in some unconscious way. Maybe she needed to feel superior.

  “A nice time . . . hmmm.”

  “I did. We had a very pleasant dinner.”

  I figured I could derail her train of thought.

  “When he picked me up so early, I imagined that he meant to get there for the early-bird specials.”

  “And he didn’t?”

  “The waitress offered the early-bird menu, but he said he wanted to look at the ‘real’ one. He said that if I wanted to see what the specials were, I should feel free to.”

  “Really?”

  “You sound surprised,” I replied.

  “I am, sort of. I mean, he’s buddies with Dr. Tom, and Dr. Tom can be the world’s biggest cheapskate at times. Like when he asks for two senior citizen tickets at the movies. I may be older, but I am not that old.”

  “Really? He does that?”

  “He says that what sixteen-year-old ticket seller is going to challenge him on it?”

  Rufus rolled over in his cage, snorting twice, rustling and readjusting himself on his stack of cushions. Every day, at least once, I would have to get down on all fours and square up the stack of mattress layers in his cage, so he wouldn’t have to endure a thick roll of foam rubber under his rib cage. He would grow immediately nervous when I did this, and try and force his way back into the cage—as if he was trying to prevent me from entering his den.

  “And so the date went well? No spinach stuck in your teeth for the entire evening?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  And in order to circumnavigate any more of Ava’s inquiries into the exact nature of the evening, I went ahead and gave her a five-minute synopsis of the date.