by Jim Kraus
Rufus licked at his injured leg and whimpered.
“Now I do.”
“Rufus, why did you run out in front of that car?”
“Mike’s car?”
Sometimes, even in moments like this, Rufus could drive me batty.
“Yes, Mike’s car.”
“You were going to make a bad mistake. You said that you would never mate before being married, because God says not to, and you’re not married and I knew I had to stop it. So I did the only thing I could.”
“Get run over by a car? You did that to stop me?”
“It stopped you, didn’t it?”
My eyes filled with tears again. I had grown tired of crying, but these tears felt different.
“You risked death to save me?”
“I guess. That’s what members of the pack do, don’t they? You’re in my pack, aren’t you?”
I placed my hand on his head, as gently as I could.
“I love you, Rufus.”
He did not need to reply.
“The ocean? Really?” I asked.
“If it’s warm.”
I parked right out front of the vet’s office. I hurried around to the passenger side of the car. Just as I scooped the dog up in my arms, I heard him ask, “It is warm at the ocean, isn’t it?”
“It is, Rufus. It never snows at the ocean.”
Dr. Bartles was on call that night.
“Like Bartles and Jaymes,” he said when he entered the examination room. “The wine coolers—remember?”
Everyone under thirty has no idea of who either of those people are, and I only had a vague recollection.
Dr. Bartles gently prodded and probed Rufus. His temperature was normal. “That’s good. Sometimes an internal injury will cause temps to spike.”
Rufus yelped when he touched his front leg.
“This is broken. No doubt about that,” he said. “We’ll X-ray the leg, and the rest of him too. But he looks in good shape. No cuts. No lacerations. Eyes are good. No spinal damage from the looks of it. That’s what kills most of the animals hit by cars—the spine is broken and then that’s that.”
He poked a bit more.
“You have one lucky dog on your hands. Went right under the front wheels, you say?”
“Yes. He crawled out from the side.”
“Well, he’s a bit greasy, but let’s get him X-rayed. You can wait in the lobby. Shouldn’t be that long.”
A sleepy technician came out with the news.
“It’s broken. The right front leg. A clean break. The doc is setting a cast on it now. Everything else checked out fine. That’s okay, right? You do want to keep the dog, right?”
“Of course.”
The technician shrugged. He had the name Tony stitched on his shirt pocket, but he did not look like a Tony.
“What else would I do?” I asked.
Tony waved it off. “Some people hear that it costs $400 to set a leg versus $50 to put a dog down . . . well, they opt for the cheaper choice.”
I could have said that such a dilemma posed a terrible and inhumane choice . . . but I didn’t. I just nodded. What if you didn’t have $400 or what if $400 was all you had to support your family for the next month?
Animals caused tough choices. I guess people did as well.
“The doc will call you when he’s done.”
Rufus stood on the exam table, his right front leg encased in a white cast. His face glowed with relief. The leg hair had been shaved up past the cast. His skin had a pinkish color at the top of the cast.
Dr. Bartles held what I know is called an Elizabethan collar.
“He’ll chew the cast off if we don’t use this,” he said.
Rufus looked at the collar, then at me. We had both seen the movie Up, where a bad dog had to wear a collar like that.
I looked at Rufus. I could read his eyes.
“He won’t chew at it. He promises. I promise. If he does, I’ll bring him right back.”
The doctor did not look assured.
“You won’t chew on the cast, will you, Rufus?” I asked him.
The dog looked up at the vet and offered him the most convincing face I had ever seen.
“Okay. If he does, you bring him back,” the vet replied.
The doctor turned away, then back again.
“I almost forgot. His leg will hurt. I gave him a localized shot while I put the cast on. Do you think a few pain pills might help?”
I looked at Rufus.
“Yes. He would like enough for a few days,” I replied.
“Okay, I’ll give him one now. Help him sleep tonight. Could you hold him and I’ll get the pill down?”
“I don’t have to. Just give him the pill. He’ll swallow it.”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
“No. Hand him the pill.”
The doctor took one pill out of the bottle and held it out to Rufus, who lapped it up and swallowed a second later.
“You have one special dog there, Mrs. Fassler. Most dogs will fight a pill like that.”
“I know. He is special. Very special.”
Late that night, near midnight, I heard Rufus rustle and stir in his crate. I sat and watched him from the comfy chair in the kitchen, with a thick blanket over me, thankful that he had been spared—and that I had been spared. He had to sleep in his crate, since climbing stairs would be out of the question for some time.
I tried to push the me-and-Brian-what-might-have-happened-if thought from my mind. I would think on that later.
I saw Rufus’s eyes as he struggled to stand.
“You have to go outside, don’t you?”
His answer would have been yes. I could see that.
I carefully picked him up and carried him to the front lawn, placing him down on the snow as gently as I could. The mailbox canted backward. The tire tracks and the skid were obliterated by the freshly fallen snow. Snow had continued to fall, in dusts and fits, the wind gone, a quiet blanketing of the area.
“I don’t want to do it here,” Rufus said softly, almost in a whisper, as if he did not want any neighbor to hear him. “I live here.”
“I know. But until your leg heals and the cast comes off, this is where you’ll go. Understood?”
“Okay,” he grumbled.
He slowly walked through the heavy snow when he finished. He managed to get to the small wall that separated the lawn from the driveway and stopped.
I had been watching the snow and did not see him standing there.
“You’re sure the ocean is warm?” he asked again.
“It is. Always warm and it never snows.”
He nodded.
“That’s good,” he said. “The ocean. Where it’s warm. He didn’t say anything about the ocean. But he did say we need to trust him.”
Trust?
“God said that? Trust? In what?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I think he said that. That is a good word, right? Even if I said it?”
“Yes,” I replied. “It is a good word.”
I picked Rufus up from the snow.
Who am I to argue with a dog?
11
I know. I shouldn’t have punched Brian in the throat. I know that physical violence is never the answer. And, yes, I did take his call early the next day—the morning after the accident. His voice, hoarse still, was audible enough. He inquired about Rufus. His rasp—it made me feel good. I know, I shouldn’t have felt that way, but I did. And I forgave him for letting Rufus off his leash. I apologized several times for hitting him. He apologized many times to me. But, a few minutes into the conversation, I knew that I had to tell him that we had no future together. At this point in my life, I think honesty trumps feeling awkward.
He took it well. . . . I guess he took it well.
After all, it would probably be difficult to remain involved with a woman who reacted as I did. And how many men would feel good about getting punched out by a mere slip of a woman? (I may
be more than a mere slip—but you know what I mean.) And I was not still mad. I did forgive him. I did. Holding grudges and anger is a cancer on the soul. I think that’s sort of a famous quote by someone noteworthy. Nor was it an issue of Brian being spectacularly negligent. I’m sure he didn’t see the car or understand the implications of what could—and did—happen. But to react so cavalierly, so indifferently to what could have been a horrible tragedy—well, that I could not abide. How do you simply pick up and move on after the death of someone—even a dog—whom you loved with all your heart? Did he expect me to do that?
At that moment, I knew that I could never “be” with Brian. He might be able to move on from tragedy and loss with nary a second thought. I could not. And what may look like a small fissure to some would always be a chasm, an abyss, to me—always dividing us. It was a gulf that could not be bridged by desire or good intentions.
So I thanked him for all he had done, and for being nice to me. And I told him, in no uncertain terms, that we had no future together.
And, after wrapping up that entanglement to my life, I set about unwrapping and then cutting every other entanglement that tied me to this place and this house and this life.
The neighbor at the end of the cul-de-sac was a Realtor—a very good one if you trusted her signs posted all over town. I called her and told her that I intended to put the house on the market and would appreciate her advice on what to do to make the place more attractive to buyers. I sent an e-mail to all my subscribers to the writer’s website, stating that I would be closing the newsletter and website and I would promptly refund any unused subscription liabilities. (It was not a huge sum—somewhere just over four figures.) I made a list of all the people I would need to call to inform that I planned on moving, all the things I would need to accomplish before a move could take place.
I gave Rufus his pain medication, which I am sure he had begun to associate with his pain relief. He took it gratefully, hobbled over to his crate, scooted around as best he could, laid his head down, and easily shut his eyes.
I knew he would sleep for several hours.
I made a quick trip to a self-storage place near where I had once worked, and bought four large bundles of medium-sized boxes, three bundles of book boxes, and one bundle of larger, lamp-sized boxes. The empty boxes filled the back of my car.
“Moving, you are?” the self-storage person said, very Yoda-like.
“Moving, I am,” I replied and immediately regretted it, since the young man’s expression did not change, indicating he was totally unaware of being in on the joke.
He hesitated a moment.
“Where to?”
I shrugged.
“I have no idea,” I said, feeling at that moment a huge chasm of liberation open up inside of me.
“Really? Most people know. I’m pretty sure most of them know. Don’t they?”
I imagined that most people did know. So did I, I guess, in a very generalized way—a macro-knowledge of my moving.
“Well, someplace near the ocean.”
He nodded, sagely, as much as a clerk in a self-storage facility three days before Christmas can be sage.
“That’s nice. I like the ocean.”
Validation.
I let the phone go to voice mail that morning.
Ava called, asking about the date. Beth called. Brian called again and left a long message saying that he understood and there were no hard feelings and that we could still be friends. Mike called asking about Rufus. That call I picked up in the middle of his taped message.
“He’s okay, Mike,” I said, and explained the doctor’s diagnosis and the cast and how grateful I was that the dog had been spared.
“That makes a lot of us. The whole family worried themselves sick. My kids would have been crushed if Rufus had been really hurt.”
I once again gladly offered Mike absolution.
I tried to be quiet as I assembled boxes, but there is no way to dispense packing tape quietly. The tape squeals and protests at being unrolled. Yet even the adhesive squallings did not wake Rufus. Those pain pills must be pretty potent.
Soon after, I had assembled every box I had purchased—at least the bottoms of them—using three rows of packing tape along the bottom joints. (I tend to over-tape everything.) The pile became unmanageable in the kitchen, so I started tossing them into the dining room and then the formal living room—two areas that I seldom used. I imagined that I would fill up the boxes with all the “important” material from my life. When I was finished with the taping, I switched on the coffeemaker, and made a cup of instant-brewed coffee—strong, with two sugars this time. I tried to unwrap a package of Girl Scout cookies (Trefoil shortbread cookies) silently. Even the slightest crinkle of cellophane would normally get Rufus excited, charging toward me from wherever he had ensconced himself. But he slept on.
Powerful pills, those pain meds.
Maybe I could use them when we traveled to the ocean. Rufus would sleep—a blissful, unworried sleep—and would arrive at our night’s destination in peace.
But then he would be up all night, unless I gave him another pill, and that seemed to put us on the slope of dog drug addiction.
I discarded the plan as quickly as I reviewed the potential downsides.
I ate my four Girl Scout cookies, drank my coffee, then decided that I should call Ava back. She may now have heard about the accident. She may be frantic with worry. Maybe. I looked at the clock. It was only 9:45. I would have sworn it was later.
“Ava,” I said calmly, “I’m leaving.”
She sputtered, not really offering a cogent response.
I launched into my story, tragic and miraculous, marked by my epiphany, an exclamation point, as it were, summing up my life to date, and the necessity of my forward movement to some oceanfront, or near oceanfront, somewhere.
Really, I have gotten paid to write words in succession. People paid me to do that.
So I finished my story (not telling her about Rufus saying that we should move to the ocean where it’s warm) and said that I was now beginning the process of packing up my life.
“And starting over?” she asked.
“No. Not that. I loved what I had. Before I lost everything. So it’s not a negation of that. But it is a new beginning. Or a rebirth. Or . . . well, okay, starting over.”
I heard her inhale. She did that when she was thinking.
“I’ll miss you,” she said, her words calm and matter-of-fact, as if she had been expecting this sort of news all along. “But it will take a while, won’t it? You will wait till the house sells, right? We’ll still have time for lunches and coffee, right?”
I assured her that nothing was going to happen quickly.
“Have you told Bernice?”
“No. I’m going to send a letter. I would e-mail, but I think her computer is still down. She’ll get the letter, be able to process it a bit—then we’ll talk. I mean, it is not like we live close now.”
I heard another inhale.
“I can help you pack, right?”
“Sure, I would love that.”
“It also means that I get everything that you’re leaving behind, right?”
I laughed—the first time in the conversation that either of us laughed.
“Sure. You’re welcome to the detritus of my life. What you don’t want, I give to charity.”
I heard Rufus stir. His eyes were slits. He stared for a moment, then slowly lowered his head again and closed his eyes.
Those were some wonderful pills.
I wonder if they come in human dosages.
I’m sure they do.
My Realtor neighbor came, gave me a checklist of things that I needed to repair, repaint, toss, clean, close, or hide. The list ran two pages long.
“But nowhere near as long as most, sweetie,” she said. “Your house is hospital clean in comparison to most of my clients.” She had emigrated from Israel and called everyone “sweetie.”
&
nbsp; She did not mean it as faint praise. I have been in other people’s homes and while I was cluttered, at times, and only in a few rooms, other people’s clutter made me look obsessive and manic, in terms of cleaning and organization.
I had a roll of contractor’s fifty-five-gallon trash bags—thick, green, huge bags. I discovered them tucked away in Jacob’s basement workshop. Inhabiting many of the dark nooks and corners of the basement were items that no one would want. Broken things with cords. I read somewhere that people find it very difficult to throw away an item—even if badly broken—with an electrical cord on it. I admit to that problem. I found radios, iPod speakers, alarm clocks, irons, waffle irons, mixers, camcorders more than a decade old, VHS tape players that would eat any tape that was inserted, fans, heaters, frying pans, toasters, and lamps—all broken, all never to be repaired, at least by me. There were more, and I felt more and more like a hoarder as I assembled my dusty, broken finds. Those I stuffed into the big green bags, trying to keep the combined weight under forty-five pounds. What does forty-five pounds feel like? That was the limit that our garbage collectors set on any single bag of debris. I didn’t think they carried scales with them in their trucks, but nonetheless, I attempted to stay vigilant to the limit.
Speaking of scales, I found three scales under the bed upstairs. I had forgotten all about them, the three of them unhappily living with a thickness of dust bunnies.
I also stuffed bags full of clothes—my husband’s, my son’s. These I would give to the church’s resale shop. Someone would make use of them. I tried not to think about much at all as I packed them into bags. I did not caress or hold any item to my cheek. It would serve no purpose other than making me very sad.
I would make a clean break, and this was no time to hold up a diminutive t-shirt of my son’s and begin to weep. I had his memories, and they were better and more powerful than any swatch of fabric. I had wept enough over the size and scents of old clothes. No more. Not now.
I’m not sure why it felt easier to do this today when I hadn’t been able to do it for years—packing up the remains of my old life, that is. Perhaps I had to come to that “clean break with the past” time. And now, here it was. Time to move on.