A Girl Like You

by vinnie Kinsella

  “He was making a show of her. She was helpless.”

  “Listen, maybe we should talk later.”

  Maybe. Maybe not, I thought.

  I opened a kitchen cabinet to get out a mug for tea, then put my phone inside the cupboard and shut it. I sat down and pulled my knees up to my chest as if folding myself up to stay safe.

  I’d loved the thrill of secrecy, but the stakes got higher with every request he made. The clothespinned woman had been visually shocking, far beyond my sense of eroticism. He had shown his true self, and I didn’t like what I saw.

  What would be next?

  I realized I’d given up a very big part of myself in my time with Daniel. I’d let go of my inherent sense of boundaries and handed over my hard-earned independence. And I had worked too hard over the last ten months to feel whole again.

  A week later, a text came through from Daniel.

  “Hey babe. What’s new and exciting?”

  I debated answering, deleted his message, and threw my cell on my bed.

  But it had to be done. I couldn’t have him texting me at all hours of the day and night with his sexual suggestions, some of which might still captivate me. He could reach me at a vulnerable time and I’d give in to his wishes. Then I thought about the clothespinned woman and I felt resolute again.

  I wasn’t ashamed about what I’d done with Daniel. We were two consenting adults. I wasn’t ashamed. But I was finished. Done.

  I picked up my cell.

  “I don’t want you to contact me anymore,” I texted Daniel. “I don’t want to hear from you again.”

  “Catch you at a bad time?”

  “No, this is a good time. Don’t call or text. I’m serious. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to. I’m done.”

  There was a long pause and I thought he’d gone away from his phone.

  “You’re too vanilla for me anyway. You don’t have it in you to explore new things.”

  He was angry. And he was right. I’d pushed my boundaries as far as they went. His went further into sadism than I’d ever expected. Maybe I was vanilla. But I was strong and true to myself, and in the end, that was better than exploring any sexual fantasies I could dream up.

  I got the box of clothespins out from my top closet shelf, carried them to the kitchen, and dumped them, one by one, into the trash, on top of broken eggshells, granola-bar wrappers, and crumpled paper towels. I thought about taking a pic of the buried clothespins and sending it to Daniel, but that would open myself up to him again, and I couldn’t take that risk. I didn’t even want them in my house, so I tied the bag and carried it out to the trash, letting the lid close with a crash.

  I blocked Daniel, then deleted our entire conversation history, his name in my contact list, his phone number in my call log. There was no way for us to reach each other anymore.

  Thankfully, Ian was out. I texted Eddie.

  “I need you,” I said simply.

  “Be over in twenty.”

  Over tall glasses of wine, I told Eddie everything, right down to the last detail.

  “Are you kidding me about this?” he asked incredulously. “You did clothespins?”

  I nodded my head miserably.

  “Aw chicky,” Eddie said, reaching across the table to hold my hands. “What’s a sweet woman like you doing with a dom with an attitude?”

  “I didn’t know what I was getting into,” I gulped at the wine. “I liked having a secret life, not the same old dull life I had with a stupid job. My best friends are my kids and a little dog…and I liked Daniel. I really liked him.”

  “Geez, you didn’t see any of this coming? Did you try to read his aura?”

  “I didn’t think of it…a lot of it was over the phone.” I finished my wine and reached for the bottle to pour another glass.

  “Yeah, phone sex—that’s a dangerous game to play.”

  “It was fun at first…until it wasn’t.”

  “Well, you tried something new. Good for you. Now we gotta get you back on track. And your life isn’t stupid. I’d be the first one to tell you if it was.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Good thing the April classes are starting soon,” Eddie said decisively. “Whaddya say we venture into the world of coin collecting and tarot card reading?”

  “Anything you want, sweetie. I’m in.”

  “I’d rather see you rolling coins than on these roller-coaster relationships.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  I picked Penny up and we both looked out the kitchen window at the bare trees. It felt like March would never come to an end. If spring was a time for fresh starts, I needed it, badly.

  78

  A week later, it was a stressful as usual day at work. Wes and Paulie were arguing over the name of the grocer whose store had closed in 1975, and whether Sal’s old sump pump would keep his basement dry when the rainy season came along. No mindless topic was off limits.

  My cell vibrated on my desk. It was a call from Maddy, which was strange because she couldn’t use her phone at the doctor’s office, and she couldn’t be at lunch: it was only 10:30 a.m.

  I took my phone into the bathroom.

  “Mom?” Madison sounded frantic, and I sat down hard on the toilet seat.

  “What’s wrong? What is it?”

  “I stopped at your house to throw in some laundry.” Madison was hard to understand, and I realized she was trying to catch her breath.

  “Are you all right?” I felt my own panic rising in my throat.

  “It’s Penny, Mom.”

  “Penny?”

  It had been chilly in the house, so I put a little orange fleece doggie jacket on her. Then I left for work as I always did, telling her I’d be right back and I loved her. She had settled down on the kitchen floor to wait for me.

  “What about Penny? Is she hurt?” I had an immediate image of little Penny with one of her spindly legs in a cast, dragging it around behind her, and felt a tug at my heart.

  “Mom,” Madison sobbed. “She’s gone.”

  “You mean she got out?” I pictured Madison opening the door and Penny, always full of energy, bounding out and racing down the street.

  “Mom, she’s gone. She died.”

  Nothing she said made any sense. I felt a copper taste in the back of my mouth even as my mind rejected what she had said.

  “That can’t be true. She may be hiding somewhere, sleeping.”

  “Mom, I’m looking at her right now. She looks like she’s sleeping, she looks peaceful, but she’s—she’s,” Madison was unable to get the word out. “She’s cold, Mom.”

  My ears began to ring. I tried to stand up, but my knees gave out and I sank to the green linoleum bathroom floor. I felt a scream forming but when it came out, it was a low moan.

  I wiped my sweaty forehead on the sleeve of my sweater. Shivering, I struggled to get off the floor, using the sink to balance myself and open the door. The ringing in my ears was so loud I couldn’t hear my own voice. I somehow managed to open the bathroom door and step out.

  “I need to—to go,” I said to Joe.

  Surprise registered on all the men’s faces.

  “You OK?” Joe said. “You look like you should sit down.”

  “You’re pale as a ghost,” Wes agreed. “Want some water?”

  I made my way to the main door, using my shoulder to push it open. Outside, the wind whipped my hair into my face, blinding me. I used the railing to feel my way down the stairs and went two blocks in the wrong direction of my car. I had to backtrack, taking an agonizing amount of time.

  My screaming began as soon as I shut my car door, a terrible wailing without any words except “no, no, no.” I pounded my palms on the steering wheel. I grabbed handfuls of my hair and pulled hard, not even registering pain. It couldn’t possibly be true. Penny had been by my side during all the rough patches. She had never been sick. She would live to be fifteen.

  I put my car into gear and backed carefully o
ut of the parking lot, signaling to take a right. I drove slowly, scrubbing at my eyes with the back of my hand. It was a four-minute commute. When I got home, Madison was waiting for me on the front porch, looking very much like she had on the first day of kindergarten: lost in disbelief.

  I stumbled up the porch stairs toward the front door.

  Maddy pulled on my arm to stop me.

  “Mom—I don’t know if—I don’t know if you want to see her.”

  But I was already at the window and saw Penny stretched out on her side, little legs crossed gracefully, the way she always slept. The little fleece jacket was still on, covering her small back. Her eyes were open.

  I bolted across the porch and leaned down into the bushes, retching up the fruit salad I’d had just a couple hours before at breakfast. Madison came over and smoothed back my matted hair.

  “I need to see her,” I said at last, wiping my mouth.

  Penny was lying right by the door where she always sat waiting for me. But when I opened the door, she didn’t bound to me with excitement, barking to welcome me home. She didn’t stir.

  I collapsed onto the floor, looking at the back of her neck where the fleece didn’t cover her. I had just gotten her groomed and her fur was perfectly clipped at the back of her neck. She always looked so tiny after getting groomed, fragile almost, so pretty, so much a little princess.

  “She’s a really good girl,” the groomer had said. “She’s such a cuddle bunny, always wanting to be held.”

  I touched her head. She was so cold I imagined she’d caught a chill, some kind of bronchitis and couldn’t breathe—or something—because it made no sense that I had left her two hours before, all wagging and bright-eyed, and now she wasn’t even Penny anymore; she was like a doll, empty and cold.

  “Mom—” Ian came in and knelt down next to me. He bowed his head and started to cry.

  “It’s OK, honey,” I said, sounding like a robot, knowing I was telling him something that wasn’t true. It wasn’t OK. It would never be OK.

  Maddy came out of the bedroom with the fuzzy pink blanket I used to cover Penny in the middle of the night when her nose didn’t feel warm.

  She draped it carefully over Penny, covering her cold nose.

  We stayed on the floor for what felt like a very long time, arms around one another, leaning in for support because alone, we knew we would fall apart.

  “What do we do now?” Ian asked, touching the edge of the blanket.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Madison said shakily.

  I was on auto-pilot. We couldn’t keep Penny where she was on the floor, but it seemed insurmountable to move her. I called Eddie.

  “Jesus,” he said. “I can’t believe it. Not Penny!”

  “It happened and we’re all here and I don’t know what to do next.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty.”

  We waited for Eddie in silence. I couldn’t say if he got there quickly or if it took a while, because it felt like time had stopped. All I wanted was to go back to the morning, when I told Penny I’d be home soon. If I could go back, I would have stayed with her. I would never have left her side. I tried to remember what I’d said to her the night before, certain I’d told her she saved my life, every single day.

  Eddie came rushing in, coming to a halt when he saw us on the floor.

  “Hey,” he said to all of us. He leaned down and felt the blanket draped over Penny. “She’s cold,” he said, which infuriated me.

  “We know that,” I snapped at him.

  “How—how did this happen? Did she choke?” Eddie had tears in his eyes and was clearly having trouble forming words.

  “We don’t—I don’t know—we couldn’t tell.”

  Then it was the four of us sitting in silence next to Penny.

  “We should call the vet,” Eddie said at last, pulling out his cell phone.

  When Eddie reached the vet’s office, they said to bring Penny in. The office was just north of town.

  None of us made a move to touch Penny.

  “I’ll get her,” Eddie said finally.

  “Please don’t touch her,” I shrieked, finding my voice again.

  Eddie pulled back as if he’d touched something hot.

  I eased Penny onto my lap, where she’d sat a thousand times before while I was writing at the dining room table. I’d imagined her being very light, but like a small statue, Penny was immobilized, frozen, and heavier than I remembered. The soul is weightless, I thought, trying hard to distance myself from emotions. Her soul had been gone when I had gotten home. She’d left before I had a chance to say goodbye.

  I held her close in my arms as we all walked to the car, as if to keep her warm.

  “Did she choke on something?” our kindly old veterinarian said after we’d carried her into the office and placed her carefully on an exam table, still wrapped up.

  “We weren’t there. She was alone,” I said.

  “How old?”

  “Six,” Madison answered quickly.

  I held on to the edge of the table to steady myself. “She was just in two months ago for a check-up and everything was fine.”

  “These things happen, and we often don’t know why,” the vet said gently. “But given her breed, it was possibly heart failure. Did she pant a lot? Have difficulty walking distances?”

  I felt my stomach turn over and thought I might be sick.

  “Yes—she did pant, but we always thought she just didn’t like warm weather,” I said shakily.

  “When dogs aren’t getting enough oxygen, they will frequently pant,” the vet said, as if it were consoling information.

  I thought of all the times I’d carried Pen home when she’d grown tired on a walk, but in a million years, it never came into my mind that she had a weak heart. Not Pen, who was always there, my strength, my rock. Not Penny, who had my heart, who carried it with her now and forever.

  I tried to find words to ask the questions I would one day need answered.

  “Was there something we could have done for her?” I said, my ears ringing so loudly I could barely hear my own words.

  “Well, there are heart medicines, but I can’t say they would have significantly prolonged her life. It’s likely she lived as long as she could until her heart failed.”

  My hands were clammy, and when I clasped them hard, digging my nails into my palms, I had no sensation. “Would that be quick?”

  “Oh, yes, split second. Like going to sleep, lights on, lights off, just like that,” he said sympathetically. “She probably didn’t feel a thing.”

  Lights on. Lights off. Lights on. Lights off. Lights off.

  “If you want to know exactly what happened, I can—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “I don’t want her touched.”

  The doctor looked startled.

  “I’m sorry, I—” I began to say.

  “No need to apologize, but do you need to sit down? Or some water?”

  “What do we do now?” I asked, knowing I would puke up even water.

  “If you want her ashes, we will give her a private ceremony,” he said, sounding professional again.

  “I—yes, I want her ashes.”

  “What does that mean, a private ceremony?” Eddie asked, speaking up for the first time in the exam room.

  “It means she will be cremated alone, not with other pets.”

  I closed my eyes and felt my stomach turn over. When I opened them, Eddie was handing me a wet paper towel.

  “Thank you,” I said, wiping my face.

  “Would you like to take the blanket?” the doctor asked.

  “No!” I said too sharply. “I mean, no, I want it to keep her warm. I want it to stay with her.”

  “I’ll give you time to say your goodbyes,” the vet said, leaving us.

  Ian and Maddy moved toward the table together, each of them placing their hands on Pen’s back.

  “We love you, little one,” Madison choked out. “We love you,
Pen-Pen.” They were both crying as they left the room to wait in the car.

  “I can’t do it,” I said desperately to Eddie. “I can’t—I can’t say it. I can’t say goodbye. I can’t do it.”

  “Then don’t,” he said, putting his arms around me. “You don’t have to say it.”

  “I don’t want to leave her,” I said desperately, crying into his shoulder.

  “Sweetie, she’s already gone. This isn’t Penny anymore. It’s just her shell.”

  She’s already gone, I thought, and that was the most terrible of all truths. She was gone. I didn’t know if she had a choice, or if the choice was made for her, I didn’t know anything about how the universe worked—all I knew was that she would never have willingly left me. She had been taken from me. I was enraged. I felt robbed of something most precious to me. I would have given anything I could to have her back, to cuddle her even one last time, to look into her wise, dark eyes and thank her for saving my life every day.

  I felt dizzy when I lifted my head from Eddie’s chest. He steadied me as I leaned down to Penny and pulled the blanket a little away from the back of her neck. I touched her smooth hair where it was neatly groomed in layers like I’d worn my own hair in high school. When her hair grew out, we’d always called her a sheep dog, but now it would never grow out again.

  “You’re my baby,” I whispered. “You will always be my baby girl. I will always love you. You will be in my heart forever.”

  I tucked the blanket carefully back around her the way I used to swaddle the kids when they were infants.

  “I don’t want to leave her,” I said shakily.

  “Honey, Ian and Maddy need you now,” Eddie said. “They need their mother.”

  Being their mother was the only thing that got me out of that room and away from Penny. It was the only thing keeping me breathing. It felt like the only thing left.

  When I got to the car, I saw Ian and Maddy in the back seat. Ian had his arm around his sister and she was crying hard into his chest. Eddie got out of the car to hug me when he dropped us off. The kids stumbled up the stairs of the front porch and went inside.

  “You’re going to be OK—not right now, but soon,” Eddie said, breathing into my hair. “It will get better with time.”