“Does anyone have something they’d like to share?” Sandra said. “Remember, you don’t have to speak if you aren’t able to.”
A middle-aged man across the circle from me spoke up. “My dog Louie got out of the house and disappeared. He hadn’t been acting like himself for the days before, but he’d never run away before. He just never came back. I didn’t know what to tell my kids. I didn’t know if Louie had passed away that night.”
The man began to sob. “I didn’t know if he was out there alone, trying to get back home.”
He took a moment to regain his composure. “We put up posters all over town with his picture. We put together a reward, even. But it’s been a month now. I don’t think Louie’s coming home.”
I cried openly then, lowering my head, trying hard not to sob. Sandra passed around a box of Kleenex.
“We feel your pain,” Sandra said gently.
I swore after all the crying I’d done over the past year, I would start carrying a handkerchief. Maybe something embroidered with my initials. With lace on the bottom.
“My cat Paisley went out one night and didn’t come back like she always did in the morning,” an older woman said, clinging to the handle of her straw pocketbook. “I left food out for her, but I had to go volunteer that morning at the food pantry. When I came home that afternoon—it was just a few hours later—Paisley was at the back door, already…already passed away. She had tried to come home to me to say goodbye, but she was too weak to make it up the back steps. She was all curled up in a ball, looking more like a doll, or something else, not my Paisley anymore.”
I closed my eyes, feeling her pain. We were all connected by grief.
“I watched my little pug Gracie get hit by a motorcycle,” said a man wearing a fly-fishing baseball cap. “Middle of the day; the douchebag never even stopped to see what he ran over. My little girl landed on the curb and was gone before I even got to her.”
“Can we talk about the stupid things people say after we lose our dogs and cats?” the man with the baseball cap asked. “Like, ‘Time to get a new one to replace it.’”
“Or ‘Someone needed a new pet in heaven,’” spoke up a woman wearing a long gauze skirt. “Or ‘It was just their time.’”
It was quiet in the room for a moment. I looked at the pet posters on the wall.
A young woman smoothed her hair with shaky hands before she spoke. “I got home and found my black lab Toddy lying with his sister’s body. He refused to move away. He growled at us when we tried to touch her. My husband had to pry him off her. We cried, all three of us, all night long.”
“Animals can sense even before we can that a member of their pack is ill,” Sandra said. “They frequently sit and wait with them to bear witness as they pass away.”
“I’m not sorry her brother stayed with her, because I never wanted her to die alone,” the young woman said. “But now Toddy is mourning right along with us, and we want him to feel better.”
“Are his sister’s things still around—her toys, blankets, dog bed?” Sandra asked. “It might be easier on Toddy if you put those things away for now, because they all smell like his sister, and he may be still waiting for her to come back home.”
“I kept my dog’s ashes in the car for a year, because he always loved going for a ride,” said a woman who had been silent until now. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get another dog.”
“You may need to wait years before you can love another pet, and welcome it into your home,” Sandra said. “Remember, every pet is unique; you will never replace your lost pet with an identical new one.”
We all nodded in agreement.
“I have the ashes of many pets I’ve had during my life,” Sandra said. “I’ve told my kids when I die, mix our ashes all together and scatter us in the ocean.”
The young couple holding hands, both of them openly crying, said they started their cat Sassy on chemo after finding a lump on her belly. She was from a feral litter. Their mail carrier had seen a hawk swoop down and take one of the kittens. But their kitten had been rescued.
“Feral cats have shorter lives,” Sandra said. “You gave Sassy the best possible life she could ever wish for. She would never have had a family on the streets.”
The hour-long meeting ended after Sandra invited all of us to the next meeting two weeks later. I gathered up my coat and walked out with some of the others.
“See you next time?” the woman who’d had the feral cat asked me.
“See you then,” I answered.
I started the engine in my car and put on my seatbelt but left it in park. I watched through the window as Sandra finished stacking the chairs in a utility closet and turned out the lights in the rec room.
Lights on. Lights off. Lights off.
“I miss you,” I said out loud, quietly at first but then my voice swelled into a wail. “I MISS YOU!” I screamed at the top of my lungs over and over, tears running down my face until my voice became a whimper.
“I miss my girl,” I whispered into the night.
83
One week later, Eddie, the kids and I picked up a small paper bag with a handle tied with raffia. It wasn’t at all heavy. We carried it into the kitchen and set it on the floor where Penny had lain. Wordlessly, the four of us sank to the floor.
Inside the bag was a small scroll wrapped with black ribbon. We set it aside without taking off the ribbon and unrolling it. Next was a little pink bag with something round inside. Shakily, I opened the bag then felt wild sobbing beginning in my chest. It was a circle of white clay with a perfect impression of Penny’s little paw, so tiny it looked like a puppy’s. But then again, she had always been a puppy, in size and in spirit.
All of us were crying hard. Madison took out the next tiny envelope and looked inside. It was a lock of her hair, golden brown, and I knew it had come from the back of her neck. By the time we got to the tiny mahogany box at the bottom of the bag, we were all sobbing so hard none of us could take it out, so Madison gently repacked the bag with the scroll and the clay and the envelope holding the tiny scruff of hair.
It was impossible to believe my Penny, such a bundle, was reduced to a tiny bag like the kind you might use to carry a gift for someone’s birthday or anniversary.
All that mattered was this: Penny was home again.
84
Two weeks later, at the end of March, we had an unexpected early burst of spring.
We wore cardigans instead of parkas; I got out my sneakers after the dregs of dirty snow melted in one warm afternoon.
With the unseasonably warm temps and painfully brilliant sunshine, blossoms sprang up everywhere: yellow and white daffodils, pink and deep-purple tulips, blankets of light-blue forget-me-nots. Skeletal, dry gnarled branches were suddenly forsythia bushes, ground cover greenery gave us clutches of violets, a rhododendron bush came out of nowhere.
I hated the flowers and everything beautiful that reminded me of Penny. But being outside and working until every muscle in my body ached helped clear my mind. Ian and I raked up nearly ten bags of leaves and dry vines, tied loose branches together with twine and left them at the curb to be collected by the DPW. Ian cut down a scraggly pine tree near the front steps with snaking roots cracking our driveway. When he thought I wasn’t looking, he wiped tears from his face. I worked until my arms were so sore, I could barely lift my coffee mug.
I knew very little about gardening. In a nutshell, I knew perennials came up every year, start seedlings indoors, move them outside to acclimate them, transplant them, and wait for blooms. I spent so many hours outside that my knees were embedded with grime, I had half-moons of soil under my nails and smudged dirt all over my face.
I planted what I liked—deep-orange poppies in an old metal watering can, a bright-red azalea in a silver bucket slightly green with age, purple coneflowers whose centers matched the ledge I painted on the porch.
I dug, weeded, and pruned every weekend in the spring. I upro
oted squares of sod and put them down in a patchwork pattern in the mud beneath our picnic table. My yard had been in a constant state of disarray since I’d moved in, I realized, and although I didn’t really care what it looked like, tending to it kept my tears at bay, at least for a little while.
I found a bag of bulbs I’d brought years before still in their original paper bag. The bulbs had slender green stalks, the earliest beginnings of leaves, exposing its vast root systems and bulky bulbs entwined forming a mass like small potatoes. I gathered them up and dug a few inches into the soil to the dirt to plant them, not knowing what might blossom and not caring, either. I unearthed so many fat worms, I considered opening a bait shop.
My work was frenetic, I went for hours hacking out crabgrass and weeds, digging up soil and turning over sod, grooming the edges of flower beds, trying to identify flowers by their leaves. I carried my trowel in my back pocket in case I saw a stray dandelion or clump of crab grass. I bent over the ground not even trying to hide my ass from the world, ripping out the knees on all my jeans, splattering bits of wet dirt in my hair and ears.
Everywhere I looked, I saw Penny. I saw her traipsing happily around the backyard like a sheep in open pasture. I saw her nosing through the pile of twigs and grass. I saw her lying in the sun. I was grateful, so grateful, that Penny had been by my side through the divorce. I was still burning with fury that she was taken away without warning, without any signs, without any logic. Out of nowhere.
Penny had gone on her own terms. She didn’t have to grow old and slow down and get rheumy eyes and diminished hearing. Maybe she was sparing us that. I thought that was incredibly brave. And one day I would be thankful, grateful to her for making that choice all alone. My Pen-Pen.
I couldn’t turn away from the fact that I still had mothering to do. Ian had told me seeing Penny’s body was the biggest shock of his life, and I wanted to show him that nothing in life, not even staggering loss, was insurmountable. Maddy asked me to get matching tattoos inside our wrists, Penny’s name with a heart at the end. I was giving it serious thought. Nothing could possibly make me happier than looking at her name every day.
Change was inevitable and out of my control.
I was working hard to trust the universe, even when it made no sense to me.
I was alone that spring, by choice. I didn’t want anyone around who would try to talk me out of my grief or try to make it all better. I didn’t expect to be alone forever, but to a great degree, I didn’t care. I cancelled my membership on Fish. I was done with online dating. I would wait to see what the universe had planned. I had to believe better times were ahead.
When the branches of a wilted shrub in the far corner of the yard burst with lilac blooms, the scent was so strong I could smell them from the kitchen sink. I pulled the plastic covers off the rocking chairs on the front porch and sat there in the late afternoons after work. Not long ago, Penny was on my lap, and I rocked us both. I knew I had to move away from the grief, a little bit each day. But I didn’t want to leave behind the last time I saw her, all springy and sweet and full of life.
I was in a strange place of limbo, not planning the future, trying not to live in the past. Just getting through the days and bracing myself for whatever would happen next, hoping I’d be strong enough to get through. And once I got through it, I knew I would be able to face anything, because nothing would ever be as hard as losing Pen.
I was surviving the immense loss. I didn’t really expect to. But I was surviving. Somehow, I was surviving.
85
A few weeks later, an email came from Sandra that the animal shelter was looking for volunteers for all kinds of activities, from walking dogs to playing with cats to helping with the gardens.
I signed up for yard work. I liked being out in the sun with my hands busy. I was always thinking about Penny, but my crying jags were more manageable when I was outside working.
Clouds were gathering the Saturday I was volunteering, and by the time I got to the shelter, it had turned into a downpour. I got out of my car and opened my hatch to search for an umbrella, coming up empty. I tried to run and avoid the puddles in the parking lot, but by the time I got to the front door, I was soaked.
Sandra met me in the lobby and handed me a towel to wipe my face.
“Hold on to it,” she told me. “One of our indoor chores today is laundry.”
The other volunteers had cancelled, so I spent the morning washing and folding pet blankets and towels. Most of them had seen better days, but there were many cozy fleece blankets like the ones my kids used to sleep with, because both of them had been too warm at night for a comforter.
“These are nice,” I said, folding a fleece. “Do they keep the dogs comfortable?”
Sandra looked at me over the rims of her red-framed glasses.
“Comfortable? Have you ever been inside the shelter before?” Aside from our meeting in the rec room, I hadn’t.
“Come on,” Sandra said, straightening up and stretching her back. “You can help me with what’s next on the list: chow time.”
We loaded up two wagons with huge bins of dry food and water, and Sandra hit numbers on a keypad to let us into the animal units. As soon as we got inside, I heard the sounds of barking, so loud the noise bounced off the walls and spiraled back into the middle of the room, a roaring cacophony of sound.
I looked around and immediately felt ashamed for thinking the animals had comfortable quarters. It was warm and dry, yes, and the dogs were each in their own walled-off space, but that was all that could be said. Their spaces were barren—no stuffed toys, rubber balls or rawhide chews anywhere. All the dogs I saw down the row of tiny spaced-off pens were large dogs, all of them on their feet, all of them barking loudly and continuously. Many were pacing or circling, a few were spinning as if they were puppies chasing their tails, but this wasn’t a game, it was some kind of fixation. Their eyes were dilated and bulging.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Sandra gave a short laugh. “Kennel sickness is starting to set in. They spend too much time alone with nothing to do; they’re constantly under stress from the noise and chaos in these unnatural surroundings. This isn’t like home. Hard as we try, we can’t make this place comfortable and loving. We do the best we can, but the dogs get strung out.”
My heart sank. That’s just how they looked: strung out.
“What’s worse, the more overstimulated they become, the less chance they have of being adopted because they appear mean to people, even when they’re the sweetest dogs in the world, just scared out of their minds after being here so long.”
“How long?”
“Jess, we see dogs start experiencing negative effects of being here after two weeks. Some of them stay for months.”
At the end of the first row of pens, a small white dog with gray ears was sleeping in a perfect circle on a threadbare towel. It was the tiniest of spaces in the row, and her food had been tipped over.
The note card posted on the door said she had been there three weeks, she was shy around children, and that her name was Lucy. I hesitated outside the door, not wanting to wake her, but I did want to sweep up her food and fill her bowl with fresh kibble. As I stood watching her, Lucy lifted her head sleepily, one drowsy eye still closed, and looked at me.
I blinked hard and looked away.
When I turned back, Lucy was at the door, two front paws up, trying to make herself look much taller than she actually was. I didn’t know how she could possibly have moved that fast, so I nudged the door open slowly and slid in quickly in case she tried to run.
She didn’t run.
She lay down and rolled onto her back to show me her tummy. I stroked her soft belly gently and she pretended to nip at my fingers, her own little game. After a while, she got back onto her little paws and looked up at me. She was panting.
I backed out the door and shut it, then slid with my back to Lucy down to the floor. I stayed there until
I heard Sandra calling my name.
“I’m down here,” I called back.
Sandra’s wagon was empty as she rolled it down to where I sat. Instead of asking what I was doing, she sank down to the floor and sat with me. We were both quiet.
“Something spook you?” she said at last.
“The little dog—” I pointed behind me.
“Lucy. She’s a cutie, isn’t she?”
“Cutie,” I echoed. “But what’s wrong with her?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think someone should look at her, the vet here or someone,” I said shakily. “She’s panting a lot.”
Sandra turned around to see Lucy, still looking at us, waiting patiently.
“Jess, all dogs pant. She’s happy to see us, that’s all. Maybe needs more water. Maybe she got a little warm in this weather. There’s nothing wrong, aside from her being in this kennel, which is the last place she wants to be.”
“Where does she want to be?”
“Home.” Sandra said simply. “She wants to be home.”
Lucy wasn’t shy around children, I thought. She had just been waiting for a family with older kids that wouldn’t pull her tail or pick her up and drop her.
I think she had been waiting for us.
And we were waiting for her.
It took just one day to adopt Lucy. Ian and Madd went with me to pick her up, arguing over who got to hold her in the car.
She’d had all her shots, but I took her to the vet the next day. I asked him to listen to her heart three times.
“She’s fine,” the vet assured me. “Take her home.”
86
My work situation was improving. Wes was finally on medication and didn’t fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. But some things never change. Beef Jerky still barked at the birds outside. Talk of the Spring Fling Festival, gossip about who was dating whom (all unconfirmed) and nonsensical discussions about weather took up most of the day for Joe and his cronies.
A Girl Like You Page 29