Lily And The Octopus Part 21

Except when sleep comes, I do not dream of Lily.

5 P.M.

What are these?" Trent is holding pamphlets.

"I don't know." I sit upright and lean on some throw pillows. I've never seen them before. The pamphlets. The room is vaguely spinning and the TV is still playing Friday Night Lights and this time I don't need to be reminded what happened; I wake up already knowing.

Trent thumbs through them before saying, "Oh." He places them on the coffee table.

"What?"

"Nothing. You can read these later."

I reach forward and my abs hurt in the way they do when I've been working out a lot, except I can't remember the last time I've seen the inside of a gym. Weeks ago, maybe. When I pick up the pamphlets, I immediately regret it. Pet mortuary. Pet crematory. Pet burial grounds. Words jump out at me and a.s.sault my eyes. Respectful handling. Individual cremation. Selecting an urn. Bereavement counseling. Fine products. Compa.s.sionate care. Each phrase is a new stab at my heart.

Trent takes them from me.

"Where did you get those?" I ask-I accuse.

"They were here on the table."

Someone must have put them in my hands before I left the animal hospital, but I have no memory of it. Did I drive here with them clutched in my hands? I have no memory of that, either.

"I'll put them over here with the letter."

"There's a letter?"

"You can read it later. You don't need to read it now."

Dear Sir, We were able to remove the octopus after all. Your dog is fine. Please come pick her up at your earliest convenience. She is excited to see you!

Yours in science, The Animal Hospital "What does it say." I don't ask; this is an order for him to tell me. There is no reading it later. I need to know. I need to know what the letter says now.

Trent sighs. He opens the letter, which is folded in thirds. He scans it until he gets to the end. "You have until Monday to decide what you want to have done with Lily." He reads me the options. If I choose individual cremation, I can shop for an urn, bring her home. If I choose group cremation, they will dispose of the cremains for me. There are other packages for burial. One includes a "precious clay paw-print keepsake."

All of this tests my beliefs. I don't believe in G.o.d; I don't believe in an afterlife. I do believe you live and you die. I do believe death is eternal nothingness. I do believe the body is just a sh.e.l.l. I do believe Lily is no longer there. There is no deciding what to do with Lily; there is no more Lily. There is deciding what to do with her body.

None of this frightens me.

Or does it?

I don't need Lily's remains to remember her by.

I don't need an urn to remind me of her love.

I don't need a precious clay paw-print keepsake to remind me that life is fragile, temporary, short.

Or do I? Do I need them so that I know I loved her? Do I need them to know that she loved me? Can I stomach the idea, years from now, of not knowing where her body is?

Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

It hits me.

Lily's body is in some freezer, stacked with the bodies of other unfortunate dogs. That's how they can still make a precious clay paw-print keepsake.

Trent puts the pamphlets with my keys on the dining room table.

I don't have to read them now.

9 P.M.

My phone is ringing and it's Jeffrey and I don't want to answer it. Before I got in the car I sent him a text: Lily pa.s.sed away. I was with her at the end. I'm not able to talk about it yet, but I thought you should know. And then a second text: Thank you for being an important part of her life.

I'm not able to talk about it yet.

My phone is ringing.

It's Jeffrey.

I grip the steering wheel with both hands and concentrate on the freeway and the lane ahead of me. I think back to our relations.h.i.+p and my saying explicitly, these are the things that if you do them they will hurt me, and his uncanny ability to just do those things anyway. I'm not able to talk about it yet. Talking about it would hurt me. So what do you do if you're Jeffrey? You call to talk about it.

Just as I decide not to talk to him, to let the call go to voicemail knowing I may never listen to the message, my fingers betray me and answer.

"Hi."

"Hi." It's been a long time since I've heard his voice. It sounds familiar, yet foreign. "You're driving?"

"Home. From Trent's."

"I didn't think you should have to drive home alone."

It's the Bluetooth feature on this car, new since our breakup. His voice spills from the stereo speakers, surrounding me on all sides. It's . . . unnerving. There's a long, empty pause before I say, "Thank you." And then, "Where are you?"

"I'm home."

I laugh.

"Why is that funny?"

Why is it funny? "I don't even know where home is for you now." How could I not know where he lives? I can picture a few of his things, things that used to be ours. But I can't picture them in the context of any s.p.a.ce.

"Do you want, like, an address?"

I'm suddenly panicked that he might invite me over. "That's okay. I'm driving."

Silence.

"She was a good girl."

Another long pause.

"The best," I agree.

I pa.s.s the exits for Vineland, Ventura, and Lankers.h.i.+m before we speak again.

"What happened to us?" Jeffrey asks.

Is this the right time to be honest? I don't have anything left in me to be otherwise. "You weren't as faithful as I needed you to be."

Jeffrey swallows.

"You never seemed fully invested." He says it without anger or retaliation. We are just stating facts.

Fireworks burst over the Universal Studios theme park, their last embers raining over the freeway, just as our statements now are the dwindling cinders of explosive arguments we had long ago.

"I know." That much is on me.

Another silence you could drive a truck through.

"We had a really good run for a while," Jeffrey says.

"I think so, too."

As I pull the car to the right to prepare to exit on Highland, I tell Jeffrey I have to go.

"Take care of yourself, Ted." The way he says it, I can tell it's the last time we'll ever speak.

"You, too, Jeffrey." It feels weird that we use our names-names are for people who are less acquainted than we are. My finger hovers, paralyzed for the briefest of seconds, before I disconnect the call. Ted and Jeffrey. We are strangers again.

I open my sunroof and crank the radio. "Cecilia" by Simon and Garfunkel is playing, but in my head Cecilia sounds too close to Lily and I change the station to something else, something that means nothing, something I don't recognize. Something angry at life.

Pulling up to my house is such a normal activity that I almost think the whole day hasn't happened. I wonder what I was doing at Trent's; I wonder why Jeffrey had called. Lily is fine. She's waiting for me, asleep in her bed in the kitchen. It may take her a minute to perk up when I walk in the door. She's been a terrible watchdog these past few years. But she will wake up. She will wake up when I walk in the door.

As long as I sit in the car this is true.

Once I go inside this is not true.

As long as I sit in the car this is true.

I've so convinced myself that, when I do work up the courage to go inside, I stand in the dark, unwilling to turn on the lights, to do anything that might shatter my delusion. Finally, when the darkness becomes deafening, I whisper.

"Lily?"

Silence.

Of course there is no answer.

I got out of the car.

11 P.M.

There's an empty bottle of vodka in the freezer and I don't know why it's there or why there's not a full bottle. I toss it into the recycling bin. Then I take the unopened bottle of vodka from the cabinet and the remaining beer in the refrigerator and I dump them down the drain. I do this before undertaking the somber task of putting Lily's bed out of sight in the closet. I take her paw-print blanket and hold it up to my face, inhaling deeply, before folding it neatly and placing it on top of the laundry. I lift her food and water dishes off the floor. I don't even wash them, I just empty them and put them in a drawer. There's a stray piece of kibble hidden under her food bowl.

Unfinished business.

My bed is unmade. In the middle is a nest of towels where Lily slept her last night. I strip the bed, and under the towels I find an empty trash bag laid out over the sheets. I don't remember putting it there, or even having the thought to do so. I flip the mattress, even though it's dry, and make the bed with clean sheets.

Slowly, I'm erasing the events of the day.

I take a hot shower and stand for a long time under the spray. I'm aware that I'm was.h.i.+ng her off me, removing her from the spots where we last touched. I turn off all the cold water until the hot water scalds, and when I can't stand the pain any longer I turn the cold k.n.o.b until the water becomes temperate again.

When I get out of the shower I forget to even dry off and I just stand there next to the open window in the thick July air looking out into the darkness of the backyard. Tomorrow is Friday-therapy with Jenny. How will I speak of this with her?

On Fridays we play Monopoly.

I find some shorts on the floor, flop down onto the sofa, and turn on the TV. I look down at my legs and they are splayed in a way that creates a nook for Lily-the one she would always step into, turning around three times and then falling asleep in, her chin slung over the bend in my knee. This is how I sit now. I never sat like this before. This is how I sit now. Lily has fundamentally changed me.

What was the point of grieving early? That's what I will ask Jenny. If the point was to alleviate the grief I feel now-to make it malleable, to spread it thinner in a more manageable fas.h.i.+on-grieving early had utterly failed. If I was detaching weeks ago, shouldn't it be easier to fully detach today?

There will be two drugs.

I want to go back to that s.p.a.ce in between them. After the first, where she is no longer in pain, just floating on a peaceful cloud of sleep. Before the second, where her heart still beats and her chest still rises and falls and that little bit of pink tongue is still tucked safely inside her closed jaw.

Midnight encroaches and I want to stop the clocks. Tomorrow will be the first day that Lily never saw. There's an overwhelming desire to run away.

The octopus came when I was away. All this time I have felt at fault, the one to blame, but suddenly I am overcome with a wave of anger at Lily. She used to bark at the mailman, bark at the wind, bark at every pa.s.sing car. She used to race to the front door to scare away potential attackers, her silly body rigid with readiness, her nose pressed through the wooden blinds to smell danger, her bark that of a much larger dog. She used to dash to the door whenever I got home. She used to be diligent when things would go b.u.mp in the night. But somewhere along the line, she aged. She got older, and harder of hearing and maybe lazy or just impaired. Whatever the cause, she let her guard down. She failed to protect us.

That is when the octopus came.

She is the one at fault.

She is the one to blame.

Or maybe the octopus tricked her into submission. He was that wily. He could have come prepared. He could have come unannounced. The octopus, after all, is a master of camouflage.

It's impossible to focus my anger.

Why did I think we would be together forever? Lily never made that promise. Dogs don't live as long as people. In my head, I knew this. But to think that there would come a day when we would part was to take the joy out of a day we had together. A day together at the beach. A day together taking naps and walks. A day together chasing squirrels.

My body fights with my mind for rest. My eyes grow heavy and yet still resist sleep, but I don't know why. I need sleep. Desperately. Maybe I fear the return to Fishful Thinking now that I know it does not end how I thought it did. Now that the journey does not return us home.

I finally break free of my repose and wander aimlessly through the house, turning off switches wherever there is light.

When I get to the kitchen I find red ball staring at me from the linoleum floor, and my eyes water again. I lean down to retrieve it. It's impossibly fixed to the floor, like the sword in the stone. It takes a long time to move it but, like Arthur, I do, and I tuck it in the drawer with her food.

I turn off the kitchen light.

She was twelve and a half in actual years, which is eighty-seven in dog years.