Dog Medicine

by Julie Barton

  “The dog is a she,” she said, snatching the leash from me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  She sighed. “Let me call Rita to take her back to her cage. Now I’ve got to process your refund.” She looked at her watch.

  “I don’t want a refund,” I said, still not making eye contact. “Just keep it. I’m so sorry.” I ran out the door, back down Second Avenue, distraught. I shuddered at the thought of what I’d just done, tried to force an enormous, terrified, overly stimulated animal to lie down in bed with me. I panicked, thinking that perhaps living in the city this past year, I’d lost my connection to animals and the natural world. If that happened, nothing could help me. No animal, no person, nothing. The sadness swallowed me as I walked back into my apartment and went to bed alone. I lay there promising myself that I would never, ever tell a soul what I’d just done.

  The sorrow on that lonely walk back to my apartment was like the strike of lightning that cracked the dam. I didn’t know this then, but depression can be like a slow leak. Once the dam’s hit, water starts to seep through and as the days and weeks go by, the crack grows bigger.

  I tried to search for the moon when I lived in Manhattan as a way to orient myself, to stem the tide of sorrow. But I could rarely find it. Sometimes I would see a sliver of a crescent through the crack of two buildings. I couldn’t yet admit that I missed the wide-open spaces of Ohio, that I longed for a quiet night interrupted only by cricket song. In New York, I was mostly inside, underground even. Soon, I forgot to look up at all. And no matter how much you try, when the rising water starts to seep under your door, you can’t keep pretending that your world is not flooding.

  SINKING

  APRIL 19, 1996

  The first morning back in Ohio, I woke at 11 a.m., once again disoriented from a deadened sleep. I had slept for twelve hours, but felt like I’d merely blinked. I couldn’t fathom ever getting out of bed.

  At 11:30, I still lay in bed not moving. I had no idea what to do. Every move I made felt off, wrong, awkward, strange. I had felt some version of this malaise my whole life, but now it had officially taken over. I craved stillness, silence, and darkness. I spent much of that first morning in Ohio with a pillow over my face. I could not bear that I had failed in New York and returned to my childhood home.

  Eventually I heard the gentle click of my mom opening my bedroom door. She tiptoed in with toast and juice, placing them quietly on my bedside table. I craved solitude and wanted her to leave. Instead she sat down on the edge of my bed and put her hand on my hip. The touch made me flinch.

  “Honey?” she said.

  “What,” I mumbled. She pulled the pillow up a bit. I fought the urge to bat away her hand.

  “I’m going out to lunch with Lynn Sears. I’ve had it planned for a while and I just can’t cancel. Will you be okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, both annoyed and grateful that she was leaving. I wondered if she was imagining me tossing a hair dryer in the bathtub. “I’ll be fine.”

  “So,” she paused, as if what she was going to say next needed careful phrasing. “So . . . what are you going to do today?”

  In hindsight, I can see that she was doing all she could to be kind to me. A simple check-in. Just making conversation. But I picked up the pillow and threw it at her. She blocked it with her arm, but the corner of it smacked her cheek. I sneered and said, “Mom, just fucking go.” She stood up, turned, and walked away.

  I rolled over, shaking. This was our pattern. She showed up, and I punished her. She tried tenderness, but her well-intentioned attempts misfired. She had the distinct dishonor of perpetually saying the exact wrong thing, no matter the words, and suffering the wrath of my pain and anger.

  As was her custom, she left silently, carefully. I heard her car pulling away followed by the thud of the garage door closing. Her departure brought a swirl of guilt, relief, and despair, enough emotion to lull me back into a deep, black sleep. What relief sleep had become. As I drifted down I wished with clear, longing intention to sleep for an eternity.

  • • •

  If fate works the way I think it does, I am pretty sure that at this point, my puppy was sleeping a lot too. His mama was licking his ears clean, her warm, dry tongue a lucky blanket. He could only suckle and sleep. It’s not easy, the hard work of being a newborn puppy. He got stepped on, squished, beaten to the last available teat. He needed his mother desperately, and she was exhausted. He was blind and hungry, aided only by his nose toward the scent of sustenance. He could clumsily crawl, his eyes couldn’t open, but he knew that if he stayed safe and warm with his family, if he slept as much as he needed to sleep, he would be okay.

  I believe that when Bunker and I were both helpless against the challenges of life, when we both needed unconditional love or would die, our mothers showed up and did what mothers do. They do everything they can to save their children.

  BLARNEY

  1982

  After Midnight died, my parents decided we should get a purebred puppy. We researched breeds and agreed that an Irish setter would be a good fit for our family. We brought Blarney home when I was about nine years old. She was a little nut-brown puppy, all legs and plate-wide feet, and she would curl up and sleep in the bend of my legs. In between random bursts of goofy puppy energy, she was quiet and timid, and I remember kissing her head, feeling the large bump on the crown of her skull as she looked at me as if I were an angel. I would brush her soft-as-down ears, the rusty orange fur turned rich maroon by her first birthday.

  More than once, Clay noticed our connection, and in front of me, he would torment her—bump her, push her down so that her long, spindly legs splayed out in all four directions, her claws scratching the hardwood floor in resistance. But I also remember seeing him snuggle with her on the floor in front of the television when he thought I wasn’t watching.

  When we left the house, Blarney would sometimes try to escape and come with us. If successful, she would sprint to the end of our long driveway, then chase our car for a quarter-mile down the road while we yelled out the window, “No, Blarney! Go home!” She would lope through the grass, dodging mailboxes and trees, the whites of her eyes showing, her ears blown back, her body in a full sprint.

  Once, when Blarney was two, my mom’s station wagon pulled out of the garage, idled down the driveway, heading for the grocery store. I was standing in the kitchen making a snack when I noticed the red blur of Blarney’s body galloping past the kitchen window.

  I raced to the front door. “Blarney!” I yelled. My mom turned out of the driveway and Blarney ran, full speed, toward the road. I marveled at her power, at the capacity of her lungs to gather enough oxygen to supply her pumping blood. It was a beautiful sight, an Irish setter at full speed, ears back, tongue relaxed and out. She should’ve been in a sunny, open field with wildflowers and scurrying mice. Instead she was chasing my mom’s station wagon, hoping to never be left behind, exactly as a school bus barreled past our driveway the moment she so gracefully, quickly, tried to cross.

  I stopped halfway down the driveway and watched the bus crash into her body. Her head thwacked against the bus’s grill, her sweet soft ears flailing wildly. Her body fell to the road and the bus drove over her before slowing to a stop.

  I held my hands to my mouth to feel if the screaming I heard was actually coming from my body. I began to run, full speed to the end of my driveway. The kids on the bus were clambering to the back window to gawk at my beloved dog. The driver stood up, opened the door, and walked down two of the stairs, but didn’t step onto the road. I paused at the end of my driveway, twenty feet from where Blarney’s body lay, and didn’t realize my mom had stopped her car until she came up to me and grabbed my wrists. She yelled at me to stop screaming.

  “Breathe, Julie,” she yelled. “Breathe!” All I could do was scream. I wanted to go to Blarney, but my mom held me back. S
he motioned to the bus driver to move on. When the bus pulled away, I screamed, “The bus is leaving! They ran over Blarney and they’re leaving! Mom! Call the police! They can’t just leave!”

  Mrs. Rankins, the elderly widow who lived alone across the road from us, had come outside. She never liked Blarney, would shoo her out of her yard with a broom. She stood at the end of her driveway, arms tightly crossed. She was small with cropped black hair, always looking out her window with a disapproving grimace.

  “Mrs. Rankins,” my mom said, calling over to her. “Can you please take Julie while I rush Blarney to the vet?” I looked at my mom with shock.

  “No, Mom! I want to go with you! I’ll hold Blarney in the back seat. You drive.” I wanted to be with Blarney if she were in pain or were to die. I needed to be with her, to comfort her. She was hurt; I was hurt. She was scared; I was scared. She could not die without my telling her that the world was good, that she’d done good, that I loved her. I could not fathom being absent from her traumatic injury or death.

  “Julie,” my mom said. “Go.” She pointed to Mrs. Rankins’ house.

  “But, I can’t not be there!” I screamed. My mother wanted to protect me; she didn’t understand that I felt that Blarney was mine. She was my love, my solace in this family I didn’t understand. I couldn’t let her die without me.

  I wasn’t given a choice. Mrs. Rankins held my forearm and led me up her driveway. “You can’t see that, dear,” she said. I barely knew Mrs. Rankins. The image of Blarney’s body hitting the bus and falling to the road looped endlessly in my mind. I found myself silenced. The tears stopped abruptly. My lips tingled. I stole a glimpse of one of the neighbor boys putting Blarney’s limp body into the back of my mom’s station wagon. Blarney’s head dangled, inert, lifeless.

  After my mom drove away, Mrs. Rankins took me inside her house that smelled like mothballs and disinfectant. Everything was dark brown: the carpet, the walls, the rug, the stove, the refrigerator. She offered me graham crackers and milk, and I took them without words and waited for my mom to return.

  When the doorbell finally rang, I went to the door behind Mrs. Rankins and knew immediately when the door revealed a sliver of my mom’s face that Blarney was gone. She had died; I had missed it.

  I remember watching my father cry that night as he played piano. Our whole family separated during the mourning. We ate alone, we wept alone, and we went to bed early. Later that night, I lay in bed reeling. Through the wall, I heard Clay crying. I held up my knuckle, thinking about knocking, if only to indicate to him that I felt sad too. Chances were he’d shout an obscenity through the drywall, but I took that risk and pulled my fingers down, then rapped them gently, three times. Silence. No longer the sound of our big, beautiful dog bounding down the hall. Then, when I thought it was past all hope, three knocks back.

  LAKE BEAUCHÊNE, QUÉBEC

  MAY 1996

  A few hours after I threw the pillow at my mom, she returned from her lunch and found me still in bed. She walked into my room, opened the windows, and left without saying a word. I appreciated her silence and the fresh air, the sound of the wind in the trees, the birds singing. Nature thrived in the forest outside my bedroom window, and life could go on while I slumbered. It really didn’t matter if I was there or not. The earth would turn, the sun would rise, the moon would wax and wane. I found the continuity consoling and further proof that I need not be alive.

  Hunger eventually pulled me out of bed and I went to the kitchen to pour a bowl of cereal. I ate sleepily at the kitchen table, and my mom sat across from me. The clock read 1:30 p.m. She had a cup of coffee and the newspaper. I didn’t know what day it was, whether my mom had called in sick or it was a weekend.

  “Lynn says hi,” she said, before taking a long sip of her black coffee. “She’s glad you’re home. She lived in New York for a few years and said she couldn’t leave soon enough.” I stared blankly at the wall, swallowing a pang of defensiveness for Manhattan. Part of me loved New York—the energy, the potential, the noise. “Oh, and Dad called,” she said, holding the newspaper in front of her face. “He’s looking into taking you up to Lake Beauchêne in a few weeks.”

  Lake Beauchêne was a remote fishing preserve in Québec that my dad loved. He had taken Clay there every summer for the past few years. Sometimes my parents went with friends. I’d never been. The last time my dad and brother went to the lakes, they took my brother’s friend and his terminally ill father. This man, who had only a few weeks to live, wanted to spend some of his final days on these sacred waters in a boat with his son, to say words only the two of them and the loons would ever hear. I thought this was so beautiful and tragic, and I understood Lake Beauchêne to be the kind of place for special conversations.

  I also knew that this would be my dad’s attempt at an I’ll Save Julie trip, but I didn’t care. I was up for being saved. It was a thirteen-hour drive, and I wanted thirteen hours alone with my dad. I needed some time with him on a boat. I needed to be in a remote place with no interruptions, no work, just trees, birds, fishing gear, and my father’s ear. I longed to hear the loons calling through the morning fog.

  “Do you think fishing might be something you’d want to do?” my mom asked. I noted her overly careful wording.

  “Sure, whatever,” I said. She pulled the newspaper down, squinted at me over her reading glasses, smiled slightly, and offered to take my empty cereal bowl. “Thanks,” I said, as I heaved myself up out of the chair and to the couch, where I disappeared into the television. I spent some time with MTV, then looked for a cheesy movie to watch. I stumbled upon Some Kind of Wonderful and curled into the couch, blissful at the escape.

  The next several days resembled this one. I slept past noon and my mom tiptoed around me offering food and silence as I lay on the couch, watched television, and slept. I was grateful for her patience and quiet with me. She was the one who rescued me from my urban demise, and the next day I threw a pillow at her. She had every right to be angry with me, but she wasn’t.

  Dad booked our fishing trip for the next week. For at least a few days I could escape my suffocating bedroom. Early the following Saturday morning, Dad and I packed the car while Mom fussed over the cooler and its peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, apples, chocolate chip cookies, and soda. I was having another tough day, my thoughts running dark, but I managed to put enough underwear in a bag and get into the passenger seat of the car.

  After pulling onto the freeway, my dad and I started talking. Since my returning home, aside from the night he held me as I cried, we hadn’t spoken much. He was mostly working; I was mostly sleeping.

  So in his car, on Route 71 North, he asked what happened with Will. I told him that I’d fallen deeply in love but that Will was fighting some demons. I told my dad that I would always love Will and that he was a good man. My dad told me he thought the guy was too negative and that I was better off. I smiled and watched the road.

  The truth was, Will had started calling around the second week I was home. “I miss you,” he’d say. “More than I thought I would. I miss your skin. No one has skin like yours. So soft. No one else kisses me the way you do.” Of course I knew that he’d been with other women both while I was in New York and since I’d left, and I was aware enough to recognize that he loved me partially because I’d made myself unattainable. But I desperately needed to be wanted. I needed to feel adored and part of me still loved him, so I answered his calls late at night in my bedroom. I told him that I missed him and didn’t understand why things hadn’t worked out between us. He hinted that maybe some day they still could, but I couldn’t ever imagine that.

  Each mile out of Ohio peeled off another layer of the malaise. It felt like leaving New York: leaving trouble behind. I made a mental note that I needed to be careful, because I could get used to running away. Somewhere past the Canadian border, as we skirted around the lip of Lake Ontario, our tank near
ing empty, we stopped at a gas station, and I started driving. As I pulled onto the freeway, my dad said, “Can I tell you about my parents’ deaths?” The question startled me. I glanced at him and nodded.

  My father was with both his parents when they died. His mother died when he was only twenty-four, before Clay or I was even born. She had rheumatic heart disease—a result of her childhood rheumatic fever. Her heart was literally too big for her chest. She died in the hospital with my father watching, scared. My grandfather and father loved her so dearly for her unfailing grace, her lilting smile, her gentle demeanor in the face of the harshness of a Depression-era life. My dad was in law school when she died, and he struggled to focus. He and my mom had been married for only two years and they lived in a small rental house in Ithaca, New York. My dad mourned his mom’s passing between the pages of law books, trying to wrap his mind around two difficult styles of cognition: the law and how to live without his mother.

  After my grandmother died, every now and then, without warning, my grandfather would show up on my parents’ doorstep. My dad would open the door expecting a classmate but instead he’d find his father, skin ashen, spirit weakened. He had driven straight from Illinois to New York just to see his son. My dad would motion for his father to enter, and inside, they’d shake hands firmly, then hug for a long while. My mom would whip up a quick dinner and they’d sit down together, around a table, talking. My grandfather would smile at the life his son was building, scratch their beagle behind the ears, and pat his lap so the dog would join him.

  My father and his father would sit on the couch and talk. For hours. Grandpa would reminisce about life, about Grandma, about having to put down Marty, his overweight and elderly beagle, soon after his wife died. My father says that these were some of the most loving and poignant times he’d ever had with his father. Grandpa talked, Dad listened, and they cried together. Quietly in one of those conversations, Grandpa said, “You know what I am doing, don’t you, son?” My dad listened intently to his father’s soft words. “I am grieving. And I know this will pass, because time heals all things.”