by Pete Nelson
“What do you mean?” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Same old thing,” she said, sniffing again, apologetic and apparently mad at herself. “Something’s gotta give, Paul. This is just too hard. I haven’t been sleeping. I have bags under my eyes.”
“Did something happen?” He found it hard to swallow.
“Nothing specific,” Tamsen said. “It’s just that Stephen and I had a talk the other night. This is driving him crazy too. It’s got to be getting to you too — isn’t it? It’s not good for anybody. You can’t be all that happy about the situation.”
“I’m happy when you’re here,” Paul said. “When you’re not, I just sort of go numb and try not to think about it.”
She leaned her head toward him and kissed him.
“I’m happy when I’m with you too,” she said. “But when I’m with you, I’m making Stephen unhappy, and I hate that. And when I’m with him, I’m making you unhappy, and I hate that too. Whatever I do, it’s wrong. It worked for a while, but that’s not true anymore. I should have known better.”
“Is it wrong for you to be sitting here?” Paul said. “I think it’s pretty right.” But he wasn’t going to try to argue her into choosing him. As much as he wanted to be with her, deep down he had to allow that she needed to feel free to do what she had to do. There were things she wanted. Even a moron could see that Stephen was probably better able to give them to her than Paul was, and if that was true, then the right thing for Paul to do would be to back off and not stand in her way. Maybe the movie was affecting him too. “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”If she wanted stability, security, a family, then Stephen was her best bet. Paul could see that. Surely she could too. Those were just the facts.
“What does Stephen think?” Paul asked.
“He’d like it if I stopped seeing you,” she said. “He’s too polite to make it sound like an ultimatum, but he feels like as long as I have feelings for you, we’ll never know what we could have between us. I didn’t put that very succinctly.”
“You don’t have to,” Paul said. “I get it.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here, by the way,” she said. “He’s going to be upset when I tell him. I really wasn’t going to spend the night. I promised myself I wasn’t going to. And I have to tell him. I’m not going to start sneaking around. That’s not an option.”
“This can’t be easy for you,” he was willing to acknowledge.
“I have no one to blame but myself,” she said, taking his hands and looking him in the eye. “I wanted to know you. I still do. You’re a really valuable part of my life. I can’t imagine not having you in it. And all these other parts of your life that are so … in transition … don’t matter, in a way. But they do. I’m sorry I’m so confused. I thought we could do this and be open and honest about it. I’ve been selfish, and it’s unfair. To everyone.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
She didn’t answer at first. She seemed to be wrestling with her conscience. Finally she put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him toward her, kissing him gently, lushly, wetly. Her eyes glistened.
“I want you to take me to your bed and make love to me,” she said.
If.
Only.
He.
Could.
Failure was virtually guaranteed, a fait accompli.
He nevertheless took her to bed, where Paul in the Bed did everything he could to make Tamsen feel loved, while Paul on the Ceiling looked on. He tried to take his time, breathe deep, relax, slow down, and ignore his dysfunctional doppelgänger. Paul on the Ceiling kept reminding Paul in the Bed that if he couldn’t overcome his impotence tonight, he might not get another chance. Paul in the Bed told Paul on the Ceiling that he really didn’t need that kind of pressure.
In the end, the best Paul in the Bed could do was to hold Tamsen until her gentle snoring told him she was asleep. He opened his eyes and stared at the spot where Paul on the Ceiling had been, but Paul on the Ceiling was gone. Paul in the Bed felt sick to his stomach. He rose and went into the kitchen for a drink of water.
“How’d it go?” Stella asked him.
“It didn’t,” he said.
“It’s not good.”
“You’re overthinking it again.”
“I know,” he said. “Why don’t you ever have that problem?”
“If I asked myself that question,” she said, “I’d be overthinking it.”
“I wish I was more like you,” he said. “I don’t like the way I am.”
“Then change,” she said.
“I’m trying.”
“I know. That’s what matters.”
He heard a noise from the bedroom, the bed squeaking as Tamsen rolled over in her sleep.
“I don’t think she’s going to be with me much longer,” Paul whispered. “I think she’s starting to make a choice. She thinks I’m too much work.”
“How do you know the other guy isn’t too much work too?” Stella asked.
“Possible,” Paul allowed.
“It’s up to her, isn’t it? Everybody’s work somehow. All you can do is be yourself. You’re a very caring person. What else could you do?”
“I could step aside and make it easier for her,” Paul said.
“Like the guy in the movie?” Stella said. “The one in the white tuxedo.”
“Yeah, like him,” Paul said. “I’m no good at being noble either.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“That’s the line in the movie,” Paul said, “before he puts her on the plane with Victor Laszlo.”
“Yeah, but why didn’t she just say, ‘No thanks, I’d rather stay here with you?’ Wouldn’t that have made more sense?”
“She wanted Bogart to do the thinking for both of them,” Paul said. “Besides, the Nazis were coming.”
“Are the Nazis coming now?”
“I certainly hope not.”
“Do you think Tamsen wants you to do the thinking for both of you?”
“Definitely not.”
“I rest my case. You already think enough for one person,” Stella said.
“Or more than enough,” Paul said. “Do you need to pee?”
“I’m okay,” Stella said.
He took her water bowl to the sink, poured out the old water, and refilled it with fresh. The dog struggled to her feet, nearly losing her footing on the linoleum floor before correcting herself, then walked stiffly to the bowl, where she lapped slowly with her tongue.
He went back to bed, sat on the edge of the mattress, and watched Tamsen sleep, lying on her side, wearing one of his white cotton dress shirts for a nightgown, the collar turned up to frame her face. He wondered how much longer … then took Stella’s advice and stopped himself from thinking too much. He lay down beside Tamsen and buried his face in her chest, feeling the warm rise and fall of her soft skin as she breathed in and out. She awoke just enough to put her arm over him and pull him closer, muttering something under her breath that he couldn’t quite make out, something that began, “You don’t have to … ,” before becoming unintelligible.
He wanted to wake her and ask, “I don’t have to what?” but he let it go, on the chance that in her dream it wasn’t him she was talking to.
20
Time
Then one night, Paul woke up on the couch, unable to sleep. It was two in the morning, and eighty-one degrees, October now but Indian summer, humid, the air not moving, the curtains hanging limp and still at the open window. A moth fluttered briefly against the screen, then disappeared into the night. Of all the things he’d lost to Karen in the division of property, the air conditioner was the only item he’d felt inclined to contest, but by then he was too tired to fight. Their internal thermostats were wildly incompatible — she was invariably too cold when he felt fine, or fine when he
felt hot, and they were never comfortable at the same time, though he never complained. Growing up in Minnesota, he’d explained to Tamsen, you learn early to keep your thoughts about the temperature to yourself, on a frozen January playground where everybody is just as cold as you are and where whining about it changes nothing and annoys all.
The dog felt the heat too, her breathing labored — huff, huff, huff, huff, huff — in a pattern he could hear repeated from where she lay on her pad in the front room. Paul was uncomfortable enough — imagine living through a night like this wearing a fur coat. If it stayed hot tomorrow, he’d take Stella to the fountain in front of the county courthouse and let her cool off in the holding pool. If it was this hot tomorrow, he’d join her.
He got up and went to sit on the porch.
He sat on the swing in his boxer shorts, rocking slowly to minimize the chain’s squeak. All the windows in the student ghetto across the street were dark. Sometimes, on warm nights when people went to bed with the windows open, he could hear the mating cries and coital barks of nubile coeds and college boys who’d yet to experience the joys of erectile dysfunction.
He heard a train whistle and listened as the train passed through town, the tracks half a block from his house. The sounds of trains appealed directly to the heart — the distant rumble of approach, then the thundering crescendo as they passed, and then the attenuated decline, like the memory of love when love is gone. The ta-tack-teh-teh rhythm of the train’s wheels soothed him.
In the silence that followed, Paul heard Stella wake and struggle to her feet, grunting and huffing to get her hindquarters up and running. She tottered off into the kitchen. The clicketyclack of her toenails on the wood floor was as reassuring as the steel wheels of the train. He heard her return, pause, and then push the screen door open with her nose to find her way out onto the porch, where she stood panting, tongue out.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Hot night,” she said.
“Very warm,” he agreed. He listened as a car screeched down King Street.
“It’s time, Paul,” Stella said.
“Time for what?” he said.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “It’s time.”
He considered her words. He’d known, of course, that one day she would tell him.
“What do you mean, ‘It’s time’?” he said, stalling as the impact of her words settled in. “Why? Why now?”
“Come here,” she said, leading him into the front room, where he turned on the light. Her L.L. Bean doggie bed was darkened at the front edge, and a trail of urine led from it toward the kitchen. “I can’t control my bladder anymore. It’s bad enough that I’ve lost control of my bowels.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Paul assured her. “I’m used to cleaning up after you. I don’t mind.”
“This is different,” she said. “What if I’m in the car and I lose it? What if I’m on the couch, or at somebody else’s house, or at Jake’s? I can’t be pissing all over everything, now can I?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“It’s just a little piss,” he said. “I don’t care — ”
“I care,” she said quietly. “There’s no dignity in it. It’s important to me to keep my dignity. You know?”
“I know,” he conceded. “You’ve always been a gracious mutt.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Which is why this is my decision. So don’t blame yourself. But I need you to pick up the phone and call the vet. See if you can get that nice Louise woman. I like her. We should do this tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” he said. “Stella, I don’t want to.”
“Paul,” she said, “I need you to be strong about this. This is something you have to do for me. I can’t do it myself. I would if I could. I’d been hoping to die in my sleep ever since I noticed I’d been leaking, but it’s gone too far now.”
“But you’re still sharp,” he argued. “You’re mentally all there, you can see and hear … I can get a diaper or something for you.”
They listened to a police siren howling in the distance.
“I’ve tried not to complain,” she said, “with all that you’ve had going on, but it’s a little worse than you think. It’s not just my bladder and my bowels. I can hardly walk. I haven’t really smelled anything in weeks, and I can only see a little bit out of one eye. It’s getting harder to hear you too. And I get confused. Which is why I’m glad I remembered to tell you these things now while I’m clear. Do you remember what your grandmother said, the last time you saw her in the nursing home?”
“Yeah.”
“And what did she say to you?”
“She said she wished she’d died when she felt better.”
“That’s how I feel, Paul,” Stella said. “I told you before. There’s a line. And above the line, life is good, and below the line, life is not good. Right now I’m still above the line, but I don’t want to wait until I’m below the line. I want to go thinking life is good. I think I’m entitled to that.”
He watched the moths gathered about the streetlight. He’d heard once that moths didn’t want to fly toward light, that light in fact inhibited the action of their wings, so that whichever wing was in the dark beat faster, pushing the moth inexorably toward the flame. Some of the moths attacking the streetlight were only going to live for twenty-four hours. They too had a line, above which life was good, and below which life was bad. Everything did. For everything there is a season.
“But I love you,” he said. “What am I supposed to do with that love, once you’re gone?”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Stella said.
“It makes me feel good to love you,” he said. “When I pet you or feed you or take you for walks, it makes me feel good. It makes me proud of myself. Like I’m doing something valuable, and that makes me a good person.”
“I like it too.”
“I know you do. So when you’re gone, I won’t be able to do that.”
“So get another dog.”
“It’s not that simple,” Paul said. “You’re special to me. I can’t just get another dog.”
“It’s easy to love,” Stella said.
“Easy for you to say. You love everybody.”
“You can still love me after I’m gone,” she said.
“But it’s not you. It wouldn’t be you. It’d be the idea of you. The memory of you.”
“What’s the difference?”
“It’s a huge difference. There’s a saying: ‘Hell is the inability to love.’ That doesn’t mean not knowing what love is. It means knowing exactly what it is, being fully aware, but somehow being prevented from expressing it.”
“Paul,” she said, “I’ve had a great life. I’ve traveled all over the country with you and I’ve seen more states than any dog I’ve ever met. We’ve been camping and fishing, we’ve been in all kinds of restaurants and bars where they don’t ordinarily allow dogs …”
“Because, you’re so well behaved.”
“Well, thank you. I’ve done all kinds of amazing things, thanks to you. I don’t want to leave you, but it’s time. That’s all. It’s time. I’ve been richly blessed. More than I ever deserved.”
“Ditto.”
“I want you to have my stuff. I’ve made a list. You can have my bed and my bones and my tennis balls and my stuffed animals and my dish. Though I don’t know what you’d do with any of it if you’re not going to get another dog.”
She hadn’t had any stuffed animals since she was a puppy, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her.
“I’m tired now,” she said, eyeballing the wet doggy bed. “I guess I’ll just sleep on the floor. I’m sorry about the bed.”
He wanted to call someone, but it was two in the morning. He lay on the couch and at some point dozed off, but before he did, though he was not a believer, he found himself uttering a short prayer.
“If you could just take her in the night, I wouldn’t mind …”
But she was with him in the morning, awake and alert and looking at him with pleading brown eyes. There was nothing to be done, no stroke-of-genius plan he’d hoped would come to him in a dream to change what had to happen. It was simply time. He called the vet and was told they could come in at two o’clock that afternoon. He called Tamsen twice but got her answering machine both times and didn’t leave a message because it wasn’t the sort of thing you could leave a message about. Finally he called Karen, asking her if she could take time off from work to help him — Stella had been her dog too for a while. They arranged to meet at their former community garden plot at one o’clock.
He spent the morning reading the paper at Jake’s. Stella lay in the doorway, where she’d lain for the past fourteen years, watching the street through the glass doors and occasionally checking over her shoulder to make sure Paul was still sipping coffee. As soon as he put his cap on to leave, she started struggling to her feet. Paul lifted her hindquarters, careful not to put any pressure on her bladder, but she tinkled a bit in the doorway anyway. Just as well, Paul thought, in case the next dog to come along wondered whose doorway it was.
He parked in the lot at Serio’s Market, an old-fashioned mom-and-pop grocery store with fruits and vegetables displayed in their shipping crates and wooden floors that squeaked. He picked up a half pound of shaved roast beef in the deli section, some meatballs, and a quarter pound of sliced muenster cheese, even though cheese gave Stella diarrhea. That wasn’t going to matter. He stopped at the liquor store next door and purchased a bottle of wine.
“Remember that Smith College party where they knocked the cheese tray over?” Paul said, parking the car on the grass at the Northampton Community Garden and lifting Stella down gently from the passenger’s side.
“That was good cheese,” she said.
She headed straight for their plot, a patch of prairie when they’d first signed up for it. The community garden was located next to the long-defunct state hospital, a collection of decrepit brick buildings with ivy on the outside and asbestos on the inside. Paul had manned the rototiller that first year, pulverizing the sod and turning it over and over until it was workable. The first year, they’d planted mostly vegetables, but over the years Karen had planted more than half their garden with annuals and perennials and rose bushes and cutting flowers. Paul hadn’t visited the garden since their divorce.
