I Thought You Were Dead

by Pete Nelson

  “Beautiful day,” Stella said, raising her nose to the wind. When a bee started up from a patch of Johnny-jump-ups, she made a halfhearted attempt to snap at it. Eating bees was her favorite thing in the world, and Paul wished he could catch one for her. Downtown, in the fall, when the bees buzzing around the sidewalk trash cans grew slow and lethargic in the cool weather, Stella would lie down on the sidewalk and eat bees for hours until her lips swelled up, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  At the garden, she examined the various sections before taking her usual place in the shade of the willow tree. Paul remembered when Karen had shoved a handful of pussy willow cuttings into the ground. “That’ll never grow,” he’d predicted. The bush was over ten feet tall now, full and thriving. Karen was good at making things grow. He saw her car pull in behind his.

  “Look who’s here,” Paul said. “Surprise.”

  “Oh, Paul,” Stella said, her tail thumping at the sight of her former mistress. “I thought she was dead.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “She’s fine. Don’t try to get up.”

  “She looks great,” Stella said. “I’m not sold on the short haircut.”

  “It looks fine,” he said. “I think she just wanted to change things up a bit.”

  “She looks like she’s gained some weight,” Stella said.

  “She’s pregnant,” Paul told Stella. “Due any minute, by the looks of her.”

  “Hi, you two,” Karen said as cheerfully as she could. “Hello, Stella.” She looked at the dog and then, reluctantly, at Paul. He’d remembered how the corners of her eyes glistened with tears when she was sad. She put her hand on her belly.

  “I was going to tell you,” she said. “But I figured in a town this small, you already knew.”

  “I did,” Paul said. “Congratulations.”

  Karen turned back to Stella, kneeling.

  “It’s good to see you again. You’re still the most beautiful dog in the world, do you know that?” Karen looked at Paul. “How’s she doing? What’d the vet say?”

  “He says there’s nothing you can really do with a dog this old,” Paul said. “She’s not strong enough to survive surgery. The appointment’s at two.” He was feeling strong about the decision, but that could change at any moment. “I brought lunch — help yourself.” He used the corkscrew on his Swiss Army knife to open the wine and filled three paper cups. Karen sat opposite him, with the dog in the middle. He handed her a paper cup full of wine, then remembered and dumped the wine on a tomato plant.

  “I forgot,” he said. “You can’t have wine. I apologize.”

  He’d bought a bottle of water. He rinsed and refilled Karen’s cup with the water and then handed the cup to her.

  “Dig in.”

  “Actually,” she said, “I’m not eating meat these days either.” Sure, he thought. Defy sixty million years of evolution as an omni vore. “Kevin is a vegetarian.”

  “Is he?” Paul said. Kevin, not Kirk nor Kurt. He was never good with names. “That’s okay with the pediatrician? I mean, for you. Not for Kevin.”

  “Obstetrician,” she corrected him. “I just have to make sure I get enough protein. You still do dairy, don’t you?” she asked Stella, pushing the cheese closer to her, first peeling off a slice and dropping it into Stella’s open mouth.

  Stella lapped at the wine.

  “Excellent bouquet, eh, Stell?” he said. “A delicate balance of wood and fruit, with a smoky finish, perfect with cat turds and stepped-on cheese pizza.”

  He raised his cup to his ex.

  “To Stella,” he said, “who …”

  Suddenly he choked up and couldn’t speak. It had been happening like that all morning, whenever he thought about it. It didn’t matter if he thought about the past, the present, or the future, because each bore a particular kind of sadness. The past seemed the safest place to dwell, but it was like swimming in a river flowing unstoppably into the now and the next, neither of which held much joy or promise.

  “To Stella,” Karen said, touching her paper cup to his. He knew she wanted to say something about his drinking, but he knew that today she wouldn’t. “Our flower girl.”

  “This really sucks, Karen,” he said. “I can hardly stand it.”

  “She’s old, Paul,” Karen said. “It’s the right thing to do. You’ve been the best owner a dog could want — she’s been with you twenty-four hours a day, practically. I think that’s all any dog would really want, and you gave that to her.”

  It was true. She’d sailed off the coast of Maine. Attended swank parties in Soho lofts. She’d met Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Irving at a UMass fund-raiser. She’d had her picture in the paper, twice. She’d been to forty-six states and seven national parks and crossed the country a dozen times with him. She’d dug her nails into the Athabasca Glacier and wandered through fields of wildflowers in Montana. She’d chased seagulls into the surf on the Oregon coast and waded the tidal flats of Provincetown. She’d hiked the Appalachian Trail and chased away a black bear that was raiding the food cache. She’d done a lot. It was time.

  They ate and made small talk, updating each other on their families. Karen was sad to hear about Harrold’s stroke; she was glad to learn he was getting better and asked Paul to convey her best wishes. The fact that she was pregnant was none of his business. She wore a gold band on her left hand — also none of his business. Sharing even the most mundane things with Karen was awkward now, as if saying merely “What time is it?” or “Pass the salt” was a bad move that could undo the long, laborious psycho dramatic process of pissing and bitching and blaming that had allowed them both to move on. They really had said everything they had to say to each other. Chitchatting seemed absurd, and yet he needed her there to do this thing. She’d shared her life with Stella too. He needed to be with someone else who’d known her.

  Paul looked at his watch and said, “We should probably go.”

  In the past, Stella would commence trembling as soon as she recognized the Northampton Veterinary Clinic parking lot, and it had often been necessary to give her shots or examine her outdoors, on the steps, where her anxiety levels were manageable. Today she was calm. Paul kept saying to himself, “It’s a common thing, it happens all the time, millions of people do it every day.” He looked at the dog to see if there was anything he could read from her expression, any kind of fear or apprehension, but he saw only resolve.

  Karen, following him in her own car, parked next to him and waited outside with Stella while Paul went to the reception desk to report in. In the linoleum-floored receiving room, a cat the size of a small bear was wedged into an empty beer case between its owner’s feet. The front desk was usually staffed by high school girls who loved animals so much that they were willing to work after school for free.

  The receptionist said she’d go get Dr. Larson. Paul said Stella would prefer that Louise, Dr. Larson’s assistant, be the one to perform the procedure. Anna said Louise would meet them at the side door.

  In the parking lot, Karen scratched Stella behind the ear.

  “Can we have a moment?” he asked Karen. “I think she should pee before we go in.”

  He led Stella around to the backyard, where she squatted for the last time.

  “Lunch was delicious, Paul,” Stella said, once they were alone. “Thank you very much for that special treat.”

  He was having a hard time talking.

  “Don’t cry, Paul,” Stella said. “I don’t know what to say to you. I know it’s hard, but it’s only one day. We’ve had so many good days that it more than balances out.”

  “God-fucking-damn it, though,” he said.

  “I know,” she said softly. “You know it’s the right thing to do, though.”

  “I know,” he said. “Karen was telling me what a great life you’ve had, and I know that. I guess I can’t help thinking how mine is taking a rather dramatic turn for the worse. I’m really sorry — I didn’t want to make this any harder for you.
You have had a great life, I know that.”

  “Well,” the dog said, “you made it great.”

  “Thanks.”

  “There’s no chance that you and Karen might get back together, is there?”

  “No,” Paul said. “There’s no chance. Not even if lightning hit us both. Twice.”

  “Well, then,” Stella said. “I always liked her.”

  “So did I. She’s a good woman.”

  He looked around, hoping that something would be different about the day, but the birds sang and the bees buzzed and the clouds in the sky rolled silently on, just as they always did.

  “You will be loved, Paul. Remember that I told you that.”

  “I will,” he said. “You know me. I remember everything.”

  He looked at her.

  “We shouldn’t keep people waiting,” she said. “I’m sure Louise has better things to do than to wait around for me all day.”

  Later he remembered the heat, and how the warm sun burned down on them in the backyard of the veterinary clinic, and how somewhere faraway somebody was using a chain saw. How he picked her up and carried her into the room, setting her down on the stainless steel table. How Louise removed Stella’s collar. How the room was more like a kitchen than a doctor’s office, clammy and cold from the air-conditioning, with sinks and stainless steel basins, and the floor was wet from having recently been washed. How Louise said, “What this is, is simply a very powerful sedative.” How she worked silently, moving quickly, as if afraid she’d lose her nerve, first shaving a bare spot on Stella’s right front shin with an electric shaver. Paul would remember saying, “It’s okay, Stella — it’s going to be okay. Don’t be afraid,” more for his own benefit than for Stella’s, and how Karen was saying the same things. “We love you, Stell. We both love you very much.” He’d never had to watch love die, all in an instant, right before his very eyes. It had always died somewhere else, in some other town, some other place. He’d remember how they both held her, soothing her, his hands and Karen’s hands touching the dog but touching each other as well, and that it was the last time he physically touched his ex-wife, the last time that the circle was complete, the way it had once been, the three of them all in one place at one time. Later he’d remember how Stella looked up at him one last time, and then Louise stuck the needle in. How surprisingly fast the drug acted, stopping the heart instantly, like turning off a light switch, and how the old dog’s head went down and she didn’t move anymore.

  The doctor’s assistant said that they could take all the time they wanted to say good-bye and that Stella’s ashes would be ready to be picked up in the morning. It was another minute before he could take his hands from her. He wanted to hold on to her. Finally Karen took his hands in hers and gave them a squeeze. She hugged him. He closed his eyes. He hoped someone would take Stella away while he had his eyes closed, but her body was still there when he opened them, though she no longer occupied it.

  It was more than he could bear.

  Karen hugged him in the parking lot again. Her tears had made her mascara run.

  “Thanks for coming,” Paul managed to say.

  “Of course,” she said. “Call me if you need to talk. I loved her too.”

  He got into his car and drove until dark, heading north into Vermont, where the leaves were perhaps a third turned. He picked up dinner at a McDonald’s drive-through but couldn’t finish his cheeseburger.

  Part 3

  Fall/Winter

  Natural selection takes millions of years to effect change, because nature resists rather than encourages change. Most species tend to stick with what they know and go with what works for them, focusing on one prey species or adapting to one habitat until that singularity is modified by circumstances, at which point the majority die off, with those who remain surviving more out of dumb luck than by actually figuring out how to adapt. It’s rare when a species learns anything quickly. One exception may be the elk in Yellowstone National Park, who’d lost their fear of wolves over the years that wolves were gone from the park but quickly rediscovered it after wolves were reintroduced in 1986. At first the elks stood and watched as the wolves approached and killed them. Within one generation, mother elks were again teaching their young to fear wolves. Humans seek change despite ourselves and only because we are the lone species with a sense of our own impermanence.

  — Paul Gustavson, Nature for Morons

  21

  The Insignificance of Being Earnest

  He called Tamsen the next day to tell her what had happened. She didn’t hesitate, telling him she was driving up and would stop on the way to pick up something for dinner. He tried to warn her on the phone that he wasn’t going to be very good company, and when she arrived, he was mad at her for not listening. He felt sick to his stomach and wasn’t hungry. He wanted her to go home and come back some other time because he knew that even though she was only trying to make things better, they would be worse before she left. None of this would be her fault. It would be his. Why wouldn’t she listen? He didn’t want to be good company. He wanted to be a bastard. He had nothing to give her.

  At first, when he said he didn’t want to talk about it, she simply cleaned his house, without explaining why, although she didn’t have to. She vacuumed, mopped the floors. She vacuumed under the couch cushions and under the couches, the windowsills, the radiators, gathering up all the dog hair that had collected over the years. She put Stella’s dog bed and toys in a garbage bag and asked Paul what he wanted her to do with them. He suggested she put them in the trash can. Soon the house smelled of ammonia, Simple Green, and Murphy’s oil soap, as if she were performing an exorcism with cleaning products. He stayed in his bedroom. He didn’t want to talk. He could hear her in the kitchen going through his refrigerator and throwing out all the old Tupperware containers that had started to buckle and balloon from the biological corruptions in progress within. She left him alone. She ordered Chinese takeout and told him his was in the microwave when he said he wasn’t hungry. Every nice thing she said or did for him only made him want to withdraw further into a dark, private, pissy place where he was free to loathe himself, convinced that he didn’t deserve and hadn’t earned her kindnesses or for that matter anybody else’s. He would have been the first to admit he was not pulling his oar, as his father might have said, and he knew what his Viking ancestors did with guys who didn’t pull their oars.

  Lying in his bed with the shade pulled down, he realized how unfair it was of him to interfere with her happiness. She deserved better, someone who could do as much for her as she did for him, someone who could make love to her when she wanted to make love and be with her for the rest of her life — he had a pretty good idea of what she wanted. He was only being realistic. It wasn’t fair to make her wait. She should be with Stephen, who by all accounts was a great guy, just the sort of person who would make her feel safe. To go on pretending otherwise was pointless and would only make it hurt more later. They were clearly fooling themselves. It hurt too much to lose the ones you loved, and he was going to lose Tamsen one day, he was certain, so the sooner the better.

  He hid in bed, listening to the radio with his headphones on. When he heard her open his bedroom door to say good night, he kept his eyes closed, which was just as well because he didn’t think he could look her in the eye anymore. The local NPR station was offering Bach’s violin concertos this evening, familiar but welcome, so he closed his eyes again and listened, each piece forming a full emotional narrative, clear as any written word, telling of innocence and experience, love discovered and love destroyed, struggle and failure and triumph, loss and recovery. Nothing else that he’d ever heard made as much sense, each piece picking him up and leaving him somewhere better than where he’d been before.

  He dozed off. When he woke up, the digital clock said it was 3:46 in the morning. He went to the kitchen, where Tamsen had done the dishes, scrubbed the sink, and lined his booze bottles up on the counter. He poured him
self a glass of bourbon, then changed his mind, dumped it in the sink, and filled his glass with cold cranberry juice from the refrigerator. He went to the front room and pulled aside the window curtain to see if Tamsen’s car was in the driveway. It was. He turned and saw that she’d fallen asleep on the couch under a quilt she’d taken from the guest room. Even in the dark, he could tell the place was spotless. He sat on the coffee table in front of the couch and watched her. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes.

  He couldn’t hold it back any longer. He started to sob, even though he was afraid that if he started he’d never stop. He told her he was sorry he’d been acting like such a dickhead. He said he appreciated everything she’d done. She shushed him and held him. He lay on the couch next to her. He said again he was sorry for behaving badly and she told him he didn’t have to apologize to her. He was crying about Stella, but he was crying about everything else too, everything he imagined Tamsen was thinking about their relationship and where it was headed.

  “Should we go to bed?” she said at last when he’d stopped. “I’m sorry, Paul, but I have to be on the road no later than five thirty. I’d already rescheduled some meetings for tomorrow morning and I just can’t miss them.”

  “Can we just sleep here?” he asked.

  He didn’t notice when she left, but when he awoke, there was a note on the coffee table, no words, just a drawing of a heart, and the letter T.

  He spent the day in a haze. He went to Jake’s and tried to read the paper but couldn’t concentrate. He went to his office and tried to work but ended up playing solitaire for three hours. He ran errands, picked up a few things he needed to pick up, including a small metal box from the vet’s, containing Stella’s ashes. Time crawled. He felt encased in amber, unable to move forward. He reheated leftovers from the food Tamsen had bought him for dinner and watched ESPN for a while to distract himself, but soon he had to get out of the house. His house felt haunted.