The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

  And not to be too cruel, she doesn’t say, but you will not be missed.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry you gave up on that piece,” he says. “You know I wanted you to finish it.”

  “To be honest,” says the woman, “there was another reason. I got distracted. I started writing something else.”

  “What about?”

  “About you.”

  “Me! How bizarre. What on earth made you decide to write about me?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly plan it. It was around Christmas, and I happened to watch that movie It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”

  “Many times.”

  “And you know how it goes. Jimmy Stewart—George Bailey—is stopped from taking his own life by an angel who shows him what a great loss to the world it would’ve been had he never existed. I was sitting there watching with Jip—I had Jip in my lap—and of course I thought about you. I mean, I was always thinking about you after I heard what happened, wondering if you were going to be all right.” (Here the man’s gaze is again drawn to the flowers on the windowsill.) “I was thinking about what a close call it was. And I forgot all about the movie and started imagining what it would’ve been like if you hadn’t been stopped. After all, it was sheer luck—or maybe you have a guardian angel. In any case, I could not stop thinking about it. What if you hadn’t been found in time? And I knew that’s what I needed to be writing about.”

  If the man was pale before, he is now as white as paper. “Am I hearing you right? Please say no.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman says. “I should have said that it’s fiction. I disguised everyone.”

  “Oh, give me a break. You think I don’t know what that means? You changed my name.”

  “Actually, I didn’t use names. I unnamed everyone. Except for the dog.”

  “Jip? Jip’s in it, too?”

  “Well, not exactly Jip. There’s a dog. He’s an important character. And he has a name: Apollo.”

  “Rather a grand name for a miniature dachshund, don’t you think?”

  “He’s not a dachshund anymore. As I said, it’s fiction, everything’s different. Well, not everything. For example, I kept the detail about your finding him in the park. But you know how it works. You take some things from life, you make other things up, you tell a lot of half-lies and half-truths. So Jip becomes a Great Dane. And I made you an Englishman.”

  The man groans. “Couldn’t you at least have made me Italian?”

  The woman laughs. “Here’s what I learned from Christopher Isherwood about turning a real person into a fictional character. It’s like when you fall in love, he says. The fictional character is like the beloved: always extraordinary, never just another person. So you leave out the details about how that person is just like every other human being. Instead, you take what you find exciting or intriguing about them, the special things that made you want to write about them in the first place, and you exaggerate those. I know everyone wants to be Italian. But ever since I’ve known you you’ve always seemed like a Brit to me.”

  “And did you decide to make me a goy while you were at it?”

  The woman laughs again. “No. But I did make you a bit more of a womanizer than you really are.”

  “Just a bit?”

  “Ah. You’re upset.”

  “You must have known I would be.”

  “I did. I admit that I did. When do people ever like it when you write about them? But I had to do something. As I said, from the minute I heard what had happened I could not stop thinking about it. So I did what you do if you’re a writer and you’re obsessed about something: you turn it into a story that you hope will lay it to rest, or at least help you figure out what it means. Even if we know from experience that this pretty much never actually works.”

  “Yes, I know, you don’t have to tell me all this. And writers really are like vampires, you don’t have to tell me that either, I’m sure it’s something I once told you. Again, the irony is not lost on me. But as you can see you’ve given me quite a shock. I don’t know what to think. What have you done? Right now I can tell you it feels like a betrayal. Absolutely a betrayal. And after the conversation we just had, I do have to ask: What makes me fair game? And you could at least have waited. Christ. There I am in the hospital, at the lowest moment of my entire life, and you’re at the computer churning out pages. Not a very pretty picture. No. In fact, it strikes me as downright sleazy. What kind of friend—oh shame on you. Words fail you, I see. I’m amazed that you can even look me in the face. And did I hear you right, about a dog? The dog is a major character? Please say nothing bad happens to the dog.”

  DEFEAT THE BLANK PAGE!

  PART TWELVE

  This is the life, eh? Sunshine, not too hot, nice breeze, birdsong. Now, I know you like the sun, or you wouldn’t be lying in it, you’d be up here on the shady porch with me. In fact, that sun must feel awfully good on your old bones. And you probably find the ocean breeze as refreshing as I do. Whenever it blows our way you lift your head to sniff, and I know your three hundred million odor receptors are picking up far more than the salty tang coming through my measly six million. It’s hard for a person to smell more than one thing at a time. When I hear someone describe a wine as having a heavy black-pepper aroma followed by hints of raspberry and blackberry, I know they’re full of shit. Show me the human that can smell a raspberry from a blackberry, even without having to go through pepper first. But your nose, on the other hand, tens of thousands of times as sensitive as mine, according to dog science—able to smell one rotten apple in two million barrels—now that’s a whole other organ.

  More amazing yet that you can tell apart the countless different scents hitting you at all times from every direction. A power like that makes every dog Wonder Dog. But talk about too much information. A power like that would drive any human being insane.

  Thinking back to when you used to wake me in the middle of the night, inhaling every inch of me as I lay on the floor. Searching for data. Who was I and what might I have up my sleeve. You still sniff me all the time, but never with the same kind of investigative fervor.

  According to science, you can smell not only what I had for breakfast today but also yesterday’s dinner; when I last washed the shorts and T-shirt I’m wearing and whether or not I used bleach; where these sandals have taken me lately, and the fact that I’ve changed my brand of sunscreen. All of this would be a piece of cake for you. But now that I know what dogs can do, nothing would surprise me. The woman we often meet walking her mother and daughter mutts says dogs can tell time. When I come home from work, she says, I look up and see my girls at the window while I’m still a block away. They can tell from the level of my scent in the air.

  I think it’s fair to say that, thanks to your superior gift, you can read me better than I can read you. Hormones and pheromones keep you updated. My anxiety about classes starting up again in a week. My open wounds. My hidden fears. My loneliness. My rage. My never-ending grief. You can smell all that.

  What else. A fraction of malignant cells not yet detectable to medicine? Plaques and tangles silently forming in my brain, heralds of dementia?

  It’s been surmised that a canine companion could know that its person is pregnant before that person herself knows.

  Ditto a person dying.

  Not that your sense of smell is what it used to be. Age has surely dulled it, as happens to people too. And look at that nose: once a ripe dripping black plum, now crusty and gray like a used coal.

  I was saying: hot sun, cool breeze—these I’m pretty sure you like. But what about the birdsong. There’s a feeder in the yard, and birds are abundant. We hear chickadees, sparrows, finches, and robins throughout the day—except for certain hours when, mysteriously, every one falls silent as if they’d all gone off to church.

  I like bird sounds, even the monotonous woe
-is-me of the mourning doves and the screechy cries of jays, crows, and gulls. But you, indifferent to man-made music of any sort, what effect does nature’s music have on you?

  I’ve known people who don’t at all appreciate birdsong, who even find it annoying. A story about the conductor Serge Koussevitzky complaining about being woken up mornings at Tanglewood by all those birds singing out of tune.

  Sometimes a bird catches your eye—as pigeons in the city sometimes do—flying low through the air or hopping on the lawn, but never tempting you to the chase.

  Squirrels, rabbits, and chipmunks also appear, some daring to get quite close, but none needing to fear.

  The neighbor’s tom, black and white like you, observes you through slitted eyes from the edge of the lawn, telegraphing that he’s unimpressed.

  Once, a strange-looking dog streaked by, furtive and swift, there and gone so fast that I might have hallucinated it. Only later did it hit me: that was no dog but a fox.

  I wonder if you’ve ever chased any creature in your life. Seems to me you must have. The instinct must be there. Boar hunting, after all, is in your genes.

  Not that I’m not glad we’re all peaceable kingdom here. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Just remembered my old boyfriend training Beau to sit still for a full minute with a pet mouse on his head.

  I have seen you snap at flies and other insects, to my worry including stinging ones. And you once ate an enormous spider before I could stop you.

  Or maybe it was the mouse being trained to sit with a dog under its butt.

  The other constant sound here is the surf, which I like to think is as restful for you as it is for me.

  The first time we went down to the beach I wondered if you’d ever seen the ocean before, or gone swimming, or walked on sand. (The size of your footprints I imagine giving some people pause.) Luckily, the beach is just minutes away. We go only when the sun is low, early morning or dusk. Short as it is, the walk’s not always easy for you. You go slowly, ever more slowly—hobble is the word I’m dodging here. I’m afraid that one day we’ll get down there all right but then you won’t be able to make it back.

  In the city a short time ago a scary thing happened. It was scorching, the first really bad day of the season, and we were headed for the shade of the park. But before we could get there, and though we hadn’t gone far, you stopped, you buckled and sank to the concrete, clearly distressed.

  I nearly panicked, thought I was going to lose you right then right there.

  How kind people were. Someone dashed into a coffee bar and came back with a bowl of cold water, which you drank greedily without getting up. Then a woman passing by stopped, took out an umbrella, and stood holding it open to shield you from the sun; it’s okay if I’m late for work, she said. A man driving by offered us a ride, but I knew you’d have trouble climbing into the backseat, and by then thankfully you’d revived and we were able to walk home.

  Now every time I walk you my heart is in my throat.

  But you must walk, the vet says. You must get at least some exercise every day.

  The medication is working, he tells me. The pain relievers and anti-inflammatories ensure that, though you may not always be totally comfortable, you are not in agony. Which could change, of course, and that is an agony to me. Because how will I know.

  Haunted by Ackerley’s description of Queenie at the end: She began to turn her face to the wall, to turn her back to me. That was the moment, the sign he took to mean he should have her—killed.

  You’ll let me know, won’t you. Remember, I’m only human, I’m nowhere near as sharp as you are. I’ll need a sign when it gets to be too much.

  I don’t see it as tampering with nature, playing God, or, as some would have it, interfering with a being’s spiritual journey, its passage to the bardo. I see it as a blessing. I want for you what I’d want for myself.

  And I’ll be there, of course. I’ll be with you on that last journey to the vet.

  I thought the moment had come yesterday, when you left your breakfast untouched. I broke off a piece of my own breakfast bread, which you ate from my hand. (Like reading mass together.) By evening, though, your appetite had returned.

  So let’s think no more about it. Let’s look to this day, and only this day. This gift of a perfect summer morning.

  One more summer. At least you got that.

  One more summer to lie stretched out and contented in the sun.

  And at least I get to say good-bye.

  Am I talking to you, or to myself? I confess the line has gotten blurred.

  The weeks before we came here were so hard. It’s been some time since you could make it comfortably up and down five flights of stairs, and so we’d started taking the elevator. This was mostly fine with the neighbors. By now they’re used to seeing us, and only one person, a retired nurse whose husband died of leukemia last year, has questioned your designation as a therapy animal. But even she has commented on how well mannered you are, the way you scrunch your body so as not to take up too much of the elevator’s tight space. And other tenants, much like people we meet all the time, are plainly delighted when they see you, charmed in the way people often are by any type of gentle giant.

  But the increasingly pungent odor of your coat, the stench of your breath and ropy drool—particularly in that close space, now suffocating in the heat—were harder and harder to ignore.

  And then: the dreaded inevitable. In the elevator, in the hallway, in the carpeted lobby. Hardly a day passed without an accident. And nowhere was the problem worse than in the apartment. Jesus, it smells like a stable, said a delivery man. Someone else said zoo. Hector, God bless him, said nothing.

  Three rugs, the couch, and the bed had to go. I got a second rubber air mattress, and we started sleeping side by side on the two mattresses on the floor.

  I did my best, vigorously mopping and scrubbing, going through several bottles of Lysol a week. But the job began to seem herculean, and the odor never really went away. It has permeated the wood floors, the bookshelves. It’s in all my clothes—the way cigarette smoke was when I was in my twenties—and, I sometimes fear, in my skin and hair.

  It’s bad but not that bad, said the person who’s always been most sympathetic about my situation. What you need to do is get away for a while, let the place air out.

  Just when I was about to despair, he came to our rescue.

  My mom had to go into a nursing home, he said. She’s got this cottage on Long Island where she used to spend summers. We just sold it, but the new owners don’t take possession till after Labor Day. They’re planning to gut the place and completely renovate it, so it won’t really matter what damage the dog does. And he can be outdoors a lot of the time anyway. I didn’t get out there much myself this summer. I’ve got to work, and I hate being a weekender, especially in August, traffic’s such a bitch. Anyway, it’s only two more weeks, and you need it more than I do. Your life will be so much easier there, you’ll see. While you’re gone, if you want, I’ll see what I can do about your apartment.

  My hero.

  Even chauffeured us here in his SUV.

  Getting you into the SUV without hurting you was one more hurdle. Hector came up with a makeshift ramp: an old door that had been stashed in the building basement.

  No stairs for us to worry about here, just two little steps to the porch. And no need for a car. I can bike the six miles to town to do grocery shopping. A week from today, when we have to leave, our friend will come in his SUV and drive us home.

  The first night here there was a spectacular storm. We cowered together under a roof that sounded like it was being strafed. Rain all night, and in the morning calm. It was like some membrane had been peeled away to reveal a whole new world, bright and clean. You could almost hear Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” You could almost smell the blue. And every day
since has been glorious.

  On the beach, usually around dusk, we sometimes see another pair: a young man, shirtless, caramel tan, ice-blond hair— a real beach boy—and his Weimaraner. We watch the dog plunge into the water to fetch the stick the man keeps throwing for him. The man has an arm. Far, far out sails the stick. Far, far out swims the dog, again and again, breasting wave after wave, tireless. A thrilling sight. How deliriously happy he seems, how triumphant, racing back to drop the stick at the man’s feet.