Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

by Brad Watson

  Sometimes when the dog held them in her long, inscrutable gaze, the man believed she was truly thinking about them, truly regretting being adopted by them, and he felt ashamed. Then he would think it was ridiculous to feel ashamed over what you thought a dog might be thinking of you, as if their thoughts could be anything but the simplest kind of reaction to your behavior or possibly your moods. A dog didn’t know how to reprimand. He really should try not to have such absurd thoughts. It wasn’t making things any better, that’s for sure. No matter how they tried, things seemed to get steadily worse. At least, he told himself at such times, we were never foolish enough to have children.

  IT WAS NOT UNHEARD-OF for them to argue over the way in which one or the other took steps intended to ward off the possibility of an argument in the first place. One might do more than one’s share of the cooking or cleaning, only to have the other accuse him or her of trying to gain the moral upper hand, of shoring up ammunition for or against some future assault.

  Their therapist told them they were both emotional infants and this stung badly enough that for several days they were sullen and mute and limped about the house like injured pets who’d been kicked by their masters.

  Sometimes, in their studied attempts to get along and avoid unnecessary argument, they argued over whether or not one or the other was, in fact, actually angry. The interpretation of a mood, a gesture or the lack of one, a meaningful look or a meaningful avoidance of eye contact or acknowledgment of a gesture or a mood. And then the one, indignant that the other was angry for no apparent reason, would begin to display obvious and intentional signs of frustration or anger, perplexing and then angering the other, all of which led to loud accusations of the one or the other and then of the one and the other having lost his and/or her mind.

  Once they had a fantastic blowup over whether or not a certain actor in a particular movie was Albert Finney. She insisted the actor was Albert Finney, and he insisted that she was wrong, the man was not Albert Finney and possibly was not even English. They became impossibly enraged, out in the yard shouting at one another about Albert Finney, until one of their neighbors called the police.

  He was essentially right in the end but it was spoiled because the other actor was in fact English, just like Albert Finney, and this tainted his victory with the faint odor of speculation, of luck. Afterward, they laughed over what the dog would think if she could understand that their argument was over the identity of an actor who resembled another actor, Albert Finney.

  The dog lay on her pallet in the den, surrounded by her comforts—her buddy toy, and her bunny which she’d had since she was in the shelter, and her ball and her bone—and gazed at them evenly, her snout resting on her paws, and said nothing.

  They fought over sex, of course. Of course! Even so, it was horrible and humiliating all around. Each believed sex to be a great mediator, a mollifier, a rich black coal to stoke the fire of love. For they did love one another, in spite of their frequent and intense hatred. Their love and hatred were simply two sides of the same emotion, easily flipped. And so when they were enraged one with the other, and when the intense heat of the argument had cooled down, one or the other would sometimes attempt to blow gently into the embers, warm things up, maybe get it on. Timing was crucial, however, and almost never correct. You couldn’t make your move a moment too soon, or the argument started right back up, and to wait a moment too late was futile, exhausting, as if years had passed, as if the one had spent much time in a coma, traveling eons in a cocoonlike, strange-dreamed world, awakening to this weirdly familiar stranger mooning and touching and whispering terrifying words into an ear.

  Their secret, not necessarily kept from one another but an openly shared secret, was that each knew the other was the only kind of person either might be remotely capable of continuing to care about, much less stay with for any length of time. Each knew that the other was the kind of person who, little by little, inevitably, grew to hate whomever it was that they had once (perhaps) loved. That the other was just like them, the kind of person who hated him- or herself so deeply and thoroughly, and was so rottenly insecure of his/her intellect, moral fiber, looks, and so on, that it was impossible not to hate anyone who genuinely cared about them. And, if that person perhaps did come to genuinely despise them at some point, it only served to confirm their bitter certainty that such a betrayal was bound to happen. But—but—if you were with a person who was just like you, not only in those ways but also in terms of being overly temperamental, extremely hypercritical, constantly suspicious of one thing or another, and who abused you verbally and sometimes, to some degree, physically, who in other words both treated you exactly as you deep-down believed you deserved and gave you damn good reason to think of him or her as the meanest, sneakiest (son of a) bitch, well, it was a marriage made by the gods, that’s all there was to it.

  In her own humble and quiet way, the dog was in accord with this assessment of the situation.

  THEN THERE WAS THE business of the gun. One could argue that it would be insane for either of them to believe that one or the other should bring a gun into their house, of all places. Even so, when a colleague of his gave him the gun, he was delighted, though later on he was mystified that he had been delighted over the gift of a gun, that he had not thought it an unusual gift, a dangerous gift, a gift almost never given, especially not to someone who is simply a colleague and not a frightened spouse who must on a regular basis get to his or her car across a forlorn and empty parking lot in a bad part of town, or deliver large bags of cash from the till to the bank in the bleak evening, or rob a store or a bank. It was not much of a gun, a little .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol, cheaply chromed, with a white plastic handle that was a little loose in the screws. The colleague had laughed and called it an Italian Assassin’s Gun, given to him by a friend after a poker game one night for the same reason the colleague was giving it to him right now, which was that his wife had demanded he get rid of the gun, she would not have the thing in her house, and so would he like to take it home and—HA HA HA, the colleague had laughed—try it out on his wife?

  And so quite possibly, of course, even he had to admit it, this was why he had accepted the gun and taken it home and pretended to be nonchalant about the fact that he was bringing a gun into their house. Their house, of all places. Because of the challenge, the bald-faced effrontery serving some vague, untethered resentment or another.

  Of course they fought over it, the gun. Over the wisdom of having it and keeping it around. She was in the camp of those who believed having a gun would only, inevitably, put a gun in the hand of an intruder who otherwise might not have a gun. He was in the camp of those (or so he told himself conveniently at the moment) who believed that, whether or not one was especially handy with a gun, it was better to have a fighting chance with a formidable weapon in the admittedly unlikely but not beyond-the-pale chance that one would indeed be confronted by an intruder with a knife or a gun. I will not be a passive, helpless victim, he said. What difference would it make, she said, whether you had a gun in your hand when you got shot or did not have a gun in your hand? At least we’d have a chance! he said. What are the odds—the chances, if you prefer—of it ever coming up? she said. Then they fought over the quality of the gun, which was obviously not good, and over whether that mattered since it had been a casual gift from his colleague whose wife had told him it couldn’t stay in their house any longer. I’m not talking about the manner in which we acquired the stupid thing! she said. And if she didn’t want it around what makes you think I would, for God’s sake? Well, it shoots just fine! he said. At aluminum cans, she said. CANS ARE NOT ARMED AND DANGEROUS!

  Where are you going? he said.

  To throw the goddamned thing away.

  He ran ahead and blocked her from entering his study, where he had put the gun. She tried to get around him, and they began to wrestle. She dug her sharp fingernails into his arm, and instinctively he did something he’d never done befor
e. He slapped her across the face. They both froze in disbelief of what had just happened, their faces two variations on some kind of horror. Then, giving him the coldest look she’d ever given him, she walked away.

  It was late in the evening. She went into the bedroom and began taking clothes off the closet rack and from the dresser drawers and throwing them onto the rumpled bedcovers and took a duffel from the closet shelf and threw it onto the bed beside the clothes and began to stuff them into the bag. He followed her and stood in the doorway.

  Where are you going?

  I don’t know, a motel, whatever. Maybe I’ll just get into the car and drive, I don’t know where.

  You can’t just do that.

  Watch me.

  She made for the front door with the unzipped bag in her hand, still in her pajamas and furry slippers.

  Come on, she said to the dog, who had retreated from her pallet to a safer place beneath the coffee table. The dog looked from her to the man, and didn’t move.

  You’re not taking the dog, he said.

  She’s my dog! she said. I’m the one who got her from the shelter. I’m the one who feeds her, gives her her medicine, brushes her coat. You don’t give a damn about the dog.

  I do, too! I do those things!

  Where’s the leash?

  She found the leash and snapped it onto the dog’s collar and started coaxing the dog from beneath the coffee table. The dog reluctantly began to creep from under the table to follow her, eyes frightened and moving rapidly from the woman to the man.

  Stop that! he said. You’re freaking her out.

  Me! she said.

  He went to stop her, trying only to restrain her from leaving the house, but they grappled in the foyer, her bag falling open into the living room and spilling her clothes, the dog trying to scramble out of the way but she was restrained by the leash held tight in the woman’s hand. He knocked over a hat and coat stand with his elbow and sent it tumbling. She let go of the leash and the dog scrambled past them on clickity claws toward the rear of the house, trailing the leash.

  Look at that! she shouted. You’re traumatizing the goddamn dog again. Stop it. Just stop!

  You can’t just get into the car with a bag of clothes and head out into the night.

  How do you know, how could you know? Let me go, you bastard. I’ll kill you!

  She twisted in his grasp and chopped at his throat with her fist. He deflected her blows, backing up.

  Stop, he said. You’d better stop.

  He backed away and she immediately stooped to gather her clothes back into the bag. He rushed into his study and snatched the little pistol off the shelf next to the dictionary and went back into the living room and stood over her. She looked up, saw the gun in his hand, and froze.

  You don’t have the guts to use that ridiculous thing, she said. Even you’re not that insane.

  He stepped back, shucked a round into the gun’s chamber, and for a moment thought he would shoot a bullet into the floor near her, just to let her know he would do it. But at the last moment he pointed the muzzle toward his right foot and fired.

  The pain was blinding. He fell to the floor.

  Jesus! Jesus fucking Christ! she kept saying as he writhed on the floorboards, moaning, touching and then recoiling from his bleeding foot. Somewhere in another room the dog barked frantically, as if an intruder were breaking down the door.

  ON THE WAY TO the hospital, while he gritted his teeth and poured out a cold sweat, they did not fight verbally but carried on a battle of silence wherein each believed himself or herself superior to the other, she because he had been enough of a hysterical idiot to shoot himself in the foot in order to make a point, he because he was in agonizing pain and knew that anyone who could drive another person to shoot himself in the foot just to get her to shut up and stay put must be out of her mind.

  The young, balding emergency room doctor ordered X-rays, anesthetized and cleaned the wound. The police came and required them to fill out a report. Luckily they were not police officers who had ever been to their house, called by one of them or by their neighbors. And then they went back home.

  Miraculously, the bullet hadn’t cracked through any bones. It was five a.m. He hobbled off to bed, his foot bandaged and throbbing. He took one of the sample Percocets they’d given him and slept.

  She stood over him for a long while, watching him sleep. It was difficult for her to gather her thoughts. She was rather stunned, a little in shock. She went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and forgot what she was doing and stood for a long while at the sink staring at her shaking hands and the stained porcelain in the basin of the sink.

  In the afternoon he woke to find she was not there, had left a note that she was going away for a while, that she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to come back or not, whether there was any point to coming back at all, and that the insanity with the gun was truly frightening to her and caused her to wonder whether things had finally gone too far, that if he could shoot himself in the foot in order to make a point, then who was she to say that one day, in order to make a point, he would not shoot her in the foot or the hand or point-blank right between the eyes?

  He stood at the sink reading over the note, trembling at first with rage that she would leave while he lay wounded in the other room, then awash with a flood of shame and grief. He could hardly believe that she had gone and might not come back and that he hadn’t been able to keep this from happening, yet another disaster, his third marriage down the drain.

  He limped back to bed with the note crushed in his fist and lay down and stared at the ceiling. Theirs was an old house with real plaster on the ceilings and walls and he lay there for a long while looking at it, its hidden patterns slowly revealing themselves. How had the workmen made that simple but beautiful finish on the plaster? As if it had been pressed into place with crushed flowers. There were no craftsmen such as that at work anymore. He couldn’t imagine how they might have done it, and he wondered for some minutes about the various ways in which they possibly had.

  The dog, who’d been hiding somewhere in the house, crept into the bedroom, her head low, still trailing the leash clipped to her collar, her eyes wary and vulnerable. Then she crept backward from the room again and he heard her claws clicking across the kitchen linoleum and the sound of the leash dragging behind her on her way back to the den.

  It was not all over, surely. She wouldn’t stay away forever. He was fairly certain of that. She would’ve taken the dog, surely, if she meant to be gone for good. She was right that he should somehow get rid of the gun. The whole thing was at least as absurd as anything else they’d ever done, and the gun was the most absurd thing that he’d ever done, he’d have to grant that, and the painful embarrassment, the horror he was feeling, as he lay there, was nearly as excruciating as the throbbing pain returning to his foot. He fought against a great creeping weight of despair. What a fool he was. My God. He sighed heavily and reached for the foil packet of Percocets, popped one out, and swallowed it with water she’d left in a glass on the bedside table within reach. He took a pillow from her side and put it underneath his injured foot, to elevate it.

  BACK IN THE DEN, the dog was not at all certain the woman would ever return. She had only watched the woman leave the house and drive sadly away in her vehicle, without saying a word to her, the dog. Now the dog didn’t know what she would do. She thought all this was at least partly her fault.

  With her previous owners, before she’d escaped and been taken to the shelter, she’d been beaten for simply crossing from one room to the next. For crapping in the very yard into which they had kicked her in order to crap. For barking when the very real threat of another dog entering their yard had been imminent. She had protected them! Defended their honor and territory! And they’d beaten her! It had scrambled her mind. She ran away. She was captured and put into yet another cage. The man and woman came by one day and took her home, and were kind to her, but almost immediately t
he daily loud barking and snarling started up, and even if she could usually tell when it was about to start she was always frightened and wanted to run away. Now here she was beneath the coffee table, licking her paws, with their leash fastened to the collar about her neck, and nowhere to go. No walk. No drive up into the mountains to chase squirrels. No quick trip to the prairie to jump jack rabbits, harass the cowardly pronghorn herd. She could trip open the back screen, jump the fence, and walk until another man or woman or couple saw the leash and took it up. She could offer herself to someone else this way, take her chances.

  But another couple, another family, would only present a new set of baffling circumstances. Of this she had no doubt. In spite of their bad behavior, this couple had loved her and cared for her and served her well. She resolved to stay under the coffee table, the leash clipped to her collar in hope, and wait for the woman to return.

  But she couldn’t rid herself of the darkening fear that once again everything had gone to hell. She didn’t know if she could take it all happening all over again. She had tried so hard to be smart, to stay out of trouble. But she had been distracted by her own anxiety, hadn’t paid proper attention, and if the woman had been driven away, maybe she would have to go away now, too. She began to gnaw hopelessly at the end of her leash, but that didn’t comfort her at all. For the first time in a long time, since she was very young and homeless and hungry, she raised her muzzle into the air and let out a long, mournful howl.