A Home for Goddesses and Dogs

by Leslie Connor

  I stood behind Guffer and lifted him by his hips. I got his legs under him—enough to prop him up. But when I let go he swayed. Then collapsed. He cried and craned his head and shoulders toward the door. As stressed as he was, he wanted to go out.

  “Something’s really wrong,” I called. My voice was breaking now. “He can’t walk. He can’t even stand!”

  Eileen swore. She came rushing down the stairs, one strap and buckle of her overalls swinging. “He wants to go out,” I said. She grabbed a towel, looped it under Guffer’s loins, and used it as a hoist. She helped him to the door, and I followed, all the while watching his useless hind legs tap the floor. Even his toes bent under the wrong way.

  Aunt Brat called, “I’ll be right down!” I heard her hurrying back and forth to the bathroom, running water and flushing the toilet. She had to be cleaning up a colossal mess at the top of the stairs. By the time she made it down to the kitchen, with Soonie right behind her, Eileen was bringing Guffer back in through the door.

  I’d been standing, frozen, with my hands clamped together, pressing my knuckles into my bottom lip. “Is he back on his feet?” I asked. But I could see that he wasn’t. Eileen was still using the towel to carry him—like he was a dog suitcase.

  She shook her head as she let him down to a sitting position. “He peed,” she said. “But we’ve got big trouble. He’s in pain. And he’s lost control of his hinds.” She gave my aunt a look that sank my heart.

  “Then what? You think it’s his spine?” Aunt Brat’s voice quavered.

  “That’d be my guess.” Eileen was solemn. Aunt Brat stared at the dog. Soonie approached and sniffed Guffer from head to toe. She stayed close to him, blinking her eyes.

  “Well, do you think he got hurt? I mean an incident? An accident? Lyddie? Did you see anything?”

  I tried to think. “He was fine last night. Came up the stairs.”

  “I looked him over, felt his bones,” Eileen said. “Not a lump or a scratch on him. It’s just . . . I don’t know. It’s weird.”

  “Oh, Guffer,” I whispered. I got to my knees beside him. I touched him ever so gently. He rested his chin on my shoulder for no more than a second. He made a shrill yip as he pivoted in place. He turned his back to all of us. I looked at his pale pointed ears and round head, the golden ruff that turned lighter down his shoulders like a perfect shawl. Something was terribly wrong inside his handsome dog body.

  “This is no trip to the local vet, Brat,” Eileen said. “He’s got to go to the hospital.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Aunt Brat. She came and knelt in front of Guffer and held his chin in her hand. “Our poor guy,” she whispered. He lifted his chin away. He mewed again. “Aww, I’m so sorry, boy. So sorry.”

  “I sure don’t like this,” Eileen said. She bit her quivering lip. I flashed on the day the little goats had been dumped at the feedstore and felt the same sort of gravity in all my ribs. I wanted to comfort Eileen. But I thought if I did anything—if I touched her—we’d both crumble. Guffer did not want to be touched either, so I put my arm around Soonie, warm old set of bones that she was. I strummed her velvet coat. She shivered.

  “Okay. Okay then.” Aunt Brat stood up. She kept her voice steady. “I’m going to call ahead so they’ll be expecting us.” She jammed on her glasses and picked up her phone and headed to the window to get the best signal. She looked back at me over the glasses. “Lydia, are you all right?” she asked. I nodded. She nodded back. “That was a very good catch there on the stairs,” she said, poking numbers into the phone. “He’s a big dog.” She leaned against the window glass, phone to her ear. “Yes, hello . . .”

  I couldn’t bear to listen as she described his symptoms, and I don’t think Eileen could either. She lined up our shoes, and coats, and Aunt Brat’s purse, all at the door. Then she went to tell Elloroy that he’d be home alone with Soonie for at least the morning.

  I cuddled Guff’s big blond face. I tucked my fingers into his ruff and let my forehead touch his. I needed to take in the woolly smell of him, to touch the curly chin whiskers. He accepted, but without one drop of enthusiasm. An ache grew inside my chest. This poor, strange, difficult dog, I thought. He has to be all right. He just has to be.

  “I wish you could tell me what’s wrong,” I whispered to him. “We’ll find out, though. We’ll get you fixed up. I promise we will.”

  Don’t make that promise . . . you don’t know!

  Our big yellow dog looked like a broken marionette. How, I wondered, how will he ever be all right again?

  53

  The Worrying Room

  In a flurry of conversation I learned that the animal hospital was near the university. “Well, at least I know how to get there,” Aunt Brat said. She took a worried breath inward. “Oh, Eileen, do you think you can take the day off—”

  “Of course I can!” Eileen stood tall. “Did you think I’d leave you alone with this? Not a chance! We’ll go together. The three of us.”

  Aunt Brat’s shoulders dropped. “But Lydia has school—”

  “Oh no, she doesn’t.” Eileen gestured all over the room, but mostly at the dog and me where we huddled. “You think she’s going to sit in a chair learning lessons this morning, Brat? Really?”

  “Please,” I said. “Let me come. I’ll help. I need to be with him.” My jaw ached. I almost said the awful thing I was thinking: What if they have to put him down?

  “Of course you should come.” Aunt Brat conceded. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  It took all three of us to get Guffer into the boxy car. We lifted and hoisted. He sat next to me on the back seat. He was pitiful, with his head hanging and his yellow feltlike ears so low.

  Aunt Brat took the car slowly over the country bumps, then pressed the speed limit on the smooth highway. I kept my arms around Guffer the entire way. Cold, nervous sweat formed in my pits, and I shivered.

  Everything was awful.

  We lifted the poor dog, slung in his carrying towel, through the big glass doors to the animal hospital. A biting, antiseptic smell hit my nose—so much worse for Guffer, I thought. He tried to turn and leave, eyes wide with fear. He whimpered. We coaxed.

  Reception calmly logged him in as “Guffer Bratches.” It sounded so adorable it made my eyes flood. I hid my face in my sweater sleeve.

  They sat us down in the waiting room. They might as well have called it the worrying room, because that’s what we did for the next twenty-five minutes. I sat on the cold linoleum beside Guff. I wondered, was it good that the attendants at the animal hospital did not seem as alarmed by our flop-legged dog as we were? Hope fluttered in my chest but went still again with my next thought: They’re letting us sit here like this because they can already tell how hopeless it is. . . .

  Finally, a young woman wearing a candy-pink smock came. She had a megaphone voice and the kind of forced cheerfulness about her that makes everything worse. “Okay, Guffer!” she screeched. “We’re so sorry this happened to you. This way! This way!”

  Ugh! I wanted to stuff my fingers in my ears. She chattered at us all the way into an examination room. There, we waited some more until the veterinary surgeon finally came in. Guff cried through the exam. We winced and we worried.

  “I can’t be sure without images, but this looks like some sort of anomaly of the spine,” the vet said. “Your dog has little feeling in his hindquarters.” He said something about an interruption in the neuropathway. “The only way to find out is X-rays and an MRI.”

  When Aunt Brat asked about the cost, he said that finding out what was wrong would run in the thousands.

  I heard Aunt Brat slowly fill her lungs.

  The room swam.

  The vet went on. “Depending on what we see, you could be looking at a surgery. It’s expensive,” he said with a tick of his tongue.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Eileen declared. “We’re committed to him. He’s a special one.” She took a hard swallow. Aunt Brat nodded in ag
reement, though her face looked gray.

  “Okay,” said Aunt Brat. She sounded just as blunt as the doctor now. “Images. How soon?”

  “The earliest we can get him into the tube is first thing tomorrow morning,” the doctor said. “Then I’ll give you a call and tell you what we’re dealing with.”

  “He has to stay the night?” I asked.

  “Yes. We will make him comfortable and sleepy,” the surgeon promised.

  I felt about half a percent better. I planted a long kiss on the cap of Guffer’s head between his ears. I breathed in the woolly smell of him. I cannot explain how it hurt to turn and leave him there. Outside, I marched to the car, with my women right on my heels.

  “Well. That was no picnic,” Aunt Brat said. She wrapped her fingers on the steering wheel and took a cleansing breath.

  “Damn straight,” Eileen agreed. She rested her head against the passenger’s-side window.

  I sat on my half of the back seat, reached over, and swept together all the pale Guffer hairs he’d shed onto the black leather. I rolled them in my fingers, spun them into a short little piece of blond yarn.

  “Well, I feel like he’s in good hands,” Aunt Brat said as we sat waiting at the first stoplight on our way home. I closed my eyes and felt the vibrating of the car. “The surgeon has a great reputation,” she added.

  “Yep. Got a good feeling about the staff at that place too,” said Eileen.

  I grunted. Not on purpose. “I just hope that person in the pink smock won’t yammer at Guff the whole time,” I said. “She’s too loud. He’ll hate that.”

  “True.” Aunt Brat and Eileen said it exactly together, and if that weren’t enough, they did it again. “She did yammer.” There was a pause. And a snort. They looked at each other and burst out laughing, and so did I. Then I cried without making a sound the whole way home.

  54

  Dog Cash

  Aunt Brat didn’t make me go to school at all that Friday. From the second we arrived back home I felt it: we had too much space and too much quiet without our big yellow dog to wreak us some havoc. We were empty.

  I called Soonie up onto the couch beside me. She jumped up, then stood with four feet poking into the cushions before falling into a restful curl—on me. I curled up too and let the dog settle on my hip. I wrapped my arm around her knobby-boned back. She was warm as a radiator; her rhythmic breath sounded like steam running through her.

  I worried and I stewed. What if Guffer’s trouble was something unfixable? Or too expensive for Aunt Brat and Eileen—on top of the cost of the goats? What if they could not say yes—even if they want to? I thought I should tell them: I’d rather have Guffer than a college education. They could spend my nest egg. I didn’t care.

  We don’t know what’s wrong yet. We won’t know until morning.

  Ugh! It’s a warped-up, messed-up thing to not be able to do anything but wonder what’s coming.

  We wait and see. . . .

  My mother had said those words more times than I could count. I realized that she’d never once said, All we can do is wait and see. She’d haul out a sheet of watercolor paper and click open her box of paints, and create something.

  And what are you going to do with these next long hours—huh, Lydia Bratches-Kemp?

  For the time being, I burrowed. It wasn’t even noon, but I was drifting toward sleep, helped along by the warmth of Soonie. I reached out to my mom before I was all the way out.

  It is April . . . the Seed Moon . . . time to plant seeds of desire. . . .

  I desire my dog to be well. . . .

  Surround yourself in light and flowers. . . .

  My eyes are closed. . . .

  Decorate eggs to bring joy. . . .

  It’s going to take more than a few eggs to bring me joy. . . .

  Sing in the rain. . . .

  It’s not . . . raining. . . .

  When I woke Aunt Brat and Eileen and Elloroy were in the kitchen making lunch. “What’ll you have, Lyd-jah?” Eileen called to me, and I forced one eye open.

  “Hmm. Nothing for me, thanks,” I said. I hoped they would not protest. I had dreamed myself up some thoughts—or pictures—or something. I slid myself out from under the sleepy greyhound, hugged my long sweater close against the lost warmth of the couch and the dog. I climbed the stairs. Midway, I remembered: This is where I caught Guffer this morning—exactly here—on this stair. I wanted him home so much.

  In my room, I knelt beside the art box. I wanted the wax pencils—all the yellows, creams, and golds. I dug them out and held them in a bundle. And now a blank sheet of paper, I thought. That was in the other box with the homeless goddesses. I popped the lid off. The very first thing that caught my eye was the plastic sack of cards from my father—

  Wait! Money! . . . We need money!

  I tore right into that orange envelope, the one that Jaycinda had brought through the snow.

  A pair of hundred-dollar bills slipped into my lap when I opened the card. “Whoa,” I whispered.

  For the first time in my life I had a reason for wanting this money. So why did I even start to read the card?

  Kemp had straight-up tall handwriting.

  Dear Lydia,

  I can’t imagine a harder time for you. I’m so sorry Mom is gone. I’d like to see you. Could we do that, please? I’m willing to—

  “No!” I snarled. I sent the card flying across the room—or tried. Greeting cards are hard to throw. It opened up, caught air, and landed not far enough away. I swore. Who sends a festive-colored card when a mother dies, anyway? And why does he get to say Mom like that? “Ugh!”

  It is the worst feeling when you look for your dog, thinking you will bury your face in his coat for comfort—but he’s not there.

  I pressed my eyes into my knees. I thought about how scared Guffer must be, and lonely, and wondering. . . .

  Guff, are you okay? Are you comfortable and sleepy?

  I thought about his quirky walk—the bunny hopping—and his weak hind legs. Was whatever had happened this morning part of that? Was something always wrong inside but we missed it? I thought about how I’d failed to understand the dog in the beginning—and the awful days when I’d really not wanted him—

  But I love you now. I do. I cannot bear it if I lose you. . . .

  I lifted my face and blinked. Then I used the scissors and cut away the top edge of every envelope. I picked the bills from inside each card—no reading. Kemp had sent larger bills as I gotten older—and yes, it was all cash, through the mail. Risky. He must have been trying to make it easy for me to use the money. But I hadn’t spent a cent.

  I had seven years’ worth of bills in my lap. I counted it up. I had just short of two thousand dollars. I could hardly get down the stairs fast enough to turn it over to Aunt Brat.

  She balked when she saw the cash. “Wow,” she said. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?”

  “Enough to make a difference,” I said.

  “Right . . . but I can’t see us accepting your money, Lyddie.” Aunt Brat shook her head. “Eileen and I will figure this out.”

  “But you’ve already spent so much. If he needs a big operation . . . Please?” I said. “I don’t want it for anything else. It’s never felt right to use it.”

  “Hmm. Because of the way Kemp walked out,” Aunt Brat said. She stared off, looking rather tired. “Bad money.” She exhaled.

  “Yes. Bad money. And Guffer is sort of a bad dog—the best bad dog ever.” My voice cracked. “I didn’t want him.” I said the horrible words. “But now . . .”

  “He’s grown on you.” She smiled softly.

  I nodded, face beginning to crumple. I was one kind gesture away from a full-out cry.

  Aunt Brat stepped up and closed her hands around my hands. She drew the bills away from me, saying, “Okay. We’ll use it. It’s a fine thing to do with this money.”

  She was about to fold me into a hug. But I slipped away, and of all the crazy things, I went outs
ide. No coat. No shoes. I stood on the porch and sucked in an enormous breath of chilly April air. I swept a little handful of wet snow off the railing and held it against my eyes.

  “I want the dog back,” I whispered to absolutely no one. “I want him back!” I took another minute just looking out to the south the way Guffer so often had.

  Well. Thank goodness for firewood. I filled my arms and went back inside. I piled the wood on the hearth.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Aunt Brat asked. “If you’re not, I don’t blame you. I’m not so okay myself.”

  “Hard day,” I said, because it was. “I’m just going to go back up . . .” I suddenly remembered my gold and yellow pencils.

  “What about something to eat?” she coaxed, but I think she could already tell I would say no thanks. “Well, here. I’m having afternoon coffee since I missed out this morning. I made you some, too. Milk and honey, just the way you like it.” My aunt held out a mug.

  Morning seemed a long time ago. I wasn’t hungry, but I could use the coffee. “Thank you,” I said. I cupped the mug, breathed in the steam.

  “Go ahead. Take it upstairs,” said Aunt Brat. I loved her for that.

  I swept the cards and envelopes off my bedroom floor and packed them back into their plastic bag. I shoved the lot under my bed.

  I looked at the chimney wall where the new niche had been built. I moved my art box into the bottom of the space—a perfect fit. I brought over all the cream and yellow-gold pencils and a blank sheet of paper. I sat with my back against the warm bricks, my coffee mug by my side. I used the top of the art box like a lap desk. I started drawing yellow dogs.

  55

  When a Dog Is Gone from Home

  I woke to a hand gently shaking my shoulder. Aunt Brat was settling on the edge of my bed, with her phone in her hand. She mouthed the word “sorry,” but she smiled and pointed to the phone.