Dog Medicine (13 page)

A
UGUST
5, 1996

Three days had passed since Melissa called. I sat in my room late on the night I was supposed to call and tell her whether I wanted to move in with her and her friends. It was midnight in Ohio, 9 p.m. in Seattle. Not too late to call, but I was nowhere near a decision. Bunker lay curled in his crate with the door open. I'd been reinforcing his recall all day, and he was exhausted with a belly full of treats.

My bedroom window was cracked open, and in spilled my favorite sounds, the crickets and cicada and owl calls, the symphony of a summer night in Ohio. They were a loud chorus, messy but still somehow in unison, a warm lullaby that I'd taken for granted as a child. In New York, I remember perking up when I heard one lonely cricket in the bush outside my apartment. I wondered how he ended up stranded in that endless metropolis. I mourned for him that no female would ever answer the call of his rubbing legs, and I wrote a really bad poem about his plight.

I sat in front of Bunker's open crate, thinking about this new possibility. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, asked the crickets to give me an answer. Should I go? Were there crickets at night in Seattle? Was this all too soon? Was I ready to try again?

I heard the shuffle of my mom's slippers in the kitchen, the clinking of dishes, the rumble of the starting dishwasher. She and my dad had been watching television, and my dad had just gone to bed. He didn't say it, but I knew he thought Seattle was too far
away, too risky for my fragile emotional state. It was dark and rainy, he said, and I had no job there. “But whatever you want to do, I will support,” he said, though his voice was unconvincing, and I knew he wanted me to stay.

“Hey, there.” My mom peeked her head into my bedroom.

“Hi,” I greeted her, then turned back to the open window.

“Beautiful night,” she said, pulling her robe tight around her waist.

I had been daydreaming about Will in New York, imagining what he was doing, who he was kissing.

My mom sat down next to me on the floor. She smelled like dish-soap and perfume. In her presence, for whatever reason, I had a momentary panic that I was on the precipice of feeling depressed again. Could I possibly move to
another
new town? Could I try again? I thought of Melissa's enthusiasm on the phone.

“I don't know what to do,” I said. “I was supposed to call Melissa today and now it's probably too late.”

“I'm sure she can wait until tomorrow,” my mom said. She seemed so sure, but I was stuck. “Do you want to make a list?” she asked. Forever the taskmaster, my mother walked to my desk, grabbed a red pen and a yellow pad of paper. She patted my sheets, summoning me to my bed. “Okay,” she said, drawing a line down the middle of the page. The clock read 12:08.

“Aren't you tired?” I asked.

“Nah,” she said. “Let's get thinking here. Pros of going to Seattle and cons of going to Seattle. Go.”

I spoke, she wrote. By the end of our brainstorming session,we had an impressive list with barely a few more pros than cons. My mom promised she would drive out west with me, had written “Mom/Daughter Thelma and Louise road trip” on the “pros” side. The list seemed make-believe. I just kept wondering if I was well enough to even attempt to make it out in the world again. My
mom handed me the list, her just-now-aging hands pointing to each item. “Can live with Aunt Aurora initially,” was listed as a pro.

“Did Aunt Aurora say I could live with her for a few weeks?” I asked.

“I haven't asked her yet, but I know she'd love to have you,” my mom said. Aurora, my mom's youngest sister, was the one family member I felt understood me. She was a therapist who seemed to actually see the problems within my family when everyone else either ignored them or thought we were perfectly fine. Aurora had a dog, a few cats, and a rabbit, and she rode horses with her daughters almost every day. She would adore Bunker, I knew it.

“I don't know,” I said. “What should I do?” A glance at the clock showed 1:30 a.m.

“I say you go for it,” she said. We both smiled, and I felt a surge of happiness followed closely by panic.

“I should move?” I said.

“Look,” she held my hands in hers. “I would love for you to stay close to us forever, but Ohio isn't the right place for you.” Her chin quivered. “I wish it was, but it isn't. So you have to explore. You have to get out there. I say go for it.”

My mom, who I'd only seen cry once, wiped away a tear as she squeezed my hands. “I'll feel much better about this because Aunt Aurora is there,” she said, sniffing. “You have family there who you can go to if you need anything. And, you know, Aurora's a therapist so she totally gets it.” A month ago, were my mom to suggest that I needed regular therapeutic intervention, I would've been insulted. But now I knew she simply cared, and I also knew that needing help wasn't a bad thing. My mom and dad insisted that my depression wasn't a character flaw or something to fear. “It's just your brain's chemistry,” my dad would say, over and over again, until the need for Zoloft seemed as normal as the need for daily
vitamins. I was slowly realizing that their acceptance of my illness was a gift.

“Okay,” I said, as if amazed by the word. “Okay. I'll go. I'll move to Seattle. I'll try again.” My mom smiled, put her hands over her mouth, and gave a little yelp. Bunker startled awake. “Want to go for a car ride, Bunk?” I
asked.

A
UGUST
1996

T
he miles rolled beneath us. I watched the flat horizon and kept one hand on Bunker's crate. We had managed to squeeze the crate into the backseat of my used Ford Explorer, reasoning that since the metal doghouse was his safe place inside our house, he might feel less displaced if he spent much of our weeklong drive tucked inside.

Through much of western Ohio, I sat twisted in the passenger seat, looking backward at my boy. It was as if I couldn't look forward yet. I couldn't look ahead at what might happen in Seattle. What if surviving on my own there was as difficult as it was in New York? I tried to push away the fear that I'd end up depressed again, that I would make all the same mistakes. I hadn't called Will to tell him I was moving. His calls, his professions of love were becoming routine, but I didn't know how to refuse him. Part of me loved hearing him say that he loved me, that my body was his favorite, that he missed it like crazy.

In the car, I watched this little animal behind the bars of his crate. His limbs were getting longer, but his face was still puppyish. He looked at me with wide-eyed concern for the first several hours of the drive, as if to say: Do you know that the room is
moving
?

Soon he resigned himself to this strange place and lay down, resting his chin on his paws and drifting in and out of sleep. Somewhere around Indiana, to keep him engaged as my mom drove, I started to howl and bark at him. Every once in a while, he would bark too and I'd push a treat between the bars of the crate.

My mom chuckled as I repeatedly said, “Speak!” in a high-pitched voice. She must have known that Bunker and I were deepening our language, cementing our understanding of one another. After a while, he began to howl happily after a few barks. “Hawooo-oo-oo!” he would cry, then wag his tail and look at me, as if he were proud and expecting a treat and my reply. I'd howl back and he'd join me. Before long, all three of us were a chorus of voices, like wolf ancestors meeting in a beige SUV. My mom's howl came out high and polite, like she was singing in a church pew. But she was howling with us, and that thrilled me. “Amazing,” my mom said. “Have you ever heard a dog howl like that?”

“It's so expressive,” I said. “Like if you played it backwards on a record player, you'd hear a complete sentence.”

“Totally,” she said. “It's uncanny.”

We watched the road for a bit, and then every once in a while, I would howl. Within a moment, Bunker would grumble back or howl in return. Communication had commenced. Bunker had long howls, happy howls, and howls crackling with longing. I imagined I could understand them all. When it came to Bunker, I had chosen to trust myself.

My mom and I were good road-trip partners. She tolerated my musical choices (all Ani DiFranco, all the time), and I obliged her occasional request for silence. We drove with the windows down much of the time. The changes in smell signaled our movement: In Indiana, flowers and sulfur and exhaust. Illinois, the slight scent of wheat, ground corn ebbing from the coming plains. Missouri, scorched asphalt mixed with cut grass and cow dung.

As was our way, we didn't talk of anything substantive. No deep discussions, no emotion, no gut spilling. My mother was taking care of me, giving to me, in the way she knew best—with all her time and attention. The absence of intense conversation was welcome at this point in my recovery. I had been wrung dry by the breakdown, by the summer of falling deeper and deeper,
and by the proverbial hands of therapists, parents, and doctors who had sought to pull me back up. I was ready for some emotional radio silence.

Across the quiet plains of Nebraska at dusk, I put the pillow against the window and thought about language and speaking and silence. Bunker would learn to speak alongside me. I would learn to speak up for what I wanted, to trust what I felt, to give it weight and importance, to ask for help. I would take care of Bunker, and Bunker would be my constant and loyal companion. My devotion to him was a salve, the only thing I knew for sure.

I made grand, optimistic plans with each westerly beat and fought away the still omnipresent but not nearly as believable negative voices in my mind. I imagined us as pioneers moving westward, the three of us chasing the sun every night like we might actually be able to catch it.

A
UGUST
1996

My mom's middle sister, Diane, owned a house in Sun Valley, Idaho, so we planned a detour there. We would enjoy a day of rest before the final push toward Seattle. Aunt Diane was in California while we were there, so we had the house to ourselves. We arrived in the dark and fumbled with the key under the dim porch light where the bodies of moths pinged against the bulb. Bunker perked his ears. I imagined him sensitive even to the pain of insects.

The door creaked open and the house breathed musty on us, a long exhale of dust after months of being uninhabited. We had spent a Christmas at this house when I was a teenager. I had fine memories of a horse-drawn sleigh ride, ice-skating, games of Tile Rummy with my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I had all girl cousins, two of them from California who were beautiful, blonde, and my age. They had a deep sisterly bond. I couldn't fathom having a sister. I couldn't fathom not feeling adrift in relation to my sibling. I longed for what they had, not even sure that I understood exactly what it was.

But mostly, my conclusion after that Christmas was that they were cool, smart rebels—and I was not. They were quiet, rolled their eyes regularly, dug Aerosmith, and wore black rubber jewelry. I was too visibly excited to unwrap the new Dee-Lite CD signed “From Santa.” Their hair was long, blonde, and stringy straight. They wore two-day-old black eyeliner while I still had a perm and was prone to wearing my hair up in a denim scrunchie
at the top of my head. They wore paper-thin, ripped white men's T-shirts even though it was snowing outside. I wore my royal blue turtleneck under a purple, red, and blue machine-made sweater.

I sat on the living room couch and shivered away those memories of that Christmas. Bunker climbed next to me and put his head on my lap. Re-envisioning childhood discomforts felt akin to walking through a beautiful wildflower field full of land mines. You never knew when a nice evening walk could become an unprecedented disaster.

My mom was rushing by me, wanting to unload the car and get to bed. I watched her. She hunched over when she was hurrying, like she was cold or suffered from osteoporosis or really needed to pee. I longed to talk to her about that Christmas, about how it shook my confidence, about how I let tiny little events like small glances from my cousins steal away bits of my self-worth, and there wasn't much there to begin with. My therapist in Ohio had told me that it made sense that I was struggling. “Anyone who has been through what you've been through would be struggling,” she said.

But what was it that I had been through, really? I still came back to that question. I still couldn't quite piece together what had rendered me unable to function. What left me so broken? Was I simply a weak person? A lot of people fought with their siblings. Were society's messages to girls—that we need to be good and beautiful and kind and quiet—to blame? Were my parents to blame? Was Clay? I didn't say good-bye to him when I left Ohio. He was happy in his engagement, looking to buy his first house and begin his life as an adult. Was there no one to blame after all? Was blame not at all the point here?

“Coming to bed?” my mom asked, half up the stairs.

“What?” I said.

“Come on,” she said, a little impatient. “It's late. Let's sleep.”

“Okay,” I said, patting Bunker, who still rested his head on my
lap. “Come on, boy,” I said, whispering, “I'm okay.” And with that, he hopped up, climbed the stairs, and settled on a shag rug next to my bedside for a quiet night's sleep under the bright and clear Idaho moon.

The next day we decided to go for a hike. It was a beautiful summer morning, warm but not hot and almost no humidity. We drove up a dirt road and the car dusted to a stop at the trailhead that Aunt Diane promised would lead to a stunning hike up a verdant, wildflowered hill.

We trudged up the trail, rocks crunching underfoot, butterflies and bees twirling around flower heads. “Can you believe we've already driven two thousand miles?” my mom said, hiking behind me. Bunker walked in front of us looking back regularly to ensure we were coming. “Six hundred miles or so to go. More than two-thirds of the way there!”

“I know,” I said. “Crazy.” I liked our gradual change in longitude. The slow, perpetual movement felt good. I unlatched Bunker's red leash and draped it over my shoulder then clasped it across my chest. I swiveled my baseball hat backwards and walked up the gentle hill flanked by enormous oaks like giant umbrellas, thigh-tall grasses, and flowers swaying in the breeze. Bunker ran as fast as his puppy legs would take him. He led the way up the trail, always stopping to look back. Just watching him run free made bursts of happiness flash through me. I found myself laughing, closing my eyes, turning my face up to the sun, thinking,
Thank you
.

We walked a few miles, then turned around and descended, hungry for lunch. Bunker was limping a little, but I assumed he was simply worn out. I checked his paws for thorns: nothing. My mom snapped a picture of Bunker and me after we'd begun the descent back to the car. Later, after the picture was developed, I could see that he didn't look okay. At the time, we chalked up his funny gait to exhaustion from a healthy run in the mountains.
After all, this was a dog from the flatlands of Ohio. He'd never trudged up a mountain before. That night, he slept on the cool brick of the fireplace's hearth, flattened on his side, completely spent.

Then the next morning, after we woke and stuffed the car for our last long leg of the trip, Bunker couldn't stand up. “Come on, Bunk,” I called as my mom rinsed our breakfast dishes. “Potty!” He tried to get up but couldn't. The little furry dots above his eyes read:
Confused. Pain.

My mom walked out of the kitchen. “What's wrong?” she said, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“I don't know,” I said. “He just whimpers when he tries to get up. He's hurt somewhere.” I gently squeezed his back left leg and he squealed wildly, searingly, in pain. “Oh shit,” I whispered. Adrenaline made my ears ring.

My mom had her hand over her mouth, then began panicking aloud. “We made him do too much. Oh, my gosh. I wonder if he broke all his paws.” I closed my eyes, tried to focus, leaned down, and picked him up. I carried him outside. “I can't believe we did that!” my mom cried. “He's only a puppy! What were we thinking taking him on such a long walk?”

“He's okay,” I said, as my insides churned with worry. I carried him to the grass and put him down, my mom pacing behind me. He put no pressure on his feet, simply fell to the ground.

“Oh, my god,” she said. “He can't walk. What should we do? Should I call Diane and try to find an emergency vet in Sun Valley?”

“Mom!” I yelled. This was
my
dog. My lifeline. I wanted her freaked-out energy away from us. “Just give us a minute. Finish packing and I'll sit with him.” She held her clenched fist to her mouth before sighing and stepping back into the house to finish loading the dishwasher.

I felt Bunker's legs, his paw pads rough and tender under my fingers. He whined, then licked my hand when I lightly squeezed
his back right paw. I had no idea what was wrong, but I couldn't bear that I'd inadvertently hurt him. “Oh, buddy,” I whispered. “What happened? What did we do?” He tried to get up, stood unsteadily to pee, then fell down again in the grass. I imagined how deeply I would fall if I lost him. This recovery was only going as well as it was because I could turn to Bunker in moments of desperation. Without him, I knew I would be back in the darkness. Without him, I knew I would not likely survive.

When my mom came back outside, Bunker's eyes were closed and I was petting him, the only sound the house's wind chime clinking in the morning breeze. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “He'll be okay, Julie.”

I nodded, pushed my hands under his belly, and loaded him into the car. We drove in silence for about twenty miles before my mom began pontificating about the injury. “He probably just bruised his paw pads,” she said, both hands on the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead. I nodded. “He'll be fine,” she said. “We'll take him to the vet when we get to Seattle, make sure everything's okay.” I put those words on replay in my mind and watched the earth undulate beneath us.