Dog Medicine (5 page)

A
PRIL
17
AND
18, 1996

My mom and I barreled through eastern Pennsylvania. We pulled into a rest stop near Allentown where, as if scripted in a stupid movie, there stood Will. He was on tour with his band, a tour funded by the bass player's dad.

“Oh, my god,” I whispered to myself when our eyes locked outside the vending machines. He walked over to me and pulled me to him, pressed his whole body into mine. My mom saw us and said nothing, just walked back to the car.

“I left New York,” I said into his collar. He smelled like cigarettes and beer.

“Okay,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Shhh,” he pulled me close again. I still loved him. I loved his body. I loved how slight and strong it was. I had wanted to hold that body every morning and night for the rest of my life. But soon the cigarette smell became unbearable, and my mom was waiting for me. “I love you. I'll always love you,” he said. I wiped my tears on my sleeve and pushed him away. His bandmates smirked as they ambled past us.

“Me too,” I said. I walked to my mom's car. She sat clutching the steering wheel with the engine already running. I'd barely closed the door when she floored it and pulled away.

“You okay?” she asked, as she sped back onto the freeway, looking over her shoulder into her blind spot. “Of all the luck. I can't
believe
we ran into him here.”

“Yeah,” I said, buckling myself slowly. “Just drive.” I closed my eyes and prepared to return to sleep. I couldn't look back.

My mom and I didn't talk for several hundred miles. I slept, then woke and sat with my head turned away from her, my nose an inch from the window until I fell asleep again. We stopped an hour or so later and spent the night in a roadside motel.

I woke in the motel, disoriented after a vivid dream of New York and Will and the life I'd abandoned. My mom tapped my shoulder, saying that it was checkout time, almost noon. “It seemed like you desperately needed some real rest.” I imagined her watching me sleep, monitoring my breathing as if I were a newborn in a crib.

“Okay,” I said. I stumbled to the bathroom, peed with my eyes closed, brushed my teeth, and followed her to the car. I curled up against the car window, my eyes pulling closed again, sleep taking me away.

“Only about an hour left,” I heard my mom say. I opened my eyes to see my mom's small hands clutching the steering wheel, her rounded nails painted cantaloupe orange. I didn't respond, hardly awake, noting the descending sun. Leaving Manhattan felt like flipping over a topographical map. On this side, everything lay flat, concave even. After several months of tight spaces, walls, and corners, the openness of eastern Ohio was alarming.

Farmland rushed by: soybean fields, cornfields, enormous old barns. Soon the landmarks became familiar. Outside Pataskala, the tall red barn that leaned one degree short of tumbling over. Roush Hardware at the edge of town, the place Dad always bought us a cellophane-wrapped chocolate coconut haystack as a reward for tolerating his lengthy trips to the garden section. Noah's Ark Pet Store where I sold my baby hamsters and guinea pigs for twenty-nine cents each. The ice cream shop our family would drive to on a hot Sunday afternoon—rocky road for everyone but Mom, who usually just had water. Then Dublin Middle School, where Mr. Niemie, my sixth-grade English teacher, with auburn curls, John
Lennon glasses, and bright eyes, was the first teacher to tell me I should keep writing.

We turned left down Route 745 and there was Oscar's Deli, the restaurant where I had my first job as a waitress, eating more than I served, trying not to cry when the woman who wanted her eggs poached
this
way, not
that
way, sent her unsatisfactory breakfast back to the kitchen six times. Down the long road that hugged the muddy river, past mean Robbie Thompson's house, who sometimes joined Clay in his attacks, then my childhood playmate Tricia's place. I imagined that all those kids had left home and not come back. I imagined them off in medical school, law school, landing fantastic jobs, slow-dancing with lovers on sparkling rooftops.

After a few miles, we turned onto Birchwood Road, our road. We pulled up the long, slow hill that I'd jogged countless times, past Mrs. Pethel's house and Mrs. Jacoby's place, two elderly women who, on long, lonely summer days, took me in and gave me pie. Past the opening in the yard across the street that led to Lehman's Pond and the pine grove I spent countless hours wandering.

We stopped at the end of the long driveway. Mom jumped out, ran across the road to check for mail, and there was the familiar creak of the mailbox door, the echo of its closing. Then my house at dusk. Its tall central eave and big angular points modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright's designs with loads of blond wood and enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. My parents' bedroom was in the south wing, my brother's and mine in the north. In between us soared vaulted ceilings over the kitchen and living and dining rooms.

At the end of the driveway, Mom got back into the car and closed the door hard. “Ahh,” she sighed. “We're home. Here we go.” She eased up the long driveway. I squinted, one eye closed, blinded a bit by the waning sunlight glaring through the trees. The shafts of light made our house look like a church, a place I could come to rest my battered spirit, or a place I could come to die.

 • • • 

Many things can go wrong in the first few weeks of a puppy's life. He could miss out on essential care from his mother and die of malnutrition or hypothermia. His mother could develop mastitis and slowly poison him and all his littermates with the toxins in her milk. He could get crushed under the weight of his exhausted, milk-filled mama. Or there could simply be not enough milk to go around, and he'd die of hunger.

I was as raw as I'd ever been, perfectly willing to become increasingly self-destructive until I finally ended my life. My mind was not well, and I knew it, which was terrifying. Knowing that you are not rational, that your thoughts are out of control, is disorienting. It's like sitting down on a couch and then watching your body walk away without you. This is the time to ask for help. But I wasn't aware enough to know that help was what I needed. I was like a newborn too: helpless, blind, weak.

The closer I got to Ohio, the stronger the connection between me and Bunker must have become. I remember pulling into the garage thinking about the dogs of my youth, how they provided me with such solace. It occurred to me then that maybe I could try again and get my own dog. A dog I could protect. A dog that would protect me. It was just a thought.

1977
AND
1980

The first dog I remember loving was named Midnight. We found her abandoned in a car wash during a blizzard when I was four and my brother was seven. Family legend has her shivering in the corner with icicles dangling from her matted fur. My mom snatched her up, drove her home, and never posted “dog found” signs, because whoever owned the dog, she reasoned, was irresponsible. And besides, we all fell in love with her. My parents decided she was a cock-a-poo, half cocker spaniel and half poodle. She had soft, tight curled fur and a long, thin tail.

My dad, in particular, adored Midnight. She didn't soil the house. She didn't shed. She liked to snuggle and was interminably happy. “Midnight is the best dog we've ever had,” he would say. He liked to declare a lot of wonderful things, and I loved this about him. “We are the luckiest people that she came to us. It was meant to be—for us to find her. Amazing dog, that dog.” I would listen, near rapture. I felt the same way, and his similarly deep connection with our dog left me elated. Midnight would twirl adoringly at his feet and he would bend over, all six athletic feet of him, and pick her up, letting her cover his face in kisses. He'd say things like, “Oh, yes, I love you too. I love you too, good girl.”

All little girls love their dogs, but I felt a desperate kind of love for Midnight. I would call her to me, and as if she knew how much I needed her, she came running. When she curled up in my lap, I felt my breathing regulate, my skin relax, my shoulders loosen. I was protective of her because our house felt safe when Midnight was around.

When Clay and I fought, Midnight hid. She would run to my parents' room, flatten her body, her back legs stretched into a frog-like splay and scoot under their bed. Then she'd army-crawl all the way to the wall, shivering. Sometimes, after the fight, I would try to coax her out, but she would look at me suspiciously from the dark corner, unmoving. Other times when she hid, I would just sit silently next to my parents' bed, waiting. Usually, she'd come out cowering, her pressed-down tail still wagging at the very tip. She would whimper a little, curl into my lap, and lick me furiously.

“It's okay,” I would whisper. “We're okay.” And I would tell her that sometimes people fight. Sometimes I'd cry and say I was stupid. Sometimes I'd cry and say that Clay was stupid. Most often I'd just be silent. My brother and I fought daily. We'd insult each other, yell at each other, and inevitably, he would lunge at me and hit me, hard. At seven years old, I knew what a punch to the head felt like. I knew what a kick on the shin felt like. I knew what a bad blow to the gut felt like.

One day my mom locked Midnight in the laundry closet. She said not to open the door because Midnight would bite. She held up her hand, which bore a gory brown and purple bruise.

“Midnight did that?” I asked.

“We think she hurt her back. She's really sick, honey. It hurts her to move.”

“Why isn't she at the doctor?” I asked.

“I tried to take her, but she bit me when I approached her. So I called, and the vet said to just isolate her and see if she improves.”

The laundry closet opened from both sides. My mom had moved the laundry basket out and lined the floor with sheets and towels. I peeked inside from a small two-door cabinet in my parents' bathroom. Midnight was shaking and I could see the whites of her eyes. Every once in a while she would move, then whimper, then scream. Then she was perfectly silent, like she was gone. It was so dark in there.

I didn't open the door to pet her. I don't remember if I spoke through the wooden slats to try to soothe her. I just know that she died. Her back was broken. I don't know if she died in the closet or if she was euthanized at the hospital, but I do remember seeing my father's face filled with tears. I'd never seen him cry. My parents told us that the doctor thought that Midnight had slipped a disc while hiding under the bed. A metal slat on the bed frame had probably pushed into her back, dislodged a disc, and broken her spine.

I decided that fear had killed her. If you run and hide, you die. Her death triggered something dark in me. Because all I wanted to do, just about every day, was run and hide.

A
PRIL
18, 1996

My mom pulled into the garage with one swooping motion, all of it so familiar, as if the movement of our car back into its spot was encoded in my blood. I'd done it so many times, and so many times I'd felt something unnamable and complex—raging fear and love and sorrow all twirled into one black knot in my belly.

She killed the engine, pulled the keys from the ignition and rounded the front of the car before I could even blink. She said something as she entered the house, cheerful words I couldn't discern as I pushed open the passenger door and rested my feet on the oil-stained garage floor. I was struck frozen by the sound of the screen door slapping shut. It was a noise that brought back three words:
Everyone hates you.
I heard this like an angry, menacing, shouting crowd. I wondered if I was losing my mind, actually hearing voices now. There was the smell of gasoline and fresh-cut grass. My bedroom was next to the garage and I could see the flowered wallpaper from my spot in the passenger seat. I did not want to go back into that room. I paused, my hands clammy in my lap, as the seared-in memory of my brother knocking down my bedroom door played behind my eyes.

My mom asked, “You coming in?” She passed quickly, opening the back hatch of the car, then limping my sloppily packed suitcase into the house. Our cocker spaniel, Cinder, now thirteen, snuck out of the busted hole in the screen door and ran to me. She was sweet and small, but she left anxiety urine in secret corners. Her stumpy tail wagged into a blur and I came back to the moment,
took a few small shuffling steps, and bent down to touch her. She whimpered, kissed my ear, sending a chill down my spine, a desperately needed hit of adrenaline.

My dad was still at work. Surely he'd heard that his only daughter was coming home, that she'd (thank god) left that awful, dirty, too-crowded city. My father, a lover of Midwestern expansiveness, was proud to call New York City “the smallest city he'd ever been to,” because when he visited, his hotel rooms were consistently minuscule.

I followed Cinder into the house and straight into my room, to my pink and green floral wallpaper, white wicker furniture, bookshelves filled with track trophies and stuffed animals. I had spent so many nights in this room dreading the next day. It was in this room that I'd sought refuge. It was in that closet that, as a teenager, I'd flown into an uncontrollable rage and broken everything in sight, pulling the rod and shelves out of the wall, my mom too scared to enter the room until the noise stopped. It was in that bed that I stayed awake at night wondering why I felt so much when everyone around me seemed to feel so little. And here I was again, back to this spot where the dark energy seemed inherent. I was back to the falling-in feeling, back to trying like hell to make it through the next hour. I was back to this one question:
What is wrong with me?

I sat down on the edge of my bed like I'd broken several bones. Cinder jumped up next to me, sat down, and pressed her side into mine. I put my arm around her and held her chest with my palm, and the beating of her heart took me one shade out of the darkness. I held on to her as long as she would allow before my mom called, “Cinder, outside!” The backyard's screened-in porch door slammed. Cinder wiggled out of my grasp and trotted out of my room, her stubby tail twirling, her toenails clicking down the tile hallway.

I watched from my bedroom as my mom walked out to the
patio outside my window, her black cardigan sweater pulled tight across her chest, her arms folded. She was taking a deep breath, searching the sky. It seemed she was whispering a prayer.

She came back inside, walked to the threshold of my bedroom, and suggested I rest while she made dinner. I opened my bedroom window and inhaled, noting the familiar scent of our forest, green and thick with its spring bounty. But I felt as if I were buzzing, like every fiber in my body was still surging with feedback from Manhattan. My ears rang. My head felt so full that I imagined it could've been riddled with tumors. I sat staring out the window and watched the sun disappear. The moon was full, as full as I'd ever seen it, like it was a balloon about to explode. I watched it rise through the trees in our backyard, inching ever so slowly to the tips of their branches like fingertips holding up the white ball. I sat there thinking that maybe this was all hormonal. Maybe I was just too connected to the moon. Maybe I'd spend my life going crazy every full moon, losing my mind until the new moon came and let me be.

Soon my mom called, “Dinner!” in the voice I'd heard each night around seven o'clock for eighteen years. My hands shook slightly at the dinner table. We ate without talking, then cleared the plates. I found myself mirroring my mother's chipper attitude as I loaded the dishes she'd rinsed. For this moment, I felt content returning home to the familiar, well-lit kitchen with the clean floor, the double oven, the welcoming tan and brown tiles. The house smelled of spaghetti with meat sauce and melted butter on baked potatoes. Cornhusks sat limp next to the stove; small bright-yellow dots of corn pollen marked the countertop.

My mom started the dishwasher, then sighed deeply, wiped her hands, turned off the lights in the kitchen, walked to the couch, and turned on the television. I dried my hands on the old baby-blue dishrag we'd had for decades and watched her from the darkened kitchen. She curled up on the couch and pulled a blanket over her lap as my thoughts pinged about. I had envisioned
her wanting to talk, because she knew I wanted to talk. I wanted her to know what had gone so terribly wrong that I fell apart in Manhattan. I wanted a heart-to-heart. Her silence left me confused. Did she know something I didn't? Was my fallout in that apartment nothing to worry about? Again I tried to remember if I'd actually said the word
breakdown
. Yes, I had. Had I? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn't a breakdown but just a really bad day. Why weren't we talking about it?

She got up during a commercial break, went to her bedroom, and came back in her pajamas and robe, grinning but not making eye contact. She tied her robe's belt around her waist before sitting down with her feet folded underneath her. The way she didn't look at me told me that there would be no conversation.

At about ten o'clock, as I drifted in and out of sleep on the couch, my dad came home from work. I heard the swish of the door to the garage opening, his dress shoes clicking down the hallway, his briefcase hitting the floor, his walk to the coat closet. Every single night, before doing anything, he hung up his coat. I heard the hush of fabric, the clank of the metal hanger on the rod, and then the closet door swinging shut. This night, after the routine was over, I imagined he would go into the kitchen and grab his already-plated cold dinner and start eating, or maybe go change out of his suit and tie into his casual after-work clothes.

He did neither of those rituals. Instead, he walked over to me, sat down practically on top of me, hugged me tight, held both my hands, and said in a gentle voice, “How ya doin'?” A wave of his cologne hit me and the contrast of my mom's avoidance versus my dad nearly enveloping me was disorienting. Initially, I felt smothered, uncomfortable. Then, when I took my eyes away from the floor and looked into his, tears came. The emotion gathered in my throat and began to block my wind. He shook his head and pulled me in for a long, tight hug. I cried audibly, then hysterically, and he held on to me.

His attention helped me let go a little. I knew nothing except that I needed to let go. I had to stop fighting this darkness. As I hugged my dad, I took my hand away from my eyes and saw my mom, who had turned off the television and was crying too.

It was then that I understood. She was shedding the tears of a mother who was terrified, with no idea what to do or say. She wasn't turning on the television out of carelessness or anger. Rather, she didn't understand what had left me lying deadened on my apartment floor in New York City. She was scared that if she said the wrong thing, or probed too deeply, I would shut down forever. My dad's arrival, his ability to risk reaching out to me, to help me feel something, brought tears of relief to her.

This was our pattern. My father could look into my eyes and see that something troubled me. When he was home, his radar for my emotional well-being was spot on. He saved me so many times as a child, pulling me aside and saying, “You okay?” as soon as he saw the shadows cross my eyes. The problem was that he was at work most of my waking hours. It was as if I had a lifeline that was there, but out of reach. Always so busy.

My dad held on to me as I wept, but my arms went limp and my face numb. My mom cradled one of my hands in both of hers and nodded as my dad repeated, quietly, over and over: “It's going to be okay, Julie. It's going to be okay.”

“What happened?” my dad said. In his words, I heard:
Who did this to you? What is broken and how can I fix it?

“Nothing happened,” I said. I didn't say that for weeks I'd imagined jumping in front of oncoming traffic or stepping onto the third rail. I couldn't say that at that moment I fantasized about swallowing every pill in the house. “I can't think. I hate being . . . I just hate being. I could just sleep until I die. I just can't do this.”

“Do what, honey?” my mom asked gently.

“Be,” I said.

 • • • 

It is hard to be a puppy. Your siblings are just as hungry as you, just as uncoordinated, also deaf and blind. You're not really a dog yet—you're just longing. You're just hunger. If you can manage to find your way to a teat, you'll most likely get pushed over by the bigger, hungrier sibling who, just like you, is simply trying to survive.

Sometimes puppies wander off, wobble away from their mother, off the whelping blanket and onto the cold, hard ground. That's when the mama dog gets up, walks over, gently picks up her wayward child, and brings him back to his family. Back to their nest on the blanket, where warmth and nourishment can be found.