Being a grownup is awful.
My phone startles me at work and I grab it to hear the vet’s voice.
Kendra? How is Lily?
No better.
No?
No.
She is still going to the bathroom frequently?
Yes.
How much do you feed her?
Whenever she acts like she is starving.
How much?
As often as I can just to get something in her.
We want to do it only two or three times a day. That is all. I know it’s hard when she is hungry.
What about her weight? This dog just can’t afford to lose anything, I say.
Don’t worry about it, he said. I guess we wait.
I thought, he doesn’t see her, nose poised above the bowl mouth open on its way down and slamming into her dish. By the third or fourth time I drop a little food in her bowl at night she finally slows down long enough to dip her head, sniff for a mouthful she likes, lift her head and chew it.
The vet is saying, only feed her the food I gave you. NOTHING else.
Should I tell him I just ran out. I ask him, what if I run out? Can I come buy more?
We’ll have to order it for you, he said.
I wish I was a kid that broke something I should not have been touching. Mom told me to leave it alone I’ll drop it keep my hands to myself. She pushes her cart into another isle and my hands are all over glass ceramics mirrors light bulbs, anything that will break with a spectacular spray of pieces, like that pint glass that jumped off my tray at the bar last week. That stuff shatters and instantly becomes invisible.
I wish I was a kid that dropped something and with too few years of life and experience, I had not yet amassed a conscience. Yup, I dropped it and I want to run like hell. But instead I am an adult and my conscience will never be as clear as that kid rounding the corner, putting distance between himself and those incriminating broken things.
Lily is broken, but I stand here with all the weight of an adult and know that I have to somehow get all these pieces to work.
The little assembly line between her mouth and the other end only once produced something solid.
That poor dog’s ass must be raw and hurt, Jerry has said a couple times.
My mother weeks ago asked if I could put ointment “or something” on it. I asked, or something? Mom, how would I even do that?
We’re outside stomping around in yesterdays’ snow that has deflated since it fell. All the magic seeped out. Stepped on and pressed down it is no longer that wonderful stuff but a once-pristine linen quilt on grandma’s bed where we have been jumping jumping jumping for hours.
Without the allure of things outside of me I am susceptible again to the things in here. My imagination brings back the teeth and claws that are not rocks trailing shadows in the woods, but predators creeping. Outside with Lily I remember what the trainer had said: if she should perk her ears, stop, and want to retreat, you better get out of the woods fast. Tonight Lily’s ears turn toward the stones and trees and snow and darkness and collect little bits of sound. Does she hear innocent, fuzzy little things or something else?
Jerry is going to bed and I am draped across the covers with my head on Bandit. Jerry asks me to scratch his back so I stick out one finger and drag it up and down. Come on! Use two hands!
I clap for him.
I hate it when you do that, he says.
Want my list, I ask?
I’d need a wheelbarrow, he said.
Ha ha. Anyway, Lily is here and quiet and curled on a rug. Ozzie snores and the house is asleep for the night.