Page 67 - WTP XII #3

She looks at her coffee, her hand still hanging off it and notices Bruce sitting silently in the arched door- way to the living room. Pulling her attention with his perfectly tilted head, looking at her sadness. Bruce was Dee’s baby, a three-year-old Border/lab mix, although Anita always thought that was giving him the benefit of the doubt. Bit rough around the edges and too easy on their pocketbook she always maybe thought. She loves him, but invariably felt more like an Aunt than a Mom. Although now... She supposes responsibility is what really matters in the realm of pets. Love seems secondary to the water dish and the food bowl and quite a bit more, when she’s honest with herself, and can make room for the guilt she’s piled up for doing little more than keeping the poor kiddo alive.
Still staring, Bruce’s one inquisitive ear balances out the floppy playfulness of the other. Anita’s smile makes him tilt his head the other direction. Like a second question.
“Hey, boy,” she says. The words are soft to fit the morning, not disturb the quiet too much.
He springs up to his feet and trots to her, lifting his chin to the height of her thigh in expectation of something beyond the two words, having interpreted them, as dogs do, as an invitation to something more. Always something more. Something she wouldn’t admit to out loud, but always felt about dogs, is that their want is too constant for her. Maybe because she is too prone to guilt and too eager to please. A tough combination, when two soft syllables gets you an ea- gerness to be pet, and the petting gets you a sugges- tion of the outside world and the denial of that world gets you a whimper and the whimper fills some small part of your stomach with a room temperature sour- ness that requires you to either leave them wanting and whimpering, or brave things you don’t feel ready for. She lifts his muzzle off her thigh and works her other hand back around to the crown of his head, the
tips of two fingers pressing into the fold of cartilage meeting skull. His wanting eyes seek hers, no sign of wavering in sight.
“What d’you want, boy?” she asks, knowing.
Bruce’s walks belonged exclusively to him and Dee; Anita would tag along sometimes like the aunt she felt she was. Anita’s excursions with Bruce have been short and multi-directional and anywhere but in his old stomping grounds. It took weeks of whimper-
ing from the front door and racing back and forth between Anita’s feet and the nearest escape for her
to do more than let him out into the small world of their backyard. The guilt finally broke her down when he found his leash—Anita wasn’t sure where Dee
left it—dragged it to her feet, dropped it and gave her that curious head tilt. They still avoided the dog park, three blocks down and two blocks to the left. It still feels like too much, since the call, that call. Since everything. The thought of showing up with Bruce and having to lie or explain Dee’s absence was some- thing Anita still felt too soft for. Anybody who knew what had happened, she knew—they knew—but the thought of some stranger looking up from Bruce’s scraggly snout and saying, Where’s Dee? Or, How’s Dee? Or, Haven’t seen you guys in a while, before realizing Anita isn’t one of the guys. Or just saying Bruce with a question mark at the end of it. The one option, lying to these hypothetical strangers, feels like it could have enough traction to pull her to some headspace where Dee is actually just out of town,
on a business trip thing or something, or maybe her mother’s just sick, or she had a last minute whatever. Whereas, Anita explaining the reality of Dee’s ab- sence in some short, cut off, abbreviated version like it isn’t eating away what remains of her life, like it isn’t a world’s weight is... Well.
This is really the thing Anita has been hiding from— waiting out? She doesn’t want to deal with other people’s feelings about her feelings about Dee’s death. Whether they’re heartfelt or put-on, whether they were close with her or were close with Dee. This avoidance of feelings about feelings stopped her from going back to work at the end of whatever grace period someone somewhere deemed appropriate for such a loss. Now dipping into her vacation—because what else was she going to do with it? So she’s been hiding, from everybody, maybe even Bruce.
“I know,” she tells him, his chin barely adjusting his narrow little head to press into her leg again. She runs a hand down his back to arm’s length and
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