Page 69 - WTP XII #3

with the cuff of her sweater.
Bruce gives her a look of concern. “Don’t you worry, Brucey B. Nothing’s stopping us now,” she tells him, she believes.
At least she believes it until he gently tugs at his leash once they’re at the end of the paved walkway leading down from the house and out into the world beyond hers. Tugging to her left—the direction they haven’t ventured since she’s taken over walks. The direction that leads three blocks down and two blocks over.
“What am I even doing?” she speaks directly to her hesitance. Bruce barks with excitement, thinking the question is for him and there is only one answer. “You’re right. And when you’re right, you’re right.”
She lets him lead, a well-trained and well-behaved boy, it’s all he can do to only put a light tension in
the leash, pausing if it gets too tight and letting her get apace before straightening it back out again. She looks at the trees and the buds pushing out of them and the patches of already green grass, realizing the sweater might be a bit much but something more than the sports bra she has underneath it might have been a good contingency. Then a breeze flashes and she wonders if she should have worn a hat. Like some survival tactic, some mild form of shock, Anita looks at and thinks of anything other than their des- tination until the fenced-in stretch of dirt and doggie gymnastics equipment is suddenly before them. She stands right in front of the double gate—two gates to prevent the wanderings of the more brave and less trained animals.
It stops her cold. There’s a foreignness to the place that she immediately feels guilty about. Dee no longer having any life available makes Anita feel as though she should have volunteered for every min- ute of every day. Been involved in every little thing, willing as she was able. It’s dumb. She knows the
key to any long-lasting relationship is the upkeep of one’s own individuality, a separateness and a coming togetherness—what does that hippie book say? “Two pillars holding up the same roof”—but she can’t help the thought. She can’t stop the steep rise of guilt about only having been to this place the one time. The first time they brought him here. A few days after he’d finished his training, a few weeks after he’d turned one, a few months after they’d brought him home. Dee had made the proximity of the park a selling point, about bringing a third entity into their life, as if she’d had to sell Anita on getting a dog. ‘It’s
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“You hear the stories, the examples, the
exceptions to unwritten rules, and they’re always at the same distance as that of a novel. Words being put into the world with no attachment to anything tangible.”
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