Learning to Stay (25 page)

I watch and wait. Wait and watch. For what, I’m not sure. A call, a cry in the night? A thin column of smoke dancing up to meet the sky? I don’t want to leave, just in case, though I question how much good it is to sit sentry. Every time I see headlights pass through the trees from cars traveling County Road 550, I strain, listening for the crunch of tires coming up Mert’s driveway. But the whoosh of tires against wet asphalt always continues past.

It’s nearly pitch-dark when I hear a different kind of crunch—that of a footfall on snow—coming out of the north tree line. I squint, studying the dark, and trying to keep my expectations in check. After all, it could easily be whitetail deer, as prevalent as mosquitoes in these parts, or something smaller like a fox or raccoon. But the image that emerges is one of a person, bulky on top. Carrying something, perhaps. And as that image crystallizes, I recognize the general shape of the person—height and weight and carriage—to be Brad.

I jump off the glider and race across the yard, calling my husband’s name. I am not a religious person, but with each footfall, I thank God over and over and over again.

As I near, I can see a dog in Brad’s arms. Mangy and tough-looking,
it’s covered in blood and scrapes, but I don’t care. A tsunami of relief that my husband just walked out of the woods on his own volition crashes over me and I go to throw my arms around him, dog and all.

I’m stopped in my tracks by a stern, concentrated growl coming from the animal in Brad’s arms. Its lip curls up to reveal white teeth that shine like little blades against the night.

“We need to get her some help,” Brad says. “Do you have your car here?”

I nod, afraid to move any other part of my body. It dawns on me that my husband hasn’t asked why I’m here, or when I arrived, and he hasn’t offered up what he’s been doing in the woods for two days or how he came to carry out of those woods a wounded dog that seems to take an instant dislike to me.

“We’re going to need some rags and a blanket,” Brad says, moving toward the house.

I trail after him. “Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?” I yell at him. “Do you have any idea?”

He levels a serious look at me. “Not now, okay?”

I let loose an exasperated grunt and follow him inside the house. He pushes the cake aside with an elbow and sets the dog next to it on the kitchen table. “Watch her,” he says to me. Then he goes rummaging through the hallway closet.

The dog smells unholy. It reeks of blood and wet and rot. I cover my nose with the back of my hand, trying not to gag and failing.

Brad returns with an old sleeping bag and shoves it at me. “Here,” he says. “Lay this out for me. I’m going to lift her onto it.”

I do as I’m told and Brad eases the dog onto the blanket. The animal is nondescript: neither short-nor long-haired, mousy brown, and medium build—maybe fifty pounds or so. Its ears start out sticking up from its head and then fold over. It has a black nose, black-tipped
paws, and a white patch on its chest. It looks like a pit bull but not a pure one—its tail is longer, like a Labrador retriever’s, and it seems less boxy than the pit bulls I’ve seen, though that’s only on some reality television show about pit bulls and felons; I’ve never encountered one in person. It might be all pit bull, or it might be mixed with poodle for all I know.

“Run some warm water in the sink, will you?” Brad says, and I oblige this request as well.

I watch as Brad leans down to talk sweetly to the dog, petting its head and stroking its ears. It looks like those dogs on the ASPCA commercials, with the kind of eyes that tell you in no uncertain terms that the creature gave up long ago.

Brad goes back to the closet and appears this time with a fistful of sheet remnants.

“What happened?” I ask him.

“No idea,” Brad says.

“So you found it like this?”

Brad smiles. “No,” he says. “
She
sort of found me.” And then he does something that nearly makes me heave: He leans down and kisses the mangy dog on its mangy snout. The dog closes its eyes.

“She?” I ask. For whatever reason, it’s almost impossible for me to think of this animal as a she. Its deplorable condition has seemed to strip any sense of femininity from it, if dogs have such a thing in the first place.

“Jones,” Brad says, beaming at me like a proud father.

“But it’s a she?” I ask.

“I didn’t know it was a she when I named her,” he explains. “I was sitting there, in the snow, halfway up Hogsback, and she just wandered up to me out of nowhere, like a ghost.”

Brad leans down and buries his face in the dog’s scruff. He kisses
her ears and her muzzle. It is not lost on me that this is more genuine affection than he’s shown me in months.

I take care of calling the veterinarian. I get a recorded message that tells me to call the emergency pager and leave my telephone number. A woman who sounds younger than I do and calls herself Dr. Dickinson—which seems overly formal for a Saturday evening—phones back and asks us to meet her at the office in fifteen minutes. I jot down directions, thank her, and hang up.

“We need to get her into my car,” I tell Brad.

Brad starts to form a tight swaddle around the dog. Her eyes follow him, lock on him. If I didn’t know better, I would think she trusts him implicitly. When I approach the table to try to help, she bares her teeth at me again, letting loose another low growl. I back away.

I gather my jacket and gloves, and thinking that even if the dog can be saved, it might take a while, I grab my laptop bag as well.

I get in the car and Brad is in the backseat. Jones’s head is in his lap. He’s cooing to her: “Everything’s going to be okay, little girl. We’re going to fix you up, good as new. You just hang on. You fight for me, okay?”

I look at the empty passenger seat beside me and can’t help but wonder who’s going to fight for me. When do I get a turn?

The veterinarian office is the kind of quiet I haven’t experienced in some time. There are no outside sounds—no whirring of machinery or even blowing of heated air through vents. Now and then I can hear Dr. Dickinson moving around in the back room, but out here in the waiting area, it is just Brad and I and our breathing. Brad has leaned his head against the wall and his eyes are closed. When we sat down, he chose to put a chair between us. I wonder if he wanted a more complete view of the room or not to be near me. It’s a question to which I can’t provide so much as an educated guess.

I am more than tired. I am weary, too. And so I slide over, next to Brad, and lean my head on his shoulder.

I don’t know how long I am asleep, but I wake to Dr. Dickinson telling Brad that she was able to stabilize the dog and clean her wounds, but she wants to open her up to check for internal bleeding.

“What are the chances?” Brad asks.

“Hard to say,” she says. “But from the looks of her, she’s clearly been used for fighting. Who knows what other injuries she might have unless we go in and take a look.”

“How much?” I ask.

“How much internal damage?” the veterinarian asks.

“No, how much will the operation cost?” I say.

“Oh,” Dr. Dickinson says. “Right. Sorry. It’s hard to know, but I would say you’re looking at anywhere from one thousand to three thousand dollars, depending. I can work up a detailed estimate for you if you’d like.”

I shake my head and turn to Brad. “No. We can’t. We can’t afford it.”

Brad stares at me. “What? Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack, babe. I just had to put more than a grand into my car. The furnace needs to be replaced, and I still haven’t paid the plumber.” Darcy told me that we were crazy to buy the house we did—at the top end of our price range and with a whole host of problems that I waved off because I had been taken with its charm—the built-in china cabinets in each corner of the dining room, the old stone fireplace in the living room—details that seem so ridiculous now. I only wish I had listened to her. But I didn’t, and we really can’t afford the care for this dog. “We’re out of money, Brad. We can’t.”

“We have to,” he says. “We don’t have a choice.”

I want so badly for Brad to meet me halfway on this. For him to step up and be an adult. To understand that there’s a hierarchy of needs, and this dog, although it’s sad and unfortunate, ranks near or at the bottom. But Brad’s injuries, it seems, have largely robbed him of that discernment. Instead, I am his executive function, his bookkeeper, his parent. And his wife. Always, it seems, in that order. Angry tears teeter on the edge of my eyes.

Dr. Dickinson looks as though she’s watching a tennis match, her head twisting between Brad and me. “I have a few more things I can finish up,” she says. “Why don’t I give you a few minutes?”

I look at Brad and he stares right back at me. His arms are crossed
and I find myself crossing mine as well. “I’m not doing this, Brad. It isn’t up for debate. It’s just a dog. We’ll get you a different one.”

“That,” he says, his voice quivering, “is not just a dog. Plus, you hate dogs. You wouldn’t ever let me get one if I start to live with you again.”

I don’t understand the attachment Brad has formed to Jones in the hours that he’s been gone. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with which Brad I’m dealing with—the TBI-injured, childlike one or this new, caustic, and still-sharp-as-tacks adult. Because he’s right. Dogs are dirty and messy. Pets, in any form, make absolutely no sense to me. They require a constant and unrelenting upkeep I can’t imagine dedicating myself to willingly. I’ve made the mistake of mentioning this in the past. I was hoping Brad might have forgotten, that maybe a small portion of his long-term memory pertinent to this very subject might have been wiped out by that IED blast. Apparently I am to have no such luck.

“Where else would you live?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “You tell me,” he says, and I wonder if he knows how close to home he’s hit, if he knows I’ve been thinking of leaving him.

I inhale a deep breath, hold it, and breathe out. “I’m going to get some fresh air before I say something I’m going to regret,” I say.

I turn and walk out, and Brad doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t attempt to stop me. And when I complete an out-and-back loop down the road and try to reenter the vet’s office, I find out why: He has locked me out, and locked in my wallet holding our emergency credit card.

The final bill comes to $1,080.22. The drive back to Mert’s house goes the same as the drive to the vet’s office, with me driving and Brad sitting in back with the dog. Jones’s head is in Brad’s lap and he’s talking softly to her, but she’s still snowed by the anesthesia and painkillers and seems to be fast asleep.

For all her injuries, the dog, at least at first glance, seems to be in pretty good shape. Dr. Dickinson said she didn’t find any internal damage, and that the wounds covering her face and legs—even the ones that needed row after row of stitches—should heal quickly. She is to be kept quiet—no playing fetch, if she even does that sort of thing—for seven to ten days, but otherwise her prognosis is good.

I look at Brad in the rearview mirror. “We need to let the Humane Society know,” I say.

“No,” Brad says, not meeting my eyes in the mirror.

I check the road ahead and then the mirror again. “Come on, Brad,” I say. “This might be someone’s pet. She could have run away and gotten those injuries. Maybe she was just
in
a fight and not
used
for fighting. What if some little kid is missing her?”

I’d be lying if I said I’m not hoping against all hope that the dog will turn out to have wonderful owners who love her so much that they will, in turn, reimburse us the money we’ve sunk into her out of sheer gratitude for saving her life.

“No!” Brad says, and slams a fist against the back of my headrest. I hear the loud slap his hand makes against the vinyl and I feel my seat lurch forward. It’s hard to tell if I jump out of surprise or if I am jarred by the indirect action of my husband’s fist.

This is not what I had in mind when I set out for Marquette this morning. I realize I haven’t yet wished Brad a happy birthday, but I’m not feeling altogether charitable at the moment. I daydream of pulling into Mert’s, dropping Brad and his prized dog off, and wishing them all a great goddamn life before I peel out of there and back to Madison.

Mert is waiting for us on the porch. I park and get out, slamming the car door. I head toward the house. Brad can handle the dog.

“Where were you?” Mert says, looking between us.

“Ask your son,” I say to Mert, walking past him.

“What is
that
?” Mert asks, referencing the bundle in Brad’s arms.

“Her name is Jones, Dad,” he says, walking behind me toward the house. He sounds like a proud parent introducing his new baby to the neighbors.

“I don’t care what her name is,” Mert says. “You’re not bringing that thing in my house. She stays in the barn.”

The barn is a dilapidated wooden structure that used to house a cow or horse or two. In it are a stall and a few stanchions on the lower level, which is built into a hill, and a hayloft above that’s actually at ground level. But that’s approximately where its resemblance to an actual barn, as opposed to an overgrown shack, ends. Now it’s filled with Mert’s tools, an old bike or two, parts of deconstructed cars, and furniture that Brad’s mom couldn’t bear to part with when she was alive and Mert can’t bear to part with now that she’s not.