My stomach drops at the sharp vicissitude of our fortunes. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but I can’t remember the last thing I ate, or what food is, or what hunger is, or what is real and what is not. I don’t know if dogs can cocaptain fishing trawlers, or shoot harpoon guns, or if octopuses can shape-shift into men and back again. I don’t know if we’re alive or dead, or why the heaven of our complete thrashing of the octopus has turned into the fresh hell of our defeat, of having him back in our bed. I realize I just don’t know anything anymore, and that’s when the octopus says, “Good morning.”
“Please go away, please go away, please go away,” I plead. It’s the first time I’ve thrown myself on the mercy of the octopus. Maybe I can appeal to something inside of him, some sense of justice or fairness. Convince him of Lily’s sweetness, her innocence, convince him he has the wrong dog. But the octopus just cackles.
“WHY! WOULD! I! GO! I! HAVE! EVERYTHING! I! NEED! RIGHT! HERE!”
That’s when I know he has absorbed Lily entirely. That the body drawing shallow breath beside me is only the shell of my beloved dog. That in almost all respects, she is already gone.
I scoop up Lily and hold her in my arms. She doesn’t even have the strength to lift her head. After a few whispered I love yous, I place her on the floor in the hopes that she can stand and summon the strength to fight again. Her legs buckle and she tips straight onto her side with a thump, staring off into the near distance of the corner.
She begins to pant.
The decision is already made. I won’t give the octopus any more of the satisfaction of my begging.
9 A.M.
A third of the way through my file cabinet drawer, under D for dog, I find the file I keep that has all of Lily’s paperwork. The AKC certificates that show her pedigree, the rabies vaccination certificates, and receipts for the supplies I bought upon first bringing her home—for the bowls and the bed I laid out for her in my empty house the night before we first met, for the little place mat that said woof that sat under her supper dish for our first meal together, for the crate she hated sleeping in. Near the back of the folder I find what I’m looking for. The papers from her back surgery. I can’t go back to Doogie. I have to make one last-ditch effort and reach out to the people who took her in when I last thought she might die. I pull out the invoice for six thousand dollars. Did I really pay six thousand dollars? It seems like forever ago. On the invoice are two numbers, one for emergencies and one for nonemergencies. I hold the invoice in my hands for a good five minutes, crumpling and sweating on the middle of it, completely unsure of which number to dial.
I peek around the corner into the kitchen; Lily is lying on her side in her own bed, home base, exactly as I placed her a good thirty minutes ago. I retreat into the bedroom and shut the door and hold the invoice for another five minutes. I reach for my cell phone, still on the charger next to the bed, and dial the number for nonemergencies. It seems wrong, but I can’t bring myself to dial the other. The numbers are too jagged.
“Animal Surgical and Emergency Center. Is this an emergency, or can you hold?” A woman’s voice. Cheerful.
I look at the invoice and again at my phone. Didn’t I dial the nonemergency number? I did.
“I can hold.”
The longer I hold, the longer it’s not real. The longer I don’t have to assign words to the purpose for my call. Yes, I can hold. Put me on hold forever. I’ll live here, set up camp in your phone bank. It has to be better than this. It has to be better than where I am.
There is no hold music. Just a faint yet deafening hum. It could be the blood in my ears, in the swollen capillaries that feed my ear canals.
“Thank you for holding.”
My tongue is thick. “I can hold.” I’m vaguely aware this is the wrong thing to say.
But it is the right thing to say.
“How can I help you?”
I inhale. I exhale.
“My dog. She has a . . . mass.” I don’t say octopus. “It’s on her brain. It causes her seizures. She’s on medication. They’re not going to operate. We’ve decided not to operate. I think she has dementia. I don’t think she can stand up. I don’t think she’s there anymore. I think this is the end.”
I’ve wadded the invoice into a ball in my sweaty hand. It reminds me of a trick my granny taught me when I was a boy that involved crinkling the paper wrapper of a straw, then wetting it with a drop of water and watching it expand and writhe like a worm. I could almost perform the same trick with this scrunched paper and my sweat. Almost.
My granny is gone.
My childhood is gone.
Magic is gone.
I inhale. I exhale. Again.
I make two false attempts at speaking, each time my voice cracking between words.
My words are gone.
I bite my tongue hard and it finally enables me to speak.
“Who do I speak with about youth . . . ?”
Confusion on the other end. “About youth?”
I compress my diaphragm and force the word out. “Euthanasia.”
10 A.M.
The woman on the phone asked when we would be in and all I could manage was “today.” I sit on the floor next to Lily and I transfer her gently into my lap.
“What do you want, Tiny Mouse? If you could have anything.”