Trent sighs. He opens the letter, which is folded in thirds. He scans it until he gets to the end. “You have until Monday to decide what you want to have done with Lily.” He reads me the options. If I choose individual cremation, I can shop for an urn, bring her home. If I choose group cremation, they will dispose of the cremains for me. There are other packages for burial. One includes a “precious clay paw-print keepsake.”
All of this tests my beliefs. I don’t believe in God; I don’t believe in an afterlife. I do believe you live and you die. I do believe death is eternal nothingness. I do believe the body is just a shell. I do believe Lily is no longer there. There is no deciding what to do with Lily; there is no more Lily. There is deciding what to do with her body.
None of this frightens me.
Or does it?
I don’t need Lily’s remains to remember her by.
I don’t need an urn to remind me of her love.
I don’t need a precious clay paw-print keepsake to remind me that life is fragile, temporary, short.
Or do I? Do I need them so that I know I loved her? Do I need them to know that she loved me? Can I stomach the idea, years from now, of not knowing where her body is?
Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
It hits me.
Lily’s body is in some freezer, stacked with the bodies of other unfortunate dogs. That’s how they can still make a precious clay paw-print keepsake.
Trent puts the pamphlets with my keys on the dining room table.
I don’t have to read them now.
9 P.M.
My phone is ringing and it’s Jeffrey and I don’t want to answer it. Before I got in the car I sent him a text: Lily passed away. I was with her at the end. I’m not able to talk about it yet, but I thought you should know. And then a second text: Thank you for being an important part of her life.
I’m not able to talk about it yet.
My phone is ringing.
It’s Jeffrey.
I grip the steering wheel with both hands and concentrate on the freeway and the lane ahead of me. I think back to our relationship and my saying explicitly, these are the things that if you do them they will hurt me, and his uncanny ability to just do those things anyway. I’m not able to talk about it yet. Talking about it would hurt me. So what do you do if you’re Jeffrey? You call to talk about it.
Just as I decide not to talk to him, to let the call go to voicemail knowing I may never listen to the message, my fingers betray me and answer.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” It’s been a long time since I’ve heard his voice. It sounds familiar, yet foreign. “You’re driving?”
“Home. From Trent’s.”
“I didn’t think you should have to drive home alone.”
It’s the Bluetooth feature on this car, new since our breakup. His voice spills from the stereo speakers, surrounding me on all sides. It’s . . . unnerving. There’s a long, empty pause before I say, “Thank you.” And then, “Where are you?”
“I’m home.”
I laugh.
“Why is that funny?”
Why is it funny? “I don’t even know where home is for you now.” How could I not know where he lives? I can picture a few of his things, things that used to be ours. But I can’t picture them in the context of any space.
“Do you want, like, an address?”
I’m suddenly panicked that he might invite me over. “That’s okay. I’m driving.”
Silence.
“She was a good girl.”
Another long pause.
“The best,” I agree.
I pass the exits for Vineland, Ventura, and Lankershim before we speak again.
“What happened to us?” Jeffrey asks.
Is this the right time to be honest? I don’t have anything left in me to be otherwise. “You weren’t as faithful as I needed you to be.”
Jeffrey swallows.
“You never seemed fully invested.” He says it without anger or retaliation. We are just stating facts.
Fireworks burst over the Universal Studios theme park, their last embers raining over the freeway, just as our statements now are the dwindling cinders of explosive arguments we had long ago.
“I know.” That much is on me.
Another silence you could drive a truck through.
“We had a really good run for a while,” Jeffrey says.
“I think so, too.”
As I pull the car to the right to prepare to exit on Highland, I tell Jeffrey I have to go.
“Take care of yourself, Ted.” The way he says it, I can tell it’s the last time we’ll ever speak.
“You, too, Jeffrey.” It feels weird that we use our names—names are for people who are less acquainted than we are. My finger hovers, paralyzed for the briefest of seconds, before I disconnect the call. Ted and Jeffrey. We are strangers again.
I open my sunroof and crank the radio. “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel is playing, but in my head Cecilia sounds too close to Lily and I change the station to something else, something that means nothing, something I don’t recognize. Something angry at life.
Pulling up to my house is such a normal activity that I almost think the whole day hasn’t happened. I wonder what I was doing at Trent’s; I wonder why Jeffrey had called. Lily is fine. She’s waiting for me, asleep in her bed in the kitchen. It may take her a minute to perk up when I walk in the door. She’s been a terrible watchdog these past few years. But she will wake up. She will wake up when I walk in the door.