The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Thirty-Two

I LET MURIEL RUSH RIGHT INTO THE HOUSE. I’M HONESTLY not sure if I didn’t do it on purpose. “Vijay! What are you— Oh, shit, the goat!”
“Hey, Cami, I’ve been trying to call you all day.”
I kissed him. What the hell was wrong with me? Had I really wanted Dubey to kiss me? What if poor Vijay had seen that? “I’m so glad to see you. What a surprise.”
Muriel’s hooves clattered on the stairs, like someone in high heels. Max followed her, barking.
“Let me get this goat out of my house,” I said, wanting a moment to clear my head.
“I’ll get the goat,” said Gabriella, rising from the kitchen island. Two bowls and an ice cream scoop sat on the counter. How long had Vijay been there?
I stood in the kitchen, unbalanced, confused.
“You went to dance class without me,” he said, looking like a little boy.
“I’ve gone to dance class without you every single time.”
“I know. But I was here. I really wanted to go.”
The hooves sounded like an avalanche above us, accompanied by Max’s barking and Gabby’s muffled profanities. “I didn’t know that. It would have been fun to finally go with you.”
“That’s why I busted my ass to make it here today. I tried calling.”
“Vijay, the first time you called, it was, like, ten minutes before I had to leave for class.”
“But I was already here, at my parents. I wanted to surprise you.”
He’d been here? “That’s sweet, but . . .” The racket of hammering and barking was deafening, and it seemed absurd that we were talking calmly as if nothing were going on. “A little warning would be nice. I can’t always drop everything because you’ve decided to show up.”
His expression might have been the same if I’d intentionally stomped on his toe.
“Oh, Vijay. That sounded so much harsher than I meant it.” I touched his chest. “Truly.” The hooves now sounded like someone dropping a bag of pool balls in the hall. “Let me get the goat.”
He looked so sad that before I went upstairs, I kissed him again. “I’m glad you’re here now.”
The flash of his smile warmed me. He held my hands and kissed them before releasing me.
I ran up the stairs, pushed past Max barking in my bedroom door to where Gabriella had a squirming Muriel cornered and was trying to get a grip on her writhing head. Vijay’s things were laid out in my room—his suitcase, his laptop—all on my bed.
I used my sternest, meanest voice to say, “Muriel! Enough!”
Muriel stopped struggling. She wheezed a little sigh, minced down the stairs, clicked through the kitchen, and waited by the back door like a house-trained pet. When I opened it, she looked up at me with those odd yellow eyes. I dug in my jacket pocket and unearthed a sugar cube. She crunched it daintily. I crouched down to scratch between her horns. She only wanted to be with us, after all. I thought I might cry, but when she’d finished her sugar, she lifted her stout little body onto her back legs, kicking out all her limbs like a spastic ballerina.
ONCE GABRIELLA HAD GONE TO BED, VIJAY AND I MADE out against the fridge like teenagers. I nibbled his lips and ran my fingers through his hair. “What you said in the kitchen earlier—” he asked. “Do you really think that? That I expect you to drop everything at my whim?”
He had his hands under my shirt. His earlobe was between my teeth. “Well . . . a little. But I don’t think you do it on purpose.”
“Who was that guy?” I heard the overly casual tone, the way he’d slipped it in among other questions, his nose buried in my hair. “The one who danced you to your door?”
“He was my dance partner tonight because Davy couldn’t go.” Why did I feel like I was lying? I had to actually remind myself that I wasn’t. “His name is Stuart. I treat his dog.”
I was still against the fridge. Vijay leaned on one arm beside me and with the other played with my hair. Looking at the strand I’d curled he said, “I don’t expect you to drop everything.”
“Okay,” I said. “I didn’t say it to hurt you. It just gets frustrating.”
His eyes widened. “Work interfered! Things came up.”
I laughed. “And did I ever, a single time, give you a hard time about that?”
He shook his head.
“Right. And I’ve been stood up by you how many times? Six? Seven?”
“Wait, not that many, that’s not—”
“It’s not important. The point is I never gave you any crap about it, and here you are, stood up one time. One time! Stood up for something I didn’t even know I was standing you up for!”
“I never said I wasn’t coming.”
“You never said you were.”
“I said I was coming to all of them, and I always told you if I wasn’t going to make it.”
“I was supposed to assume you’d show up if I didn’t hear otherwise? You’re not being fair.”
“But we could’ve—”
“Stop.” I pushed off from the fridge and moved away from him. “Was I supposed to wait, without a partner, to the last second? Was I truly supposed to believe that you were going to swoop in for the final class? Can we please drop this and concentrate on being here now?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “Yes. We can.”
I smiled. “Good. Let’s start over, shall we? But we’ll skip the part where the goat ran in.”
We kissed. He whispered, “So, listen, I know I’ve been frustrating, with my—”
I wanted to kick his shin. “We’re starting over.”
“No, this is about something different. I wanted to apologize and make things better, even before we . . . even before I messed up this evening.” At least he said “I.”
I started a fire, then we sat on the couch, legs entwined. He played with that loose strand of my hair again. “What do you wish for . . . for us?”
“I wish you were more available. I wish I could see you more often.”
This seemed to please him. “What if I wanted that, too, and we took this to the next level?”
I turned my head, unsure what he meant.
“What if,” he said, an almost teasing tone to his rich voice, “you moved to New York and we saw each other every day?”
My breath stopped. His face glowed butterscotch in the firelight. “What if we got to wake up next to each other each morning? What if I came home to you every day?”
I was afraid to breathe. The slightest movement might tip the balance.
He swiveled his long legs from under mine and knelt. He took both of my hands in his and looked up at me with that face I’d known, counted on, and adored for so many decades. “Camden Anderson, would you marry me?”
I squeezed his hands. “Vijay. Vijay.” I cannot screw this up. I cannot hurt this wonderful man I’ve loved for so long. I had an immediate sense of the momentous consequence of whatever I said next. There was so much at stake. I pulled him back up on the couch. Where did I begin? Hadn’t I wanted this? Hadn’t I wished for this? “Thank you,” I said. I had to do this just right. Was there any way to do this right?
He laughed. “So?” he asked.
“So,” I breathed. How did I do this? Don’t make me do this!
I’d paused too long. “Cam?”
I shook my head. “I can’t answer you right now.”
His lips parted, his eyes immediately wounded. I felt his natural recoil, the pulling away from me, but I grasped his hands and said, “I’m not saying no. I’m saying not yet. I’m saying there are too many issues that need to be resolved first, before I can . . . before we can know if this is right.”
His eyes glittered orange in the firelight. “It is right. I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“I’m sure that I love you, Vijay. But . . . you’re . . . you’re not really available.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your job. Or, I guess, your jobs. They consume you—they’re important, and you’re fabulous at them. And I would never, ever be the woman who asks you to give any of that up. It makes you who you are and I understand that. But it also makes you not available.”
“It would be different if we were in the same city. It’s the distance that makes it—”
“Half the time, you’re not in your city.”
“But when I am, we’d be together, which would—“
“Vijay, sweetie, I was in your city, remember? I spent the entire time alone.”
“It’s not always like that, Cami. That was a rare thing.”
I nodded, kindly, but said, “The baby shower? The fiftieth anniversary? The six dance classes? Vijay, I love you. I truly do, but I think if I lived with you, I’d be alone all the time.”
“Those are— No, seriously, Cami. It won’t be like that.”
I stroked his high cheekbone with my thumb. “Then we’d need to keep dating a while, until I saw that. Until I believed that. That’s what I mean by ‘not yet.’ I love being with you. But for me to leave everything, my practice, my farm, I’d have to know I was getting something to make all that loss worth it. You would be worth it—well, well worth it—but not if I never saw you.”
He stared off into the fire. “I . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m—” He looked at me, more humbled than I’d ever seen him.
“Vijay, I love you. But I’m not sure we’d have a partnership. If I’m going to do this again, I want it to be better. Don’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
“We . . . you and I feel very unbalanced.” I scooted sideways, so that my entire body faced him. “I’m not saying any of this to hurt you.” I took his hands. “Everything we do, every time we get together, every single time we communicate, is your choice. You control it all. And I know it’s because of your work. But I want you to imagine what that feels like.”
He mulled this. “But you have your own work. You’re devoted to your work, too.”
I nodded. “And what about that? I own my own practice here, Vijay.”
“Veterinarians can work anywhere.”
“Doctors can work anywhere.”
He frowned.
“See? There are some things we need to work on. Work on together to find solutions that satisfy us both. Let’s not have some half-assed, un-thought-out marriage that fails, like we’ve both already had. Let’s have a kick-ass marriage. Let’s figure out a way to be remarkable.”
Gerald hopped to the back of the couch and butted my shoulder, then rubbed his face against my cheek. He lay on the top of the couch, as if to watch the proceedings.
Vijay’s expression about killed me. I felt like something had been irretrievably lost. We sat, leaning together, my head on his shoulder, his head on mine, staring at the fire, holding hands, Gerald’s tail gently tapping our heads on occasion.
“I’m going to go,” he whispered.
I didn’t question it. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
He nodded. I followed him upstairs while he gathered his things. Gabriella’s door was closed, the light out under the door frame.
After I kissed him at the back door, he paused. “Did you say no because of—” He looked out the door. “That guy? The one you danced with?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. The very fact he’d asked it made me certain Vijay didn’t get it, that he hadn’t understood my hesitation, that he’d only heard rejection.