The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Four

IT WASN’T UNTIL AFTER BOBBY HAD LEFT THAT THE TORNADO sirens went off, jump-starting my pulse.
The howl rose and fell, mournful in the stillness.
Perfect. Some more destruction to top off this day.
I thought he was going to tell me he was selling the restaurant.
Before the sirens, I had no idea what to do. I watched the red numbers of the digital clock across the guest room change for seventeen minutes. I didn’t cry. I didn’t rage or break things. Other than feeling chilled to my bones, I was numb.
When the sirens went off, there were things I needed to do. And that was a relief.
MY LEG HAD GROWN STIFF FROM MY FALL IN THE TRAILER, and my feet were so cold they ached. I limped down the hall to our bedroom, Max limping beside me.
Rain released from the sky with a screech, as if someone had turned on a faucet. I needed to get to the barn.
I opened the dresser drawer for the wool socks.
The drawer was empty.
My heart clutched.
I opened the drawer above it, which housed Bobby’s underwear and T-shirts.
Empty.
I opened the third drawer down—his jeans and sweat pants. Empty.
I flung open and slammed shut drawers. Empty. Empty. Empty.
I opened his closet and stared at the bare rod.
He’d packed his car. He must have gotten up when I left and started packing. When I reached over to kiss him before I left this morning, he knew he was leaving me.
The erratic ping of hail began.
“I KNOW I’VE BEEN HARD TO LIVE WITH LATELY.” HE ALWAYS had been, with his operatic moods. He’d been miserable to live with lately, but I’d never once thought, “Oh, he’s hard to live with, let’s end our marriage.” I’d only thought I should do all I could to get him through his crisis.
THE LAUNDRY. I BET THERE WAS A PAIR OF WOOL SOCKS IN the laundry. I opened the hamper. Four pairs of my own panties lay curled in one corner. He’d even taken his dirty laundry.
The hail sounded like someone pouring gravel on the roof.
INSIDE THE BARN, I DASHED INTO EACH STALL TO CLOSE the back doors and slide the thick Plexiglas panels into the windows, clenching my teeth against the pain in my arm. Of course the kicker refused to come inside, huddling instead in the corner of his paddock. He turned his butt to me when I called him. I didn’t blame him since he’d been held prisoner in a stall for more than a month, but I felt horrible as I closed his door, shutting him outside.
I caught my breath until it hit me: Bobby just left. That really happened.
Was he caught on the road in the storm? Or had he reached wherever he was staying? Was he thinking of me, wondering if I was safe? Would he call Gabriella? Please, please, let Gabriella be safe, still far from here in Lexington and not on a bus yet. I dialed her cell, but my call went straight to voice mail. “Call me when you can, babe. We’re getting a tornado here and I want you to stay safely put somewhere until it’s over.”
Something hit the barn door hard enough to knock down the pitchfork hanging on the wall. A hideous metallic screeching came from one corner of the barn, and I hoped the roof held.
Zeppelin, the pony, appeared to be sleeping, but his eyes were shut too tight and his tail swished. Perhaps it was denial or just his Zen way of waiting out the storm.
I opened Biscuit’s stall. My daughter’s horse was bombproof, never one to shy at invisible “goblins” on windy days. The storm didn’t seem to faze him at all. Muriel, the goat, lay near Biscuit’s hairy hooves, legs tucked under her. I didn’t bother putting her back in her own stall.
A blur of motion caught my peripheral vision and I turned but saw nothing. I hoped it was that orange cat I’d been spotting on the property. A huge but scrawny feral creature abandoned when the neighbors to the north were arrested for the meth lab they operated deep in their wooded acres. It struck me I hadn’t seen the cat for days. How many?
Bobby left.
That reality hit me behind the knees, sinking me to the floor. I leaned against Biscuit’s stall, my knees to my chest, hugging my right arm. I ached all over.
Bobby made me a latte yesterday morning. He’d driven Gabby to school, with her suitcase for the tournament, and brought back my favorite orange-and-cranberry scones. He’d come into my office as I sat researching an iguana’s skin condition. He’d kissed my neck before he left for the restaurant. He did all that when he knew he was leaving?
I huddled in the aisle and tried not to think about Bobby. Tried not to think of how he’d always made me feel something was about to happen.
Well. Something had happened. That’s for sure.
Think about something else. Think about anything else.
But, of course, that never worked.
BOBBY AND I MET THROUGH HIS SISTER, ONE OF MY BEST friends. Olive Binardi—her name fit her Mediterranean skin, her round face, her ample curves—was one of those people whose car was littered with fast-food wrappers, who perpetually lost her keys, and who was late every single place she went. She was also, in my opinion, the best massage therapist on the planet. When I first met her she was a physical therapy major and my first roommate in the Ohio State University dorms. We rented an apartment above a pizza parlor after our sophomore year.
Olive’s family lived in Columbus, and Olive received free tuition because her dad was a professor in the math department. Olive’s dad also drank a few bottles of Chianti a day, and sometimes Olive’s mother, Mimi, would arrive at our apartment at three in the morning to sleep on our thrift-store couch.
Olive invited me to the Sunday dinners, where up to thirty other relatives would descend upon their house, all shouting, all smoking, all casually using profanities that made my jaw drop.
The combination of thick smoke and the need to yell to make myself heard left me hoarse each time I attended. No wonder that the first time I brought Olive home with me to Dayton for the weekend, she thought all of us Andersons were angry with one another. We were so quiet.
I’d seen photographs of Olive’s brother, Bobby, long before I met him. He’d been banished by their father, for reasons neither Olive nor Mimi could make clear to me. That made him mysterious and bad, and therefore more appealing. Bobby lived in Brooklyn for a while and worked as a sous-chef in a relative’s restaurant. He didn’t go to college. When he came home to Columbus for Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day, he stayed at the apartment I shared with Olive instead of at the Binardi house. I went home to Dayton for those holidays—an hour away from Columbus—so our paths crossed only briefly, but enough for us to flirt, for me to stammer and blush, and for Olive to warn me, “Don’t go there, Cam. He’s trouble.”
With an endorsement like that, I was doomed.
Once, Bobby came back early for Mother’s Day weekend. He and I ate ice cream. That ice cream became as much family lore as the tornado.
My mother might say I didn’t know when to stop, but in my dabbling with starvation, I honestly didn’t know how to stop. I’d finally realized, as I arrived at my preveterinary program—existing on cigarettes, black coffee, and plain yogurt—that this had truly turned into an addiction. About the time Bobby and I sat down to ice cream, I’d grown afraid of my own behavior. When my brother arrived on a surprise visit to tell me he was worried about my health, I didn’t confess that I lied about my weight to our parents on the phone, that Olive and I argued over the grocery shopping (when it was my turn I stocked the fridge with celery, Jell-O, and grapes), or that I had freakish white hair growing on my stomach. I told Davy I’d been on a “little diet.” I sat on my hands so he couldn’t see how they trembled, and said nothing, of course, about how I couldn’t go from sitting to standing without white sparkles crowding my vision, about the bruises smudging my spine, or the scab on my tailbone. I said all the right things to him but told myself it was nothing dangerous, just enough to feel that lovely high.
And then Bobby walked into my life a day early and changed everything. I opened the door and there he stood with that curly black hair, that Roman nose, those ridiculous lashes.
I went for ice cream with Bobby. Yes, ice cream, which I hadn’t eaten in three years. It felt too tense in the house, waiting for Olive—she wouldn’t be home from work until midnight. I didn’t want to leave him alone and return to my room to study, but I didn’t know what to do sitting with him, so close to him and his clean leather smell. He’d already eaten but said he needed dessert. He opened our kitchen cupboards, then closed them. He opened our freezer, then closed it. He opened our fridge, chewed his lip while he considered a container of ricotta cheese (certainly not my purchase), then shut the fridge and suggested Jeni’s, an ice cream parlor down the block. I found it impossible to say no.
Inside Jeni’s, I was stunned by the exotic flavors: Thai Chili, Mango Lassi, Lime Cardamom. Bobby ordered Riesling Poached Pear sorbet. He said, “These are together,” to the girl behind the glass. I protested, but he took my hand, making me nearly swoon. “One scoop of ice cream. Just one,” he said. My mind whirled—had Olive talked to him about me? Did he know?
“What flavor?” the server asked.
I opened my mouth, heart racing, but had no idea what to say.
Bobby’s hand in the small of my back drew me toward the glass to look down at the tubs of ice cream. They were exquisite, but . . . my vision sparkled. I put out a hand to steady myself. I hadn’t meant to pick, but Bobby said, “Okay, Gravel Road it is.” The girl dipped the metal scoop in warm water and picked up a sugar cone, the scoop sliding into my not-choice.
I felt giddy. I’d handled a sedated tiger the previous week as part of my internship at the Columbus Zoo, but holding an ice cream cone felt more daring.
We sat outside on a bench. The dogwoods were bursting with pink and white bloom, reminding me, though I hated to admit it, of wedding cakes. The blossoms smelled like sex as the warm breeze scattered a confetti of petals upon us. Bobby had a white petal in his hair.
I kissed my ice cream cone. Sweet, cold caramel heaven on my lips. I touched it again with my tongue. Slivers of smoked almond. Grains of sea salt. Totally foreign. Forgotten.
I had only one thought: I want this. All of it. Sitting there with this man I’d been warned about who seemed to understand this bizarre, ugly thing about me and was patient and generous. I wanted his sudden smile, the way it lit up his face like a camera’s flash, the way his hair curled at the back of his neck, the way my lungs seemed to expand in his presence.
Bobby held eye contact until I blushed and dropped my gaze. I say blushed, but my “blush” is to break out in itchy red mottles like I’ve thrust my face into stinging nettles. I’ve had strangers ask me if I’m okay. Bobby didn’t seem to mind.
Back at the apartment, in my bedroom, when he undressed me, he looked away, and I knew it was because it hurt him to look. As he put his hands on my shoulders to guide me under the comforter, I mottled again, knowing exactly what my shoulders felt like under his fingers.
I covered myself, and Bobby crawled beside me, him on top of the covers, me beneath them. “You’re too skinny,” he whispered in a voice full of sorrow. Then he kissed me. Just one kiss, but it lasted. It didn’t get hurried or rushed on to other things. I savored it, the kiss and his words, like I’d savored the surprise of sea salt in the caramel. A magic combination.
We slept, that puffy yellow comforter between us, until late in the night, when knocking startled us awake. “Cam?” Olive opened my door, light from the hall spilling in. “Was Bobby here? His suitcase is in the—”
She blinked at her shirtless brother. “Oh,” she said. “Shit.” She slammed the door.
“Ollie?” Bobby called. “Wait.” He followed her.
Profanities flew, as they always did within his family. I put on a robe and joined them.
“Ice cream?” Olive raised her eyebrows at me. “Yeah, right.” I was certain Olive didn’t really believe me until she saw my changed appetite the next day. And I’m sure she didn’t believe me, then or now, that “nothing but a kiss” had happened on that visit.
Bobby stayed for three days. I went home to Dayton only for Mother’s Day instead of for the whole weekend, claiming I was swamped with homework. Bobby would begin each night on the couch while I lay awake until he crept to my room and curled up with me, warming my cold, no-body-fat self. He bought bag after bag of groceries, filling our pantry. He baked bread in our tiny kitchen. When the shiny, golden loaf came out of the oven, he pulled handfuls from it, like buttery cotton, which he fed to me, the act as charged as a kiss. He roasted a turkey and made a pot of soup with its stock and tender meat, adding ingredients that amazed me: bacon, black beans, spinach—and cocoa. “Taste,” he said. My mouth closed around his spoon. He pulled it slowly from my lips, both of us flushed.
The day he left our apartment, he told me he’d be back in a month.
I ate for his return.
AS I WAITED OUT THE STORM, I TORTURED MYSELF WITH memories of that ice cream, that warm bread, that turkey soup. When the hail stopped, the sudden release from the din startled me into the here and now. One ping, then three, then one. A churchlike quiet fell. Only a swish of horse tail. A snort. A soft storm-over rain on the roof.
When I opened the kicker’s back door, there he stood, drenched but unharmed, thank God.
I called Gabriella again, but panic seized me as her phone rang. What was I doing? I shouldn’t talk to her now. How could I not tell her? I couldn’t lie to her; she’d know. I was about to hang up when she answered. “God, Mom. What?”
Her voice was sharp with impatience, which helped me find footing. She was safe. Good. Fine, be a bitch. That would make withholding the news easier. “Whoa,” I said, in our usual banter. “Forgive me for caring about your safety.”
“It’s not even raining here, okay?”
I couldn’t help but tease her. “Oh, and I’m fine, by the way. Your concern is so sweet.”
She breathed something like laughter. “What’s Dad doing?”
I opened my mouth, not sure what would come out. For a split second I thought I would tell her. “God only knows,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie. But immediately my nose burned.
Gabriella laughed. “Seriously, Mom, everything looks fine here. It’s sunny. We’re getting close to Cincinnati. The bus driver says the storm went north, so we’ll be okay.” She paused as if waiting for something, then said, “And we won, thanks for asking.”
How could I forget to ask? So much for acting like all was normal. “Well, I figured you would,” I said. She and her boyfriend, Tyler, always did. “Congratulations anyway.”
Now Gabriella paused. “You okay? You sound . . . weird.”
“Um, well, there was this tornado.”
“You worry,” she said, in the same tone someone might say, “You pick your nose.” “I’ll be home in an hour or so,” she said. “Tyler will drop me off. Love you! Bye!”
I opened my mouth to say the same but before I could, she clicked off. I stood there, phone to my ear, feeling tired, cold, and trampled.
Muriel butted her head against my banged-up shin. I hissed breath through my teeth, grateful for the distraction of external pain.
I WAS GLAD FOR MURIEL’S COMPANY AS I WALKED OUR property in the rain. I passed St. Francis, who lay facedown in the frothy, muddy mess of my lawn. I picked him up, but only his body rose in my hand. His head had been kicked clean off. Branches were down everywhere. The wind had stripped some aluminum gutter off the back of the barn, peeled some shingles from the house’s roof, and collapsed the rickety shed with my tractor parked inside it.
Cradling my arm, I walked the fence line of our pasture, checking to see that fallen branches hadn’t compromised any fencing that would later have me chasing goats and horses down the highway. Swirls of steam rose from each white gem of hail on the ground. In the northwest corner of the back pasture, I heard a noise that made the hairs on my arms stand up—I swore it was a child crying. I peered over the fence into the trees and scrubby brush on the other side. The new neighbors had told me they found the entire back property full of crude, makeshift booby traps—obviously to protect the hidden meth lab—and had to ask the local DEA to sweep those acres and declare them safe. “Are you okay?” I called. “Do you need help?”
The crying took on new force and volume, decidedly not human.
I climbed the fence and thumped down on the other side. A rustle of movement to my left, low to the ground, made me crouch and peer through the underbrush.
It was the orange cat.
Its front left leg was caught in a trap—a pair of metal jaws with ragged teeth. The trap held the cat up high on its leg, near its shoulder.
Ignoring the pain in my arm, I crawled under the brush to the dull-eyed bag of bones. How long had he been there? The stink of infection already hovered around him. The leg was nearly severed. I knew the minute the trap was removed bleeding would start.
I carried him, trap and all—once I’d wrenched the stake from the now-soggy ground—back to the house, Muriel trotting at my side. I braced myself for Bobby’s reaction to yet another animal but then remembered, Bobby left. My phone rang in my pocket. Was it Bobby? Maybe he’d spent the entire storm worried about me, regretting his decision. Maybe he’d changed his mind and was coming back. With the cat in my arms, though, I couldn’t answer.
The cat cried and hissed. “It’s okay,” I said, and flinched. I wanted to kick myself, and then kick Bobby. What he did was not okay. That really happened. My husband left me.
Because of the jostling of the walk, the cat’s blood ran down my forearms by the time I got him on the kitchen counter. It’s a good thing Bobby was gone at the moment because blood like this would keel him over every time. I grabbed a freshly laundered saddle pad and taped it around the cat’s leg, the fingers of my injured arm puffy and numb.
I checked my phone, in case it was Bobby or Gabby who’d called, but the missed call was from my brother. I looked at the cat’s pale gums and dull eyes. Davy would have to wait.
I called Aurora, my associate vet, to explain what had happened (my injuring my arm and finding the cat, not Bobby leaving). I drove with the cat swaddled in a towel to meet her at Animal Kind.
Aurora’s eyes widened at my appearance. “You look run over,” she greeted me. We considered euthanizing the cat, but I couldn’t shake how he’d been my little shadow escort on barn chores, following me from twenty yards away—peeking around corners or down from the loft. I couldn’t get close to him, but he’d begun to eat the food I put out for him when he thought I wasn’t watching. No, I couldn’t kill this cat. So we hooked him up to IV fluids, anesthetized him, and began surgery—or, rather, Aurora did, with her healthy, nimble fingers, while I assisted. There was no way to save the decomposing leg. We amputated below the shoulder.
While he was under, we neutered him for good measure, then we stood, watching him breathe as he was stretched unconscious on his side.
Only then did I pick up the faded green collar we’d cut off and examine the worn tag declaring him to be “Champagne Toast.” A ludicrous name for such a tough guy. He had fur the color of pumpkin pie, not champagne, with white socks on his three remaining legs and white covering half his battered face. He was big, his head enormous, his nose broad like a wildcat’s.
“Just what I need,” I said. “But I’m a sucker for an orange boy-cat.”
Aurora laughed, the tiny diamond she wore in her left nostril twinkling. The diamond looked classy and exotic on her, not absurd as it would on me, just like her close-cropped black hair. She was my age but looked ten years younger, something pixieish about her. “Every orange tom I’ve ever known has been pretty damn cool,” she admitted. “I like how they get those huge boxing-glove paws in front.”
We looked down at our patient. He still had his one huge boxing-glove paw.
“Are you okay?” She touched my shoulder. She’d been watching me watch the cat, and I felt naked, exposed, afraid she’d seen the truth of the day when I wasn’t guarding it.
I still didn’t tell her about Bobby, although I longed for the strength and comfort I knew she’d give me. I wasn’t ready to share the news yet. What if he came back? We talked instead about the tornado that touched down five miles away. About Gabriella’s win. About the biter. Aurora gave me a blue ice pack and sent me home, saying she would stick around until the cat came to.
I drove home past damaged buildings I hadn’t registered on my way to the clinic. The hardware store had lost its entire roof, and several trees had been uprooted. Leaves, trash, and debris were everywhere, as if a giant tide had scraped away.
The last thing I expected to see as I pulled into my drive was the Davids’ blue Jeep. They came out of my house the minute I parked, their faces serious, expectant. I realized in a flash: the storm, the unanswered phone call, and, oh God, the bloody kitchen counter.
I sat in my truck watching them approach, Max twirling around their legs. I wasn’t ready to tell them the real destruction of the day. I needed time, if only overnight, to absorb this. If they asked how I was, I’d tell them about the horse and the cat, then send them on their way.
But when my brother opened the truck door he said, “Gabby is freaking out.”
“Gabby’s here already?” Even as I said it, I saw Tyler’s black Honda parked by the garage.
Davy offered his hand as I stepped from the truck and said, “She called us wigging out about Bobby. And, hey, your goat is loose. We tried to catch her, but we didn’t know how.”
My tongue felt pinned to the bottom of my mouth. Had Bobby talked to her already?
At that moment, Gabby stepped off the back porch yelling, “What did you do to him?”