The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Forty-Two

HELEN AND I MET IN THE OUTER LOBBY OF THE HUMANE Society office for the monthly meeting.
“I’m not feeling it,” I admitted. “Let’s ditch this meeting.”
Helen was walking out the door before I finished the sentence. “They can carry on without us,” she said once we were outside. “You know we’ll both end up splitting that box of kittens if we go back in there.”
Although the days now hinted at spring, the evenings were still cold and damp. We linked arms for warmth, heading—without discussion—for the river.
“How’s Dubey?” Helen asked.
I sighed. “Like a feral animal I’ve humanely trapped.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I have to approach very slowly in order not to scare him. I can’t make eye contact or move too fast.”
“Hmm,” Helen said, nothing more. She seemed as moody as I was tonight. I missed Moonshot. Ginger had sent me a brief video of the two of them jumping a training course. Along with his athleticism, he had an elegance over jumps that was truly breathtaking.
I liked watching him move forward and took comfort in knowing I’d helped him do that. I didn’t really want him pining away, kicking walls again.
But I missed him. And I missed Vijay. And I missed Dubey, which troubled me. I shouldn’t have to miss him, should I? I’d called him after that insane shower day, needing to talk, needing to detox it with someone who hadn’t been there, but he had yet to call me back.
“I can’t ask too much of him,” I said. “If I try to pin him down, he gets all slippery.”
“What?” Helen asked.
“Dubey,” I said.
“Oh.” She wasn’t really listening.
It’d been a nice idea to skip the meeting, but still a block from the river, I felt naked, the insistent wind penetrating my clothes and skin with its raw chill. “I’m freezing,” I said.
She turned around as answer. Heading back, we faced into the bitter wind.
We walked fast, clutching each other. I held a hand over one ear. “What’s Hank doing tonight?” I asked, hoping that maybe we could call him and all go to dinner somewhere warm.
She made a funny sound—sort of a laugh, with something uncomfortable underneath it. “He’s cooking.”
“Ooh, cooking what?” Even better than going out would be going to their house.
“His mac ’n’ cheese, apple pie, meatloaf, you name it.”
That seemed odd. I was about to ask if they were planning a party when a warning buzzer vibrated up my spine.
I stopped walking.
Helen didn’t question my halt. I saw she hadn’t wanted to go into that meeting for a reason. How could I not have seen it in her eyes, felt it in her distraction? “Helen? What’s wrong?”
The wind whipped her hair across her eyes and almost stole her words as she said, “Hank has cancer, Cami. We just found out.”
I TOOK HER HAND, LED HER TO MY CAR, AND DROVE HER TO a coffee shop that had a fireplace.
Hank had testicular cancer. Before she even told me it had metastasized in his lungs, I thought back to his shortness of breath in salsa class. The man ran marathons, for God’s sake. A little dancing shouldn’t have made him wheeze. Why hadn’t I registered that?
I pictured the cancer making those sunspots all over his lung X-ray. I knew enough about human medicine to know what that meant. It was the same for dogs, after all.
“He has surgery this week, to remove a testicle,” Helen said. “Then he’ll start chemo.”
I’d just advised a family with a beautiful twelve-year-old black lab not to go the chemo route. Dog’s lives were so short, the amount of time such misery bought—and it was misery, misery the dog couldn’t understand—did not seem worth the price. I was overcome with the urge to call them back and say, Do it. A few months is a few months.
“He never had any symptoms in the early stages,” she said, staring at the fire. “I mean, we thought maybe he had a hernia once, but it just . . . went away.” She rubbed her eyes. “His back had been hurting lately, though. A lot. And he was getting out of breath—you saw him.”
“You have a good doctor?” I’d show up on Vijay’s doorstep if I had to, to get him to find them the finest, most skilled doctor who existed.
But Helen nodded.
“The survival rate is high,” I said. “Even with advanced.” I left out the word sometimes. “Think of Lance Armstrong.”
She didn’t even flash her gap-toothed smile. “I do,” she said, in all seriousness. “Every minute of every day since we found out. I dream about Lance Armstrong.”
I squeezed her hands in both of mine.
“I love that man,” she said. The words seemed so flimsy compared to the sincerity in her eyes. “I’m gonna need you, friend.”
“You have me,” I vowed. “Anytime of the day or night.”
AT THE NEXT SALSA CLASS, WHEN I HUGGED HANK TIGHT, he whispered, “Let’s just dance. For now.”
So we did. He and Helen didn’t change partners between songs.
“You okay?” Dubey whispered at one point. I was pleased he’d sensed my sorrow.
At the end of the class, as we all sat chatting and drinking, Hank cleared his throat and said, “I’ve got some news to share with you all,” and he told us. Helen held his hand the whole time and never took her eyes from his face.
When we got to the car, Dubey pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “Why them?”
I knew what he meant. They’d figured it out, they didn’t need to be tested.
But life tests all of us over and over again.
I went to sleep that night intentionally visualizing Lance Armstrong. I dreamed I galloped on Moonshot, chasing that yellow jersey on the bike, leaping fluidly over cars and corner coffee carts. We stopped, panting, in a deserted cobblestoned square. Even in my dream, I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that Lance had gotten away.
HANK’S SURGERY WAS TEXTBOOK, AND, AT HIS REQUEST, I made him a batch of Hanky-Pankies the next day, when he was over his anesthesia queasiness.
Dear, sweet Vijay spent hours researching Hank’s cancer when I told him the news, providing Helen and Hank with several case studies of treatment and good prognoses, helping them translate what doctors told them, talking to doctors himself. Because of Vijay I believed Hank’s oncologist when he said the outlook was excellent.
Luna showed no signs of giving birth. She cracked me up with her stubborn, willful ways. My father was sweet on her, for reasons he couldn’t explain. My heart lifted each time I pulled into my drive and saw my father’s old blue pickup truck—he’d taken to dropping in on her.
“She looks like a wine barrel on toothpicks,” Dad said of her. He liked to sit on a bucket and feed her handfuls of beet pulp. If beets were, according to old wives’ tales, supposed to induce labor in women, he thought perhaps beet pulp would do the same for a donkey. The only effect it seemed to produce, though, was fuchsia foam around her lips and pink-tinted teeth.
“According to Dr. Coatney, she’s overdue,” I said. “She says donkeys gestate twelve months on average, but some go thirteen or more.”
We didn’t have the exact date she’d been bred, of course. Mr. Pete Early, now in jail, had responded to the Humane inquiry with, “F*ck you. How the hell should I know?”
“Everything is healthy and on track,” Dr. Coatney assured us, but the donkey was not at all serious about getting this show on the road. Sometimes you could see one of the foal’s hooves, or a folded knee, pressing against Luna’s sides. How amazing that a whole donkey, with four legs, a tail, and a head was folded up in there like origami.
Then I’d look at Gabriella, touch my own stomach, and think the same thing: this amazing human being was once all folded up inside of me.
One night, Gabby and I were at the kitchen island, both of us studying (she, news magazines for current debate statistics; me, a foaling book I’d ordered online).
“Who will be your date to the wedding?” she asked. “Vijay? Or Dubey?”
I closed my foaling book. “Maybe neither.”
“You need a date, Mom. Dad will be there with Lydia.”
“So? I don’t care.” She stared at me. “It’s not a competition. I could be remarried, but I chose not to be. I don’t care what any of them think of me.”
Gabriella cocked her head. “How do you get there, Mom?”
“You get there by living, I guess. You live and you learn.”
“You’re a quick study, then,” she said.
“What does that mean?” I was pretty sure she was complimenting me, but I wanted to be sure.
“You seem so . . . happy. You’re way more fun and cool now than when you and Dad were together. Which is weird, because he’s the one who left, but he’s the one who seems so sad and . . . stuck. You had this shitty thing happen to you . . . but it’s like you used it as a springboard, you know?” She grinned. “You don’t need a man.”
“I want one,” I admitted.
“But that’s totally different than needing one,” she said.
Amen. I wanted to dance to hear her say those words.