“We’re at an impasse until Audrey can come. But I’m not going to let him kill the cats.”
“What if he sets out poison?”
“I’ve been watching for that. He hasn’t tried it yet. I think he’s trying to find somebody to bribe at the sheriff’s department to say the cats have all left.”
Mom was quiet for a moment. “Lucas…”
“Yeah?”
“Why is this so important to you? Not that I don’t love animals, but for you it seems, I don’t know, more than that.”
Lucas shifted in his chair. “I guess it’s because they’re all alone in the world.”
I glanced over at Mom as she sat back, crossing her ankles. “You feel like you need to protect them because they’re abandoned. The way you once felt you, yourself, needed to be protected, when you were abandoned.”
“Your group therapy is making it almost impossible to have a normal conversation with you.”
“I’m serious.”
“Couldn’t it just be that I feel responsible for them?”
“Why? Why do you feel responsible for everything all the time? It’s as if you’ve been a grown-up since you were five years old. Is it…”
They were quiet for a moment. I sniffed carefully at the floor in front of his feet, hoping for a morsel I might have missed.
“Is it what?”
“You’re the only child of an alcoholic.”
“Can you let this one go, Mom? Sometimes I do things for no reason I can name, okay?”
“I just think it would be a good idea to take a look at it.”
“Mom, they’re cats. Can we just maybe say that’s all there is to it? I honestly don’t go through life blaming you every day, or thinking about all the things that happened. I know that’s important for you, but I’m just glad things are finally back to normal. All right? And I think it’s normal to want to stop some builder from bringing a house down on some helpless cats.”
“Okay, Lucas. Okay.”
*
Lucas and I played and played. He liked to say, “Do your business.” This meant that when we were outside he would sometimes give me a treat, but most of the time not. He also could put his fingers in his mouth and let loose with a shrill, piercing noise that scared me at first but then became a signal to run to him for a little snack of some kind, so that I became excited whenever he raised his hands to his mouth.
My least favorite item in the house was the “crate.” Mom and Lucas sounded very excited when they introduced me to the thing, but it was built from thin metal bars and was not chewable. They put a soft pillow in it and taught me “Go to Your Crate,” which meant that I would go inside it and lie on the pillow and they would give me a treat. Then they suddenly changed the game: we did Go to Your Crate and they gave me a treat and then left me alone in the house!
There was nothing to chew but the pillow. Once I had shredded that (it was not too tasty) I was very lonely. I missed Lucas so much I barked the whole time he was gone.
Lucas was very upset that he had left me alone all day, though I was in such a frenzy of joy when he returned I raced around the living room, jumping on the furniture and rolling on the carpet and licking his face. He seemed unhappy that I had strewn pillow stuffing all over the place, but what else was there to do with it? He didn’t taste it himself and did not know how unappetizing it was. I certainly wasn’t going to eat it.
“I have an old towel you can put in there,” Mom said.
“You shouldn’t rip up your dog bed, Bella,” Lucas told me.
I wagged.
“Maybe put her ball in with her next time,” Mom observed.
I stared at her alertly. Ball? I knew that word—the ball was the most wonderful toy in the house. When Lucas threw it, it would bounce away and I would chase it and catch it and bring it back to do it again.
Sometimes Lucas took the ball with us on a walk. There was a wide open place with grass where Lucas would let me off the leash—a “park”—and he would toss the ball over and over again. The ball never got away from me.
I loved chasing the ball and I loved bringing it back and I loved when Lucas told me I was a good dog. Sometimes there were other dogs and they chased other balls, pretending they didn’t wish they were chasing a ball thrown by Lucas.
He was my person. I wanted nothing more in life than to be with him every day. Well, that and treats. “Do your business,” he’d say. Treat! Then, “Do your business.” No treat. It was not the best game.
Then I understood: Do Your Business referred to squatting and peeing, which I had come to prefer to do outside. Lucas radiated such approval, giving me a treat when we were in the grass, that I realized what Do Your Business was all about. We went to the park and I did Do Your Business and got a treat and Lucas was so excited he threw the ball and it bounced over to where children sometimes played on swings. I was right behind it, gaining ground, and when it bounced onto a plastic ramp and rolled to the top I followed, my nails digging for purchase on the slippery surface. At the top of the ramp the ball kept going and so did I, jumping off and catching the ball after it hit the ground and bounded up to mouth-level.
“Bella!” Lucas called. “You ran up the slide! Good dog, Bella!”
Lucas was pleased with me. He led me over to the ramp. “Okay, chase the ball up the slide, Bella!”
We played that game over and over. The ball went up the “slide” and I jumped off after it and caught it and took it back to him. Sometimes I caught the ball in the air on the other side of the slide, right after it bounced off the ground. Lucas would laugh in delight when I did this.
Later he gave me water and we sprawled in the grass. The air was cool and the sun was bright in the sky. I put my head on his legs and he stroked my head. Whenever his hand stopped I nuzzled it, wanting more.
“I am so sorry I have to leave you for work. I love my job, though. I have a desk but I’m hardly ever there; mostly I’m running all over the place assisting my managers with their cases. It’s fun but I do miss you, Bella.”
I loved it when he said my name.
“Did you hear Mom walking around last night? She’s back to not sleeping. I don’t know what to do if she is going back into one of her cycles. God, I wish they could just fix her.”
A sad feeling came off of him, so I climbed on his chest. That worked: he laughed and pushed me off. “You are such a silly dog, Bella!”
Any time I was with Lucas, I was happy. I loved Mom, but what I felt toward Lucas was as compelling as hunger, and often when I was sleeping I would dream that he and I were together, feeding the cats or playing ball-up-the-slide.
I did not like the phrase “go to work” because when Lucas said it, he meant he was going to leave me for a long, long time. “I’m going to go to work,” he would say to Mom, and then I would be alone with her. I could not imagine why he would do Go to Work. Wasn’t I a good dog?