The water running into the drain is almost black.
“This is intended for the Japan market,” Daisuke says. “In other countries, there is a labor force for professional pet grooming. But we have had interest internationally.”
Now the spigots in the wall are spraying her dog with a green liquid detergent of some kind. The dog becomes more agitated. Licking her lips, and twisting on her leash, knocking her nose against the bone.
“The soap is getting in her eyes, I think.” Madoka clenches her hands together behind her back.
“It’s not toxic. Washing humans is easier. With humans, you can instruct them to close their eyes,” Daisuke says. “And suggest they scrub themselves with the soap. This is obviously hard to do with dogs.”
Madoka’s dog is splattered with pale green foam, as if afflicted with some kind of extraterrestrial mange. She now stands frozen, muscles tensed, enduring, head flinching whenever the jets hit her face. Madoka can see her dog’s ribs now. The tufts of hair around her eyes and inside her bat ears droop and drip. Madoka begins to cry.
? ? ?
TWO HOURS LATER, Madoka and the dog are in the car again. Madoka’s appointments have been canceled. In the trunk, next to the emergency duffel, is a bag of dog food, two chew toys, several bones, and absorbent pads. Her dog has turned out to be a caramel brown color. Madoka is thinking of naming her Toffee, or maybe Toff-Toff. Both Madoka and dog are exhausted, slightly red around the eyes, heavy-lidded.
Madoka rolls a peppermint around in her mouth.
“It is quite funny of Yoshi to put those peppermints in the survival bag,” Madoka says to Toffee. “That brand of peppermint is my favorite candy. It’s a kind of joke. As if I would need them to survive. What I’m thinking right now is that if something happened, and I needed that bag because I really did have to survive, and I knew I’d never see Yoshi again, then those peppermints would break my heart. Or if Yoshi dies in space, on the way to Mars, or there or the way back. Or in Utah, or any number of places.”
Toffee sighs deeply and edges her nose toward Madoka’s hand.
“Don’t worry,” Madoka says. “He isn’t going to die. He’s absolutely not. He’s going to come home. You shouldn’t be scared. I’m not scared. It’s only been a training session, this time, and so there’s nothing to be worried about at all. We are going to go home right now, you and I, and I will make a message for Yoshi, and let him know that I found the peppermints. Don’t you think that would be a good idea? Don’t you think he’ll want to know that?”
Toffee licks her hand.
“I’m tired of waiting,” Madoka says. “I’m tired of waiting for Yoshi to find me. I’m tired of waiting to find myself. Nobody ever finds anything if they just wait.”
HELEN
Meeps,
I’m so glad that you are loving the video game work and doing so well! It sounds really interesting, and fun too.
I had a very unusual experience here that was almost like dying. Because it was almost like dying, but wasn’t, the first thing it made me think of was my father. Maybe you will like hearing that I’ve thought about my father during these past fifteen months more than I have my whole life, it seems. Maybe you will hate learning that it’s still not very much.
It’s not the same, you know. My father’s absence didn’t mean to me what my absence has meant to you. You want me to feel more. I want you to feel less. Which one of us is feeling the correct amount? Why do you want me to feel more? To punish me? Or are you afraid that because I don’t feel my father’s absence, I also don’t feel yours? Why do I want you to feel less? Because that makes me feel less guilty for all the times I left you?
Quite frankly, the men in my life don’t bear all that much thinking about. From everything I’ve heard, my dad was a great guy, but people tend to inflate great qualities in these cases. I have thought about my husband more than my dad. I got pretty angry at one point. I say “my husband” because that person was different from the person who was your father. You won’t want to hear that either. Eric didn’t love me in a really great way. Maybe there aren’t great ways to love other people, except for from very far away, and in one direction.
I had the thought yesterday that love from a parent toward a child—no, my love for you—was the most terrible form of love, because it can’t ever be reciprocated.
I have considered it a point of pride, a skill, that I’ve been able to extricate myself from the tragedy that happened to my family, that I didn’t let it define me. It feels really good to do that, Meeps. It feels really good to be free. In the greatest and happiest moments of my life I haven’t thought of anyone, not even, no, especially, myself.
And yet, if anyone were to ask me right now to think of someone I love, I would think of you. I have never loved a person more than I have loved you.
You think I only love you in the “of course” way. That I always loved myself more, that my work was always more important.
You don’t know how great and terrible the “of course” way is. You are able to accept things without reasons. I do not have that. The only thing I accept without reason is loving you.
I worried, when I was pregnant, that I wouldn’t feel the proper mother things when you were born. I did. I felt them all. And then I arranged things so that I could live my life exactly the way I wanted to. I was so confident it would all work out because I had such a good feeling.