Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(52)

“But how do they end up in dioramas? Do you think they volunteer to be taxidermied? Are they roadkill that lucky scientists stumble upon?”

“I guess I don’t know.”

“They’re hunted.”

“Really?”

“And hunting isn’t clean.”

“It isn’t?”

“No one ever got something that didn’t want to be gotten without making a mess.”

“Oh.”

“Bullets leave holes, sometimes big ones. Arrows, too. And you don’t bring down a bison with a little hole.”

“I guess not.”

“So when they position the animals in the dioramas, they turn the holes and gashes and tears away from the viewer. Only the animals painted into the landscape get to see them. But remembering they’re there changes everything.”

Once, after hearing Jacob recount an example of Julia’s subtle belittling, Dr. Silvers said, “Most people behave badly when wounded. If you can remember the wounds, it is far more possible to forgive the behavior.”

Julia was in the bath when he’d come home that night. He tried—with gentle knocking, calling into the room, and unnecessarily loud shuffling—to make her aware of his presence, but the water was too loud, and opening the door, he startled her. After catching her breath, and laughing at her fear, she rested her chin on the tub’s lip. They listened to the water together. A seashell brought to the ear becomes an echo chamber for one’s circulatory system. The ocean you hear is your own blood. The bathroom that night was an echo chamber for their shared life. And behind Julia, where the towels and hanging robe should have been, Jacob saw a painted landscape, a flat forever occupied by a school, a soccer field, the Whole Foods bulk section (a grid of plastic bins filled with painted split peas and brown rice, dried mango and raw cashews), a Subaru and a Volvo, a home, their home, and through a second-story window there was a room, so tiny and precisely painted, only a Master could have made it, and on a table in that room, which became her office once there was no more need for a nursery, was an architectural model, a house, and in that house in that house in the house in which life happened was a woman, carefully positioned.

—

Finally, the vet came. She wasn’t what Jacob was anticipating, or hoping for: some gentle, gentile, grandfather figure. To begin with, she was a she. In Jacob’s experience, vets were like airplane pilots: virtually always male, gray (or graying), and calming. Dr. Shelling looked too young to buy Jacob a drink—not that the situation would ever arise—was fit, firm, and wearing what appeared to be a tailored lab coat.

“What brings you here today?” she asked, riffling through Argus’s chart.

Did Max see what Jacob saw? Was he old enough to pay any attention? To be embarrassed?

“He’s been having some problems,” Jacob said, “probably just normal stuff for a dog of his age: incontinence, some joint issues. Our previous vet—Dr. Hazel at Animal Kind—put him on Rimadyl and Cosequin, and said we should consider adjusting the dosage if things didn’t improve. They didn’t improve, and we doubled the dosage, and added a dementia pill, but nothing happened. So I thought we’d seek another opinion.”

“OK,” she said, putting down the clipboard. “And this dog has a name?”

“Argus,” Max offered.

“Great name,” she said, lowering herself onto a knee.

She held the sides of Argus’s face, and looked into his eyes while she stroked his head.

“He’s in pain,” Max said.

“He has occasional discomfort,” Jacob clarified. “But it’s not constant, and it’s not pain.”

“Are you in pain?” Dr. Shelling asked Argus.

“He whines when he gets up and down,” Max said.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“But he’ll also whine if we don’t drop enough popcorn during movies,” Jacob said. “He’s a catholic whiner.”

“Can you think of other times he whines out of discomfort?”

“Again, almost all of his whining is for food or a walk. But that’s not pain, or even discomfort. Just desire.”

“He whines when you and Mom fight.”

“That’s Mom’s whining,” Jacob said, trying to relieve the shame he felt in front of the veterinarian.

“Does he get enough walks?” she asked. “He shouldn’t be whining for a walk.”

“He gets a lot of walks,” Jacob said.

“Three,” Max said.

“A dog of Argus’s age needs five walks. At least.”

“Five walks a day?” Jacob asked.

“And the pain you’ve witnessed. For how long has it been going on?”

“Discomfort,” Jacob corrected. “Pain is too strong a word.”

“A long time,” Max said.

“Not that long. Maybe half a year?”

“It’s gotten bad in the last half a year,” Max said, “but he’s been whining since Benjy was like three.”

“Same could be said of Benjy.”

The vet looked into Argus’s eyes for another few moments, now in silence. Jacob wanted to be looked at like that.

“OK,” she said. “Let’s take a temperature, I’ll check his vitals, and if it feels right, we can do some blood work.”