Lily and the Octopus(14)

But instead he simply smiles and says, “Okay.”





Backbone


My cell phone rings in an ominous way, sounding almost flat, the way it does when you know something is wrong before you answer the phone. I fumble to retrieve it from my pocket and the call almost goes to voicemail before I can answer. There’s no time for anything to be amiss; we leave for Meredith’s wedding in the morning.

It’s Jeffrey. “Something’s wrong with Lily. You need to come home.”

I look at my watch. It’s a little past three o’clock in the afternoon and I am more or less on my way home anyway. I’m just leaving the grocery store and the last thing on my list is to pick up our suits for the wedding from the dry cleaners.

“Can it wait thirty more minutes?”

I think of all the things that might be wrong with Lily. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Neither pleasant, but neither the end of the world. Too many treats from her Christmas stocking. Limping? She once had a thorn in her paw, like the old fable involving Androcles and the lion. It took some gentle prodding to get her to sit still long enough to remove the craggly thing. Bleeding? Bleeding is easy—just apply pressure. Jeffrey can be an alarmist. Whatever it could be can probably wait.

“She can’t walk. You need to come home now.”

When I burst through the door I find Lily in her bed in the living room with Jeffrey sitting on the floor beside her. Lily looks frustrated and concerned when she sees me, and she doesn’t get up and her tail doesn’t wag. The new red ball from her Christmas stocking sits motionless on the floor. Her inability to greet me in her usual way all by itself makes my stomach drop.

“What’s going on, you two?” I almost don’t want to know the answer. In eighteen hours we are supposed to be on an airplane again.

“Let me show you,” Jeffrey says.

He gingerly lifts Lily out of her bed, in the heedful way he did the first few months we were dating, before they bonded, before he was confident in the proper way to do it. He places her squarely on the floor and the back half of her body immediately wilts, her hind legs splaying sloppily to one side. They just give way underneath her.

My heart sinks to depths normally reserved for my stomach, and it becomes difficult to think or breathe.

I kneel on the floor next to them and tuck one hand under Lily’s muscular chest and one hand under her soft belly. I stand her up again, supporting her with both hands. I almost don’t dare to let go.

“Stand for me, Lily.” I say it like a hypnotist giving a directive to an entranced person under my command. When I let myself remove the hand under her belly, her toenails scrape on the hardwood floor as her legs once again slip to the side. “C’mon.” This time I’m pleading. “Stand up for me, girl.”

Again, when I let go, the awful slithering of toenails on wood and the total wilting of legs. She almost tips over entirely before I catch her at the last second.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Jeffrey replies.

“Something happened,” I insist before adding, “What have you done?”

“What have I done?” Jeffrey is shocked.

She was my dog long before we ever met, and while she has become his dog, too, over the course of our relationship, they don’t have the same bond. He does not treat her with the same attentiveness (or, truthfully, the same permissiveness), and when he’s displeased with her behavior he is always the stepparent absolving himself of responsibility by throwing his hands up and calling her “your dog.” This can’t really be Jeffrey’s fault, but I wonder just the same.

“Are you accusing me of something?”

I stare at Jeffrey. Am I accusing him of something? Even in this moment I’m forced to wonder if my assertion is about Lily or the text message. I don’t know. But I can feel Lily tremble in my hands, and I know immediately now is not the time. “No. No, of course not.”

“I hope not.”

“I’m not.” I placate him while I place Lily back in her bed, where at least she’s supported by the cushiony sides. “Just watch her while I call the vet.”

When I get our veterinarian’s voicemail it dawns on me that it is now four o’clock on New Year’s Eve. I immediately dial the first animal hospital I can find a listing for, even though it’s on the west side of town. When I explain the situation, they insist I bring her in right away. If they can do anything for her, there’s a short window in which it can happen, and that window is rapidly closing.

I hang up the phone, grab an old blanket, and wrap it around my girl. I lift her carefully, and nod to Jeffrey. “Let’s go.”

In the car we hit a red light that I know to be a long red light and I burst into sobs. My choices now, as I see them, are either having a dog with wheels for hind legs or, possibly, letting her go. Without warning, without moving or standing or crouching, Lily poops into the blanket on my lap, and my sobbing becomes inconsolable. She’s dying, my baby. Right here in my lap.

The light turns green. I yell at a distracted Jeffrey to “Go!” and he steps on the gas and in the chaos I find a doggie litter bag in my jacket pocket because doggie litter bags are in all of my jacket pockets—I have a fear of being caught without them. I clean up the blanket as best I can and drop the sealed bag near my feet. I know this bothers Jeffrey, but he doesn’t say anything, and really, what other choice do I have? We both crack our windows for air.