“You’re the one who wanted a dog,” Molly says, handing me the leash. Lady is at the door, tail wagging. Lady knows what the leash means. Outside, it’s beginning to snow. The game starts in 15 minutes and I will miss the first quarter. But Molly is right – I was the one who wanted a dog. Lady stands on the mat in front of the door, waiting – it’s part of the routine – while I hook the leash to her collar. She’s so excited she begins turning in circles, winding the leash around herself in the process.

            “It’s starting to snow, “Molly says, though I know this already, but saying it counts as helping. I slip into my heavy coat, stick a plastic bag in my pocket, pull the ski hat over my ears, and open the door, trying not to hit Lady’s nose, which she’s poking at the space where the door opens. I push on the storm door and feel a whoosh of cold with whispers of wet. The sky is gray, brightness trying to shine through opaqueness. 

            Down the front sidewalk we go, Lady leading the way, straining against me like a Huskie pulling a sled in deep snow. Flakes are falling slowly, big flakes that melt into wet spots when they land on my face. As Lady pulls me down the street, I lose myself in her adventure. Lady is plugged into the motherboard of nature, the mind animals still have but humans lost when they fell from grace in Eden. Lady is a Shepherd-Collie mix, but you’d think she was a bloodhound the way her sniffer stays in overdrive. She zeroes in on this blade of grass, that tree trunk, gathering olfactory data and processing it with lightning speed. Scientists say a dog’s sense of smell is tens of thousands of times greater than our own and that dogs ‘read’ the world with their nose the way we read news on the Internet. I watch Lady squat to pee by a tree, wondering if this is the canine equivalent of a post on Facebook.

            I don’t have Lady’s sensitive nose, but I’m enjoying the walk in my own way. No one else will be out in this weather except other people walking their dogs. I swear, if it were the middle of the Great Blizzard of 1888, dog owners still would dress their dogs in cute sweaters and make the rounds to extract a mandatory pee and poop from their surrogate children. Parents toilet-train children, but dog-owners are poop-scoopers for life. We think we put a dog on a leash, but it’s actually the other way around.

            Like nannies in a park comparing babies, dog owners walking their dogs know the other dogs of the neighborhood and judge both them and their owners. There’s the lady with five dogs ranging in size from a chihuahua to a Great Dane that she walks all at once, a fistful of leashes in each hand. She’s like the quintuplet mom on the six o’clock news – it would be un-American not to admire her. The five dogs strut together with a palpable esprit des corps that makes me smile.

There’s the guy who walks two nervous little white dogs that barely clear the ground and look like a pair of string mop heads, their beady black eyes peering at you suspiciously as they pass. They’re small in a big world, so I don’t hold it against them, but I avoid their owner – he likes to get into everybody’s business – by crossing the street.

We pass the intersection to one of the cul-de-sacs that punctuate the main drag. An attractive girl in her 20s is walking a golden retriever. Like me, she’s wearing a sock hat to cover her ears, her long brown hair trailing down her back like a streamer from a celebration. I sense she selected a retriever, rather than, say, a dachshund, to be her companion because it complements her self-image. I imagine the retriever serves the function of surrogate boyfriend, one she’s happy to water and feed in exchange for unconditional love dogs freely give but that is rare in boyfriends. Good for her. I look at Lady, wondering what function she serves in psyche, resolving not to ask Molly because she might tell me.

The snow is starting to fall heavily, now, and some of it sticks on Lady’s back, but she’s still enjoying the hell out of the walk. It’s like the responsibility of taking care of a baby, but it’s a dog. That’s what Molly said when I brought Lady home from the animal shelter without consulting her. Honestly, consulting Molly hadn’t even occurred to me – how could a puppy not be good in every sense of the word? It took months before I realized it hadn’t been surprise I’d seen in Molly’s eyes that day, it had been anger. But Molly never said she was angry and I’ve never brought it up because no good would come from doing so. Molly treats Lady well, even scratches behind her ears, but I think she nurses resentment against me for unilaterally adding Lady to our household. This is strategy on Molly’s part. When we have children, and it’s my turn to change a diaper, Molly will turn to me and give a look that says You don’t mind walking Lady and she’s a dog. Molly will be a fiercely good mother.

We pass a one-and-a-half story house with no car in the driveway, where an English bulldog at the window is barking furiously. The bulldog spends every day barking at passersby, her owner never home. I feel sorry for the dog. People buy an animal, then when the novelty wears off they ignore it, forgetting that dogs are sentient creatures with lives meaningful as their own.

I realize my feet are getting cold. I need to focus on my mission.

“Come on, Lady. Let’s poop!”

Lady understands. After some intense comparison shopping, she finds the perfect spot. She squats and assumes a meditative expression. When she finishes, I scoop her work product into the plastic bag and tie it off. We turn and head back the way we came.   I look through a neighbor’s window and see the glow of a TV screen. The game is on. I think of home. I wonder whether Molly will build a fire. Fires are comforting when a cold, wet day cups the house with its giant gray hands. 

The snow has let up, but the sky’s ceiling remains low with pillowy clouds that make the neighborhood seem like a padded room. The gray sky now and the gray sky when Lady and I started our walk are different, not just in color and texture, but in distinct tones they strike and feelings they evoke. I study the clouds, noting differences in shades of gray, which brings to mind the title Fifty Shades of Gray.  It occurs to me that the title is misleading. Fifty Shades of Gray isn’t about gray at all – it’s about the line between black and white. The concept shades of gray doesn’t do justice to a color that chromatically may be a blend of black and white but intrinsically has more personality than green or purple or any of the other respectable colors. Clouds carry water, like Aquarius. The human body is 60% water, or more. Flora and fauna in rain forests exist nowhere else in the world, and what is a rain forest but a cloud on the ground? Clouds carry weather. If Zeus keeps a diary, it’s a smorgasbord of gray clouds. Many a person comes to know himself or herself by bouncing emotions off of clouds. Unlike friends, clouds listen. This makes me sorry for people in Southern California. They have no gray clouds. How can they know who they are without them?

A sudden gust of wind penetrates the space between my coat and my neck, as if someone dropped ice down the back of my shirt. I shiver involuntarily. It’s snowing again and Lady and I are not in a rain forest. I’ve been walking in a trance, my head in the clouds, so to speak. Lady is pulling me behind her as if she were taking me on a walk. The air is foggy with ice crystals. We aren’t in a rain forest – we’re in an ice forest. Lady is ready to be home. There’s no more frantic sniffing. She’s finished reading the messages on trees and bushes and lawns and in the air. Off in the horizon, I see darker gray clouds – another round of snow coming. I wonder whether it will be heavy or light, thick or spitting, fast-moving or hovering over us like a fairy. I study the gray, trying to divine the answers.

We turn the corner and there’s our house, the same shape and size as those around it but distinctly different because it’s ours. Lady is relaxed and trots happily. She follows without resistance as I walk to the garbage bin and deposit the plastic bag – it’s part of the routine. As soon as I flip the top of the lid shut, Lady bounds for the front porch, pulling me with her. The door opens and Molly is standing there with a smile.

“Come in out of the cold,” she says, and I feel like a child.

We step in, Lady first, and then Lady waits impatiently on the rug by the door – also part of the routine – for me to unhook the leash. Once freed, she trots to the living room where a fire is burning in the fireplace. Lady lays down in front of it. Any dampness in her fur will soon be gone.

“Good walk?” Molly asks.

“Uh-huh.” I hook my jacket on the coat rack.

“You’re a good dog-dad,” she says, taking the leash from my hand. I have mixed feelings about the compliment. We have been dancing around the subject of children for months. I untie my shoes and kick them off.

“The Bengals are ahead,” she says. She could care less, but she knows that’s who I root for. If she knows the score, that means she turned the game on for me.  

I join Lady in the living room and see a little circle of orange and brown helmets on the TV screen. I settle into the recliner that is my captain’s chair from which I steer the universe. Molly is back with a beer for me that I didn’t ask for but won’t turn down.

“Thank you,” I say, feeling pampered. Molly leaves, returns with another log for the fire, then leaves again. I smell something cooking in the kitchen. Lyrics from an old song come to mind. Molly and me and Lady makes three – we’re happy in our gray heaven.

By halftime the Bengals are getting stomped. Lady is snoring softly in front of the fire. Molly is on the couch reading a novel. I pick up the clicker, check the viewer’s guide, and see a romantic comedy Molly will like and that I won’t mind too much. I flip the channel. The sound of the actors’ dialogue prompts Molly to look up. She sees the screen, then looks at me and smiles. She scoots over to make a place for me. I haul myself out of my cushy chair and join her on the couch.

I put my arm around her. We watch the movie, but I feel her body relaxing. In ten minutes she will be limp against my chest, snoring with Lady – it’s part of the routine – and I’ll finish watching her movie by myself. Outside, big snowflakes are falling again, like little parachutes.  

This story appeared in borrowed solace, Fall 2021

https://defenestrationism.net/

Genuine Ringers

June 28 is Pride Day. Here’s a story of mine that resonates, published in Seventh Wave a couple of years ago

                                                      Floribunda

            It was May, when plants grow inches a day and gardeners abandon spouses and kids for shovels and trowels. Tim was plant-shopping at the garden center.  His pulse quickened when he saw the yellow floribundas.

            He elbowed past customers dragging plant-burdened wagons and lining up at checkout until he reached the display table. The floribundas were in two-gallon containers and there were less than a dozen left. The canes were thick, the leaves dark green, and the blooms were full and buttery, a deep yellow, not the pale yellow that turns white in summer heat. He leaned near a newly-unfurled bloom and inhaled its light, fruity fragrance. He turned over the tag to check the price. His pulse jumped again. The floribunda was a steal!

Tim felt a hand on his shoulder and turned. A short, balding man with a face bright as a floodlight was staring at him. The man exuded hypertension and helplessness. Tim’s first thought was that the guy was crazy. The man pointed at one of the floribundas.

“Is this a good rose?” he asked with electric intensity. “It’s for my wife. She died three weeks ago.”

  A cone of silence was forming around them. Tim was being sucked into a separate reality that was this man’s life.

“She died of cancer,” the man explained. “I took care of her every day.”

Tim didn’t know what to say, so he listened.

“I fixed her meals. I gave her her medicine.”

Tim nodded. The man sounded defensive, guilty about something he wasn’t disclosing.

“I was going to plant a rose bush by the front steps for her,” the man said. “Is this a good one?”

            The man wasn’t asking a gardening question. He was asking a metaphysical question and Tim was his priest.   

            “It is,” Tim said, supplying faith the man needed.  

            The man stared deeply at the plant.

            “She liked yellow,” he explained. “It was her favorite color.”

            Tim waited, but when the man said nothing else, Tim picked up a floribunda for himself and edged away. He found an empty flat and put the floribunda on it. He wheeled over to a table of perennials and added an orange Echinacea. His wife liked Shasta daisies, so he got two. But the prize was that yellow floribunda.

            Tim wheeled the wagon to checkout. The man who’d cornered him was in line at the next register over, his arms wrapped tightly around the yellow floribunda rosebush. He was carrying it like you carry a child into the hospital emergency room.

            Tim paid for his plants, loaded them in his car, and drove home. He carried everything to the backyard and appraised his flower beds like an architect planning Eden. The Echinacea and Shasta daisies would go in beds opposite the patio to provide color when the heat of summer settled in.

            He picked up his shovel. As he worked, he thought about the encounter at the garden center. It had unnerved him. The man’s wife was gone and he didn’t know how to fill that bare space in his life. The floribunda would be his standing prayer, his dispensation, his atonement, his miracle hoped-for. Floribunda literally means abundant flowers but, still, that was a lot of weight for a rosebush to carry.  

            Tim planted the Shasta daisies and Echinacea, dragged the hose across the lawn, watered the plants, and tamped it all down one last time. He appraised his work and, like God on the sixth day, declared it good.

            Now, where to put the spectacular floribunda?

            His eyes traveled to a bare spot near the gate. He measured with his eye. It was perfect. And spring to fall, the floribunda would catch the eye of each person passing through the gate.

            He positioned the shovel and stepped hard, driving the blade into the ground, lifting the soil out, then doing it again. All good gardeners know that a twenty-dollar plant deserves a fifty-dollar hole. 

            “I brought you lemonade.”

            His wife set the drink on a flat stone in the border. She looked at the floribunda.  

            “That’s beautiful.”

            Her greenish-blue eyes grew misty.

            “Mom always liked yellow.”

            Her mother had died of cancer years ago, early during their marriage. He started to tell her about the man at the garden center, then stopped. He watched her gaze at the yellow floribunda, turning things over in her mind. Then she looked at him.

            “I like it.”  

            He understood. The floribunda would remind her of her mother. It would be a portal through which each could commune with the other, souls touching, regrets rectified. It would fill the bare space.

This story of mine first appeared in Green Prints.