Elizabeth Wrenn - Second Chance

RAISING GUIDE DOG PUPPY

FIVE

I had just set the last, and biggest, bouquet on the coffee table of the sunroom. I’d been extravagant, buying two different bunches at Costco, mixing and arranging them anew into four bouquets, adding some of my daffodils that had bravely emerged in the early spring warmth. In the morning I’d put the finishing touches on some of the most furious cleaning I’d ever done. And for me, that was saying something. I’d even pulled out the toothbrush again, despite Elaine’s admonishments. I hadn’t told anyone about my ‘project,’ not even Elaine.

At a little after two in the afternoon, I emerged from the shower, blew-dry and styled my hair, and put on a crisp white oxford shirt and my just-pressed khakis and stared at the mirror. God. Was this the best I could do? The fat, preppy look? I touched the gray hairs at my temple, the lines at my eyes. I wondered if I’d be judged too old to take on raising a puppy.

By three o’clock I was ready for my first job interview in a very long time. I was glad it was in my home. If I’d had a résumé, my home and my kids would be the only things on it.

‘Wow,’ said Bill as we finished the tour and sat down to tea in the sunroom. ‘Your house is so pristine, inside and out.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, beaming. It felt so good to beam. And Bill, the local leader for the K-9 Eyes group, turned out to be someone who elicited beaming. He was tall, with thick dark hair and bright blue eyes, an irresistible combination. The sprinklings of gray in his hair looked sexy, not old.

He looked down at his teacup, his brow furrowed, and said nothing else. My beam retracted.

‘Is everything all right?’ I asked. ‘Would you like some sugar for your tea? Or a brownie?’ I picked up the plate of my famous Death and Resurrection chocolate brownies and offered him one. ‘They have four different kinds of chocolate in them!’

Bill averted his eyes. ‘No, thank you, Deena.’ He gazed around the room. When he finally looked at me he was smiling, but a cosmetic smile. A smile that is the Band-Aid in advance of the cut.

‘Deena, I’m not sure you’re really the best candidate to be a puppy raiser.’

The words echoed in the silence. I felt my throat constrict. I hadn’t won the inspection. I hadn’t even passed. My hand went to my open collar, clutching it closed.

‘Why?’ I whispered. My faults and shortcomings lined up in my mind like obedient soldiers.

Bill reached out and put his fingers on my other hand, trembling on the table. His touch surprised me, making me look up into his kind, blue eyes.

‘You obviously put a great deal of love and care into your house, and you have some gorgeous things.’ He pointed to the colored glass on the windowsills, then to the largest bouquet, which I’d strategically placed for greatest effect on the glass coffee table. ‘Everything is so tidy and clean. I’m worried that a dog will not fit into this picture. Especially a K-9 Eyes dog. They’re not like pet dogs and can’t be treated that way. You have to be with them nearly all the time, morning, noon, and night. And there are lots of restrictions. For example, they can never go off-leash in an open area. And they have to learn to go to the bathroom only when you say. They can’t be working guides and have a strong retrieval instinct, so they can never chase a stick or ball or Frisbee.’ He looked at me, compassionate but concerned. ‘And Deena, dogs, puppies especially, chew and dig and knock things over and get into all kinds of mischief. Your house and yard just aren’t set up for that. Is a clean house very important to you?’

Oh, God. How was I supposed to answer that one?!

My house was … it was my … what? My life? Oh, God.

How had I, a farm girl, come to this? Well, probably because my mom, a farm wife, worked her whole life to prevent the farm from coming inside. Rocky and Fordy were never allowed in the house, even on subzero winter nights. They did get to sleep in a heated barn, so they were comfortable, but they and their muddy paws and constant shedding were not welcome inside. I knew that K-9 Eyes required that the puppies sleep in the house, so I’d set up a little bed in the laundry room on the vinyl floor. Easy to clean up little accidents down there. When I’d shown him around the house, Bill had clarified that the requirement was not only that the dogs sleep indoors, but that they sleep near the bed in the room with you, since that’s how it would necessarily be once they were assigned to a blind person.

Here I’d gone to greater lengths than usual to clean my house and prepare for this inspection, and now I was about to be denied because of it. My life was becoming too damn ironic.

I put both my hands up to my face. Do not cry. Do not cry . I took a deep breath, removed my hands, and looked directly at Bill.

‘Yes. It has been very important to me. But not as important as doing this. I’ll do whatever it takes. Tell me what to do. I’ll bring a wheelbarrow full of dirt in here and spread it around, I swear to God.’ I took a breath, calmed myself. ‘I really, really want to raise a puppy for K-9 Eyes.’

Bill was silent, staring at me, but to my relief he looked intrigued rather than alarmed by my outburst.

Finally, he spoke a single word. ‘Why?’ His gentle, sincere voice pulled a lump up into my throat.

Why indeed? Now I was on guard. I’d missed all the cues about the house. It seemed like everything was riding on my answer to this one-word question.

The silence stretched across the room like a taut rubber band.

I forced a smile so I wouldn’t cry. ‘Because I’m a dog person, and I’m, well, trapped in—’ I realized I was nervously twisting my wedding ring. I stopped, put my hands flat on the table, but then to my horror realized I’d begun the sentence without knowing how to finish it.

I looked around the sunroom, my breathing shallow and rapid. Hairy was snoozing in a warm pool of March sun on the couch. A single cat hair was floating with the dust motes in the yellow shaft above him. Without looking at Bill, I told him: ‘Because I’m a dog person trapped in a cat existence.’ Now I turned. He was smiling.

I’d never really thought about how much meaning different kinds of smiles conveyed. Bill’s eyes crinkled, his face softened.

‘Okay, then. Let’s get started,’ he said, and reached into his briefcase and handed me my thick training manual.

At first no one spoke. Matt, Lainey, and Neil each stared at me, sitting artificially all together on the couch in the den. You’d think goldfish, not words, had just spewed from my mouth. In fact, they themselves looked like three gap-mouthed carp sitting in their green plaid bowl as I stood before them.

Finally, Matt spoke. ‘A dog , Mom? You’re gonna let a dog come into the house?’ The three of them looked at each other as if to confirm they’d heard right.

‘Yes.’

‘Unbelievable,’ said Matt. One of his eyebrows lifted, the other dropped, as did his jaw.

Lainey had only one concern: ‘What about Hairy?’

‘Hairy can hold his own against a wolf. I’m more worried about the puppy,’ I said.

‘But Hairy will feel jealous,’ she whined.

‘Well, maybe you could spend more time with him.’

She folded her arms across her chest and glared at me.

‘Deena,’ said Neil quietly, ‘don’t you have enough to do around here without having to look after a puppy? Besides, I thought we’d agreed on this. No dogs. They tie—’

‘I know,’ I cut in, raising my palm, ‘“they tie you down.” But it won’t! Not at all! I’ll take him everywhere with me. It’s required. And the local puppy group has lots of volunteer sitters. If we go away for the weekend we can just call and they’ll take care of it.’ Why I felt compelled to mention this, I wasn’t sure. We never went away for a weekend. Our last family vacation was a road trip to Disneyland when Sam was twelve. Neil and I hadn’t been away, just the two of us, in … well, we’d had that honeymoon trip to Vail after our wedding.