Lydia Millet - How the Dead Dream

In his house growing up there had never been pets. He had wanted one, of course. But his mother said dogs and cats left their hair on the furniture and smelled, so he tried asking for gerbils, guinea pigs, and then hamsters; his mother said rodents in cages reproduced and smelled, birds squawked and smelled, reptiles had scales and smelled, and even butterflies-which he had once been given in the form of a caterpillar kit in a colorful jar his mother would not let him open-seemed pretty at first but would soon die and smell too. The only pets that were smell-proof were fish, due to their immersion in water.

These, however, she also rejected, on the grounds that they defecated. He recalled the conversation well even now. He had asked for goldfish, his last resort; he figured he could breed and sell them, be they ever so boring. His mother had shuddered and said, "They go right in their bowls with them, and then they breathe it in. They poop in the water!" To which T. replied-quite wittily, he thought-"Well, you do too." Then she had called him disgusting and sent him to his room. Lingering around the corner on the way upstairs he heard his father say, "Kid's got a point, Angie."

And while his mother was tolerant of animals, even curious about them as long as they stayed firmly where they belonged-that is, in paintings, stories, even stained-glass windows, but far from her living room-his father was simply indifferent. His father had little interest in anything that moved, beyond athletes on the small screen or the college friends that called occasionally asking for contributions to the alumni fund. Pets seemed at best an unnecessary burden, at worst a lingering nuisance.

Yet a few weeks after the accident he found himself walking past the kennels at the Humane Society, thinking this was how caution got thrown to the winds. He chose a thin, middle-aged dog, white with tan markings, a homely but intelligent face and a tendency to back away, frightened, whenever he made a sudden movement. At first he was not sure what to do, glancing at her speculatively from his armchair as she lay on the floor beside him. An animal was with him, an animal companion. Arbitrary, he thought, arbitrary. The dog seemed superfluous, a being without purpose. He gazed at her muzzle resting on her front paws and wondered if she suspected his coldness.

But as the days passed he found himself growing fonder, almost as though their positions reversed: he was faithful now and she was ambivalent. Still she learned to trust him and he began to feel, as he watched her eat and grow stronger, various anxieties allayed.

And finally he looked forward, at the end of the workday, to going home. If he had business engagements in the evening he drove to the apartment first, snapped the leash to her collar and walked her along the path on the beach, listening to the waves and watching her tail wag as she trotted ahead of him. Outside she was far less fearful than indoors, as though a weight lifted when the ceiling above her disappeared. This puzzled him till he realized that whoever had beaten her had not done so in public.

He was on the telephone discussing the details of a condominium conversion in Laguna Beach when Susan knocked on his office door and pushed it open, flustered. Behind her stood his mother, who sat down heavily in the chair on the other side of his desk.

As he hastily cradled the receiver he saw his mother's makeup was smeared; around her eyes the mascara had streaked and the eyeliner run. She was bedraggled and for the first time in his life he could see gray at the roots of her blond hair.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. She had never visited him in Los Angeles.

"Your father's gone," she said, and began to cry noisily, pulling a clump of wrinkled pink tissues from her purse.

He felt a wave of shock. He forced himself to get up.

"Gone? What do you mean, gone?" he asked, and came from behind the desk to kneel beside her with an awkward palm on her shoulder. He wondered if he should embrace her, but she did not turn to face him.

"I don't know. Gone!" she wailed, and hunched over sobbing.

I don't know, he thought. So not dead.

He stood and rubbed her back lightly with the heel of his hand, in circles, waiting with what he hoped seem like patience; he shook his head at Susan when she opened the door and mouthed Can I do anything?

Finally his mother finished crying and blew her nose.

"Here," he said, and guided her to the sofa against the wall. "It's more comfortable here."

She sat down and instantly looked wretched and pathetic, so he sat down beside her. Wiping at her eyes with one of the balledup tissues she only succeeded in spreading the black smears.

"Now take a deep breath and tell me what happened," he said. "OK?"

"I just woke up and he was gone," she said. "And he didn't leave a note and he never called me."

"And when was this?" asked T.

"Three weeks ago," she said quietly.

"Three weeks? It's been three weeks and you haven't told me before this?"

"I went to the police but they just looked at me like.. this one policeman looked at me meanly. It was very mean the way he looked at me."

"No doubt he failed sensitivity training."

"Your father took exactly half the money from our joint accounts. I think he's, you know. Left me."

"I can't believe it," said T., shaking his head dully. "Did you-I mean-"

"We weren't fighting," she said. "We never fought."

"So everything was-"

"It was fine," said his mother. "It was the same as it's always been."

"So you were-he was-happy?"

"Apparently not," she snapped.

"I meant-"

"We weren't having relations, if that's what you mean."

T. turned away from her and examined a potted plant, one Susan and Julie had given him called an asparagus fern. He closed his eyes for a second and opened them again on the fern. It had not moved, of course.

Meanwhile his mother was rummaging around in her purse, pulling out a purple rosary, a wallet with a checkbook, a pair of tweezers, a lipstick, a comb, keys, mints, and spreading them on the sofa on her other side.

"That's none of my business," he said softly.

"Not for years," she went on, "many, many years," shaking her head, and T. got up abruptly, experiencing minor palpitations. He wanted to block his ears.

"He hasn't been in touch with you?"

"Nothing. He did use the credit card a few times. Once he got gas in Michigan. It was a Texaco. Or no, it was Exxon. No, Texaco."

There was silence in the office for a few long seconds, broken only by the faint blare of a horn out the window. His mother found a compact in the spillings from her purse and snapped it open.

"Oh! Lord!" she said, and rubbed vigorously at the mascara. "Why didn't you say something, T.? This is a time in her life when a woman has to look decent. Where's my cold cream?"

"Here," he said, and lifted a small blue pot from between the sofa cushions. "Is this it?"

She grabbed the pot and opened it, and while she spread the white cream around her eyes kept up a rapid patter.

"Mary Louise called from the K of C office and asked if we were going to come for the meningitis evening. I was so humiliated. You can't go to those things by yourself. They have kids up on the stage that have bravely survived. But then they go deaf or retarded. Water on the brain. It's always this overcooked salmon. Two hundred a plate. I don't know where he is! He could be anywhere! What should I say? What if I tell everyone and then he decides to come back and it turns out I never had to tell them at all?"

"Is that what you're worried about? Is that your main worry?"

"It's time for my car's thirty-thousand-mile service, I got a notice from the dealership. He always takes it in. The lights give me migraines. The fluorescents. What if it just breaks down on me and I have to walk miles in the dark to a payphone to call triple-A and I get raped on the way? That would be his fault then!"