Сигрид Нуньес - The Friend

Now every time I walk you my heart is in my throat.

But you must walk, the vet says. You must get at least some exercise every day.

The medication is working, he tells me. The pain relievers and anti-inflammatories ensure that, though you may not always be totally comfortable, you are not in agony. Which could change, of course, and that is an agony to me . Because how will I know.

Haunted by Ackerley’s description of Queenie at the end: She began to turn her face to the wall, to turn her back to me. That was the moment, the sign he took to mean he should have her—killed.

You’ll let me know, won’t you. Remember, I’m only human, I’m nowhere near as sharp as you are. I’ll need a sign when it gets to be too much.

I don’t see it as tampering with nature, playing God, or, as some would have it, interfering with a being’s spiritual journey, its passage to the bardo. I see it as a blessing. I want for you what I’d want for myself.

And I’ll be there, of course. I’ll be with you on that last journey to the vet.

I thought the moment had come yesterday, when you left your breakfast untouched. I broke off a piece of my own breakfast bread, which you ate from my hand. ( Like reading mass together. ) By evening, though, your appetite had returned.

So let’s think no more about it. Let’s look to this day, and only this day. This gift of a perfect summer morning.

One more summer. At least you got that.

One more summer to lie stretched out and contented in the sun.

And at least I get to say good-bye.

Am I talking to you, or to myself? I confess the line has gotten blurred.

The weeks before we came here were so hard. It’s been some time since you could make it comfortably up and down five flights of stairs, and so we’d started taking the elevator. This was mostly fine with the neighbors. By now they’re used to seeing us, and only one person, a retired nurse whose husband died of leukemia last year, has questioned your designation as a therapy animal. But even she has commented on how well mannered you are, the way you scrunch your body so as not to take up too much of the elevator’s tight space. And other tenants, much like people we meet all the time, are plainly delighted when they see you, charmed in the way people often are by any type of gentle giant.

But the increasingly pungent odor of your coat, the stench of your breath and ropy drool—particularly in that close space, now suffocating in the heat—were harder and harder to ignore.

And then: the dreaded inevitable. In the elevator, in the hallway, in the carpeted lobby. Hardly a day passed without an accident. And nowhere was the problem worse than in the apartment. Jesus, it smells like a stable, said a delivery man. Someone else said zoo. Hector, God bless him, said nothing.

Three rugs, the couch, and the bed had to go. I got a second rubber air mattress, and we started sleeping side by side on the two mattresses on the floor.

I did my best, vigorously mopping and scrubbing, going through several bottles of Lysol a week. But the job began to seem herculean, and the odor never really went away. It has permeated the wood floors, the bookshelves. It’s in all my clothes—the way cigarette smoke was when I was in my twenties—and, I sometimes fear, in my skin and hair.

It’s bad but not that bad, said the person who’s always been most sympathetic about my situation. What you need to do is get away for a while, let the place air out.

Just when I was about to despair, he came to our rescue.

My mom had to go into a nursing home, he said. She’s got this cottage on Long Island where she used to spend summers. We just sold it, but the new owners don’t take possession till after Labor Day. They’re planning to gut the place and completely renovate it, so it won’t really matter what damage the dog does. And he can be outdoors a lot of the time anyway. I didn’t get out there much myself this summer. I’ve got to work, and I hate being a weekender, especially in August, traffic’s such a bitch. Anyway, it’s only two more weeks, and you need it more than I do. Your life will be so much easier there, you’ll see. While you’re gone, if you want, I’ll see what I can do about your apartment.

My hero.

Even chauffeured us here in his SUV.

Getting you into the SUV without hurting you was one more hurdle. Hector came up with a makeshift ramp: an old door that had been stashed in the building basement.

No stairs for us to worry about here, just two little steps to the porch. And no need for a car. I can bike the six miles to town to do grocery shopping. A week from today, when we have to leave, our friend will come in his SUV and drive us home.

The first night here there was a spectacular storm. We cowered together under a roof that sounded like it was being strafed. Rain all night, and in the morning calm. It was like some membrane had been peeled away to reveal a whole new world, bright and clean. You could almost hear Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” You could almost smell the blue. And every day since has been glorious.

On the beach, usually around dusk, we sometimes see another pair: a young man, shirtless, caramel tan, ice-blond hair— a real beach boy—and his Weimaraner. We watch the dog plunge into the water to fetch the stick the man keeps throwing for him. The man has an arm. Far, far out sails the stick. Far, far out swims the dog, again and again, breasting wave after wave, tireless. A thrilling sight. How deliriously happy he seems, how triumphant, racing back to drop the stick at the man’s feet.

I can’t suppress a throb of envy as I watch these two strong young creatures play. But that’s me. You watch with your habitual calm. You know nothing of envy. No yearnings, or nostalgia. No regrets. You really are a different species.

I thought the time would pass more slowly, given how idle I’ve been. Reading Elmore Leonard, binge-watching Game of Thrones , doing some prep for teaching—that’s about it. Living on sandwiches, mostly, and too lazy even to make them, pick up two a day from the deli, some fruit from the farm stand, enough.

Hour after hour I have sat on this porch, just thinking. For example, about the therapist—remember him? I’ve been thinking about some things he said. Suicide is contagious. One of the strongest predictors of suicide is knowing a suicide. Of course I knew where he was going. Doctor Obvious. I remember telling him about my dream, the man in the dark coat, in the snow. Was he beckoning—hurry up, hurry hurry—or was he warning me away?

I was thinking about this because I had that same dream again a few nights ago. Only this time, instead of an empty field of snow, it was some kind of battleground we were on. Bombs exploding, soldiers aiming and firing. And this time it was a full-blown nightmare.

It’s common clinical practice to ask a person who’s talking suicide to describe how they would go about it. The more specific the plan, the louder the alarm. Now, if it was me ready to say good-bye cruel world, I’d be in just the right place. Throw myself in the ocean, swim away from shore as far as I could. Which would not be far. I am such a bad swimmer I’ve never been in water over my head.

But didn’t I hear that drowning is the worst way to die? I’m sure I read this somewhere. Question is, how do they know?

The one experience she would never describe.

Say—Sea—Take me. Is the poet talking about Love, or Death?

Nothing has changed. It’s still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much.

But how would it be if that feeling was gone?

I would not want that to happen.

I told the shrink: It would not make me happy at all not to miss him anymore.