Wait Until Tomorrow Part 14

In autumn our dog, Merlyn, who is only seven, becomes suddenly old and feeble. The veterinarian says he has an autoimmune disease. In other words, his immune system has decided to wage war on his body. The vet also says it will eventually go away. He is wrong.

When the dog first gets sick in October, he whimpers in pain and later howls in agony. I never realized a dog could cry, nor did I know that the sound could rip you in two. It comes on quickly though he's acted lethargic for a couple of days. Monday night, after the vet's office is closed, we realize the severity of the condition and that waiting until morning is not an option. We get him into the backseat of the car. I drive to the emergency vet (not daring to calculate the cost) while Hank tries to comfort our frightened pup.

At the emergency vet they tell us to sit and wait in one of the examination rooms. Hank doesn't like to sit in doctors' offices. He prefers to stand or pace. That's what he did during my cancer ordeal. When my follow-up CAT scan, three months after the removal of my appendix, came back clear of any malignancies, I thought we could get back to the complicated business of dismantling our marriage, but now October has arrived and our dog has begun shrieking.

A day after our first trip to the emergency vet, Hank and I are hopping around him in panic as the pain pills and antibiotics apparently provide little or no relief. He whimpers and whines, and we are beside ourselves.

For the first time in months Hank and I cleave to each other while we weep, sure that we are going to have to put him down. We make five trips to the emergency vet in two weeks, spending hours on top of hours, waiting for some kind of information. After one of those trips, we leave him there for tests and an MRI. For the cost of the MRI, we could get and maintain ten healthy dogs from the pound, I'm thinking. But Merlyn is not a dog in the abstract. He is a being in the concrete-a dog whose face I know, a dog whose eyes have looked into mine with total understanding, a dog with whom communication has become second nature. Besides, Hank will not be deterred.

The MRI shows a mysterious inflammation of the muscle. Not deadly, we are told. And yet even after we know what's wrong, we still have to bring him back again and again. The pain is not being managed.

I spend my days downstairs with my computer on my lap, working and watching over the dog. We give him pain pills and sleeping pills along with a variety of antibiotics and high doses of steroids. He wears a narcotic patch; we consider using it ourselves. Hank spends his nights with the dog. One night he stays on the living-room floor holding the whimpering, shaking dog. Hank often carries all seventy pounds of the dog outside several times a day.

After two weeks, we can take it no longer. Nothing seems to help him. This is no way for an animal or a human to live. Every time the dog cries, we want to puncture our own eardrums.

"We have to do it," I tell Hank. "He's not getting better."

"He has to get the shot," Hank agrees.

We are numb as I back the car to the front door and Hank carries Merlyn out and places him on the comforter that is now a permanent fixture of my car. We drive in silence up to the freeway.

"Hank," I ask, "what is that dog doing?" I am looking in the rearview mirror at Merlyn sitting up, gazing out the window, his pink tongue hanging like a bell from his black mouth.

"He seems to be enjoying the ride," Hank says.

"That's weird."

We pull up in front of the emergency vet; we're old hands at this by now and Hank goes to get the rolling crib. I step out of the car and open the back door. Merlyn rolls his head to the side, smiles, and thumps his tail.

When Hank comes back out, I tell him, "Put him on the ground and see if he'll walk."

"He won't walk," Hank says.

"Let's just see."

So Hank puts Merlyn on the ground, and the dog stands up and begins tracking the pee of other dogs with his noisy snuffling nose. He looks just like any other dog wandering around a yard full of dog smells.

"I don't think this is the day," I say.

"No," Hank answers, "today is definitely not the day."

The vet tells us the steroids must have finally kicked in.

"Give him some time," he says.

We bring the dog home and for a month or so we pretend to be okay. We work on the house, replacing an old moldy shower with a gigantic whirlpool bath, which we both land in when it's finished, bubbles bursting over the sides, our slick legs rubbing together like happy fish. And wouldn't this be a nice place to roll credits? The theme of the story would be that the trials and trauma of our sick dog somehow repaired our sick relationship, that Merlyn had lived up to his name and created some Hollywood-movie magic. Sometimes it really does work out that way. But not for us, not this time.

Soon our words are tiny missiles as we hide behind a stockpile of accusations: the car I had bought without consulting him, his last name that I had never taken as my own, his refusal to allow overnight visits from my friends and family, the abortion twenty years earlier. We are no longer screaming about Emmy and my support of her decision to go away for three months to study with an experimental theater company. We have worn that issue to a rag.

Finally, as Christmas and Emmy's inevitable return approach, Hank decides to go stay with his family in California for a while.

I drive him to the train station. As he leaves we're somehow back to being friendly with each other. I figure that when he comes back, we'll continue to work on the house. As much work as it needs, we may never split up. He and Emmy will eventually reconcile. Of this, I am sure.

Emmy comes home from her adventures, and the two of us spend the Christmas break feeding pills to a feeble old dog, who pees on the carpet and hobbles from one resting spot to another. My mother and my friend Darryl join us for dinner on Christmas Eve. Emmy and I miss Hank, but even if we're not getting "peace on earth," at least we have "peace at home."

Merlyn gets worse.

We have a houseguest for a week in January. We take her to the train station early on January 14. As the train pulls away, a darkness infects our mood. We go to the Original Pancake House for breakfast but the food sits like cement in our bellies.

"Today is the day," I say.

I call the veterinarian's office and make the appointment for two o'clock.

That afternoon I drive the car across the lawn to the front steps. Emmy gets Merlyn into the backseat. She has been his extra set of legs for a week now, picking him up when he fell in his own pee, bathing him, carrying him when he couldn't make it up the steps. He is a heavy dog, and he growls in pain, but the two of them work together with his failing body as best they can.

We drive to the vet's office where they are waiting for him.

Emmy waits outside, sobbing. I call Hank and put him on the phone with her. "Comfort her," I tell him. He manages to squeeze out a few civil words-the first words he's spoken to her in eight months.

I go into the little room with Merlyn. As I wait for the veterinarian to come with his shot, Merlyn licks my hand thoughtfully, gently, lovingly. He is too young to die, but he seems grateful to be going. My arms encircle his neck as she gives him the shot. Then slowly his head drops between his forepaws, eyes closed. He looks like a sleeping puppy.

"It's over," I whisper.

Hank does not return.

FIVE.

SONG BEFORE SUNRISE.

O Lamb of G.o.d who takest away the sins of the world,

Have mercy upon us.

Give them peace, O Lord,

And grant to us also that grace which comes from thee,

That peace which only you can give,

The peace of accepting,

The peace of forgiving,

The peace of knowing the oneness of G.o.d, the greatness

of G.o.d.

Rosalind MacEnulty.

An American Requiem.

ONE.

WINTER 2009.

Emmy and I stare at the dorm room, with its blood-dripping horror movie posters covering bleak cinder-block walls, tiny metalframed bed crammed into the corner, and junky furniture piled in the middle of the small room. The first inhabitant, who is nowhere to be seen, has already commandeered the window.

At this moment, Emmy could pa.s.s as a model for an Edvard Munch painting.

"I'm thinking you would need a s.h.i.tload of antidepressants to stay here, honey," I tell her. "And I'm not sure we can afford the therapy."

A few hours later, we're looking at a studio apartment a couple of blocks from campus. A few days later, we've finished emptying the storage unit where the last of my mother's things has been kept since she entered the a.s.sisted-living place last April. The boxes of music, the distressed copies of the requiem, and a stack of her books are now in my office. The daybed, love seat, and bookcase have been moved to Emmy's new apartment. She's decided she'd like to take the wicker chest, too. So we're sitting on the living-room floor, the wicker chest beside us with the lid gaping open, and I'm slowly extracting the contents-envelopes filled with pictures and newspaper clippings, a sc.r.a.pbook, old literary magazines where poems and stories of mine were published, a photo alb.u.m and framed publicity shots of my two brothers from their days as a conductor and an actor.

The arrangement of the photos in the alb.u.m is a haphazard affair: a few pictures of me as a child, of my brothers and their kids, of my G.o.dmother, and even a couple of my father and one of my stepfather. Emmy and I look through the photos, remarking on each one in turn. Emmy is entranced with one large studio portrait of my mother, her sister, and her two brothers as children. My mother is the eldest. She has a pixie haircut and is smiling at the camera. The youngest has a large picture book on his lap. When they were very young, the Field kids all had blond hair, and my mother's father, Lewis, remarked that they looked like a bunch of Swedish immigrants.

"It was the worst thing to be called an immigrant," my mother once explained. "He didn't like children very much." Conversely, my mother never cared for him either. He was a powerful judge, involved in dirty politics, and a drunk, who left his family to fend for themselves during the Great Depression.

Now my mother is the last of the Field kids. Her two younger brothers and younger sister are all dead. Her dearest friends are dead. Her ex-husbands are dead. Even her piano has been carted away and put in storage.

In the sc.r.a.pbook a tiny newspaper clipping catches my eye: it says that twelve-year-old Rosalind Field has been chosen to be the accompanist for the Girl Scout Chorale.

"Her first job," I say, shaking my head in wonder.

Then there is increasing evidence of the jobs and accolades to come: an article about "the musical family"-my mother and my two brothers-putting on a performance for the Friday Musicale; programs from concerts where she was the composer, the conductor, the pianist, or all three; a brochure from The Lost Colony, an outdoor drama, for which she was musical director for a quarter of a century. There is also a program for An American Requiem.

I put it aside to show her. I'm remembering that request she made that we not let the requiem die when she dies. I hope my brothers and I can find a way.

I stuff these relics from my mother's long and productive life into another box and notice that old dog Grief sniffing around my heart. Sometimes it feels as if the last four years have been a series of small deaths.

With Emmy gone to school, Hank missing in action, and the dog dead, I spend more and more time at the Sanctuary with my mom. Her memory plays tricks on both of us.

One time when I come over, her hair has just been cut and styled. It's a gorgeous thick silver halo.

"Your hair looks lovely this color," I tell her.

"Well, I never did dye it," she says.

I laugh and say, "Yes, you did, Mom. In fact, sometimes I dyed it for you. You've never been fully gray before you lived here."

She looks at me in surprise.

"Really? Well, I suppose if I were to write my memoirs, it would be mostly fiction."

One night I go over to the Sanctuary at about 6:45 p.m. to spend some time with Mom. She hates that the evenings are so dull-almost everyone else goes right to bed after they eat dinner-so I try to get there after dinner and play a game of Scrabble with her. Tonight I help her go to the bathroom first, then get her back in her wheelchair and put her feet on the metal footrests. I push her into the hallway and wait for the elevator.

Without fail, my mother says, "It's so convenient having this elevator right here."

"Yes, it is," I answer and rub her shoulders as we wait.

Downstairs we head inside the parlor to play our game. A woman named Jane asks to join us, and so I put out a third rack. Mother and I stopped keeping score several months ago. It had gotten to the point that I couldn't play with her anymore because she made such seemingly stupid moves. It was annoying to beat her by hundreds of points, and it would infuriate me when she would make a play for four points that with one simple adjustment could be fourteen points. Finally I realized that if we played without keeping score, we could both still enjoy the game.

Jane, however, wants to keep score. I can tell she's a bit compet.i.tive. I am, too. So I make sure I get a fifty-point lead and then I relax for the rest of the game. Jane's husband is in the hospital. He has Alzheimer's and when he returns from the hospital, he'll be moved from their apartment to the memory care unit.

"I'll still be able to eat with him," she says with a smile. Then she tells me that she's taken care of him for sixty-four years, the last six with Alzheimer's.

"That must have been hard," I say.

"Not when you do it out of love, it isn't hard," she says.

We finish the game at ten minutes till eight. I like to get out of the place by eight. Otherwise, the door will be locked and I'll have to hunt around to find someone to let me out. So I hurriedly wheel my mother upstairs. This is where I make my mistake. She has to go to the bathroom, and instead of pushing her call b.u.t.ton, I decide to help her myself, but quickly so I can get downstairs before they lock the door. Only you can't do anything quickly with an elderly person.

Once she's done, I try to get her into her reclining chair, but panic hits her. I don't know why, it just does. And I'm just trying to get out of there. But she's suddenly incoherent. She needs or wants something but she can't say what it is. She stammers and waves her hand and looks terrified. And the saintly person I was just a few minutes earlier is replaced by the demon daughter from h.e.l.l.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it," I growl through clenched teeth, my face within inches of hers. "What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?"

Then she cries, and I get angrier. And I'm angry about everything. Angry about my guilt for treating her badly, angry about the fact that she's gotten old, angry that she's always in pain and no longer the tough cookie who used to be my mother, angry that I'm no longer young either, angry that I'm not out with some cute guy in a fast car with a cold bottle of beer in my hand, angry that I'm not rich and successful or poor and holy or some d.a.m.n thing, angry that my daughter has grown up and left me, that my dog is dead and my husband has gone AWOL, leaving me in a half-finished house where the squirrels and racc.o.o.ns can nest unmolested. And don't get me started on the Republicans or the Taliban.

One of the caretakers enters. She can see that she's walked into a bad situation. She can see that I'm not being a good, loving daughter. She can see that I'm a snarling demon b.i.t.c.h.