WHEN I WENT to Sausalito, Tess stayed with my mother. An artist friend asked me to house-sit for six weeks while he went to Eastern Europe to study iconography; I decided leaving town would wave a giant Fuck You flag at Eric, a banner of my insusceptibility. I decided it was time for a more sporadic arrangement, that it would keep everything fervent and honed. I told my artist friend I’d love to get out of town for a while. The only problem: no dogs. He was wildly allergic. I insisted to him that poodles don’t shed, and that Tess was mostly poodle, I thought, but he wasn’t about to come home to dander and tracked-in spores. He was apologetic, but that was the deal. I decided it was worth it, that Eric needed to be reminded what this was, and I reminded myself that contrivance works. It does, I’m telling you. Dayna was hurt and upset, as if I were abandoning her. She was also upset she couldn’t take Tess — her hours at the lab made it impossible. So I packed up Tess’s food and water dishes, her special high-quality food the vet had recommended, her leash, her blue rubber ball, and drove her over to my mom’s. I started crying when I hugged Tess good-bye—Don’t worry, honey, she’s my grandchild, isn’t she? I’ll take very, very good care of her—and she burrowed her face in the crook of my neck. I was a terrible mother, to do this to her, and for what, for him? I pushed my nose into her charcoal-colored paw pads to breathe in the salty, furry, puppy-sweat smell, then forced myself to leave. I cried for a few hours afterward, choked with guilt, still seeing her forlorn, confused face as I drove off without her.
NOT WAKING UP to Tess was awful. I walked through Sausalito two or three times a day — gift shop, gallery, gift shop, gallery, driftwood seagulls everywhere — and when I found people with dogs, I would befriend them. Guys with dogs thought I was coming on to them, but I just wanted the dogs. One Sunday I met a retired policeman from Oakland, walking a docile, regal borzoi. This was an odd dog for a policeman to have, a guy with a movie cop’s burly swagger and black kangaroo-leather shoes. Long before Tess, I’d thought of having a borzoi one day; they’re hugely magnificent Art Deco dogs with dear, shy temperaments, but they’re also congenitally stupid. This one was skittish, too, and pulled nervously from my greeting — the guy told me she’d been part of a case he’d investigated, that she’d been abused and abandoned by some volatile, coked-up perp, and afterward he’d adopted her. Cynthia. He said abused dogs broke his heart, even more than abused kids, because dogs are even more vulnerable and trusting, their lives are in our hands and they know it. And they are like kids; they even love the people who abuse them, you know? There’s that innate instinct to adapt, adjust. He’d like to see animal abuse laws toughened up. Cynthia was his baby now, Yeah, my precious little girl, Daddy’s always gonna take good, fine care of you, uh huh. She bumped her long muzzle into his stomach, leaned against him so fully and hard he almost lost his balance. She trusted me to pet her for a while then, and I ran my fingers through her long, sheening white coat, wishing for Tess. The guy looked like he maybe wanted to keep talking, or go for coffee, but I just wanted to pet Cynthia. Yeah, I told him, because animals had purer souls than human beings — everybody has his own agenda and wants something from you, even friends, even lovers, even your mother, and you can’t let your guard down, ever, that’s when they get you, hurt you — and so animals were more honest, more deserving of love and care. I told him I had a little apricot cockapoo I just loved to death, who was everything pure and innocent and sweet in the world, whom I’d do anything for, and the idea of actually getting married and having actual children was revolting to me, because you couldn’t fully ever trust a human being, a friend, a parent, a lover, they love you, they hurt you, you can’t even trust yourself, whereas a dog like Tess would be there for you, always. I told him I shouldn’t even be away from her here in Sausalito, I should hurry home, because I was just wasting six weeks of her life — she wasn’t a puppy anymore, she was a grown-up dog, and I’d sacrificed six precious weeks of her life away from her, just to be here alone, a big, gaping crater of a person with nothing to hold inside. I told him I felt I could never get close enough to her, keep her safe enough from harm, because I wasn’t really worthy of her, and because the world and everyone in it was so profoundly fucked. I asked him if he wanted to go get coffee or a drink or something, but he tugged a little on Cynthia’s leash, and said it was nice meeting me, but they had to get going.
MY MOTHER ALWAYS apologized on the phone that she couldn’t possibly give Tess the kind of attention I gave her — she just couldn’t play Ball all the time, it was too much. It was like having a child in the house again, Like when you were little, honey, she’d say, Always wanting attention, so needy, a person could go nuts from it, from the constant demand, a person can’t help losing her patience. A person can’t help losing it, now and then. Sometimes something just snaps, she would say, her voice a remembered echo, a long-lost refrain. And you can’t give in to giving them love all the time, the real world’s not like that, and they have to learn. If you do, it just spoils a child, they learn how to be manipulative, and Tess, well, she is a little spoiled, honey, she could use some discipline. And she was acting maybe a little depressed.
I assured my mother that Tess loved being at her house and I knew she was taking very good care of her, doing the best she could, but part of me felt a little nervous and protective. I drove home a week early; I sort of expected to find Tess ragged and thin and hungry, like the orphans at the beginning of Oliver, and my mother snapping, clutching the hairbrush, a spatula, a coiled fistful of telephone cord. But Tess was fine, hurtling herself at me in joy, whimpering when I clutched her, quivering with unrestrained love. On the way home in the car she lay down with a happy exhalation and put her head in my lap.
Her ball, however, was on its last gasp. Somehow the hard rubber ball I’d left her when I went to Sausalito had gotten lost, and my mother had bought her a flimsy yellow plastic one with fake, porcupiney spikes. I’d been so clear with my mother about this, very specific about what Tess needed in a ball, but of course she hadn’t listened, my mother. I should never have trusted her. The plastic had split under Tess’s vehement play, and only an inch or so of its circumference seam held the ball together — it wasn’t even really a ball anymore, it was an asymmetrical yellow plastic flap. But for some reason, Tess was madly in love with it. When we got home and I gave it to her, she ran around and around with it, the chewed yellow plastic flapping from either side of her mouth.
I checked my voicemail messages, something I’d airily refrained from doing the entire time I was away. One, from Dayna, of course, welcoming me home. I hadn’t called Eric to tell him I was leaving, but Dayna had mentioned to him where I was. I assumed he’d learn I was back, or when I was coming back, in the same way. I’d assumed he’d call, want us to get together. Maybe he’d call later. Call me, call me, call me, I chanted to the phone. I dialed his number. His roommate’s voice answered, and I hung up. Tess perked her ears and hopefully dropped the plastic flap in front of me, expecting it to roll like a ball. When it wouldn’t, she just made do, picked it up again, dropped it closer so I could reach, and shoved it my way. But my spine was petrified from the long drive home, and I decided to go in the jacuzzi; that way, when Eric called, I wouldn’t be just sitting there, waiting for him.