“WHERE ARE YOUR COLLARS and leashes?” asked Jillian. She was bent over, holding Crispy by the shoulders and waddling towards the cashier.
“Right there,” said the cashier, pointing to them. Jillian put her arms around the dog while Adam picked out a neon green collar and a red nylon puppy leash that was maybe a little too short. Jillian attached these items to the dog and stood up. She stretched her back and Crispy shook her skin. They walked to the dog food aisle and picked out the food, two plastic bowls, and a fifteen-inch rawhide bone.
“This is our first dog,” said Jillian to the cashier. She looked around and half picked Crispy up. “Can you just ring up these things while they’re on her?”
“Can you just rip the tags off and hand them to me?”
“Oh, yeah, duh,” said Jillian. She ripped the tags off and the cashier beeped them onto her total. Everything was a little over a hundred dollars. It was more than the adoption fee, but fuck it.
“Ok, ok,” said Jillian in the car.
She walked the dog up the stairs to her apartment. “Welcome home, Crispy.” Crispy walked around the apartment and sniffed things and looked generally confused. Every minute or so she would stop and jump backwards, take a few steps sideways, look around, and then continue sniffing.
Jillian turned on the tv and gave Adam the remote. “Just let her sniff around a second, but let me know if she starts squatting.”
The house wasn’t picked up yet.
Jillian opened the kitchen window and walked around the house opening up the blinds. She set the Petco bags on the kitchen counter, got some scissors, cut off the little plastic loops from where the price tag had been and hung the leash over the kitchen door. She walked around the apartment picking up dishes, then she picked up stray clothing and put it in the hamper in the bathroom. She moved the damp towels from the floor to the hamper. She wiped the crumbs off the kitchen counters and the kitchen table and put the fistfuls of crud in the trashcan under the sink. She felt like she had to do this quickly, and she pivoted several times while she was holding the crud. Then she swept crud off the coffee table and side tables, then she went around picking up little wrappers and pieces of paper. She used a squirt bottle of all-purpose cleaner to dampen the counters and table, coffee table, and side tables. She glanced at Crispy, who was sitting underneath the living room’s dining table.
We’ll eat there tonight.
Then she got paper towels and went around the apartment, wiping in the order she’d sprayed. It took nine paper towels, more because of how much cleaner she’d used than how much dust and crud was on the surfaces. It hadn’t been that messy.
She took the scrubber-sponge and scrubbed the stove and microwave, then she got the vacuum out of the pantry, emptied the canister into the trash can and went around and did the living room and the kitchen. The bathroom and bedrooms would have to wait for a bit. First things first. The noise of the vacuum made Crispy get up and walk around in that sideways way she’d used earlier. Jillian looked at Crispy and thought, She’ll get used to it. Maybe she’ll even think the vacuum is funny later. Jillian put the vacuum back in the pantry after re-wrapping the cord, then looked around and thought.
The dishes.
She went to the sink and pre-washed the dishes and loaded a full load into the washer, poured in the Cascade and started it. The smell of warm, soapy water and damp, old food filled the kitchen. It mixed nicely with the smell of burnt rubber and dust, but the smell of cleaner was too strong. She opened more windows and lit the candles.
She got the dog bowls out of the shopping bag, then went to one of the kitchen drawers and got out a place mat. She put the place mat down on the ground next to the kitchen table, opened the bag of dog food and then took a minute to carefully pour out a portion from the 25-pound bag into the bowl on the table. She put the bag in the pantry next to the vacuum cleaner and looked at it. She got a chip clip and closed the open dog food bag, then shut the pantry door and filled the second bowl with water. When she set the bowls on the place mat they didn’t fit. The bowls were too big. She would have to buy a bigger place mat.
She kept cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, running around back and forth between rooms and pivoting. She called this “getting into the rhythm.”
The dog would need to pee soon. She gave the dog the rawhide bone.
She put her hands on her body and thought, I need to do the laundry, or no one will have clean underwear.
Crispy sat in the corner looking at the rawhide bone and Adam was watching commercials.
Jillian had to pee.
The sweet smell of the outside, the vacuum and the candles, the sound of the commercials and the dish washer and some cars outside, her kid and Crispy in the same room with her, it was awful not to quite have these things yet. This would be perfect in a second, but there were still things to get in order.
She peed. The bathroom was covered in that layer of lint and hair that gets stuck in the steamed-in soap film. She’d clean that, too.
“Get your shoes on, we need to take Crispy out.”
Crispy skidded away from the leash and was difficult to get down the stairs. She kept sitting down on the walk and Jillian kept thinking she’d get used to it, right?
“We need to talk to her to make her more comfortable.”
They both started saying “good dog” over and over and Adam went up to trees and lifted his leg to mime peeing.
“Pee-pee pee-pee, hahaha.”
Eventually, Crispy took a dump on the median. Jillian had forgotten to bring poop bags, so she looked around. She saw no one. “Come on,” she said and they walked a little faster. She needed to tire them both out so they’d go to sleep so she could work and then, when everything was in place, she could wake them up and they could all cuddle on the couch like she’d been hoping they would. She skipped and galloped to get her kid and the dog to romp. Crispy seemed happy, and even romped a little and wagged her tail in short, weird bursts. Jillian smiled at them both. They walked for 20 minutes, until Jillian’s feet were sore and Adam said he had to pee and Crispy started looking anxious.
When they got back, Jillian straightened out the pillows and blankets on the couch and turned on the tv. She tucked Adam into a little nest and gave him the remote.
“Take a little nap if you need to, I have to do the laundry.”
She put some peanut butter on the rawhide and used it to lure Crispy into the kitchen.
“Here’s your water and food,” she said, pointing to the bowls on the place mat.
She dropped the bone by the bowls.
Her bedroom was dark. Even with the shades drawn, it didn’t get much light. She picked up her bras first and tossed them into the bathtub, then picked up all the dirty clothes, separated out some things that still seemed clean, and took the rest of the pile to the bathroom and dumped it on the floor. She stripped the bed and laid the bottom sheet in the hallway. She went to Adam’s room, stripped his sheets, picked up his dirty clothes and dumped them on the sheet. She put all of her laundry from the floor and the hamper on the sheet pile, got the soap and fabric softener, then bundled up the sheet—like Santa, that was how she felt—and hauled it downstairs.
She didn’t separate the colors, just separated the clothes randomly into two machines and started them with extra soap. The clothes smelled a little musky. Back upstairs she opened her bedroom window and Adam’s, put sheets on both of their beds, made them up with the pillows and everything, tucked a stuffed animal under the sheets on Adam’s bed, picked up his toys from the floor and put them in his bin. She hung up the clothes she’d decided weren’t dirty. She took the bras from the tub and threw them into the hallway. She went and got the cleaner and the paper towels and the kitchen sponge and removed the film of hair and lint from the bathroom and polished the surfaces as well as she could. Then she dried the bathroom a little with paper towels, filled the sink with cold water and hand soap and submerged her bras in it. She turned the fan on in the bathroom, threw away the paper towels, and dusted the surfaces in her room and Adam’s, then she ran the vacuum again.