Jillian reflected on some of her youthful passions, and she was taken by a feeling of total integration. Not just the integration of her body and mind, but also a synthesis of that integrated self with the room, the atmosphere, and with the general chronology and flow of time and events, universally speaking. This was a feeling she sometimes got from motivational phrases, and she knew it to be the feeling of God. Whatever thought was in her mind when she got this feeling, she knew she owed it to God to follow.
“I’m not going to give up on my dream,” she whispered. She had a flash as bright as reality—no, brighter—of walking the dog, and maybe the dog would be big enough for Adam to ride like a tiny pony, or maybe the dog would just be big enough to attach to the stroller and pull Adam, but either way the dog and boy were happy and her hands were empty and flapping at her sides.
“Yes, I’ll do it,” she whispered.
So what about Carla. Carla was in the past.
“Hey, Adam,” she said. “Which do you like better, doggies or kitties?”
“Doggies!” he said, but he said it like “d’ah-gaze,” and lifted his arms above his head and made fists of his hands, which resulted in the knocking over of his dinner onto the floor.
Mommy scooped it back into his bowl and set in on the coffee table, thinking one day she’d yell, “The dog, the dog!” when food got knocked on the floor.
Adam was put to bed. Jillian got into her own bed and rearranged the bras and other dirty clothes that were mixed in with the covers so there’d be room for her to sit and, later, sleep comfortably. She looked until she found a web page called “Pups of Love” which was a rescue center for dogs who had been sexually abused—dogs who had belonged to pet store breeders and had been pregnant their whole lives. Some of them were still puppies themselves. A one-year-old? Isn’t that still a puppy? Some of these one-year-olds had birthed dozens of babies. She watched half a video and started sobbing. This is definitely it, she thought. And the adoption fee was a fraction of what the Humane Society wanted, so she’d have extra money for other things.
Jillian had a dream that night that she was riding an enormous dog through a meadow. The dog was running at full speed and its mouth was frothing. The breeze caught the froth from the dog’s mouth and splattered her in the face with it. The froth ran across her cheeks and her hair, which was rippling wildly in the breeze, until it separated from her and the dog, hung in the air for a minute, then fell gently onto a patch of little yellow flowers. The meadow was endless and the dog’s energy was endless and the sky had a few nice, white clouds.
THAT NIGHT, Megan had a dream that it was her birthday, and Randy took her to Chuck E. Cheese. They were in the arcade and Megan started to play a video game that was underneath a skee-ball table. The controller was a large, soft, red ball that, when she squeezed it, activated little cartoon mice that really beat the shit out of each other. She sat under the skee-ball table for a very long time, rapidly squeezing the ball controller until the alarm buzzed and she had to get up, get in the shower, and take the bus to work.
The bus was the same as always, the elevator and the hallway were the same as always, the greeting from Jillian was the same as always, the way her desk felt was the same as always, the slowness of the computer was the same as always, and as always Megan’s mind idly floated to the subject of suicide.
Halfway through the day, Megan started dicking around on the internet. She made her browser window as small as she could, paused for a second, and then looked up Carrie Wilkins. She found Carrie’s website, and on it, this bio:
Hi, my name’s Carrie. I’m 26. I make things. I paint and I write, but mostly I design. I like to make things beautiful, or creative. I make my own food and I’m trying to grow my own beets. A lot of people around me seem unhappy and I don’t understand why. I freelance because I know I’d go insane if I couldn’t make my own schedule—I believe variety is the zest of life. I know I want a dog some day soon, and sometimes I make lunch at 3:00 a.m.
I believe in the power of collaboration, and I’d love to work with you!
What a total asshole. What does she have, some kind of a pact with Satan?
The picture next to Carrie’s bio had some kind of heavy filter on it that made it look vintage, and she had a friendly but aloof look on her face. She was flanked on both sides by plants and was wearing an oxford shirt with fancy shorts and had a cool necklace. It was an outfit for sure, like all of Carrie’s clothes were outfits, which Megan always thought of as outdated or something only children did.
The website linked to a blog, which was mostly photos of Carrie doing different things. It didn’t take too long to find the picture of her with the llama with a caption about how she and her boss got it from a homeless guy.
And then just products. Pictures and pictures of products, and then little captions about how the products inspired her.
Motherfucker, thought Megan. She doesn’t get it at all. It was like looking at an ad for deodorant or laundry soap that made you feel smelly and like you’d been doing something wrong that the person in the ad had already figured out, but since it was an ad there was no real way to smell the person and judge for yourself whether or not the person stank, and that was what she hated, hated, hated most of all.
I make things, gee-wow. You think you’re an artist? Do you really thing this blog is a representation of art, that great universalizer? That great transmigrater? This isolating schlock that makes me feel like I have to buy into you and your formula for happiness? Work as a freelance designer, grow beets, travel, have lots of people who like you, and above all have funsies!
“Everything ok?” asked Jillian.
“Yeah, what?”
“Breathing kind of heavy over there, just making sure you were ok and everything.”
“Oh, uh-huh, I’m fine,” said Megan.
“It’s not . . . something I’m doing, is it?”
“What? No. No, I’m fine,” said Megan.
How could someone not understand that other people could be unhappy? What kind of callous, horrible bullshit was that to say to a bunch of 20-year-olds, particularly when this was the time in life when things were even more acutely painful than they were in high school, that nightmare fuck, because now there were actual stakes and everyone was coming to grips with the fact that they’re going to die and that life might be empty and unrewarding. Why even bring it up? Why even make it part of your mini-bio?
She copied and pasted Carrie’s bio into an email to Randy and bolded the part about not understanding pain. The subject line was “see?” and the message was, “A little callous, don’t you think?”
Randy had been about to email Carrie about helping with a new contract when he got the email.
“Hey, guess what?” said Jillian.
“Huh,” said Megan. She’d closed the internet and was going to do some work and not think about things for the next few hours.
“I think I found a good place to get a dog.”
“I thought you didn’t have the money right now,” said Megan.
“Weeelll,” said Jillian. “But I really want one. I really feel like this is the right time in my life.”
“Ok. I guess I just didn’t get my first dog until I was in high school because my parents had to pay off their student loans first, so I think of your forties as the time to get a dog,” said Megan.
Jillian looked at Megan like she hadn’t heard. I can say anything, thought Megan, and only what she wants to go in goes in.
“Awww,” said Jillian. “Well, it’s this really cool place with rescue dogs on the outside of town. These aren’t just dogs whose owners can’t take them anymore, these are dogs who’ve experienced real trauma.”