Companions
Dr. Roslin watched the TV blink off. His dinner plate, fork and wineglass sat on the coffee table. Gathering the dishes, he carried them into the kitchen while his dog, Toby, followed.
Toby’s nails clicked against Spanish tiles and click, click, clicks echoed up the walls until dissipating in a pottery display high near the ceiling. Toby tapped around Dr. Roslin with his eyes, ears and nose trained on the plate.
The plate was set down, centered on a floor tile, and Toby did his best to lick up dried tomato sauce. Dr. Roslin rested against the counter and held a greeting card. He absently stroked his thumb over its paired corners while Toby pushed the plate, inch by inch, until the grout unleveled it. The plate was re-centered, and tears dripped onto its crusted surface. Toby cleaned those up, too.
When the plate reached the grout again, Dr. Roslin gave Toby a pat and lifted the plate away from his insistent snout. Toby, ears perked and nose up, clicked around Dr. Roslin as he gathered the dirty dishes and placed them in a streak-free sink.
Before he retired to his bedroom, Dr. Roslin turned on a light over the sink and turned off the others. From the lampless street, a neighbor would have seen a porch illuminated in a glow from a sheer curtained window, but that was only if a neighbor had been out at 1:42 a.m. on a quiet street tucked far back in the Redwood hills of San Anselmo, California.
"Toby, come," Dr. Roslin called. "Let’s go to sleep, boy." Toby trotted down the Oriental runner and turned into a room.
"No, boy. Down here." Dr. Roslin stood at the end of a hall dwarfed by a high ceiling and cast in lamplight from the bedroom. He waited. When Toby came, he trotted past Dr. Roslin and around the king-sized bed to his dog bed.
Dr. Roslin turned out the lamp. He pulled back the duvet and, with effort, pulled back the grouped underblanket and crisp sheets. He got in and pulled the workings up to his chin. It was cold. He rolled onto his side. Not good enough. He pulled up his knees; he flexed his toes. Toby curled up in a tight ball on his dog bed.
"Toby, come, boy. Come up." Dr. Roslin sacrificed an arm to pat his palm on the bed. Toby came to the edge but didn't jump.
"Let’s go, Toby. It’s all right. Up.” He patted quicker and closer to the edge but Toby backed a step away.
"Toby! Up here!" Dr. Roslin slammed his palm onto the bed. His fingers jammed against the sideboard. He swore. Toby ran out of the room, tail tucked between his legs, just as he had done whenever Dr. Roslin and his wife had argued.
Dr. Roslin sat. The blankets fell to his lap. He looked through the dark after Toby. The arguments replayed in his mind: over lost keys before leaving; over a dinner decision, life decisions; over what was necessary and what was not; over Meghan. And how many times had they argued over this? He didn't want hair on the bed. He needed to stretch his legs. They were average, practical arguments, but tonight he saw her counter him. At the foot of the bed, words slid from an unknown place, emerged from her mouth, floated through the dark toward him unabated and haunting.
During the night, Dr. Roslin woke nine times. Each time he invited Toby to the bed. But Toby refused. Toby curled himself tightly, keeping to his dog bed.
Dr. Roslin went through motions to prepare for a black lab’s exploratory. The dog had gotten into packing peanuts one too many times. Dr. Roslin needed to remove the blockage. He checked instruments and induction lines. Shelly, his vet tech, had already done it but he checked again. Jan stood on the other side of the hall window.
Jan was his colleague of a few years, maybe more. (When had he hired her?) She specialized in behavioral and Eastern veterinary medicine (if one considered that medicine).
“Jan,” Dr. Roslin called.
“Watcha need?” She asked from the door. Behind Jan, a cabinet held records in colored tabs. The files needed to be computerized.
"It's nothing. I had a behavioral question."
Jan watched him. "Are you okay? You don't need to be here." She lowered her voice, "We can cover. We’ll call a relief vet for Friday."
"It's Toby. He won't jump up anymore."
"Give an example. Like into your car?"
"Yes, and I’m too old to be lifting him."
"Do you think it's arthritis?" Jan asked. "Toby’s older, isn’t he?"
"No, it's behavioral. I’m sure."
"Okay. Has there been a bad experience recently? I’m sorry… I mean, in the car?"
Dr. Roslin sighed, "No."
"He might be car sick. It’s not uncommon with these winding roads. You can use short, high pitched words to encourage," Jan said, and then showed him by example. "In, in, Toby, in! And praise, immediately… But maybe you should bring him in for X-rays?”
Another voice called from the front: Shelly. “Dr. Roslin, we got you a turkey-avocado sandwich. Want to eat now, or after Snacks’ surgery?”
Dr. Roslin didn’t want to bring Toby in for x-rays, and he wasn’t hungry. He began surgery.
Before he opened the front door, Dr. Roslin turned and stood a long time, much longer than a person would expect a man to stand at the cusp of entry to his own home. What transpired was nothing: sparse grass infinitesimally pushing up, rooted in an underground matrix that stretched down the hill to an asphalt curb, feebly working strands through cracks, cracks that split and spread across to the neighbor's front garden—a native plant garden. it was difficult grass to grow; grass that had hosted birthday parties, bar-b-ques, and one Thanksgiving afternoon football game: Toby made the best tackle of the day when he tripped up Brian (the new college boyfriend made a spectacular roll), Meghan and her mom cheered until they fell, together, to the grass, and Toby ran to them to lick their faces: the girls had won. Today nothing transpired only breath and heartbeat and eyes looking across sparse shaded grass.
Toby barked. His tail swished, and his nails tapped behind the double-breasted door. Dr. Roslin opened it. Toby sprung out at a run, circled the yard, dove, rolled, scratched his back in the grass, inverting his back's bend ─ back, forth, back ─ kicking his feet all the while. It was a joy to be a dog.
"Toby, I have new tricks to try with you. Treats, too." Toby stopped. He looked at Dr. Roslin from a world upside-down. "Treats?" He repeated in a high voice carrying optimism. Toby jumped up, ran onto the porch, and sat at Dr. Roslin's feet. They went inside and headed for the cookie jar.
It took two hands to pick up the jar. Toby sniffed and followed at Dr. Roslin's heels down the hallway to the end.
"Toby," He said as he walked into the bedroom, "You have to eat your treats on the bed." The jar clunked against pine when Dr. Roslin set it on a chest at the footboard.
"Toby, it’s okay now. Up, up." Toby cocked his head. “Up, up, up!” Dr. Roslin said with an increasing tone. He took a treat and set it on the rumpled duvet. "That's a good boy. Up!" Toby took a tentative step closer and lifted his nose. Dr. Roslin held his breath. Toby jumped.
"Good boy, Toby! Good boy!" Dr. Roslin praised; he moved to scratch Toby in his favorite itchy spots: behind his left ear, in the nook between his shoulder blades, on his round pink belly. But before Dr. Roslin had the chance, Toby sprung off the bed, holding the treat safely in his mouth. He pranced away to a corner. Between chews, Toby looked up at Dr. Roslin, seeming to consider him.
Dr. Roslin couldn't help but chuckle, "Is this a game now? What about your dinner? I’m smarter than you, Toby. You'll be awfully hungry if you don't eat dinner." At the word, Toby cocked his head and pricked up his ears. "Dinner?" When Dr. Roslin left the bedroom to walk to the kitchen, Toby was close behind.
In the kitchen, Toby’s food bowl hung next to his water bowl in a wire riser. Dr. Roslin picked up the bowl and brought it to the sink. He cleaned it out with tap water. Yesterday's dog food bits splashed out and settled onto a plate, fork and wineglass. Dr. Roslin brought down a can, snapped it into the automatic opener, and then towel dried the bowl while the can was being cut. The label spun with the can: 'Chunky Lamb in Gravy.’
"Mmmm, doesn't it smell good, Toby?"
Toby scrunched up his nose and tapped his nails, moving to either side of Dr. Roslin ─ left then right, and then back to the left ─ while Dr. Roslin poured the contents into the bowl.
Dr. Roslin left the can on the counter. "Let's go! Back to the bed!"
Toby had learned the drill. As soon as Dr. Roslin placed the bowl on the bed, Toby leaped. Dr. Roslin immediately celebrated, "Good ─ ", but Toby was already eating his mouthful a safe distance away.
Dr. Roslin leaned against the bedpost and tried to summon his professional logic.
This time, Dr. Roslin stood close to the bed, hands out and ready to corral Toby when he came for his next bite. Toby looked anxiously at the bed and then at Dr. Roslin. He jumped. Dr. Roslin grabbed him and tried to keep him at the bowl, but Toby wriggled free and ran out of the room without having taken a bite.
Dr. Roslin followed Toby to the living room. Positive, he thought, he must be positive. He clicked on the TV, and news came on; quickly, he punched in the numbers and flipped it to Jeopardy. The questions were asked, one after the other, and the answers were shouted out faster than he could think of them. By the time he thought he knew, he wasn't sure if he had cheated or come up with the answer on his own, only a bit slower.
"Proust! It was Proust!" Dr. Roslin leaned forward in the chair. He had a sense of excitement. He thought himself intelligent but it was not often he won Final Jeopardy. The feeling diminished as the contestants’ screens lit up: one, two, three; George, Marcia, Tom; they had scribbled it: Who is Proust?
Dr. Roslin turned off the TV, got up, and walked through the kitchen to the garage. He had an idea. After Meghan left for college, they adopted Toby as a puppy and bought the fold-up pen. He used a step stool and pulled it out of a cabinet. It crashed on the cement; rusted wire screeched against itself as its layers of grating rebounded. Dr. Roslin re-ordered the pen into its proper folds and carried it to the bedroom.
The bowl was half empty when Dr. Roslin entered. "Toby, I see you've been sneaking," He called back down the hall.
First, he pulled back the sheets and covers, something he hadn't done that morning. Then, he got up on the bed with the pen and stood. The flexing surface threatened to unbalance him. He unfolded the grate and placed it on its end, working it around the bed in a circle. It nearly fell when he had set four panels, but he righted it, and after perfecting the angles, it stayed. Last, he opened one of the panels so that Toby could jump in.
"Toby!"
Toby came trotting into the room. He stopped and surveyed the changes, cocking his head side-to-side.
Dr. Roslin sat on the floor, giving Toby space, with his back against a corner formed by a bookshelf and a wall. His arms encircled his knees. He watched Toby and waited. He decided he would let Toby jump on and off the bed a few times before closing him in.
Toby approached the bed. The pen contraption was new. He lifted his snout to sniff. He turned to look at Dr. Roslin, then, carefully, he put one front paw on the bed, then the other. He stretched his head and neck toward the bowl. His haunches quivered, unsure he should jump up or squat down and back away. As the moments stretched Toby began to decide that he would leap. And then, crash, it all came down.
Dr. Roslin flinched. Toby ran out of the room uninjured. Dr. Roslin sat petrified against the bookshelf, more stunned by his own idiocy than by the cataclysm that had just occurred.
When his eye recognized a thick book spine inches from his nose, Dr. Roslin loosened his grip around his knees and reached up. His fingertips lingered on the embossed letters, and the words seemed to seep from the pages; they danced on his cortex; leapt, dove, fell; took him upstream and downstream, back to the source and out to the reservoir, where punctuation, sentences, and paragraphs modulated her voice in an affecting dictation that grew hoarse as it traveled through the pages, late into the night. Dr. Roslin's fingers came down to wipe his wet cheek and then returned to the bookshelf and closed on the book’s binding.
The book was heavy in his hands. He opened it on his lap. Then closed it. He stood, swayed, used the bookshelf for support and regained his balance. Then he picked his way around the disaster to the bed. Once in bed, he thumbed over two pages and read the title, Remembrance of Things Past. The type was black block letters printed on a page yellowing. What had she said was the correct translation? His eyes closed. Her voice delivered, "In Search of Lost Time."
In the dim lamplight, Toby walked in. He saw Dr. Roslin asleep, the grating spread across the floor, his dinner bowl overturned on the duvet. The cookie jar sat upon the pine chest. Its oxidized latch caught its lid ajar.
The chest held her blankets, and the blankets held her scent because she had put vanilla-oat soap bars, a handmade gift from her great-aunt, in the chest. Some bars had been used, others were saved.
Toby sniffed the air, toward the chest, toward the bed, then walked around the mess, and curled up on his dog bed.
Dr. Roslin watched two hospice workers walk down his hall. They had already removed the mattress. He stood where the hallway wall ended. The wall, which his hands gripped, was four inches thick. On the right was Meghan in the kitchen; on the left were the hospice workers who disappeared into the room. The tap was running. Meghan was at the sink.
"You don't need to do those. I meant to do them myself."
"It’s okay, Dad. I don't mind."
He watched them toss the bedding into the hall. The sheets and blankets held lodged Toby hairs, hairs that had been rubbed loose by her gentle hands.
"Where do you want the sheets?" They asked.
He didn't know. He wanted to hold them, to hug them, to take in her scent again; the scent of her hair when she resisted he smell it: when he caught her and kissed her and held her just long enough to smell her minerals, her cells, her unique biochemical signature that mixed with the grime she had picked up along the way, olfactory messengers from the hills and the Redwoods and the pet she loved. It bloomed within him, a memory held long after she had escaped to dart into the shower.
"I'll put them in the wash," Meghan called, as she turned off the tap and set dishes to dry.
His knuckles turned white, nearly matching the wall he grasped. Toby gave the sheets wide berth as he trotted into the room. His tension drained. Her scent, the one he remembered, was not in those sheets.
Meghan carried the bedding away. The hospice workers carried the mechanical workings of the bed down the hall. Dr. Roslin stepped aside to let them pass. One of the hospice workers flattened his mouth in the semblance of an understanding smile.
"Dad, what happened in your bedroom?" His mind repeated the words, 'your bedroom.’
"What?"
"I cleaned it up. What were you doing?" Meghan waited for his answer but Dr. Roslin didn’t give one.
"Are you going to be okay tonight? I can call Brian. We'll get a sitter, he’ll drive down."
"No. I'll be fine. It’s too long a drive. Are you leaving already?"
Meghan searched his face. Her voice sounded thick. "I have to go home and get dressed for work." Her index fingers trailed the undersides of her eyelids. "I'll have Brian come down. It will only take a few hours."
"You work so late?"
"I’m working…nights now, Dad."
"Yes, I remember." Dr. Roslin said. "Brian doesn't need to come. You two need time together. Spend time with him, Meghan."
Dr. Roslin and his daughter moved to the porch. They watched the workers leave. "Take care of yourself, sir," one said before they closed the truck doors. The truck went down the drive, turned up the road, and eclipsed, for a short time, the neighbor's garden sign: Pesticide Free Zone.
"Are you going to be okay?"
He touched his daughter’s shoulder. "I'll be here. Don't worry." He paused and then he added, "If only that dog would sleep on the bed."
"Toby?" She almost laughed. This was a response her mom and she had shared on many occasions regarding Toby's antics and his rocky relationship with her dad. "Dad, he needs time, too."
"Yes. Time." His eyes smiled, his lips pressed together. "Get going. You need to make a living, heh?"
After Meghan’s car disappeared at the corner, he returned inside and walked into the bedroom. Not their true bedroom, though it had been used as one. Toby entered behind him. Though the bed and bedding were gone, he could not avoid the odor in the room. Cancer had created time, time for this room to accumulate a false scent, time to hold her hand, time for Toby to sleep at her feet, time for her to wait and time for her to suffer. Only the second, makeshift twin bed was left in the room. It was stacked with two mattresses to the height of her hospice bed. He sat, and his mind replayed her pain-filled nights.
Toby rested a paw on Dr. Roslin’s shoe and then his snout. Dr. Roslin unconsciously registered the warmth of extremities meeting.
Later, he went to his bedroom and found the book opened partway under his pillow. He got into bed and flipped to the chapter. He scanned the pages and found the quote. It was odd the way a few words, cut out of hundreds-of-thousands of strung together words, can take on a meaning of their own; become parsed for Final Jeopardy, or written out in sympathy cards by fingers that had never turned a page in the author's book, had never followed the letters line by line.
His fingertips moved over the smooth textured page, perceived or imagined the slight bump of a capital letter or a blotched period. To him, the words delivered her voice, as though she were calling from abroad.
At night he dreamed of her. Her coconut hair fanned over his face. Her vanilla skin. Her curves, cocooned by his. They slept like fetuses sharing a womb, warm under down blankets. Toby got onto the bed. "No, boy, off," she said. "He can stay," he said. Toby curled into her, and she pressed closer to him.
Toby stood over Dr. Roslin. He bent his head and licked the salty pillow, and then afterward, he found a warm place to lie, leaning into Dr. Roslin’s side.