The morning of the biopsy, before my kids leave for school, I follow my deaf dog, Matthias, around the house. He won’t eat his breakfast and he’s walking funny, freezing for seconds at a time. He drinks all his water, then knocks over the bowl with his snout and looks at me expectantly. This is how we communicate. When he wants to go out, he paws the sliding glass door and waits. When I pull the ear wipes from a drawer, he does a double take and dashes away to hide. He’s been deaf since he was born; we compensate.
My youngest kid just started middle school. He resists cleaning his room, showering, eating vegetables, going to sleep at a reasonable hour, talking about the reproductive system, and playing games he’s likely to lose against his older brother, who is right now singing loudly in the shower. My youngest calls me into his bedroom and opens his dresser and proudly points to the neat stacks he’s made. Underwear, socks, and swimsuits in the top drawer. In the second: T-shirts, pants that fit, pants that don’t fit.
“Wait,” I say. “Why are you keeping pants that don’t fit?”
“What am I supposed to do with them?”
I go to the kitchen to get a grocery bag for St. Vinny’s and find Matthias at the sliding door. I haul it open—it’s stubborn and heavy, but every handyman who assures me over the phone he’s the one who can fix it ends up admitting in person that he can’t, then charging me for his time—and Matthias ambles into the backyard to take a long pee.
I leave the door open so he can come and go. It’s late September, cool but not cold, no bugs. I’m not having hot flashes this minute, but they’ll start again soon enough.
After the kids are gone, it occurs to me to check the trash can in my bathroom. It’s empty, which means the dog has ingested the contents. It’s his compulsive appetite—not his hip dysplasia or ankle deformity or even his deafness—that makes him a challenging dog. I keep the trash can in the cabinet, but yesterday I emptied it and forgot to put it back. And I got my period yesterday, so the only items in the can were used tampons wrapped in toilet paper.
He has a nose for blood. At my sister-in-law’s house, at my ex-husband’s house (his girlfriend’s tampons), on a playdate with the neighbor’s dog. I’m not sure how many were in my trash when he got to it. More than one, fewer than five.
Matthias is my dog and he is also my ex-boyfriend’s dog. We adopted him a year after moving in together and a year before I left. In my phone, this ex is saved as * *. Two asterisks to mark an era—not my finest, no, but life is long. When I think of that time, he’s grayed out in my memories. I don’t recall one thing about him that was worth my investment, yet I can’t deny the fact that I did invest. My most recent exes are women, not men, and when my romantic history comes up, I skip over * * without a thought, though I do feel a great deal for the misguided version of me who let him into her life. You are scared, I want to tell her. This is a fool’s way out.
He will shame you. He will ignore you. He will be your punishment, not your reward.
Matthias is standing in the backyard, pitched forward slightly, staring at nothing. I beckon him and he takes a step gingerly, pauses, then takes one more. Step by slow step, he comes inside and curls up on his bed. He makes no noise. “You okay, buddy?” I ask him, and he pushes his brow against my palm.
If I don’t get moving, I’ll be late. Right breast, heterogeneous presentation, low suspicion. It’s been two weeks since they found it. Rescheduling means at least one more uncertain day, more likely a week, maybe two.
I text * *. Matthias ate tampons and I think he’s sick.
He replies, He was vomiting last week but OK when I dropped him off.
I text, I have an appointment today, but I can take him tomorrow.
I’ll call them.
I put Matthias’s food beside his snout, but he doesn’t move. His eyes are glassy and distant. I dress and brush my teeth and put my coffee in a to-go cup. My phone dings.
They say he needs to go directly to the emergency clinic.
When Matthias was six months old, he ate the laces out of every shoe in the mudroom, and for a week he expelled them in unmatched nests. When he was a year old, he devoured a bag of gummy bears, and I sat outside all night while he puked and shit, making a sound in the dark like a whale spouting its blowhole. When he was two, he ate animal parts in the woods and vomited for three days. The vet tried but failed to examine him—he’s big and stubborn, and they’re understandably cautious—so now I put him in a basket muzzle and hide Trazodone and Gabapentin in a spoonful of peanut butter before taking him in. Every day, another sacrifice: wooden spoons, several pizzas, a block of aged cheddar, a container of my teenager’s pricey protein powder, rolls of toilet paper, my youngest’s football, houseplants, headphones, underwear, pillowcases. About six months ago, Matthias stood up to lick crumbs from the stovetop, and we came home to a house full of natural gas. I got my kids out and opened all the windows. Now, I keep the stove knobs in the drawer with our flatware.
I’ve said it many times: We’ll be lucky to get six years out of this dog.
When * * was angry—jealous, mostly of the husband he’d encouraged me to leave, but there was plenty of kid-related rage too—he went quiet. He moved as if shackled. He nursed his gripes like a drunk’s last sips. I stopped asking why. He’d erupt eventually, sputtering at first and then volcanic. Once, he stopped in an intersection late at night and demanded I get out of the car. I protested until he forced me. I waved my arms as I scrambled to the sidewalk so I wouldn’t be run over. Ten minutes later, he found me on a side street, where I was waiting for a car to take me to a hotel. “Get in,” he said. “You’re being crazy.”
Crazy was getting back in, in fact, but after his browbeating that’s exactly what I did. I was never a passenger in his car again.
I can’t take him, I text * * again. I have an appointment.
* * doesn’t work for a living. He volunteers once a week at the public library, plays pickleball, takes walks, gets his teeth cleaned on time, cooks rich meals using every pot and pan, reads the New Yorker, checks on his inheritance, naps.
Fine. Coming now.
I put a leash on Matthias, and he gets to his feet. Not until we’re outside does he take on the distant look and the statue pose. We wait. * * ’s car appears at the end of my block and comes to a stop at the curb, and when * * gets out, I hand him the leash. “I have to run,” I say.