The Dog Year Read online

  Kimmy breathed a sigh of relief. “You scared us, Ron.”

  “I keep telling you all to worry about your own selves. You people are so ready to jump into anything that isn’t about fixing yourselves. I don’t need you trying to rescue me. I don’t want to hear another word about any plans that don’t include separating yourself from your addiction.” Ron trained his eyes on Lucy. “What about you, Lucy? How have you been?”

  The group turned to her in unison. Lucy said, “Busy.”

  * * *

  As they were leaving the hospital, Tig put her hand on Lucy’s arm. “I wondered when you were going to get back into therapy. I haven’t seen you on my schedule, and the group isn’t talking.”

  Lucy’s smile was radiant. “Thank you. Thank you for keeping track of me but you’ll be happy to know that I am better. So much better.”

  Tig looked at her with an unreadable expression. “Tell me about that,” she said.

  Lucy cleared her throat. “It’s true that I went through a terrible time. You saw me at my worst. I don’t blame you for wondering where I’ve been.” Lucy touched Tig’s arm, as if she were reassuring a patient.

  “Then make an appointment. Come to my office. Tell me what’s changed.”

  “Okay, I will. I have your number. I’ll call.” Lucy moved away like an expert operator in a singles bar, but not before she saw Tig narrow her eyes.

  18

  Risk Management

  Every day Little Dog watched the transformation. Lucy began by clearing her things from the room she had been camping out in for almost a year. “A suite, that’s what this baby needs. Her own place. I’ll put in a bathroom. A walk-in closet. Push the walls out.”

  Little Dog thumped her tail and rested her head on her paws. Mrs. Bobo, disdainful of all things, lifted her tail. Over the next three weeks, with Richard’s iPod charged, Lucy worked as hard as she had in medical school, like her hair was on fire. She hauled old clothes to Goodwill, brought workmen in for estimates, and cleaned every corner of her old Victorian. She bought plastic toilet-seat locks, cupboard door locks, and outlet covers without a thought of illicitly pocketing a pacifier. She shopped for eco-friendly paints, carpets, and baby furniture, stealing nary a toothpick.

  In between her shopping excursions, she deleted answering machine messages by the score. From Claire: “For heaven’s sake, get your butt to a meeting and get to work, hon. We won’t ask what cha’ been up to. But jus’ between you ’n me. What cha’ been up to?” From Sidney: “I’d love to have you over if you’d like to come, hang out a little. We could talk.” From Mark: “Hi, Lucy.”

  Ron even tried once.

  “I’m going against my own better judgment, calling you like this, but Claire is bugging the hell out of me. We’d love to see you again.” She didn’t delete that one.

  Three weeks went by. Lucy occasionally called her brother. “Painting the baby’s room soon,” she said to his voice mail. And “I know you’ll call when you’re ready.” And “C’mon, Charlie, you’re about to break your last silence record.” And, finally, “You are not going to bum my high, Charles. You are not!”

  She even booked a couple of sessions with Tig, thinking of her future as a single-mother breadwinner, knowing she would need to work, be a role model, come to a future classroom for career day.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be happy for me?” she asked Tig. “I’m out of my slump. I’m moving forward.”

  “Are you?”

  “What do you mean, are you? I’m going to have a baby. It’s actually perfect timing, to have this time off to focus. I have a lot of work to do on the house.”

  “Time off. Is that what you’re calling it?”

  “I’ve stopped stealing. I’m back in my bedroom. I’m rebuilding a life for myself. I see that as progress.”

  “You were making progress. Going to AA, making friends.”

  Lucy scoffed. “Friends? A bunch of alcoholics and an anorexic. I’m leaving crazy land behind.”

  Tig was silent. She wrote something down on her legal pad.

  “I just don’t get you counselors. Sometimes happiness is just happiness, and not avoidance in disguise. Sometimes people get better. Sometimes you people are wrong.”

  Tig nodded. “Sometimes, yes. So you’re serious about having Richard’s baby?”

  Lucy, in her most obnoxious incarnation of herself said, “Duh,” and Tig put her pencil down.

  “I will be here for you, Lucy. No matter what.”

  * * *

  Grumbling, Lucy went back to her plan with even more conviction. Her daily routine now included a cup of coffee and a to-do list, followed by a brisk walk with Little Dog. She spent the rest of her morning talking to workmen, cleaning out snarled junk drawers and basement boxes; but always, always, she carefully left Richard’s things untouched. Evenings were spent cataloging the day’s accomplishments and writing to the child of her dreams. Dear Baby, Your father was perfect. We’re going to be great friends. In the moments when she paused in her decision making—single or double breast pump, baby sling or carrier, plastic or silver spoon?—she napped. Sometimes she napped when she was in the middle of reading about the pros and cons of epidurals, or doulas versus midwives. When the contractor came at noon to estimate the cost of adding a bathroom, Lucy had been asleep.

  “Wow, I’m tired,” she said, uninspired and bleary-eyed. The caw-caw of a black bird flapped into the room.

  “Sleep is good,” he said benignly.

  Full of good will, she thought. What a nice thing to say. So supportive. She considered setting the record straight, telling him about the sperm bank, but thought instead, soon enough.

  * * *

  Finally, alone and seated on a hard plastic chair in the clinic’s exam room, Lucy held a gauze pad in the crux of her elbow. She extracted a blue latex glove from the box mounted on the wall and pulled it over her right hand. There was a quick knock at the door and a man entered, wearing gray pleated pants and a white-and-gray-striped shirt.

  “Dr. Peterman. I’m Brian Ballwig. Nice to meet you.” He extended his hand, and without thinking she offered him her own glove-covered one.

  “Oh! I was just being nostalgic, I guess,” she said, ripping the glove off.

  “You’re in plastics, I understand.”

  “Breast reconstruction, yes. But not today,” she said with a little laugh. “Of course, unless you need a little lift.” She laughed again. “I’m a very reasonable person when I’m alone. It’s only when I’m nervous and people are present that I lose my mind.”

  “No need for nerves here.” He sat at the computer terminal in the exam room and typed in his password. “I understand your usual GP is Dr. Geevie.” Several screens popped in and out of sight until her chart was before him.

  “He wasn’t available for weeks. You had the soonest opening. I just need a referral, really.”

  “So it’s just a preliminary check today. The nurse’s notes say you and your husband are pursuing pregnancy, is that right?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  “I guess it does seem a little technical. It’s all about risk management these days. Let’s take a look at your vitals and blood panel first.” There was more shifting on the computer screen and Lucy looked around. There was a collage of baby announcements tacked to a corkboard over the doctor’s shoulder.

  “Nice blood pressure. And look at that. I wish I had a cholesterol level of 170,” he said.

  The babies on the bulletin board winked and blushed. Some slept on the chests and laps, or in the arms of their parents. One had a tiny set of reindeer antlers perched on her perfectly round head. Another wore nothing but angel wings and a strategically placed cloud. It was like looking at the offerings in a fruit market at the height of summer. Each child’s face ready to be plucked from the photo, ripe and ready for kissing.
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  “Oh,” Dr. Ballwig said. “I didn’t realize you were pregnant already. I thought this was a pre-pregnancy exam.”

  Lucy tore her eyes from the photos. “Huh? It is a pre-pregnancy exam. I’m not pregnant.”

  Dr. Ballwig frowned and pushed back from the computer. “Your blood test clearly indicates pregnancy. Your hCG is elevated. You had your blood drawn an hour ago, right?” He refocused on the computer and tapped through to another screen. “Your urine test confirms it.” He rolled his stool back and said, “Well! Congratulations. I guess we can skip a few steps.”

  Lucy’s face froze, then she stood. Looked again at the babies and then at the doctor. “I’m pregnant,” she said. The color drained from her face and she put her hand to her forehead.

  Dr. Ballwig took her by the elbow, helped her find the chair behind her. “Why don’t you take a minute? Give your husband a call. I’ll get you some apple juice and we can start over.”

  Lucy swallowed and nodded. Dr. Ballwig moved into the hall in a clean swish of lab coat and competence. Lucy stood, grabbed the box of gloves from the wall, shoved it into her purse, and swept out of the exam room like 007 from a Soviet submarine.

  Little Dog lay asleep on the backseat, whapping her tail twice as Lucy threw herself into the front seat. Throwing the box of gloves into the back of the car, she yanked her phone out of her purse, opened the calendar, and squinted at it. Her last period had been the day after Halloween. It’d been seven weeks since then. She counted the days back to the afternoon she’d been with Mark. Four weeks. The horror hit her like a tidal wave. She hit a button on the car door and all four windows slid open. She gulped in air.

  “This is too much,” she said. Then she threw her head back and screamed, “This is too much.”

  A man in a hard hat stared as he lit a cigarette. “What are you looking at?” she shouted at him as she gunned the engine and screeched out of the parking lot.

  It was a short drive from the clinic to the cemetery. An elderly couple watering a large patch of golden mums around a headstone didn’t look up as Lucy’s car tore through the gates. She slammed it into park, opened the door a crack, stopped, and put her head into her hands.

  “This isn’t working,” she said. “I can’t make this work.”

  She watched as the older woman deadheaded a shriveled mum; the man filled a silver watering can from a spigot. They didn’t speak, but instead went about their business of loving by creating a garden for one.

  “I’m not going to do this,” she said to herself.

  * * *

  After three days alone, wallowing and chewing the inside of her cheek until it was raw, Lucy decided she had to talk to someone. Someone who understood difficult choices. Someone who continued to reach out even in the light of Lucy’s gracelessness.

  Sidney had given Lucy her address that first time they’d walked: 516 Serendipity Lane. At the time, Lucy had laughed at the irony of meeting this likeable woman at the office of obvious obsessions: Tig Monohan’s counseling clinic. It didn’t feel so ironic now. She needed a friend.

  Lucy had a picture in her mind of where Sidney lived: a house covered in pale pink paisley, with gingerbread dormers and minty-green shutters. Not this tired bungalow with the canted front porch. She checked the address scribbled on the back of a car wash coupon and pulled her coat in tighter against the winter wind. No, this was definitely the place. The dove-colored paint on the front door was what Lucy associated with Maine, with faded clapboard shingles and the sound of seagulls flapping overhead, but that’s where the poetry stopped. There was no railing near the bare, hastily constructed front steps. A combination of red and white trim circled half of the weathered front porch, but petered out unevenly as though the painter had run out of money, motivation, or maybe just the will to live. The doctor in Lucy would have diagnosed the whole place with chronic fatigue syndrome.

  She pulled herself from the car just as Sidney, in full winter running gear, jogged up the side street with Chubby Lumpkins trotting easily next to her. Lucy lifted a tentative hand.

  “I’m sorry—” she began.

  “No,” Sidney said. “I’m self-absorbed in the best of times, and these are not the best times for me. I’ve made self-absorption an Olympic sport.” With one hand clutching Chubby Lumpkin’s leash, she gave Lucy a quick hug. Lucy felt the knobs in Sidney’s spine even through the heavy sweatshirt the woman wore.

  Sidney stepped back. “I’m trying to get better, but I’m afraid I’m only patient with my own troubles.”

  “I’m pregnant,” Lucy blurted before she could stop herself. “It’s Mark’s, not Richard’s. I . . .”

  Sidney blinked. Started to smile and checked herself. “You’re fricking kidding me.”

  “I am such an idiot.”

  “You can say that if you want, but it won’t help a thing. Besides, you know it isn’t true.”

  “What, then?”

  “Human, maybe.” Sidney put her hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about you. I bet before the accident, you were never limited by anything. Not brainpower, money, or energy. But the universe got you anyway, didn’t it? It found your weak spot and yanked it. Now, like Pinocchio, you’re a real girl. You’re human.”

  Lucy’s eyes were glassy with tears. “I made a big mistake here, Sid.”

  “We all make mistakes.” Sidney pulled up the sleeve of her long, gray sweatshirt and showed Lucy her wristband. “I wish I could say this band is from a water park but it’s not. I just got back from the hospital.”

  Lucy put her hand over her mouth and Sidney said, “Come in, there’s coffee inside.”

  The interior of her house felt stark and orderly, in complete contrast to the disarray outside. But it felt famished, too. Clean to a fault, with spare furniture aligned just so, the carpets plumbed, the dull colors devoid of character. Sidney opened the refrigerator and Lucy caught sight of its contents. There was a twelve pack of diet Cherry Coke, a square of tofu, a jug of catsup, and every kind of mustard imaginable. There were also six cans of Ensure. Sidney caught Lucy’s stare and said, “I know. I promised I’d buy groceries.”

  Lucy said, “I’d go with you, but I’m afraid I’d steal them from you.”

  Sidney cracked a can of Ensure. “Cheers,” she said and took a sip, swallowing it like she had the worst sore throat in the history of the world. Then she took a sip of her coffee. Once they settled in the living room, Sidney repeated the routine: She sipped from the can again, and followed it up with the black coffee chaser.

  “I have to eat three meals and finish three cans a day. It’s God-awful, but measurable.”

  “What happened?”

  “I passed out. I’d never done that before. My neighbor got me to the hospital.”

  Seated in Sidney’s stark, dour living room Lucy said, “It seems like when disaster strikes you should be able to hit a Pause button. Put the news on a shelf and look at it. But it’s not like that, is it? You have to keep talking to the people in your life, wash the dishes, feed the dog, go to the bathroom, fill your gas tank. Life goes on. After the doctor told me I was pregnant, I had to say something socially appropriate. But I couldn’t. It was too much to ask.”

  Sidney nodded. “Anorexia is my pause.” She gave Lucy a weak smile. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.” She took a sip of coffee. “I haven’t always been this sick, you know. Although I have always been weight-conscious.”

  “What woman in America isn’t?”

  Sidney nodded. “I had a pretty man: Bobby. God, stay away from a man with a little-boy name like that: Bobby, Tommy, Joey. They carry a lot of heavy baggage. When we met, he was a hockey player slash physician’s assistant. He’d given up his skates, but still looked capable of surging for a goal if pressed.”

  Lucy smiled. “I know the type. ESPN is tattooed on their brain as the ultimate cultural e
xperience.” She put her hand on her abdomen.

  “Yep. He married me for himself. I was his pet wife. He’d play with me, take me out if he needed it, otherwise I could just piss in the basement waiting for him between watching sports events. I made a great prop: I was successful, pretty enough, reasonably smart.”

  “So you left him.”

  “Ha! You’d think, right?” Sidney dropped her ear to her shoulder and cracked her neck, a move Lucy had seen her do several times before. “No. A bunch of old jocks got a hockey league together, started playing on Wednesday nights. The Skates, they called themselves. Had an artist design a logo with a stingray on it, a stingray with devilish eyes. Just another thing for Bobby to do without me. One night, when I was home painting the bedrooms, he tripped on the ice and rammed his head into the goal. Broke his neck.”

  “God, Sidney.”

  There was a rueful smile on Sidney’s lips. “Don’t worry,” she said. “He lived. He lost the use of his legs, though. It was a long recovery. Physical therapy, nurses. We both had to learn to get him in and out of the chair, into the shower. I went to every therapy appointment, learned everything I could from the nurses. Until he told me to stop.”

  “He told you to stop?”

  “Said I was no good at it. Suggested I join a gym. Get in shape, lose weight.”

  Lucy’s mouth dropped open and Sidney continued. “I used to have kind of big boobs.” Sidney pulled the sleeves of her shirt down over her wrists. “I was enrolled in school at the time, taking classes in social work. So I dropped out. Got to work on my abs. And on this house.” She stood and motioned for Lucy to follow her. Down a hallway Sidney opened the door of the master bedroom.

  The walls were a honey yellow on top of glossy, white wainscoting. The floor was painted a Mediterranean blue, waxed and sparsely covered with sisal throw rugs. Jute blinds hung in each window. The sky-blue bedspread was strewn with red poppies. And on the wall, at the head of the queen-sized bed, hung a vintage life preserver with the words S.S. Happy printed on it. Sidney opened the door adjacent to the master bedroom and walked inside. This room’s white walls and white bedspreads made Lucy feel like taking in a big, clean breath. It had a light-blue ceiling with clouds painted in the corners, and twin beds with red paisley pillows on them. The windows were hung with curtains made from the same flirty paisley material. “Bobby left me for his physical therapist. Told me they had a great sex life. She was pregnant,” Sidney added. “Apparently that part of him still worked.”