Jillian Read online

Megan sobbed and said “sorry” while she thought thank you, thank you, oh, thank you.

  He pulled away slightly and her arms tightened around him. She imagined being a python and coiling around him so she could kill him and eat him and keep him with her all the time.

  “I’m going to go inside and get our stuff and say good night to some people, okay?”

  Megan nodded. Randy left. Megan thought about Randy saying goodbye to some people while he gathered their stuff, and she cringed.

  “I have a few more minutes left,” she whispered. “A few more minutes in infinity’s moment, ha ha ha ha. Oh, fuck, I’m such an idiot, that’s so gross, I’m a disgusting piece of shit.”

  He came back down the stairs and crawled down to meet her.

  “Here you go, sweetie.” Her handed her some tissues, which she used to blow her nose and wipe the gooey tear bullshit off her face.

  “Drink this.”

  She drank a sip of the glass of water.

  “The whole thing, it’s good for you.”

  She frowned at him, but then drank it.

  “Where are you going to put it all?”

  He took her tissues and put them in his pocket, then put the cup on the stairs.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day was a bad one.

  The morning shower went something like this: Oh my god, I just don’t want to be wrong about everything I’ve ever thought or to feel like I’m in some kind of dysfunctional state because of my personality, because if my personality is toxic, what am I supposed to do? Hey, what am I supposed to do about anything? I don’t have anything at all in my life, I don’t have anything that’s only mine except this feeling, which isn’t even something that’s only mine or something to be proud of but, uuhhhhh, oh my god, what am I doing, there’s nothing I can do, I’m just going to keep working at worse and worse jobs and I’m going to get sicker and sicker, my hair is going to fall out and my skin is going to get shitty, why am I even thinking about that right now, but I have to because it’s just what I’m thinking, it’s not like I’m making myself think this, it’s just what I’m thinking. Oh god, oh god, oh my god.

  All this was thought while sobbing silently and not washing, except for a little bit every few minutes because she had to (she was showering, after all) and then feeling totally ridiculous sudsing her buttcrack with the teal plastic bath poof while crying and thinking about the future. The horrible, empty future.

  When she wasn’t hiding around the apartment crying, she sat on the couch and felt physically hollow. Like she was resigned, but she didn’t know to what. Randy was being careful around her in a way that really stung, but maybe she was imagining it and he wasn’t acting differently. But if he wasn’t acting differently after her display last night, wasn’t that bad, too? She got back into bed and he sat at his computer quietly.

  “Honey?” she said. He didn’t hear her, but she didn’t want to say it any louder, so she just said, “Honey,” over and over again in the same quiet voice until he said, “Yeah?” and walked into the bedroom.

  “I was calling you,” she said.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel really bad today.”

  He took her hand and she started crying, but a little cry, not those freaky silent sobs.

  “What can I do? I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “I don’t know what to do, either, I just don’t know what to do with my life. I have no idea what to do and I feel so awful for putting you through this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” and as she continued to apologize, her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

  They both looked at it.

  “Who is it?”

  “Oh my god.”

  “Who is it?

  “Oh my god.”

  She handed it to him.

  It was a text message. It read “heres the cutie her name is crispy adams choice lol,” and there was a picture of a Labrador attached to the text.

  6

  Jillian’s Saturday had been way different. She called Pups of Love at eight in the morning and the woman on the line was a lot nicer than the woman from the Humane Society. This new woman said they had tons of young dogs as well as puppies, too, who needed a home so badly that the price of adoption couldn’t be very high.

  “I want one of the mothers,” said Jillian.

  “Then you’re in luck,” said the woman.

  Jillian and Adam ate breakfast in the car on the way to the rescue place. They got it at the Starbucks drive-through. Jillian got her favorite kind of Starbucks and a scone and Adam got a donut and cocoa. They listened to and sang along with one of Adam’s favorite albums for the first hour of the drive, then switched to one of Jillian’s. She sang along to it while Adam said he had to pee. So far away, she thought, and tried to visualize herself NOT getting pulled over, ha ha, because that would not be a very good thing.

  They drove until they came to the address, a ranch house with a big front yard. The gravel sounded under Jillian’s tires and she felt like a TV detective pulling up to the scene. Adam thrashed in his seat and Jillian smiled at him while she unbuckled him.

  What are you thinking about? she wondered. Oh, well.

  A woman opened the front door of the house and said, “Are you here for the dogs?”

  “Yeah, hi. I think we talked on the phone.”

  “You probably talked to our offices. I didn’t talk to anyone on the phone.”

  “Okay,” said Jillian, but the woman was smiling so it was fine.

  “There are so many dogs in this area that we all take turns fostering some of them. Come on in.”

  “Oh, cool,” said Jillian. “I’d love to do something like this.”

  She looked around the woman’s living room. It was carpeted and there were nice framed posters on the walls. The cream-colored leather couches were covered with blankets, and two dogs on the floor chewed rawhide bones.

  The woman rolled her eyes and said, “Those things get so nasty.”

  Jillian laughed and looked closer. The bones were dry and dirty on the bottoms, probably from the dogs’ paws, which held them pinned to the floor, and as she looked farther up the shafts of the toys she saw that the material became a lighter off-white color and then even farther up it was soft and foamy. The dogs worked the bones in semicircles with their teeth, and a little bit of foam made of hide and spit dribbled from the dogs’ lips. The dogs didn’t look up at Jillian when she came near, they just gnawed their bones, breathing heavily, and making a rhythmic grinding sound.

  “They’re so calm,” said Jillian.

  “These are mine, Misty and Fancy Pants. See her pants?” The dog had darker fur on her hind legs that did look like pants. “They’re used to company. I’m Emily.” The woman held out her hand.

  “I’m Jillian and this is Adam.”

  Jillian was embarrassed because her hands were sweaty, she was so excited, but she had to shake this woman’s hand. If I pretend it’s not sweaty, then it won’t seem so sweaty, she thought.

  Adam said hello but his attention was on the TV and the collection of movies underneath it. He imagined the woman might invite him to watch one and give him a sandwich, because most women wanted to do things like that for him.

  “Let’s go out to the run,” said Emily.

  Jillian’s heart was pounding, she couldn’t calm down. Who is this woman, what am I doing here? Okay, calm down, you know, it’ll be great.

  The back door was off the kitchen. Jillian could see it from the living room because there was an open wall above one of the kitchen counters. They walked through the kitchen, which had several bowls of dog food and water on the floor on children’s place mats. The lower cabinets were held shut by rubber bands wrapped around the knobs. There was a l
oaf of bread on the counter. Emily opened the back door, turned and smiled at them, and said, “This way.”

  The backyard was nice and big and there were a few trees and a fence around the perimeter. It took a second to see where the dogs were. I guess this is what their natural camouflage is like, thought Jillian, noticing how the chocolate Labs blended into the shaded dirt under the trees and how the yellow Labs blended into the wood on the fence. A few white-and-brown-spotted dogs, which Jillian thought looked like English hunting dogs, walked around with toys in their mouths. “Oh, those look like Fancy Pants,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Emily. “Which one do you want to meet?”

  “Adam?”

  “I like those,” said Adam. He pointed to the brown Labs under the tree.

  “I guess we want to meet those chocolate Labs,” said Jillian. Emily led them back to the tree and explained that, at least during the good weather seasons, it was better for the dogs to stay in a house with a yard.

  “You know, better for them mentally. My house doesn’t always look like this. I usually have nice hostas along that fence,” she said, pointing to a dug-up spot along the fence.

  “This is a really great thing you do,” said Jillian.

  Adam crouched in the shade by the Labs, who were initially indifferent to him.

  “They don’t bite, do they?”

  “Not as far as I know. I think they’re pretty kid-friendly.”

  “Hi, Choco,” said Adam. Choco raised her head. Adam crouch-walked closer to the dogs while the women talked about the rescue center.

  “You’re Choco and you’re Crispy. Hi, Crispy. Hi, Choco the dog,” he said. Crispy got up, wagged her tail, and walked up to Adam and began to sniff his crotch. “Hi, Crispy,” he whispered.

  “That dog’s name is Peanut,” Emily corrected. Adam didn’t pay attention to her. “I named all the dogs,” she said to Jillian. “That dog responds well to Peanut. It’s best to pick two-syllable names.”

  Crispy licked the donut sugar off of Adam’s hands. Jillian gave Emily the money order, and then Jillian, Adam, and Crispy loaded themselves into the car.

  “Hey, maybe we can talk about other names,” said Jillian.

  “Why?” said Adam.

  “Choco’s a cute name, what about Choco?”

  “But, the other one was Choco,” said Adam. “This is Crispy.”

  He was so delightful and strange. Her hands were still sweaty, maybe even sweatier. She’d made sure she had enough cash to pick up dog food and a dog bowl and a leash at the Petco. The dog started trembling. Adam unbuckled his harness and leaned way over, embracing the dog and whispering, “Crispy, Crispy,” and Crispy began to hyperventilate.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Where are your collars and leashes?” asked Jillian. She was bent over, holding Crispy by the shoulders, and waddling toward 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.

  “Okay, okay,” 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 backward, 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 trash can 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 rewrapping the cord, then looked around and thought.

  The dishes.

  She went to the sink and prewashed 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 twenty-five-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 dishwasher 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, ha ha ha.”

  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 twenty 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 up, 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.