That Nice Girl with the Dogs
I turn away from her to hide my irritation and work on the buttons only to see my old violin, saved from childhood, hanging on the wall. Resentment stiffens my fingers and tightens my lips.
Eventually, Mom is dressed in her blouse, pull-on slacks, socks and slippers. Then we go to the kitchen for morning coffee, taking our places at the round oak table with the dogs at our feet. Mom and I hold our coffee cups in the same two-handed overlapping grip to warm our fingers, and both of us watch the steam rising off the coffee with the same wistful expression. I’m reminded of when I was a young child and the comfort of drinking hot chocolate together before bed-time. I feel entranced, serene.
But not for long.
“What was wrong with that poor dog who died?” Mom asks.
“You mean Sirocco?”
“Yes, that light-colored one. She was such a nice dog.”
Mom’s mention of Sirocco blindsides me. I glance out the window into the back yard glittering with snow, and remember the nights when Sirocco, urgent from the steroids, would stand by my bed, whining with insistence. Uncomplaining, I’d shove bare feet into boots, zip a down coat over pajamas, and walk her out into the back yard. On those few, counted nights, we’d stand together for a while, my hand caught in her ruff. We stood often under the watchful stars, and sometimes in the moonlight, and twice in a misty rain. Once we heard a squirrel turning in its nest, and another time, an owl hooting overhead in the Chinese elms. Toward December, we heard the north wind whistling in the naked branches, and watched the snowflakes spin to the ground, where those same crystals now lay as a frozen blanket.
A cloud blows across the moon and a pale dog sits still as a statue in the corner of the yard, a trick of the shadows.
“Yes, Sirocco was a good dog.” I give Mom a sad smile. “She died of cancer.”
“What kind of cancer?”
“Lymphoma.”
“Wasn’t there anything you could do for her?”
