Marie Antoinette's Head
It is a strange thing, that animal. That animal that gets such preference to others, but is little different. Take, for instance, a pig — sus scrofa domesticus. A pig is much brighter than a dog. A pig doesn't stink like a dog. Doesn't shed like a dog. You might think there would be slaughterhouses full of dogs and backyards full of pigs, but to the contrary. Even "pig park" sounds better than "dog park." Instead of pork, you could eat dork. Dog sausage. Hot dogs, for Chrissake, are called hot dogs! It all makes sense. But that isn't the way it goes.
Some time ago, someone decided that dogs would be given pet status and pigs would go to market. People even mock it with some embarrassing nursery rhyme mothers recite while tickling their squealing infant's toes, who is amused by the fate of a misfortuned pig and the fantatical recalling of it by their deranged mother.
It isn't to say that dogs are not worthy praise or admiration of the pet status they have been afforded. Dogs do wonderful things all the time. They save people from burning houses. Kids from nefarious strangers. They ward off burglars. Sniff out drugs, bombs and even dead people. Cadaver dogs, they call those. I suppose pigs couldn't do that and those things are worthy admiration. Then again 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year and 30-50 are mauled to death, mostly small children.
I never thought about getting a dog. I had a dog as a kid. It was a good dog. A chow-mix. Lots of hair. He was a horny dog — that much would be on his headstone if he had a headstone. He humped all my friends anytime they fell down in my backyard. Dad said he "went to town," which confused me as a child because he didn't go anywhere. Or dad said he "buried the bone" in whoever he humped. He especially liked fat kids, and if one of my fat friends fell, he didn't stand a damn chance.
But when he died, I swore I'd never have a dog again. There is only so much heartache a person can endure, and dogs live on average only 12 years. That isn't nearly enough time. Harvey, my childhood homosexual opportunist mutt, lived 10 years and keeled over in the backyard one sunny afternoon unexpectedly. My friends spread the vicious rumor that he died of AIDS and panicked because they figured they had it, too, since he had humped them. He'd never experienced dog-on-dog, perhaps he might lament, if he could.
It is by coincidence that when I married Amelia Anne Bradbury, that we would be married 12 years before she died of kidney cancer. She was the kindest woman I've ever known and they say you ought to be fortunate for the time you had, but it is possible to feel fortunate and overwhelming and unbearable sorrow all at once. It is possible to feel cheated by life while being thankful, I can assure you. Such ambivalence is normal.
We were married nine years when she was diagnosed. And in those last three years we spent every dime we had going on vacations to everywhere she ever wanted to go, besides Europe and Egypt. I mortgaged the house, unbeknownst to her, and we went to every Atlantic Coast beach we could go to, including Bermuda, the Bahamas, Tortuga Beach, Key Largo and Cancún — twice.
Amelia loved pigs. She had a magnificent love for them. And throughout our house I have hundreds of orphaned pigs of all sorts. From salt and pepper shakers to yard ornaments to lamps to doorknobs on our kitchen cabinets. There are pastoral pig prints hanging on the walls. Pigs playing poker in the den. Pig figurines. Pigs on the bathroom wallpaper. It was Amelia who told me all that stuff about pigs, made the argument that they were, at least, equal to dogs. There was many other things as well and sometimes when I sit and think about her alone in the house, they occur to me. Pigs feel pain and pleasure. Pigs have the cognitive abilities of a three year-old child. Pigs don't sweat, which is why the wallow in mud.
Her love of pigs was legendary and began where I suspsect many people's love of pigs began — in the pages of the fine book — Charlotte's Web. There is an original first print on our bookshelf, and when it came time to selling some things to pay back creditors for all the debt I incurred to travel with her, that was not among the items I chose to sell. My motorcycle and baseball card collection weren't so fortunate. So long, Mickey Mantle.
But from time to time I get great satisfaction sitting on our porch swing reading that book. I like to imagine she is here with me. Her ghost is here with me. I like to read it aloud, as though she can hear me. Not loud enough so that someone walking by could hear, but loud enough so that I can hear myself. I can hear those beautiful prosaic words which begin at my eyes, then go to my heart, then through my mouth, off my lips, to my ears, and back to my heart again. I like feeling the breeze of a cool evening upon my face and pleasuring in the sight of her wildflowers, which have come back four times without her, and which seem to dance for me when the wind blows through the space between the fence pickets.
Though I reveled in the vacations and the fun we had trying to forget the invetiable deadline that had been imposed upon us — or hoping against hope that Stage 4 didn't mean Stage 4, hoping that enough wine and booze would make it go away, hoping that it was some mistake, or that the prayer group would work and a miracle would occur, or that there would be a breakthrough in research — sometimes when I sat on that porch swing that croaked so differently without her, I wish we would have stayed home.
I wish I had more nights with her on this simple swing looking out over the tranquility of our yard. Over those purple coneflowers and black-eyed-susans. The poppies and the irises. The sage and the milkweed. The snow-in-summer. The hollyhock and delphinium. And the bees that bustle about them by day and the fireflies by night. The hummingbird that darts in and out to have a sip at the red glass balloon feeder she religiously filled with some special mix that kept them coming back. I wish we had spent more nights home, enjoying time because things went so fast while traveling. You never really get a chance to stop and we were sharing time with hundreds of other people on beaches and in airports and hotels. I wish I had a way to have slowed it down to a crawl. To not have worked those last three years. To not have hosted guests, who all meant well, but who ended up crying and making things worse. To not have wasted time doing the dishes. Or filing taxes. Or doing laundry. I wish for so much.
It has been five years now. Slowly the debts are being paid back. Creditors, you will find difficult to believe, are not sympathetic to your wife dying of cancer. The interest that accrued alone was a staggering amount. But without Amelia, I have nothing and there is nothing for me to do besides to work and to pay debt. I even took on an evening job washing dishes at a friend's restaurant because I didn't want to sit at home alone or get drunk somewhere in a bar forever and stick hopelessly to the floor or became a hapless regular with a bad liver. I couldn't drink her away or drink myself to some sort of acceptance. I only became a blathering imbecile, a sad sappy periodic bawler who ended up at home drunk on the couch flipping through pictures on my phone of us before death so rudely interrupted.
The more I kept myself occupied, the better I was. But nothing could erase her from my memory and nothing could ever assuage the heartache. Sometimes I'd be at the office during the day and see someone who reminded me in some way of her. Or they might say something she once said. Other times I'd see her in the dishwater, or the bubbles would remind me of the white foam caps of ocean waves in which we swam. A fork would shimmer the way some fish shimmered in the water that fascinated her, swimming by her leg which made her giggle in a childlike way, and which now makes me bend over the sink and cry.
Maybe the young kids around me think I'm drunk, or on drugs, but they are sympathetic and every now and then when one of those moments erupt, one of those hard memories strike the way lightening does an old tree, I'll feel a hand on my back and someone will say something very kind. I find it very reassuring of this younger generation how capable and willing they are of empathizing, even with the likes of an old forty-something dishtanker like me.
Some time ago, someone decided that dogs would be given pet status and pigs would go to market. People even mock it with some embarrassing nursery rhyme mothers recite while tickling their squealing infant's toes, who is amused by the fate of a misfortuned pig and the fantatical recalling of it by their deranged mother.
It isn't to say that dogs are not worthy praise or admiration of the pet status they have been afforded. Dogs do wonderful things all the time. They save people from burning houses. Kids from nefarious strangers. They ward off burglars. Sniff out drugs, bombs and even dead people. Cadaver dogs, they call those. I suppose pigs couldn't do that and those things are worthy admiration. Then again 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year and 30-50 are mauled to death, mostly small children.
I never thought about getting a dog. I had a dog as a kid. It was a good dog. A chow-mix. Lots of hair. He was a horny dog — that much would be on his headstone if he had a headstone. He humped all my friends anytime they fell down in my backyard. Dad said he "went to town," which confused me as a child because he didn't go anywhere. Or dad said he "buried the bone" in whoever he humped. He especially liked fat kids, and if one of my fat friends fell, he didn't stand a damn chance.
But when he died, I swore I'd never have a dog again. There is only so much heartache a person can endure, and dogs live on average only 12 years. That isn't nearly enough time. Harvey, my childhood homosexual opportunist mutt, lived 10 years and keeled over in the backyard one sunny afternoon unexpectedly. My friends spread the vicious rumor that he died of AIDS and panicked because they figured they had it, too, since he had humped them. He'd never experienced dog-on-dog, perhaps he might lament, if he could.
It is by coincidence that when I married Amelia Anne Bradbury, that we would be married 12 years before she died of kidney cancer. She was the kindest woman I've ever known and they say you ought to be fortunate for the time you had, but it is possible to feel fortunate and overwhelming and unbearable sorrow all at once. It is possible to feel cheated by life while being thankful, I can assure you. Such ambivalence is normal.
We were married nine years when she was diagnosed. And in those last three years we spent every dime we had going on vacations to everywhere she ever wanted to go, besides Europe and Egypt. I mortgaged the house, unbeknownst to her, and we went to every Atlantic Coast beach we could go to, including Bermuda, the Bahamas, Tortuga Beach, Key Largo and Cancún — twice.
Amelia loved pigs. She had a magnificent love for them. And throughout our house I have hundreds of orphaned pigs of all sorts. From salt and pepper shakers to yard ornaments to lamps to doorknobs on our kitchen cabinets. There are pastoral pig prints hanging on the walls. Pigs playing poker in the den. Pig figurines. Pigs on the bathroom wallpaper. It was Amelia who told me all that stuff about pigs, made the argument that they were, at least, equal to dogs. There was many other things as well and sometimes when I sit and think about her alone in the house, they occur to me. Pigs feel pain and pleasure. Pigs have the cognitive abilities of a three year-old child. Pigs don't sweat, which is why the wallow in mud.
Her love of pigs was legendary and began where I suspsect many people's love of pigs began — in the pages of the fine book — Charlotte's Web. There is an original first print on our bookshelf, and when it came time to selling some things to pay back creditors for all the debt I incurred to travel with her, that was not among the items I chose to sell. My motorcycle and baseball card collection weren't so fortunate. So long, Mickey Mantle.
But from time to time I get great satisfaction sitting on our porch swing reading that book. I like to imagine she is here with me. Her ghost is here with me. I like to read it aloud, as though she can hear me. Not loud enough so that someone walking by could hear, but loud enough so that I can hear myself. I can hear those beautiful prosaic words which begin at my eyes, then go to my heart, then through my mouth, off my lips, to my ears, and back to my heart again. I like feeling the breeze of a cool evening upon my face and pleasuring in the sight of her wildflowers, which have come back four times without her, and which seem to dance for me when the wind blows through the space between the fence pickets.
Though I reveled in the vacations and the fun we had trying to forget the invetiable deadline that had been imposed upon us — or hoping against hope that Stage 4 didn't mean Stage 4, hoping that enough wine and booze would make it go away, hoping that it was some mistake, or that the prayer group would work and a miracle would occur, or that there would be a breakthrough in research — sometimes when I sat on that porch swing that croaked so differently without her, I wish we would have stayed home.
I wish I had more nights with her on this simple swing looking out over the tranquility of our yard. Over those purple coneflowers and black-eyed-susans. The poppies and the irises. The sage and the milkweed. The snow-in-summer. The hollyhock and delphinium. And the bees that bustle about them by day and the fireflies by night. The hummingbird that darts in and out to have a sip at the red glass balloon feeder she religiously filled with some special mix that kept them coming back. I wish we had spent more nights home, enjoying time because things went so fast while traveling. You never really get a chance to stop and we were sharing time with hundreds of other people on beaches and in airports and hotels. I wish I had a way to have slowed it down to a crawl. To not have worked those last three years. To not have hosted guests, who all meant well, but who ended up crying and making things worse. To not have wasted time doing the dishes. Or filing taxes. Or doing laundry. I wish for so much.
It has been five years now. Slowly the debts are being paid back. Creditors, you will find difficult to believe, are not sympathetic to your wife dying of cancer. The interest that accrued alone was a staggering amount. But without Amelia, I have nothing and there is nothing for me to do besides to work and to pay debt. I even took on an evening job washing dishes at a friend's restaurant because I didn't want to sit at home alone or get drunk somewhere in a bar forever and stick hopelessly to the floor or became a hapless regular with a bad liver. I couldn't drink her away or drink myself to some sort of acceptance. I only became a blathering imbecile, a sad sappy periodic bawler who ended up at home drunk on the couch flipping through pictures on my phone of us before death so rudely interrupted.
The more I kept myself occupied, the better I was. But nothing could erase her from my memory and nothing could ever assuage the heartache. Sometimes I'd be at the office during the day and see someone who reminded me in some way of her. Or they might say something she once said. Other times I'd see her in the dishwater, or the bubbles would remind me of the white foam caps of ocean waves in which we swam. A fork would shimmer the way some fish shimmered in the water that fascinated her, swimming by her leg which made her giggle in a childlike way, and which now makes me bend over the sink and cry.
Maybe the young kids around me think I'm drunk, or on drugs, but they are sympathetic and every now and then when one of those moments erupt, one of those hard memories strike the way lightening does an old tree, I'll feel a hand on my back and someone will say something very kind. I find it very reassuring of this younger generation how capable and willing they are of empathizing, even with the likes of an old forty-something dishtanker like me.
At the bank, they ignore me. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it is not a ding on my next performance review — doesn't control emotions well — though the only day I take off every year is the day she passed away. And that day, alone at home, I am a terrible drunken mess, a man who has swallowed himself whole and choked on the body of his own despair.
It fast approached this year — the fifth year. My years are lived between that day every year, and it has become what December 31st is to most — the last of something. It is the 9th of June. And every year on the 9th of June I hear the respirators in the room where she lied. I smell the hospital in my nose. I hear the beeping of machines. The rise and fall of mechanical lungs. The opening and shutting of that heavy tomb-like door of her room. Distant indistinct pages on the hospital PA. The shuffle of feet in the hallway. The ruffling of paperwork on her chart. I can feel the sun from the window on my skin through that incredibly thick pane of glass, which at times make me feel like an ant under the focus of a cruel child's magnifying glass. Yet, I don't move because she holds my hand with a slight grip, and by moving I might unmend that gentle bond and lose it forever.
I can hear her breathing, and every so often when the morphine fails, she whimpers in pain, though she doesn't want to whimper in pain because she doesn't want me to cry anymore than I already have. She is selfless to the end. She is doing all she can to take it, but it hurts so damn much her grunts and groans tell me. And when the pain is at its worst, she softly pleads to me, "Kiss me, love." And I kiss her while pushing the button that begs for more morphine.
The drug takes effect again and she slowly fades away, but she is looking at me as she does, tears in her eyes like dewdrops on the spiderweb on the porch between the outside light and the mailbox she bought at the antique store I haven't been to since she died. Where Charlotte waits for her pig.
I read her that book, twice, when it was time to go. I hoped that she would go peacefully the way Charlotte went. I hoped God would have mercy. But He musn't have had any that day. He must have been all out because she suffered dreadfully to the point that I considered helping her go in some way that surely would be criminal, though arguably compassionate.
The flatline is what you'll not forget if ever you have the misfortune to be there when your wife passes away, or the look in her still and glassy eyes as the machine caterwauls. That is the terrible moment when you've been cheated out of everything you love by life and God, and its all over. Yet, people on the floor below you are praising God for helping them through a routine gallbladder surgery or hip replacement. "Prayers going up," and all those annoying banal things prayer whores disperse all over social media for anyone with a colonoscopy or a cold sore will infuriate you. I never considered any of that before it happened. I was not as bitter or jaded as I am now.
I have to admit that I was prejudiced against religion far before I met Amelia, so despite the inspiration of her love to believe in more than a pragmatic world that is based entirely in wants, needs and either lustful or malevolent emotions, her death left me all the more incredulous. Amelia was a devout Catholic and believed that God moved in all things no matter how big or small. God exists in a snail. In a maggot. In a single drop of rain. In a bead of sweat. She often scooped worms up off the sidewalk when it rained and returned them to the grass where they could burrow back into the dirt. She planted plants for bees and butterflies and she looked at me with a level of disenchantment when I raked the leaves because some small thing would find a home beneath them, but would be displaced if I raked them up. It was as though I were a tornado ripping up homes with my rake. So I always agreed to leave some somehwere. She was a steward of all good things and she was not proud or arrogant or self-righteous in the least. She was humble and simple, yet she was elegant and enchanting, perhaps, all the more so because of it. Because she tried not to be at all.
Even stricken with cancer she never lost hope or admitted any sense of doubt. The cancer, she said, was not God's doing. He got no blame for anything because He was blameless. It was one of those things that happens because of genetics. Because of chance. Because God doesn't control everything or make things happen or not happen. Because Eve ate the apple. Or the devil dips his fingers in life and stirs. Because man is flawed as much as God is not. It is not the worst thing to die, she opined once holding my hand after we had drank too much wine somewhere. The worst thing, she said, is losing you. But, undoubtedly, we will be together again, she promised. Not in the form of that which we possess now, of course. But as two bees. Two flowers no one remembers ever planting. Two trees with trunks twisted into one. Or maybe we will simply exist together in the wind. In the invisible things that one cannot see. Buried beneath leaves that someone doesn't rake.
Five years later, I was sitting on my porch to gather myself to make dinner. Everything was a labor without her. People walk past and say nice things of the yard because it is in full bloom and I had trimmed the edges and mowed. But all I did was maintain what she had planted, in honor of her. As though she were on vacation somehwere and would come back at any time. They were often the same people, but even if they were different, they had the same sort of grin. A grin that says hello and nice to see you and goodbye all at once, without saying anything at all.
Then suddenly she came walking up the sidewalk — and up the walkway to the porch — a hairy little dog that was in desperate need of a hair cut. It flopped down on the porch beside my feet as though to rest and it looked out onto the yard and the walkers who passed on their evening stroll. She did so with great contentment, the way a man climbs some mountain and sits atop it in splendiferous triumph.
"Well, make yourself at home," I joked. The dog already had. It made itself at home there at my feet and it let me pet it, whereupon I discovered it was a girl dog that bore no collar or tag to identify where it had come from.
"A vagabond, aye?"
I couldn't discern what breed she was. She looked something like a toy poodle or a bichon. Something like a cloud with legs. Like a clump of cotton balls, or a mass of dandelion spores that you could break apart and make wishes upon. I got her water and some vegetarian meatloaf and she seemed to enjoy it.
"I apologize, pup. I'm a vegetarian. So you might want to reconsider your choice of houses. The guy next door grills out nearly every night."
But she ignored me and didn't budge, licking the bowl clean. I waited on the porch for her owner to come running along asking if I'd seen a dog that looked like a puff of white smoke. Probably called Snowflake, or Cupcake, or something odd like that. I didn't know what to call her, but she had a fluff of unkempt hair that sat atop her which made her look like she was wearing a powdered wig, so she was Marie Antoinette to me. And so when no owner came along, and the mosquitoes started biting, we went inside.
"Marie Antoinette," I laughed.
On one of our adventures, Amelia decided to rent a porno on the hotel TV which was French and set during the French Revolution. She did so because we were playing the "Never Have I" game, and never had either of us watched a pornographic film. I believe it was called "Comme-ci Comme-ça," but I couldn't say for certain. I think that is what she jokingly called it, afterwards.
She thought I would enjoy it, but it was bizarre and I didn't care anything for pornography. "All men like porn," she bit back facetiously. So we watched it and laughed and after Marie Antoinette had sex with all of the King's court, including the jester, and all of her court, she was condemned to be beheaded. But instead, being "beheaded" had a much different meaning in the movie and it was a fabulous grand finalé finish for every angry Frenchman who finished on her face on the gallows, including the brutish and obese executioner, who for some reason ate an apple the entire time, while grunting and groaning assuredly lurid things in French that neither of us understood.
When the film was fini, I gave it a standing ovation, much to Amelia's amusement who laughed hysterically.
"Never again will I think of Marie Antoinette the same way," she said.
I laughed thinking about it, looking at that dog. Wondering what happened to the actual Marie Antoinette's head. It was one of those memories that I had nearly lost, but reclaimed thanks to my new pet. My new friend.
It was like Marie Antoinette owned the place. There wasn't any sniffing around or the usual curious dog inspection of the premises. She jumped right up on the couch and rested her fluffy head on the pillow and took a nap. When she needed to go out, she scratched at the door. When she wanted to come back in, she barked. When she wanted more water, she pushed her bowl with her nose to the middle of the kitchen floor. She rarely seemed peckish. She simply ate when she was fed. She ate what I ate, minus grapes, onions and chocolate. She fit right in and I began to notice that suddenly I was a little less lonely than before. My heart didn't feel as broken. And I realized a purpose in life outside of the mundanity of my 9-5 bank job.
I bought Marie Antoinette a collar and a leash and we walked nearly every night. We walked as Amelia and I had walked. The same route. I let her lead and she turned at all the right corners, inevitably finding home. She was a smart dog, that much could be said. She was well-behaved. And she made me realize what kind of a mischievous pervert Harvey, who humped most of the kids in the neighborhood, was.
But as I grew attached to her, I began to worry that someone might see Marie Antoinette and claim her, as it was likely she was from the neighborhood. So I bought her a pink bandana and personalized her as best I could. But if that day came, I guess, so it came. There wasn't anything I could do about it. I could not pretend she was not theirs, nor could I hide her in my house because I was fond of her. I let her outside without a leash, knowing she didn't need one. She came back everytime. She was a trustworthy dog. But eventually, she would pass. Or I would pass. And again, there would be one of us less the other. Sometimes, though, you're too busy loving someone to think about anything else.
It was quite obvious she needed groomed from the beginning and I knew nothing of clipping dog claws, nor of cutting dog hair. And you can watch all the online tutorials you want about shaving a hygiene strip on a dog's asshole, but it's never going to give you the confidence to ever do so, especially when you see the pink eye of their rectum winking at you as you hoist the trimmers in position with one hand, while lifting their shivering tail with the other. So I made her an appointment at a local groomer called The Doggy Parlor.
Marie Antoinette, which was shortened to just Marie as I grew to love her, didn't need a leash. It was all really a formality. We went inside for our appointment and she sat by my leg and I scratched her ears. Other dogs acted wild and tried to get out of their carriers or off their leashes, but Marie sat there beside me as calmly as can be imagined. A lady who appeared flummoxed commented that she was the most obedient dog she had seen and asked me my secret. I told her there was no secret, and that she was a stray.
"A stray?" she exclaimed aghast. "Well, if that doesn't beat all!"
It did, in fact, beat all. I walked Marie back to the groomer, holding the unnecesary leash, after the assistant called us up. There the groomer stood by what looked like an operating table and I suppose I must have stared. She was a beautiful woman and I realized standing there looking at her that she was the first woman I considered in that regard since Amelia died. It was a strange feeling — I was overcome by a confluence of conflict and guilt. All the while, I couldn't help but to look at her. She introduced herself as Allison Bright, and nervously I introduced Marie, but not myself. I had forgotten my own name in her presence. She smiled and held Marie like she was her own before asking what I wanted her to do.
"Um. What? To do?"
She smiled, which assuaged my nervousness at once. "I mean, what kind of haircut do you want for Ms. Marie?"
"Whatever — you think best."
She smiled and gave Marie a look of pleasant consternation, the way a child looks at a cloud to decide what it resembles. Allison was childlike in a way. Though she was somehwere in her thirties, I'd guess, she hadn't lost that good part of youth that one ought to keep, but that which most people lose before they're 21 in their blind rush to adulthood.
I looked at Marie and it was as though she smiled. Then Allison proclaimed, "I got it," and I sat in a chair nearby and told her the story of how the dog just showed up a month or so ago, out of the blue. How she got her name, though I didn't talk about the porn.
She told me it sounded like divine intervention and that we never meet anyone by accident. It is all by design, she claimed. The universe dictates it. Orders it. But it is up to us as to what becomes of those meetings. I didn't, however, tell her about Amelia. I wanted to tell her, because Amelia is always on my mind, but I didn't. I didn't tell anyone about Amelia because I wanted to keep her for myself and I wasn't panhandling for sympathy.
We had a wonderful conversation as she cut Marie's hair and made her look more presentable and less like a cloud. In honor of Marie Antoinette, she kept the tuft of hair on her head that looked like a powdered wig. And when Allison mentioned Marie Antoinette, I sheepishly chuckled. She was a fine-looking dog. She could be a show dog. Allison shampooed and dried her. Clipped her claws. Painted her nails pink. Then she put a lacey ribbon in her hair and off we went. I thanked Allison, who smiled at me in such a genuine way that I could not easily dismiss it. It was an involuntary feeling. She seemed as though she expected me to say something more. But I didn't say anything else. I coughed, nervously, then tripped over an old Labrador retriever who lied on his side outside the door. I think he was on his way to dying. I saw it in his eyes.
I took Marie home and there we sat on the porch watching cars pass, going places or coming home from places they had already been. People walking. Riding bicycles. All with some intent to do something. Either something grand or something modest. But, something, nonetheless. All with a determined purpose.
I meant to say something meaningful to Marie. To express to her how grateful I was she came along when she did. To explain to her why it is that I chuckled when I saw her, because of that ridiculous movie, the name of which I cannot now recall, only that it was not, "Comme Ci Comme Ça," or "Cum See Cum Saw." The memory of it was buried.
I wanted to tell her how happy I am that she got me out of the house and gave me a purpose again. My life had been drowned in sorrow. I didn't ever expect to ever get it back. It is something you sometimes don't realize you've had until you don't have it anymore. But it seemed strange to say such sentimental things to a dog — as though she could understand me. It is a shame we cannot talk to dogs, I thought. Or to pigs. I thought, for some reason, about a pig I saw on the way to the slaugterhouse a while back. I felt so damn sorry for it, watching it naively smile with its nose poked out of the hole of the trailer and that pale blue eye peering out to see what it could see in its last few hours of life. What it must have thought, I wonder. It smiled at me. I am happy Amelia never saw it.
I felt guilty for being attracted to the pet groomer, but it was good to feel that way again. To feel that semblance of love that I had thought not possible to again feel. That attraction made me feel alive. I thought of going back and talking to her. Asking her if she'd like to sit on the porch with me or to have dinner. Just to talk to her. Just to see her smile and to imbue in me something that had been lost. But I buried the thought and decided not to refer to her by name and to do my best to forget her altogether because it was a betrayal of my wife. I have never described myself as a widower, and I haven't taken off my ring, and no one or nothing will make me move on or to be unfaithful. No Dear Abby, or all the bad advice from all the counselors in the world will ever convince me that I must move on.
A few days later, I let Marie out and when I went to let her in she was gone. I frantically searched the yard and the neighborhood to no avail. It was so unusual that I thought she must have been taken, so I called the police who said there was nothing they could do besides to take a report. I began to indict the usual suspects. The druggies who walk by. The scrappers who troll the neighborhood trash for aluminum and copper every Thursday. The thieves with itchy skin who look for catalytic converters. The strange neighbor lady who I caught bathing herself in her lustral birdbath. It could be any number of them, but she certainly didn't leave on her own. As she had come.
I was prepared to call a local pet service which hunts for missing pets. The Pet FBI, or something like that. But, instead, I sat on the porch and waited. Then something came over me. Some uncommon feeling I had not known for a long time. At least not since I was a kid and waited for Santa Claus. Or for the Easter Bunny. Or the Tooth Fairy. Or for fireworks to erupt in the night sky on the Fourth of July when it seemed like they never would, though it was well past dark. It was something I had with Amelia and that Amelia had with God — Faith. So I sat there on the porch and waited for her, thinking of Amelia, recalling more memories, and classifying them where I thought they belong according to levels of sentimentality and fondness. Memories are all I have left and I hope not ever to lose them.
The conversation came up when we were in Salem, Massachusetts — about her dying. When we were strolling around looking at witches and for witches and witch things. It wasn't something we talked much about because it was important not to dwell upon death so much so that you lose life in the process, we knew. But once in a while when she had too much to drink, it would come up. We had just got back up to our room at the Hawthorne from the Halloween Ball in the hotel's ballroom. And before we made love, she made me promise that I would move on after and not live my life alone. Then she asked me to take her "doggy," but I didn't want to because it made me think of Harvey humping my friends. I could do it any other way. But since she was dying, I did it anyway, and in my mind Harvey butt-humped another chubby kid. One last time.
"There is so much wonder and love in this beautiful world of ours," she said peacefully afterwards, naked in a shroud of crisp white sheets. "For every slaughterhouse there are ten schools where children are learning something new. For every prison there are ten churches where people are finding love and hope. There are far more good people than bad. So many adventures to have. Doors to open. Windows to look out of. Beaches to walk upon. Museums to visit. Dreams to dream. Wonders to wonder about. Don't live alone, Nathaniel. Live like you're living now with me — with someone else. I want that for you. She will be lucky to have you."
I nodded, but it was the furthest thing from my mind. Plus, we were in costume as a Marie Antoinette and one of her many, many, many, many lovers — a joke between ourselves — so it seemed only like a role we were playing. There was no way that I would move on. There isn't even a term for it that wasn't sleazy to me. That desirous part of me would die with her, my grief would kill it, but I told the only lie I would ever tell her when I promised to move on, someday.
This absurd world of ours could be filled with desperate horny beautiful woman whose desirous appetites could only be satiated by me and me alone and I would have only one message for them — Let them eat bukkake. I laughed, sitting alone on that porch swing as it croaked, for that was the name of that absurd porno movie we watched all those years ago. I finally remembered it — Let Them Eat Bukkake — derived from Marie Antoinette's most indignant comment to the people of France.
It fast approached this year — the fifth year. My years are lived between that day every year, and it has become what December 31st is to most — the last of something. It is the 9th of June. And every year on the 9th of June I hear the respirators in the room where she lied. I smell the hospital in my nose. I hear the beeping of machines. The rise and fall of mechanical lungs. The opening and shutting of that heavy tomb-like door of her room. Distant indistinct pages on the hospital PA. The shuffle of feet in the hallway. The ruffling of paperwork on her chart. I can feel the sun from the window on my skin through that incredibly thick pane of glass, which at times make me feel like an ant under the focus of a cruel child's magnifying glass. Yet, I don't move because she holds my hand with a slight grip, and by moving I might unmend that gentle bond and lose it forever.
I can hear her breathing, and every so often when the morphine fails, she whimpers in pain, though she doesn't want to whimper in pain because she doesn't want me to cry anymore than I already have. She is selfless to the end. She is doing all she can to take it, but it hurts so damn much her grunts and groans tell me. And when the pain is at its worst, she softly pleads to me, "Kiss me, love." And I kiss her while pushing the button that begs for more morphine.
The drug takes effect again and she slowly fades away, but she is looking at me as she does, tears in her eyes like dewdrops on the spiderweb on the porch between the outside light and the mailbox she bought at the antique store I haven't been to since she died. Where Charlotte waits for her pig.
I read her that book, twice, when it was time to go. I hoped that she would go peacefully the way Charlotte went. I hoped God would have mercy. But He musn't have had any that day. He must have been all out because she suffered dreadfully to the point that I considered helping her go in some way that surely would be criminal, though arguably compassionate.
The flatline is what you'll not forget if ever you have the misfortune to be there when your wife passes away, or the look in her still and glassy eyes as the machine caterwauls. That is the terrible moment when you've been cheated out of everything you love by life and God, and its all over. Yet, people on the floor below you are praising God for helping them through a routine gallbladder surgery or hip replacement. "Prayers going up," and all those annoying banal things prayer whores disperse all over social media for anyone with a colonoscopy or a cold sore will infuriate you. I never considered any of that before it happened. I was not as bitter or jaded as I am now.
I have to admit that I was prejudiced against religion far before I met Amelia, so despite the inspiration of her love to believe in more than a pragmatic world that is based entirely in wants, needs and either lustful or malevolent emotions, her death left me all the more incredulous. Amelia was a devout Catholic and believed that God moved in all things no matter how big or small. God exists in a snail. In a maggot. In a single drop of rain. In a bead of sweat. She often scooped worms up off the sidewalk when it rained and returned them to the grass where they could burrow back into the dirt. She planted plants for bees and butterflies and she looked at me with a level of disenchantment when I raked the leaves because some small thing would find a home beneath them, but would be displaced if I raked them up. It was as though I were a tornado ripping up homes with my rake. So I always agreed to leave some somehwere. She was a steward of all good things and she was not proud or arrogant or self-righteous in the least. She was humble and simple, yet she was elegant and enchanting, perhaps, all the more so because of it. Because she tried not to be at all.
Even stricken with cancer she never lost hope or admitted any sense of doubt. The cancer, she said, was not God's doing. He got no blame for anything because He was blameless. It was one of those things that happens because of genetics. Because of chance. Because God doesn't control everything or make things happen or not happen. Because Eve ate the apple. Or the devil dips his fingers in life and stirs. Because man is flawed as much as God is not. It is not the worst thing to die, she opined once holding my hand after we had drank too much wine somewhere. The worst thing, she said, is losing you. But, undoubtedly, we will be together again, she promised. Not in the form of that which we possess now, of course. But as two bees. Two flowers no one remembers ever planting. Two trees with trunks twisted into one. Or maybe we will simply exist together in the wind. In the invisible things that one cannot see. Buried beneath leaves that someone doesn't rake.
Five years later, I was sitting on my porch to gather myself to make dinner. Everything was a labor without her. People walk past and say nice things of the yard because it is in full bloom and I had trimmed the edges and mowed. But all I did was maintain what she had planted, in honor of her. As though she were on vacation somehwere and would come back at any time. They were often the same people, but even if they were different, they had the same sort of grin. A grin that says hello and nice to see you and goodbye all at once, without saying anything at all.
Then suddenly she came walking up the sidewalk — and up the walkway to the porch — a hairy little dog that was in desperate need of a hair cut. It flopped down on the porch beside my feet as though to rest and it looked out onto the yard and the walkers who passed on their evening stroll. She did so with great contentment, the way a man climbs some mountain and sits atop it in splendiferous triumph.
"Well, make yourself at home," I joked. The dog already had. It made itself at home there at my feet and it let me pet it, whereupon I discovered it was a girl dog that bore no collar or tag to identify where it had come from.
"A vagabond, aye?"
I couldn't discern what breed she was. She looked something like a toy poodle or a bichon. Something like a cloud with legs. Like a clump of cotton balls, or a mass of dandelion spores that you could break apart and make wishes upon. I got her water and some vegetarian meatloaf and she seemed to enjoy it.
"I apologize, pup. I'm a vegetarian. So you might want to reconsider your choice of houses. The guy next door grills out nearly every night."
But she ignored me and didn't budge, licking the bowl clean. I waited on the porch for her owner to come running along asking if I'd seen a dog that looked like a puff of white smoke. Probably called Snowflake, or Cupcake, or something odd like that. I didn't know what to call her, but she had a fluff of unkempt hair that sat atop her which made her look like she was wearing a powdered wig, so she was Marie Antoinette to me. And so when no owner came along, and the mosquitoes started biting, we went inside.
"Marie Antoinette," I laughed.
On one of our adventures, Amelia decided to rent a porno on the hotel TV which was French and set during the French Revolution. She did so because we were playing the "Never Have I" game, and never had either of us watched a pornographic film. I believe it was called "Comme-ci Comme-ça," but I couldn't say for certain. I think that is what she jokingly called it, afterwards.
She thought I would enjoy it, but it was bizarre and I didn't care anything for pornography. "All men like porn," she bit back facetiously. So we watched it and laughed and after Marie Antoinette had sex with all of the King's court, including the jester, and all of her court, she was condemned to be beheaded. But instead, being "beheaded" had a much different meaning in the movie and it was a fabulous grand finalé finish for every angry Frenchman who finished on her face on the gallows, including the brutish and obese executioner, who for some reason ate an apple the entire time, while grunting and groaning assuredly lurid things in French that neither of us understood.
When the film was fini, I gave it a standing ovation, much to Amelia's amusement who laughed hysterically.
"Never again will I think of Marie Antoinette the same way," she said.
I laughed thinking about it, looking at that dog. Wondering what happened to the actual Marie Antoinette's head. It was one of those memories that I had nearly lost, but reclaimed thanks to my new pet. My new friend.
It was like Marie Antoinette owned the place. There wasn't any sniffing around or the usual curious dog inspection of the premises. She jumped right up on the couch and rested her fluffy head on the pillow and took a nap. When she needed to go out, she scratched at the door. When she wanted to come back in, she barked. When she wanted more water, she pushed her bowl with her nose to the middle of the kitchen floor. She rarely seemed peckish. She simply ate when she was fed. She ate what I ate, minus grapes, onions and chocolate. She fit right in and I began to notice that suddenly I was a little less lonely than before. My heart didn't feel as broken. And I realized a purpose in life outside of the mundanity of my 9-5 bank job.
I bought Marie Antoinette a collar and a leash and we walked nearly every night. We walked as Amelia and I had walked. The same route. I let her lead and she turned at all the right corners, inevitably finding home. She was a smart dog, that much could be said. She was well-behaved. And she made me realize what kind of a mischievous pervert Harvey, who humped most of the kids in the neighborhood, was.
But as I grew attached to her, I began to worry that someone might see Marie Antoinette and claim her, as it was likely she was from the neighborhood. So I bought her a pink bandana and personalized her as best I could. But if that day came, I guess, so it came. There wasn't anything I could do about it. I could not pretend she was not theirs, nor could I hide her in my house because I was fond of her. I let her outside without a leash, knowing she didn't need one. She came back everytime. She was a trustworthy dog. But eventually, she would pass. Or I would pass. And again, there would be one of us less the other. Sometimes, though, you're too busy loving someone to think about anything else.
It was quite obvious she needed groomed from the beginning and I knew nothing of clipping dog claws, nor of cutting dog hair. And you can watch all the online tutorials you want about shaving a hygiene strip on a dog's asshole, but it's never going to give you the confidence to ever do so, especially when you see the pink eye of their rectum winking at you as you hoist the trimmers in position with one hand, while lifting their shivering tail with the other. So I made her an appointment at a local groomer called The Doggy Parlor.
Marie Antoinette, which was shortened to just Marie as I grew to love her, didn't need a leash. It was all really a formality. We went inside for our appointment and she sat by my leg and I scratched her ears. Other dogs acted wild and tried to get out of their carriers or off their leashes, but Marie sat there beside me as calmly as can be imagined. A lady who appeared flummoxed commented that she was the most obedient dog she had seen and asked me my secret. I told her there was no secret, and that she was a stray.
"A stray?" she exclaimed aghast. "Well, if that doesn't beat all!"
It did, in fact, beat all. I walked Marie back to the groomer, holding the unnecesary leash, after the assistant called us up. There the groomer stood by what looked like an operating table and I suppose I must have stared. She was a beautiful woman and I realized standing there looking at her that she was the first woman I considered in that regard since Amelia died. It was a strange feeling — I was overcome by a confluence of conflict and guilt. All the while, I couldn't help but to look at her. She introduced herself as Allison Bright, and nervously I introduced Marie, but not myself. I had forgotten my own name in her presence. She smiled and held Marie like she was her own before asking what I wanted her to do.
"Um. What? To do?"
She smiled, which assuaged my nervousness at once. "I mean, what kind of haircut do you want for Ms. Marie?"
"Whatever — you think best."
She smiled and gave Marie a look of pleasant consternation, the way a child looks at a cloud to decide what it resembles. Allison was childlike in a way. Though she was somehwere in her thirties, I'd guess, she hadn't lost that good part of youth that one ought to keep, but that which most people lose before they're 21 in their blind rush to adulthood.
I looked at Marie and it was as though she smiled. Then Allison proclaimed, "I got it," and I sat in a chair nearby and told her the story of how the dog just showed up a month or so ago, out of the blue. How she got her name, though I didn't talk about the porn.
She told me it sounded like divine intervention and that we never meet anyone by accident. It is all by design, she claimed. The universe dictates it. Orders it. But it is up to us as to what becomes of those meetings. I didn't, however, tell her about Amelia. I wanted to tell her, because Amelia is always on my mind, but I didn't. I didn't tell anyone about Amelia because I wanted to keep her for myself and I wasn't panhandling for sympathy.
We had a wonderful conversation as she cut Marie's hair and made her look more presentable and less like a cloud. In honor of Marie Antoinette, she kept the tuft of hair on her head that looked like a powdered wig. And when Allison mentioned Marie Antoinette, I sheepishly chuckled. She was a fine-looking dog. She could be a show dog. Allison shampooed and dried her. Clipped her claws. Painted her nails pink. Then she put a lacey ribbon in her hair and off we went. I thanked Allison, who smiled at me in such a genuine way that I could not easily dismiss it. It was an involuntary feeling. She seemed as though she expected me to say something more. But I didn't say anything else. I coughed, nervously, then tripped over an old Labrador retriever who lied on his side outside the door. I think he was on his way to dying. I saw it in his eyes.
I took Marie home and there we sat on the porch watching cars pass, going places or coming home from places they had already been. People walking. Riding bicycles. All with some intent to do something. Either something grand or something modest. But, something, nonetheless. All with a determined purpose.
I meant to say something meaningful to Marie. To express to her how grateful I was she came along when she did. To explain to her why it is that I chuckled when I saw her, because of that ridiculous movie, the name of which I cannot now recall, only that it was not, "Comme Ci Comme Ça," or "Cum See Cum Saw." The memory of it was buried.
I wanted to tell her how happy I am that she got me out of the house and gave me a purpose again. My life had been drowned in sorrow. I didn't ever expect to ever get it back. It is something you sometimes don't realize you've had until you don't have it anymore. But it seemed strange to say such sentimental things to a dog — as though she could understand me. It is a shame we cannot talk to dogs, I thought. Or to pigs. I thought, for some reason, about a pig I saw on the way to the slaugterhouse a while back. I felt so damn sorry for it, watching it naively smile with its nose poked out of the hole of the trailer and that pale blue eye peering out to see what it could see in its last few hours of life. What it must have thought, I wonder. It smiled at me. I am happy Amelia never saw it.
I felt guilty for being attracted to the pet groomer, but it was good to feel that way again. To feel that semblance of love that I had thought not possible to again feel. That attraction made me feel alive. I thought of going back and talking to her. Asking her if she'd like to sit on the porch with me or to have dinner. Just to talk to her. Just to see her smile and to imbue in me something that had been lost. But I buried the thought and decided not to refer to her by name and to do my best to forget her altogether because it was a betrayal of my wife. I have never described myself as a widower, and I haven't taken off my ring, and no one or nothing will make me move on or to be unfaithful. No Dear Abby, or all the bad advice from all the counselors in the world will ever convince me that I must move on.
A few days later, I let Marie out and when I went to let her in she was gone. I frantically searched the yard and the neighborhood to no avail. It was so unusual that I thought she must have been taken, so I called the police who said there was nothing they could do besides to take a report. I began to indict the usual suspects. The druggies who walk by. The scrappers who troll the neighborhood trash for aluminum and copper every Thursday. The thieves with itchy skin who look for catalytic converters. The strange neighbor lady who I caught bathing herself in her lustral birdbath. It could be any number of them, but she certainly didn't leave on her own. As she had come.
I was prepared to call a local pet service which hunts for missing pets. The Pet FBI, or something like that. But, instead, I sat on the porch and waited. Then something came over me. Some uncommon feeling I had not known for a long time. At least not since I was a kid and waited for Santa Claus. Or for the Easter Bunny. Or the Tooth Fairy. Or for fireworks to erupt in the night sky on the Fourth of July when it seemed like they never would, though it was well past dark. It was something I had with Amelia and that Amelia had with God — Faith. So I sat there on the porch and waited for her, thinking of Amelia, recalling more memories, and classifying them where I thought they belong according to levels of sentimentality and fondness. Memories are all I have left and I hope not ever to lose them.
The conversation came up when we were in Salem, Massachusetts — about her dying. When we were strolling around looking at witches and for witches and witch things. It wasn't something we talked much about because it was important not to dwell upon death so much so that you lose life in the process, we knew. But once in a while when she had too much to drink, it would come up. We had just got back up to our room at the Hawthorne from the Halloween Ball in the hotel's ballroom. And before we made love, she made me promise that I would move on after and not live my life alone. Then she asked me to take her "doggy," but I didn't want to because it made me think of Harvey humping my friends. I could do it any other way. But since she was dying, I did it anyway, and in my mind Harvey butt-humped another chubby kid. One last time.
"There is so much wonder and love in this beautiful world of ours," she said peacefully afterwards, naked in a shroud of crisp white sheets. "For every slaughterhouse there are ten schools where children are learning something new. For every prison there are ten churches where people are finding love and hope. There are far more good people than bad. So many adventures to have. Doors to open. Windows to look out of. Beaches to walk upon. Museums to visit. Dreams to dream. Wonders to wonder about. Don't live alone, Nathaniel. Live like you're living now with me — with someone else. I want that for you. She will be lucky to have you."
I nodded, but it was the furthest thing from my mind. Plus, we were in costume as a Marie Antoinette and one of her many, many, many, many lovers — a joke between ourselves — so it seemed only like a role we were playing. There was no way that I would move on. There isn't even a term for it that wasn't sleazy to me. That desirous part of me would die with her, my grief would kill it, but I told the only lie I would ever tell her when I promised to move on, someday.
This absurd world of ours could be filled with desperate horny beautiful woman whose desirous appetites could only be satiated by me and me alone and I would have only one message for them — Let them eat bukkake. I laughed, sitting alone on that porch swing as it croaked, for that was the name of that absurd porno movie we watched all those years ago. I finally remembered it — Let Them Eat Bukkake — derived from Marie Antoinette's most indignant comment to the people of France.
Five hours later, Marie came back. But unlike how she came the first time, this time she came in a car that pulled up to the curb. The brakes squealed as it parked and I smiled at her happy face in the passenger window as she grinned and barked at me. She had got me, I knew by that rouguish grin on her furry face. Then the driver's door opened and out came the purpose of the dog — the dog groomer — Allison.
"Hello, Nathaniel," she called. "Are you missing someone?"
Sure enough, Marie ran to me and did circles around my legs as if to wrangle me with an imaginary rope. As though to celebrate in that she outwitted me as she had. She was carrying in her mouth a squeaky toy. It was a pig and she happily dropped it at my feet as though to rub it in.
I knew then who she was. I suppose, I knew all along, or rather, I felt it all along. She was Amelia and the pig toy confirmed it. As crazy as it sounds, my wife returned as a stray dog. She came back. And I remembered when she said as she lied there dying that she would do everything she could do to come back. But I figured it would be in a cool breeze that I wouldn't recognize. Or in the moonglow. Or maybe as a clichéd cardinal. That pig was her sign. Her happy and intentional declaration to me. She told me she wanted to save a pig from slaughter someday. If it was a boy she wanted to call it Deuce Pigalow, and if it was a girl her name would be Amy Swinehouse.
"She picked that out of a box of toys," Allison said. "She was quite insistent — as I was to bring her home to you."
"You could have called. I would have come over and —"
"It was on the way. Really. I was going home and I just live up around the corner there, so I thought I'd return her to you. I love happy reunions."
"Yes. I do, too," I replied, looking at my clever wife, that playful ball of slightly less white fluff. She looked up at me and I knew what she was doing. She loved me so much that she was playing matchmaker.
"I got to say, it's kind of strange that of all places she runs to, she comes to the groomers. I've had dogs that have enjoyed it. But — not that much."
"Well, Marie Antoinette is quite the strange one."
"Ain't she sweet?"
"Sweet as sugar," I replied. "Sweet as sugar."
Marie gave Allison an approving bark. I would imagine she said many things in that bark that I don't understand, but that I could guess. Like those Frenchmen in that movie. I knew why she ran away and went to the groomers. She knew I'd never go back. What an actress she was this time around. My God, how much I miss her.
"You're going to think I am crazy, Ms. Bright," I reluctantly began just as Marie rolled on the ground and whimpered, happy as a pig in mud, "but there is more than meets the eye about Marie."
"That so?"
"Yeah. That dog is my wife who passed away five years ago. She has come back to life, as a dog, to play matchmaker. And I think she thinks she has succeeded, but in telling you this, I've turned the tables on her, and you will leave here thinking I am absolutely crazy. You cannot possibly think anything else of me. Thus, her diabolical plan has failed. She might love me so much that she came back as a dog to play matchmaker, but I love her so much that I thwarted her best effort to match me. So I win. Sorry, Ms. Bright. And sorry, Ms. Marie," I boasted triumphantly.
Allison was befuddled, it was clear. But she stood there quietly and then she suddenly smiled at Marie.
"Well, I'm sorry to say, Nathaniel, that your wife once more got the better of you. And please, call me Allison. She told me the entire story on the way over. She said you would probably do just what you did and make your best effort to chase me away. But she also told me what kind of man you are, and that is a beautiful and wonderful thing. I don't ever want to replace her, or for you to take off your ring, or to take her pictures down from the shelf. I don't want you to forget her at all. But I am interested in seeing you. In that way. To live, laugh, and love with you. If all that is not too premature, that is? Wait — I'm sorry — I sound like a throw pillow at a Target."
"She talked to you?!"
Allison nodded.
"Amelia?!"
But just as I turned to look at my wife, she floated up off the ground like a dandelion spore just out of my reach. Like a little canine hot-air balloon departing. I suppose I was too profoundly mesmerized to say anything. Or there was too much I wanted to say to get any of it out. But Allison reached down and grabbed my hand as Amelia ascended very peacefully until she was indiscernible amongst a sky full of perfect white clouds. She disappeared like Marie Antoinette's head.
"Let them eat bukkake," I whispered, feebly to myself, and to Amelia. "Goodbye, love."
"She talked to you?!"
Allison nodded.
"Amelia?!"
But just as I turned to look at my wife, she floated up off the ground like a dandelion spore just out of my reach. Like a little canine hot-air balloon departing. I suppose I was too profoundly mesmerized to say anything. Or there was too much I wanted to say to get any of it out. But Allison reached down and grabbed my hand as Amelia ascended very peacefully until she was indiscernible amongst a sky full of perfect white clouds. She disappeared like Marie Antoinette's head.
"Let them eat bukkake," I whispered, feebly to myself, and to Amelia. "Goodbye, love."
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