Eight Minutes (10 page)

One night, after dinner, I flip through a magazine while Eric, on his fourth beer of the night, explains the two-by-two method, which means that no firefighter should enter a burning building alone. If there are two inside, he says to Toby, there have to be two outside, backing you up in case the roof collapses.

“The house can faw down.”

“Right.”

“Kay’s mad about the dog.”

“Oh, please.” Eric’s voice has taken a bitter tone that causes me to look up. “That’s just stupid. You want to tell her something, tell her that.”

Toby screams, “I don’t want to!”

Thud startles from his corner, his dog tags clinking as he shakes himself awake.

“Eric,” I hiss. “What are you doing?”

“How can anyone get mad about saving a dog?” Thud thumps his tail on the floor and comes over to Eric, ready to play. He ignores me and talks to the dog. “Isn’t that right, big guy?”

He rubs Thud’s head before he gets up to throw his beer bottle in the trash.

Toby starts crying.

“Come here, baby.” I put the magazine down and crouch down to Toby’s level to receive his chubby arms around my neck. I whisper in his ear, “Daddy’s just being silly. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I’ll make sure. Who’s the boss of John Robberson?”

“Me?”

“That’s right.” I pick him up. “Let’s go upstairs.” I can’t be in the same room with Eric right now.

After I put Toby to bed, I’ve calmed down enough to ask Eric, with the most neutral tone I can muster, to explain what he’s doing with the game.

He finds ESPN, mutes the TV, and answers, matching my tone, explaining that he changed the game on purpose, after our last talk, kind of like a test. He wanted to see if Toby would follow him. It worked. Toby followed him, so he thinks that proves there is nothing to it.

“Why’s he talking about rotten eggs? What do rotten eggs have to do with anything?”

“Sulfur. It’s a sign of a chemical fire. Means you have to use hazmats.”

“And booby traps?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Eric.”

“Meth houses. Those guys don’t want anyone poking around, so they rig the house with booby traps. Sometimes first responders get caught in them.”

“Meth houses? You’re teaching a three-year-old about meth houses? He plays that game with Sanjay. Yesterday, they were on the playground, yelling about booby traps. How am I supposed to explain that?”

“Ah, come on, I don’t tell him why they have booby traps. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“All right, maybe I went too far with that one,” he says. “I’m sorry. But it perfectly makes my point.”

“Which is?”

“There’s no way Toby knew about any of that stuff, no way. But when we play, he acts like he’s known all along.”

“I’m still stuck at the part where you teach our three-year-old about meth houses.”

“I’m not . . . I’m just giving him details . . . to prove a point. To you.”

“Which is?”

“John Robberson has nothing to do with it. I told you this before. He’s just an amped-up version of me. I take him to a flight museum, and John Robberson was a pilot. I broke my leg, so Toby says John Robberson broke his leg. We see a fire truck, and all of a sudden John Robberson was a fire chief.”

“John Robberson
was
a fire chief.”

“So?”

“You’ve gone too far.” I can’t stop my frustrated tears, but I control my voice. “Stop the game.”

“I would if I thought it was hurting him.”

“What if it is? Think about that. What if it is actually hurting our son, and you just won’t acknowledge it?”

“I would never hurt Toby.”

“Not on purpose, no. But what if you weren’t so sure? Why keep doing it?” I ball my fists over my eyes to compose myself. “You made your point.”

Finally, I pull his face back toward me. “Search your rational, logical brain and explain it to me. Give me one reason you are determined to keep playing the game. Why it’s so important for you.” I let go of his face. “If you can’t do that, I have to conclude the only reason you keep doing it is to piss me off.”

He looks at me a long time before he speaks. “I don’t know why you feel the need to make this about us. But it’s getting old, Shelly. Really old.”

He grabs the remote and pushes the volume key, extinguishing the silent static between us as the room fills with television chatter. We watch a miserable half hour of the local news. He flips me the remote. Over his shoulder, on his way to the bedroom, he says, “Okay. You win. I was out of line about the meth house stuff. I’ll stop playing”—he makes air quotes—“the game.”

The air quotes make me mad, but I feel we’ve had a breakthrough.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THUD

T
he less we talk, the earlier Eric runs. But I don’t say that, because he would say it’s because we live in the desert and do I have any idea what it feels like to run six miles in the ninety-degree heat? Do I want him to drop dead from dehydration?

The next morning, he wakes up with the first beam of sunlight in our window. He says he has to complete his five miles before eight o’clock or it will be too hot. Thud’s leash jangles, and I can hear his doggy toenails on the tile floor. That dog loves to run.

When they return, Toby and I are having breakfast and it’s almost nine. “What took so long?” I say. “Everything okay?”

Eric ignores me. “Come on, buddy,” he says, as he gets Thud some fresh water in his bowl. The dog’s back is arched, and he’s moving like an eighty-year-old man. On top of that, he’s wheezing. He won’t lie down. He ignores the water.

“Is he okay?”

Eric explains that everything was fine until he stopped for a restroom break at the sports complex nearby. He tied Thud’s leash to the water fountain while he went in and didn’t notice anything was wrong until about fifteen minutes after the break, when Thud was slowing down and struggling to breathe. The dog wouldn’t run anymore, and Eric could barely get him to walk the rest of the way back home.

Thud is making a painful wheezing noise with each inhale. The poor dog pushes his head down toward the floor with every breath, almost like a gag, almost like he’s trying to cough out a hairball but doesn’t have the energy.

Toby hops down from the breakfast table, and I stop him. “No, baby, I think you need to leave Thud alone for now.”

Thud makes a short, low harrumph, almost like a cough. He steadies himself, front legs in a wide stance, head down, like he’s going to puke.

I whisper to Eric, “He looks terrible.”

“I know,” he snaps. “Where’s that twenty-four-hour animal hospital?”

I tell him the intersection and push him out the door. “I’ll call the office and tell them you’ll be late.”

“Is Thud okay?” Toby asks in a shaky voice.

“Daddy will take care of him. The doctor will take care of him.”

I call Eric’s office and tell one of the engineers, an old fart (judging from how he sounds), that we’ve had a dog emergency this morning and that Eric should be in before noon. He asks me if Eric knows about the conference call he’s supposed to be on, and I ask him if he’s ever owned a dog and hang up before he can answer.

As soon as they leave, I ask Toby to help me load the dishwasher. We bring a step stool to the kitchen sink so he can see how I rinse everything before loading it. I’m taking my time and we spend a long time at the sink, and still, no word from Eric. My she-bear is kicking into gear on behalf of the dog.

My phone rings, and I answer without looking. It’s Pauline, still worked up about the grow house. She heard about Mrs. Gilliam’s man in the white van, and now she wants to do background checks on new homeowners to keep this from happening again.

I launch into a way-too-detailed explanation of why that is a horrible idea. Logistically impossible. Not just impossible. Fundamentally wrong. Maybe illegal. I’m talking too fast and my heart rate is up, so I take a breath. Toby is getting restless, my dog is sick, and I can’t think about this right now. I tell her as much, and at least it gets her to shift gears. She launches into a me-too story about how the vet saved their schnauzer.

Still no word from Eric. Toby decides to work with his watercolors, so I set him up on the back porch, laying newspaper everywhere. I keep him company while he paints with his brushes, then the sponges, then his fingers. Finally I join in, and we paint pictures of the dog, using our thumbs to make the black spots. Toby’s pictures have Thud on a fire truck. Thud barking at a burning house.

“He’d better be careful,” I say, pointing to how close he’s drawn the dog to the fire.

“I know,” he says, “because if he goes in the house, he’ll die.”

“Let’s put the watercolors away now, all right?”

My phone is in my pocket, and I keep checking it. When Eric finally calls, his words come out in a rush.

“They think he swallowed a bee. Maybe he was messing with it around the water fountain. The vet said it wasn’t the running that got him; it was the time it took for the sting to start to swell in his throat. Thud was really struggling for the last mile. I should’ve carried him.” His voice cracks, but it holds together, like high-impact glass that shatters but retains its shape.

I walk with my phone to the bedroom and close the door behind me so Toby won’t hear. “You didn’t know. As soon as you realized—”

“I should’ve noticed earlier.”

“He’s going to be okay, right? What did they do for him?”

“He’s in an oxygen tank, and they loaded him up with an antihistamine. Now all they can do is watch him and make sure it’s working. If they can keep the swelling down, they can keep his air passage open and he should be okay. I had to sign a form saying they could do a tracheotomy if they needed to.”

The cracked glass in his voice finally seems to give way, as if the word
tracheotomy
sends it crashing to the floor.

I manage to say, “Do you want me to come up there and wait with you? I could drop Toby off.”

He clears his throat. “No, I’m still in my shorts. I had that conference call, which I’ve already missed, and there’s a lunch meeting. I have to make that one. I have to present the schedule for phase three and talk about—” He hesitates, and I can hear the weight on his vocal chords. He sighs. “Anyway, I can’t miss it. There’s nothing to do here. They say they’ll call me and give me updates on his condition. It won’t do any good to sit here.”

“Are you sure? Seems like one of us should go and sit there.”

“They won’t let you see him, and it doesn’t make any sense to go to the vet’s waiting room and sit. They’ll call.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Tell Toby we’re taking care of him. Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. Are you okay?”

I can hear him straighten and can picture him pulling his broad, freckled shoulders back, bracing himself. “Be there in a few.”

Maybe ten minutes later, Eric explodes through the door, shucking his sweaty T-shirt into the laundry bin as he hops out of his running shoes. I hold Toby in my arms to keep him from darting underfoot. I hear the shower water running and Eric’s cell phone ringing. The shower turns off.

Silence.

I have a bad feeling about it and strain to hear. It could be someone from work. Or a wrong number. I’m hoping it’s anything, anyone except the call I already know it is. I feel a nudge and look behind me, but nobody’s there.

“Maybe,” I say out loud, “maybe it’s good news.” But as soon as I say the words, I can almost hear a loud buzzer in my head: no, wrong answer. On that hunch, I take Toby outside to check on the garden, walking on queasy knees and talking too cheerfully. I don’t tell Toby that Thud is okay, because I’m pretty sure he’s never going to be okay again.

I realize I feel worse for Eric than I do for poor old Thud. It’s as if some nasty mess has landed in my house and all I can think about is how to clean it up. My mouth is dry and my hands feel shaky, but when I check, my outstretched hand looks still. I wish I were one of those people who can cry as soon as something sad happens, but I’m not. I look for something to fix. Nothing sinks in with me until there’s nothing left to do about it.

The next thing I see is Eric standing in the patio doorway, and I know by the look on his face that Thud is gone. I point at Toby with a shrug and he holds up a finger, indicating he needs a minute. He turns back inside, and I can feel his sobs in my chest. When he reappears on the patio, I try to hug him, but he shrugs me off to blow his nose.

“Come inside, Toby, let’s go talk to Daddy. Inside.”

We explain it to Toby in simple terms, that Thud’s body stopped working.

“Why?”

Eric kicks into a way-too-long explanation about throats and lungs and how everyone needs air to live. As Toby starts to try to hold his breath for as long as he can, I interrupt.

I tell him about the bee sting, how it swelled up and made it so Thud couldn’t breathe on his own anymore. Eric adds that the vet thought that maybe Thud was allergic to bees because he had such a strong reaction.

“Not all bee stings mean you can’t breathe,” I clarify.

“Most bee stings,” Eric is quick to add, “you get a swollen spot, and it hurts, but you’re okay.” He takes a deep breath. “The problem,” he explains, “is that Thud’s swollen spot was inside his throat.”

“But why didn’t the doctor make it better?”

I explain that the vet tried, but Thud was too sick and couldn’t get enough air for the medicine to work. “It was too late.”

Toby nods. I’m not sure if he accepts this so easily, or if what actually happened simply hasn’t sunk in. I watch him carefully.

We’re sitting on the floor of the living room, with our backs leaning against the sofa, the soft carpet cushioning the blow. Toby comes out of my lap and goes to Eric, who is sitting cross-legged and heartbroken. I doubt Toby has ever seen him look this miserable. He sits on his daddy’s right thigh and put his hands on the side of Eric’s face.

Eric crushes him in a hug.

Toby wriggles loose, stands up in the circle of Eric’s legs, and faces him. Even though Eric’s eyes are dry, Toby kisses his daddy’s right eye with a gentle touch and a soft “mmm,” then kisses his left eye, like we always do for him when he cries.

“All better, Daddy?”

“Not yet, buddy, but you showed me you love me, and that makes me feel better. I’m super-duper sad about Thud. I’m going to miss him.”

My eyes spill over, watching Toby display such empathy. This is the best lesson Toby can take from this. Thud was part of our family. Eric will miss him the most, and Toby somehow understands.

I put my head on Eric’s other shoulder. “Thud loved you as much as you loved him.”

He puts his arm around me and pulls me close. It’s the first gentle gesture he’s made in a long time. My eyes spill over with tears of longing as I snuggle into his neck.

Eric says, “Toby, I need to talk to your mom. Can you play in your room for a few minutes?”

Toby complies without a word.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

He breaks down and sobs, his arms clinging to me as he yields the weight of his entire body to our embrace. “I’m here,” I say as I cry right along with him, wondering if his grief about Thud is triggering something else. “I’m right here.”

When the first wave passes, he wipes his face with the backs of his hands. I hand him a box of tissues and take a couple for myself.

“Feel any better?”

“I’m a wreck,” he says. “Sorry about that.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. It’s good to let it out,” I assure him. “I’m glad I could be here for you.”

He nods. The air between us feels heavy, expectant. “I’ve never cried that hard,” he finally says.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, as gently as I can. “Sometimes it helps me process the emotion if I can put words to it.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t realize what was going on with him.” His voice breaks. “How can I be that tuned out?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to explain. I just feel . . . I don’t know . . . disconnected.”

I nod.

“It’s not like me, not to notice how much he was struggling.”

“Eric. It’s not your fault. You did everything you could do, once you realized . . .” My voice trails off. “Even if you’d noticed earlier, I’m not sure there was anything you could’ve done. You were still a long way away.”

He says, “I feel like I’m a long way away from everything in my life.”

I hug him. “Come back, then.”

Eventually, Eric says he has to get to work, so I offer to pick up Thud from the vet. I call Lakshmi to see if she can watch Toby for a few minutes so he won’t have to see the body. Getting our pet’s corpse from the vet is the kind of thing I can do dry-eyed, as long as I do it quick and don’t have to talk to anyone. I don’t argue about the bill, even though it seems inordinate to me. I sit in the waiting room—the one I didn’t go sit in earlier, when the dog was alive. Soon, the vet’s assistant appears, and I don’t know whether he’s being polite or rude, but he loads the cardboard box in the back of my car without speaking.

After making such an unexpected connection with Eric, I don’t feel quite as sad as before. I turn on the radio on the way back home, feel guilty about it, and ride the rest of the way in silence. Good ole Thud. Even on his way out, he’s had a positive effect on our family.

I wonder where Thud’s spirit is right now, and think about what I will say if Toby asks me that. I’m going to stick with heaven as the right answer, I suppose.

When I return, I place the cardboard box that holds Thud’s body on a low shelf in the garage. Toby and I make a list of all the things Thud liked to do and gather up all his doggie toys. We make a trip to the home-improvement store to buy some wood to make a grave marker.

I barely remember the daze of making funeral arrangements for my mom, except that it gave us tasks to perform while the reality sunk in. I’m hoping this will be true for Toby, that by doing the rituals with him, it will become more real for him.

When Eric sees our handiwork that night, he hugs Toby and tells him how much it means to him. He invites Toby to watch as he goes into the backyard to dig a hole for Thud’s grave. When he’s ready, I help him retrieve Thud’s body from the garage. Standing over the grave, I read aloud our list of the things Thud loved to do and the reasons he was a good dog. Eric talks about how much he and Thud loved to run together and tells stories of when Thud was a puppy. With a thick voice, he tells Thud he’s sorry he didn’t know about the bee. I finally cry at that one. Eric gets choked up, but Toby seems fine. Who knows what he’s thinking about right now?

Toby holds Eric’s hand and says with finality, “And he wasn’t in a fire.”

Only he says “fi-wah.” I ruffle his curly hair and refuse to ruminate on what the hell a fire has to do with anything.