On the Divinity of Second Chances (20 page)

I set down the magazine on the table before me. I don’t know how long I’ve been holding it, appearing to be reading it but really thinking about my wife, and I don’t know how long the woman at the next table has been staring at me. She shyly looks back at her book when I notice her attention. She’s smaller than Anna, with medium-length blonde hair, and maybe ten years younger than us.

A little flustered, I get up to put the
Forbes
back on the rack. I set it down, turn around to see what the blonde woman is doing, and there she is, staring at me again. I give her an embarrassed smile, and she returns it. Oh, my God, there’s an opportunity here I never considered. I could have a second chance at love; I could have a whole new beginning. Yes, I could just cut my losses and start over. This time I could be the man I should have been with Anna.

I look toward the door, pause, and think, but before I can make a decision, I notice Jade come in and put something on the bulletin board. I quickly walk over to catch her before she leaves. “Hey . . .” I stop in my tracks. On the flyer is a picture of her dog. That dog is my daughter’s whole world. “Oh, no,” I murmur. She recognizes my voice, turns around, begins to sob, and clings to me. “Oh, no . . .”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the blonde woman watching me. I don’t look directly at her.

“Okay . . . okay, we need an action plan,” I think aloud. “Have you checked the animal shelter?” She nods into my shoulder. “Have you reported this to the police?” She nods again. “Have you called all the veterinarians in the area?” She nods again. “Have you put ads in the newspaper?” She nods again. “Have you called the radio station?” She shakes her head. “Okay, I can do that, and I can offer a reward.” She nods. “Okay, should we get back in the game here? Let’s go to the phone outside and call the radio station, and then let’s continue to put up flyers and look for her.” She nods, lifts her blotchy face from my shoulder, pulls a tissue from one of the pockets on her cutoff army pants, and blows loudly. “Okay, we’re going to get through this,” I say like it’s all under control, even though it’s not.

Grace on the Veil
(July 3)

I stand next to Jade at the counter of the
Mont Soleil Journal
, while she fills out a classified ad form. Sometime in the night, Aretha disappeared. She blames herself for not tying her up.

“Lost: Rottweiler-Husky female, 8 years old. Missing bottom front tooth. Just skunked. Last seen near lifts Friday night. Please return her. I need my dog girl back. I’m falling apart. 788-2174,” she has written. “How much?” she asks the newspaper lady.

Newspaper Lady examines the ad and looks at Jade compassionately. “No charge for lost and found pets.”

“That’s really nice of you,” Jade replies.

“I hope you get her back,” Newspaper Lady says.

Jade nods and starts crying and turns to walk out the door.

“Are you okay?” asks Newspaper Lady.

Jade doesn’t turn around. She shakes her head as she walks out the door. I put my arm around her and walk away with her. She cannot see me today. She is in Hell.

Jade takes her flyer to Otto’s Office Supplies to xerox it two hundred times in black-and-white and six times in color. I stand next to her, unnoticed.

“Two hundred,” Jade tells the clerk.

The clerk glances at the flyer as she rings Jade up. “Dog missing, huh? I’m sorry,” she says.

Jade nods as her eyes well up with tears, and she bites her lip. She takes her change, her flyers, and gets out the door before she starts sobbing again.

She buys a staple gun and staples at the hardware store, and carries them with her flyers in her “Choose to Re-Use” canvas bag. She hits the grocery stores, then the library, where she runs into her dad. This, of course, I orchestrated, knowing she needed some help and support. Together, they wander the streets of Mont Soleil. She shuffles like a zombie, bursting into tears intermittently while posting flyers and looking in people’s backyards for her dog.

At the end of the day, Jade goes home and checks her messages, hoping someone has called. Her outgoing message on the machine says, “I think my dog is dead. I don’t feel like talking to anybody and I sure don’t feel like massaging anybody.”

Hip Problem Lady’s voice comes on. “Oh, I’m sorry about your dog. Call me when you feel better.” Then there are two hang-up messages.

I go next door and visit Josh. He’s folding laundry. “You go next door and check on my girl,” I tell him. He can’t see me. Sometimes, though, when I talk to people, they hear something and think it’s their own thought. “I said”—I knock my voice up a couple notches—“you get yourself next door and check on my girl!” He pauses, looks out the window, and puts his laundry down.

I return to Jade. There’s a knock at the door. It’s Josh. Good boy. “I haven’t heard your fire alarm go off today. I was worried about you.” He gives her his million-dollar smile.

“I think Aretha’s dead,” she spits out, and begins to fold over, crying.

“Oh . . .” he says tenderly. He catches her before she completely buckles over, puts his arms around her, and rocks her gently.

“That’s right,” I tell him. “You stay with her.”

Over the following week, Jade’s flyers soliciting the return of Aretha turn from simply stating the facts to featuring a picture of her hugging Aretha and shamelessly begging for the return of her dog, her family: “I like to believe in divine order. I like to believe that somewhere out there a kid wanted a dog so bad that the universe/God had to put into motion a chain of events that would drop my awesome dog at her door to show her parents that 1) the kid needs a dog, and 2) dogs won’t destroy your home or your life. Once that need is established and the fear’s dispelled, please return my dog and go find a real stray. The animal shelter is full of animals that need nice humans like you. But as for Aretha, she and I belong together. She is my family. You’ve got to give her back.”

One caller told her he delivered something to a house on Ridge View and saw a dog that looked just like the one in the photo on the poster. Jade rushed out there, crying in the truck, so hopeful, wanting it so much, butterflies in her stomach as she rang the doorbell. The man who answered the door was on the phone and gave her a signal to wait. The dog was behind him. It wasn’t her. It was a rottweiler-golden retriever. It didn’t look like Aretha at all to Jade. Her heart sank. It wasn’t her.

Another caller was sure he saw her by a Dumpster behind the mini-mart. She ran a spiral around town beginning at the mini-mart, hoping, hoping so much, but returned home more disheartened and in a deeper state of despair.

Yet another person called late at night because she had just seen the flyer. She was sure she and her mom saw Aretha at Frog Lake. Jade put on a coat over her pajamas, put on her hiking boots, and sped out the West Road to Frog Lake. Frog Lake sits in a deep valley, where Jade felt dwarfed by the mountains, dwarfed by her helplessness. She parked, but remained sitting on her truck, and sang Aretha’s name. She sang terms of endearment. “Where’s my good dog?” Her voice bounced off all the mountains around her. She kept singing pleas for her dog to return, creating a chorus of echoes. It occurred to her that the mountains not only bounced her voice across the valley, but higher up each time, too, up to the stars, up to the heavens, to where she imagined Aretha to be. In truth, Aretha was right next to her, just three feet off the ground. The geography of Heaven is a common misconception. In truth, it’s just three feet off the surface of the Earth. That’s why when you die and go through the tunnel, it’s a horizontal tunnel and not a vertical shaft. I put my arm around Jade. She seemed to sense me. “Girl, your dog has crossed over. She’s right here. She’s still with you even though you can’t see her, just like me.” Jade began that wailing again as her suspicion grew that Aretha had not been kidnapped—really, who would want a stinky dog in their house?

There was no moon that night, only the dark, dark Earth, and the bright, bright heavens.

Through her sobs, Jade sang, “I love you, sweet girl, I love you, my sweet dog girl . . .” and let it fill the valley, and let the mountains bounce her message back and forth and lift it right up to where she thought Heaven was.

I wish Jade could have seen me and known I was there with my arm around her, but she simply could not. Grief and fear are blinders. This is the root of Hell. Hell is the illusion of our separateness from God. Jade felt very separate. For the next month, in this way, Jade stays in Hell. She can no longer see divinity in all the things she used to. She is blind.

Later, when the density of Jade’s fear and grief lifts enough, I will talk to her about this night, about how Aretha heard her song from the other side, and how it was beautiful for her.

As Jade grows to accept Aretha is almost surely gone, she wants to sleep outside where she can look up at the stars and see Aretha’s new home. She imagines Aretha flying across the sky in a royal blue shiny cape, and in this dream Aretha has her tail back. Jade used to ache thinking about how someone cut it off before their lives came together. What kind of person chops off puppy tails? She loved the idea of her dog being back intact. But the peace Jade finds for a few moments when she looks at the stars does not last. Like a small patch of blue sky in a rainstorm, those moments of peace, too, are only a sucker hole.

Forrest on Flashbacks
(July 4)

While I scavenge food left behind on tables on the deck of the Java Joint, a poster on a nearby telephone pole catches my eye. My sister’s dog. I freeze for a moment, and then put one more sandwich in my pocket and leave.

I should go see Jade. I should offer to help somehow. But I start thinking, what if someone did something to Aretha? Could I trust myself if someone did something to my sister’s dog? And then I just started seeing fire everywhere, everything on fire.

I walk quickly out toward the lifts, out of town, and back up into the hills.

Olive on What to Wear When You Marry the Earth
(July 4)

“So, are you going to marry the Earth?” Mom asks me as we mix another batch of mud.

“I might,” I answer. It’s personal.

“I’d like to paint it,” Mom announces.

“Paint what?”

“Paint you marrying the Earth.”

“In a way, isn’t that what this house is? I mean, how much more in partnership can I live with her than to live inside her? I’m already marrying her.”

Mom stands up, looks around for a towel of some sort, and finally wipes her muddy hands on her black pants. “I just can’t picture how this batch of mud is eventually going to make a suitable house for you and your baby. I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Olive.”

“I know it’s hard to picture, but it’s going to be great, Mom. I’m not the first to do this, you know.”

“Well, I do know that if you’re serious about marrying the Earth, we’re going to do it right.”

So I found myself, just beginning to show, in a sheer gold chiffon toga wearing a crown of wheat on my head while she painted me in a field of golden wheat. It didn’t stop there. Next, I wore a short green chiffon toga with a crown of Russian olive leaves and willow leaves in a thicket near a creek. At first, I was peeking out around a tree, sort of hugging it, but then Mom decided I should be entwined in the branches of the tree, so she gave me a leg up and I scratched myself all up finding a position aesthetically pleasing and interesting to paint. After that, she painted me in the green toga again in a field of Grandma’s sunflowers, but this time I wore the gold chiffon on my head with a wreath of sunflowers over it. Last, she really pushed it by getting me to stand in the pond wrapped in blue chiffon with a crown of lily pads on my head. The lily pads were big and kept flopping in my face. I know there had to be snakes nearby, too. Still, Mom seemed genuinely happy for the first time I can remember, so I stood in the slime and did whatever she asked.

That night, Mom, Beatrice, Grandma Pearl, and I go to the Summerville Fourth of July supper picnic in Memorial Park. Grandma leads us to the potluck table and sets down her snake kabobs. Beatrice is horrified. I survey the other things on the table. All the potluck dishes appear to have mayonnaise in them. I have a new and intense revulsion to mayonnaise.

Men barbecue, children chase each other, and people sit on blankets eating their mayonnaise-based foods. I catch a whiff of something that smells good and follow it to, of all things, a hot dog stand. I give the man two dollars, take my hot dog, and sink my teeth into it. While I chew, I realize it needs catsup and mustard.

I look up to see Hazel smiling at me. “How is that hot dog treating you?”

“The baby wanted a hot dog,” I say with a shrug. “I didn’t even like these when I was a kid.”

“It’s a mystery,” she says with a chuckle.

“We’re over there,” I tell her, point to the others, and make my way back.

Sitting there on the blanket with my grandmas and my mom, and my hot dog, and looking at the fathers begin to set off their safe and sane fireworks in the sandbox, I’m happy. I watch some children with sparklers and some that chase each other and smile, knowing that’s what lies ahead for my little one.

Anna on Coming Home
(July 7)

On the way home, I think of paintings I’d like to do of Jade, with her white body next to white Aspen tree trunks and her golden-orange hair with the golden-orange autumn leaves. In autumn, the leaves will be the same color as her hair. I suppose I mostly think about art to keep myself from thinking about Phil and the decisions I should probably be making. Neither of us is getting much from this arrangement. He gets a house-keeper and a cook, and I get my expenses covered. I feel like I still need some time to develop a vision of what my new life could look like before I take any leaps.

When I finally reach Mont Soleil, I notice pictures of Aretha on every telephone pole. Uh-oh. I stop by Jade’s house on the way home. A handsome man answers her door.