The Dog Year (11 page)

When her name was called she carried the magazine with her into Tig's office.

“Did you leave this particular issue in the waiting room for me?”

“Nice to see you, Lucy,” Tig said with a warm smile.

“Seriously, are you trying to teach me some kind of lesson?”

Tig tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “I'm not following.”

Lucy dropped the magazine on Tig's desk and pointed to the photo essay of an African tribe. “This picture here. The little boy with the shoe.”

Clad only in a pair of faded shorts held onto his slender hips with a piece of twine, the boy wore one slip-on tennis shoe, the kind surfer dudes wear after a day of catching waves. “Cause I get it. I steal unnecessary stuff while this little guy doesn't even have a shoe for his right foot.”

Tig raised an eyebrow. “You think I planted that particular photo essay for you?”

“What am I supposed to do with that image? It's not like I can erase it later with the Uninstall button, the way I do when I'm cleaning up my hard drive. From now on, I have to live with that image, and the possibility of it popping up while brushing my teeth or having a conversation with the guy at the Jiffy Lube.”

Tig said, “It sounds like your anxiety is particularly high today. Talk to me about this, Lucy.”

Lucy flipped the magazine to a full-page color photo of a grouping of women. “Here's another,” she said, as if the lesson-to-learn was inscribed on the page.

The women were all topless, and all standing together, like deer, seemingly unaware of their feral exquisiteness. Their luminescent skin shone without benefit of Clinique's new line of moisturizers or the latest in skin toners. Calm and collected, they gazed serenely at the camera, their quiet attitude made more impressive by their uncovered breasts.

“What are you showing me here, Lucy?”

“Look how beautiful. The only time in my life when I could be
that
composed, nude, and in front of a camera would be in a dream.”

Tig gazed at the picture.

“Yeah, and even then my body anxiety would win out and I'd grab a dream bush.”

Lucy wasn't finished. “Check out those breasts. In plastics, we say that the
perfect
breast measurement is twenty-two centimeters from sternal notch to nipple. This woman's breasts are easily a glorious forty centimeters from origin to destination with not a trace of anxiety in her eyes, not a date circled in her appointment book for a surgical consultation. No dreams for a perkier twin set. Her culture loves her long, beagle-eared breasts. She's probably the pin-up girl of the tribe. If, say, she had small Hershey's Kisses for breasts, she would cover them in shame and pray at night for breasts that droop toward her middle, hoping against hope that one day she would be able to tuck them into her waistband for the harvest and feed the tribe during breaks.”

“What are we talking about, Lucy?”

Lucy dumped herself into a chair. “Maybe my shopping/stealing thing is just my biological drive to hunt and gather, but made crazy by a culture that forces a narrow range for beauty. If loveliness in our society was a saggy ass and shitty hair, I could stay home with my gold medal and stay away from the temptation of free shopping.”

“So you're thinking IV bags are the key to beauty?”

“Look, I'm just offering some kind of insight. Isn't that what I'm supposed to do here?”

“Maybe we should talk about why you left the AA meeting.”

“You saw me there. I don't fit. And, besides, I don't get alcoholism. First it's a disease, and then it's something we give to our higher power.” Lucy emphasized
higher power
like it was a ridiculous notion, made up by children wielding crayons, or well-meaning hippies. “If you have diabetes, you take your insulin, not pray for Jesus. If you drink too much, you should stop drinking so much.”

“And if you steal too much, you should stop stealing so much.”

“Whatever. Stealing doesn't wreck my liver and ruin my ability to work.”

Tig shot Lucy an incredulous look. But Lucy waved her expression away as if she were returning a serve at the tennis courts. “I
can
work; my hands are steady and my thinking is clear. It's just my decision-making
after
work that's a little sticky.”

“Sticky?”

“I'm just saying AA isn't the right place for me. The people at the meeting said as much: that I need to find some place more appropriate for my needs.”

“I'm not going to fight with you. I'm happy to listen, try to solve problems, identify issues, and work through them—but I'm not going to fight you.”

Lucy seemed to deflate a bit, having been puffed up and ready for the debate. She had fought her way through medical school. She had fought hierarchy and sexism. She had fought disease and illness every single day of her life as a doctor. Her life was all about putting up her dukes. Take that strategy away and what was she left with?

Tig said, “I talked to Stan. It would go a long way to mending your relationship with him if you'd return some of what you took.”

Lucy stood. “I offered to bring it all back! He scoffed at me.”

“He's less angry now. More willing to listen.”

In her mind, Lucy saw herself unlock her old bedroom door, push into the dusty room, and breathe in the scent of what was once her and her husband's refuge. Her chest tightened. She pictured herself filling boxes with all the pilfered supplies and hauling them out of her house.

Tig took in Lucy's pallor. “Lucy?”

“I have every last syringe, every last chux pad. It's all in my bedroom.” She considered explaining the details to Tig, but what exactly would she say? “My marriage bedroom is a shrine to my husband except when it's a storeroom for red-hot hospital merchandise”? Would she tell Tig that she only opened the door to the room when she has to make a deposit? That she slept in the home office that was supposed to have been the nursery for her unborn child?

Tig saw Lucy's discomfort and offered, “Do what you can, Lucy, and before long you'll do what you need. Then you'll be able to do what you want.”

“Do what I want? I wonder what that will be. I
had
what I wanted.” She sighed. “Okay, I'll try. But I'm keeping an IV bag in case I go to Africa someday for a charitable boob-job junket. Don't try to stop me.”

“Come back to the meetings, or find another job, Lucy.”

Lucy stood and paced the room. At the large picture window she tapped her fingers on the glass.

“Okay, I'm going to pound the twenty meetings out, pack that crap up, and get you to sign me back to work as soon as I possibly can.”

Tig started to speak, stopped, and looked at Lucy. “Mourning is not something that you cram for like a med school exam. Changing behaviors and building relationships take time. You can't lasso mental health and punch it into submission.”

Lucy checked her watch. “Are we finished? There's a meeting in twenty minutes. I'm going to get a passport and a stamp and fill that sucker up, then I'm going to come back here and display my shiny new frame of mind and get back to fixing other people's problems the way it should be done: with anesthesia, a scalpel, and a Band-Aid.”

P
arked outside the Serenity Center, Lucy closed her eyes. She tried a relaxation technique she had learned in med school. She clasped her fists, took a deep breath in, held it, then released, shaking her hands out. Her heart pounded. She took another breath. Little Dog crawled across the console, placed her front paws on Lucy's shoulders, and licked her ear. Lucy scratched the dog's back and was rewarded with a face sniff and a sneeze. A knock on her closed window startled her, and she turned to see Claire Weezner waving. “Why, hello again.”

Lucy rolled her window down. A thought raced into her head.
This woman thinks I have ruined my life by drinking.

“I know that look. I've seen it many times. It's so weird being out in the world and knowing.” She widened her eyes dramatically. “I promise not to breathe a word. That's the AA credo, honey. A-n-o-n-y-m-o-u-s.” She whisper-spelled it. Lucy opened her mouth to protest and Claire winked. “Aw, honey. I couldn't care less that you know I'm a lush. Love that word. Makes me feel a little sexy. You know, like I'm all about excess and pleasure.” Claire reached through the window to pet Little Dog and said, “Of course, waking up in your own vomit is not very pleasurable, so I try not to do that anymore.”

Claire smoothed her pink jogging suit and said, “C'mon. Lock up. Time to go inside.” She took a step back and said with her kind, soft southern voice that reminded Lucy of wind chimes, “Sweetie, I don't know what ails ya but this place here, it's got a kind of healing mojo.”

As they approached the heavy doors of the Serenity Center, Mark Troutman stuck his head out. “Claire. We're waiting for you.”

Lucy frowned. “What are you doing here?”

“Same as you, I imagine.”

“Don't you ever work?”

“
P.M.
shift. Sometimes nights. Leaves my days free to stalk AA meetings, Egypt.”

Claire looked from Lucy to Mark. “What name did you call her?”

Mark smiled. “Inside joke.”

“Not a very funny one,” said Lucy.

“Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit. How the hell do you two know each other?”

Lucy said, “It's complicated.”

“I bet it is, sweetie. It always is with Mark. He's tasty-looking, though, don't you think?” Claire lifted her reading glasses from a colorful beaded cord around her neck and examined Mark lasciviously. “I'd go for this kind of thing, if I went for that kind of thing. Manly angst.” She licked her lips.

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Claire.” Mark's neck colored.

Lucy paused at the room entrance. She spotted Ron right away, sitting in his wheelchair, chatting with an elderly woman chewing a toothpick. There were others she hadn't seen that first day. A thirtysomething man in a business suit and an Asian man in a red-and-white-plaid shirt that screamed “picnic” rather than “addict meeting.” Kimmy, the soft woman wearing dated clothes, waved Lucy over, patting the gray metal folding chair next to her, and whispered, “Tig called to say she won't be coming today, and the five thirty
P.M.
meeting had to be cancelled. We have visitors.” Turning to her right, she said, “But you know Sara, right?” The angry teen from the last meeting rolled her eyes and said to Ron, “Let's go.”

After the initial welcomes and readings Ron said, “Experience, strength, and hope. Anyone have anything to say on these topics?” The businessman consulted his watch. Lucy glanced at Mark, who looked away. The elderly woman cleared her throat and said, “Used to be able to smoke in these meetings. Gave people something to do. I don't have much to say about strength and hope, but I got lots of experience. More than enough for one person.” She flipped the toothpick to the other side of her mouth and fixed the collar on her faux denim shirt. There was a daisy appliqué on the collar. “I don't know why I come to these meetings. They don't do me no good. Been drinking since my teens. No hope for me now. Breaks up my day though, these meetings. I like that.”

“Well, that was cheerful,” said Sara.

“Sara,” Ron said in controlled admonishment. “We do not offer commentary. We offer support and hope. If you cannot abide by this rule I will ask you to leave today and come back tomorrow.”

Claire spoke up. “Leave her alone, Ron, she's just a girl.”

Sara slumped in her seat and glared at the table.

Kimmy put down her knitting. “I had to learn that strength can be about doing something but also about doing a little less. Every night my father falls out of bed after drinking himself into a stupor. Every night I haul his butt back into bed. Hate the behavior, not the drunk, right? Last night he fell out of bed and I walked into the room, gave him a pillow, and went back to bed.”

“When you move out, you won't even have to toss a pillow his way,” said Claire.

Kimmy picked up her knitting. “And when you quit butting into people's testimony, Claire, you'll give us all hope.”

The Asian man spoke up. “Why isn't there an Al-Anon group during the week?”

“More drunks than non-drunks, I guess,” said Claire.

Mark glanced at Lucy, raised a knowing eyebrow, and gestured for her to take the floor.

Lucy said, “I'd rather just listen if you don't mind. There are things I don't feel like sharing.”

“You're only as sick as your secrets,” Sara said while searching for split ends in her jet-black hair.

“Lucy, you don't have to say a thing. Just soak up the support, baby,” said Claire.

Twenty minutes later, Lucy jiggled her foot. As soon as the clock hit the hour she slipped her purse onto her shoulder and fled. At the door of her car, Mark caught up.

“There's always an informal social time after the meeting, you know. That's when you get the real stories. Like, apparently Ron was a Marine.”

“I don't want anyone knowing my story.”

“That, my high school friend, is abundantly clear.”

“Alcoholism at least has the status of a disease. Like there's some kind of brain-chemistry hook. But stealing stuff is just greed. Or arrogance.”

“I don't think that's totally true. There's brain chemistry involved in stimulating people's reward centers, and from what I've read, stealing can be as intoxicating as drinking alcohol.”

Lucy started to say something, but stopped. “Did you have to learn about that as a cop?”

“Uh, no. Wikipedia.”

“You Wiki'd my issue?” Warped as it was, Lucy was momentarily touched. She pictured this man—who was probably more comfortable with driving or woodworking—with his computer open, typing. She considered the reason for his interest, then cracked open her car door, intending to leave, but said instead, “So Kimmy lives with her dad.”

“Yeah, she's got some effed-up sense of loyalty to the guy.”

“She talks about it in the meeting? In front of all you strangers?”

“That's how you turn strangers into friends, Lucy. I'm not a joiner, but if I'm gonna join any group it's gonna be a group with problems.”

Lucy swung her car door wide just as a small spotted stray cat darted across the parking lot. Little Dog barked and dove from the front seat. “No! She's a runner. She doesn't always come when you call her.”

Mark sprinted after Little Dog. The cat skittered up a tree, leaving Little Dog at its base, and Mark stomped on the red leash still attached to the dog's collar. As he reached Little Dog, the cat leaped from the tree, landing on Mark's shoulder for a split second, then darted off and into the brush. Little Dog went wild while Mark grasped the leash with one hand and his eye with the other.

“Hang on to her! Do you have her?” Lucy grabbed Little Dog by the collar and scolded her. “Since when do you do that? Run off without warning, chase a cat. What were you thinking?”

Mark dropped the leash and put both hands up over his eye. “Shit.”

“What happened?”

With his jaw clenched he put one hand out. His lips were white. “Judas Priest. Can you just not talk for a second?” He tried to open his eye but only succeeded in causing it to tear up in earnest. He moved over to his beat-up pickup. “That cat hit my eye.”

“Let me look. I'm a doctor.”

“I know,” he said in measured tones. “I know it. But I cannot remove my hand right now.” Lucy put Little Dog in her car. The gravel crunched under her shoes as she made her way back to Mark.

“Just let me see.
Quickly.
In about five minutes, this lot is going to be filled with co-dependent do-gooders.”

“I'm going to drive myself to the eye doctor.”

“I'll take you.”

“Lucy. Respectfully. No.”

He opened his car door and sat. Wiped his eyes. Lucy watched while he fumbled, putting his keys into the ignition, then tried to shift. Lucy said, “Oh good God. Stop with the manly act and get into my car.”

The door to the Serenity Center opened and the man in the suit walked out, checking his BlackBerry and moving with the full importance of someone who believes his work keeps the world spinning. Mark slammed the door to his truck.

Fifteen minutes later, Lucy paced in the waiting room at South Central Wisconsin Optics. When Mark emerged an hour later with a patch on his eye, she frowned and said, “I'm so sorry.”

“Scratched my cornea. Have to take a few days off. Hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“I'll take you home. We can get your truck later.”

In Lucy's Subaru, Mark rested his elbow on the armrest, keeping his palm over his injured eye. Little Dog snuffled into his lap, burrowing her head into the crux of his elbow. With his free hand he scratched behind her ears.

“Dogs,” Lucy said. “They're the only beings that can cause you nothing but trouble and then get you to give them a backrub.”

“Dogs and women.”

“I wouldn't know about that, I guess.”

“Sadly, that was a joke, not a history report.”

“So do you have a dog? A German shepherd named Sidekick?”

“Dave.”

“Your sidekick's name is Dave?”

“My pug. His name was Dave. He was old. I got him in the divorce. He really liked me. Couldn't ever think of replacing him. You probably think that's stupid.”

“Not stupid. I only just started with Little Dog. She's a stray. The posters I made to find her owner have been sitting in my car for the past two weeks. I've no intention of putting them up. If her owner didn't think enough of her to get a collar, he doesn't deserve her.” She touched Little Dog's tail. “Already, I can't imagine what I'd do if something happened to her.”

Mark nodded, looking at Lucy, and said without a trace of self-consciousness, “Happens fast, sometimes.”

And Lucy, as usual, missed the entire moment.

*   *   *

On her own after Mark closed the door to her car and climbed into his truck, Lucy was left to puzzle out what he'd said as he left the vehicle.

Thanks. I don't usually let people help me.

Her doctor-self smiled, having heard these words before.

You're different than other people, Egypt.

When Lucy thought about herself, she saw what she thought others saw: someone who didn't stand out unless you had her résumé in hand. In truth, she had cultivated that perception. She loathed superficial judgments and was uncomfortable with overly friendly people looking to share. She liked books, facts, and science, finding they rarely let her down. She had almost no hobbies, few friends, and a sense of humor that could be seen as rude but functioned mainly to thwart interactions that might turn uncomfortable. When it came down to it, she wondered if Mark found her as irritating as she found herself. Lucy was pretty sick of herself lately. She had too much time on her hands.

From the passenger seat, Little Dog looked over at her expectantly, reminding her of the one noisy and impatient box of stolen supplies that she had managed to pack, crowing from the backseat like a redneck comic.
Let's get 'er done!
She dialed Charles, and when his voice mail picked up, she left a message.

“Your job is getting in the way of my therapy. I have man translation needs, for one thing. And I could also use some help boxing up the . . . stuff . . . the supplies. . . . okay, the loot. Whatever.” She hung up, then scrolled through her address book.

“Who else can I call?” She bit the inside of her cheek and silently scrolled through her phone list. Charles, Clinic, Dentist, Dermatology, Domino's Pizza, Hair Affair, Laser Solutions, Massage and Wax World, Pizza Hut, Pizza Pit, Richard. She paused. Closed her eyes, let herself feel the density of longing in her throat. She dialed her late husband's phone number and thought about the bill she kept paying, just to keep his recorded voice a cell tower away.

“This is Richard Lubers. Leave a message.”

There was a digital beep and Lucy said, “Come back.”

*   *   *

She was scrolling through the rest of her phone list: Phong, Charles, Wells Fargo, Sidney, Starbucks . . . Sidney. Lucy thought for a second, then pressed Call.

When Sidney answered, Lucy said, “I have three pizza restaurants and three hair removal salons in my phone. And you.”

“Better than porn lines and the Home Shopping Network.”

“That is splitting hairs, I'm afraid.” She took a breath. “Listen, I know we don't know each other all that well—almost certainly not well enough for me to ask this. But can you come to my house and help me box up some stuff?”

Sidney paused. “I'd be honored. I had a terrible time packing up my ex-husband's things, and it was just a divorce. I can't imagine how hard it must be to pack up your husband's things. But good for you. It'll help you move forward.”

“What? Oh, no. There will be no moving forward. I'm not talking about Richard's things. I'm talking about the stuff I . . . the hospital stuff. The stolen stuff.”