“Holding the Dog” by Deb Stark

If Mr. Green, or Noah, as he says I should call him, notices the slight smell of garbage, he ignores it.  Just follows Laurie into my kitchen, shakes my hand as he sits down and starts pulling papers out of his black knapsack.  My daughter smells it though.  I see her nose wrinkle as she picks up a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal, stacks it with the unwashed dishes in the sink and wipes the sticky table.  Too bad.   It’s raining.  It’s November.  My shoulder aches.  I’d like to stretch out in my chair for a few minutes but little chance of that.

“Isn’t Mum up?” Laurie asks. 

“Not yet.”  I don’t tell her I’d followed Grace from room to room most of the night, checking the locks each time she moved to another window.  I’m too tired to hear another lecture about schedules and I just want the next few minutes over with.

We join Noah at the table. He’s in his best social worker mode, talking about how he knows this is difficult but it’s for the best.  He pushes the paper and a pen toward me. “I’ve filled in the paperwork.  Just need you to sign here and we’ll be all set.”  

There’s no we here, I want to say.  Then I remind myself there’s no need to pick on him.  I pick up the paper, pull out my glasses and start to read.  

The form is surprisingly short considering what it means.  The important ones always are – birth certificates, death certificates, those kinds.  It’s those other legal papers that confuse you with the multiple pages and big words.

Application for Admission to a Long-term Care.  

Long-term care.  That’s the right term.  Not nursing home, as I called it the first time Laurie brought Noah to see me last summer.   He all but said I wasn’t taking care of Grace.  I told him we were doing fine and there was no way I was locking Grace up.  Part of me wanted him to argue back so I could yell some more and maybe feel better but he didn’t - just kept smiling and saying I didn’t need to rush, but we all knew what lay ahead.  By then my heart was pounding so hard I thought I was having another heart attack.  I told him to leave.

The place Laurie and I picked is called Pleasantview Village.  We decided, or she finally wore me down, at Thanksgiving.  She wanted to call Noah right then, but I refused.  Fall was is Grace’s favourite time of year.  No need to rush.

When I was growing up, there was one nursing home in town.  People called it The Manor, and used funeral voices when they talked about it.  I have vague memories of visiting a crumpled man in a dark room full of crumpled men.  Mother told me to call him grandpa and be nice but, as much as he smiled at me and reached out his hand, I refused to shake it.  He smelled and he had no teeth.

“Promise you’ll never put me in The Manor,” Mother used to say.  And we didn’t.  Grace insisted she move in with us after Mother broke her shoulder.   And when she fell again, and broke her hip, Grace visited Mother in the hospital every day until the end.  At the funeral, a cousin told Grace she’d been an absolute martyr and she didn’t know how Grace stood it for so long.  Grace didn’t say anything, just tightened her lips and turned away to shake someone else’s hand.         

The Manor is long gone. According to the perky tour guide we had, Pleasantview Village is a modern building with natural light and semi-private rooms with plenty of space for a favourite piece of furniture. You can hang your own pictures, wear your own clothes (although nothing that isn’t washable) and have a cup of coffee whenever you want.  They have therapy dogs, memory gardens, and special events like pizza night.  

Boomers are Transforming Long-term Care I read in the paper a while back.   Grace will still be locked in a special wing, with a huge mural camouflaging the door so she can’t find it.  She’ll still wonder who I am and forget that she likes pizza.  Transform that, boomers. 

Two days ago, I fell asleep in my chair after supper.  Grace managed to unlock the door and get outside.  I called Laurie who called the police.  They found her about three am.  She’d made it right across town to the fair grounds and was sleeping under a bleacher.  When Laurie heard Grace was safe, she started to cry.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted to kick myself for falling asleep.  I wanted Grace.  I wanted to fall asleep again, and never wake up.  I just wanted.  

Yesterday, I told Laurie to call Noah.   Then I went into the bedroom and pulled down the little blue suitcase I’d stuck at the back of the closet last August.  I stared at it and wondered if I had the right.  Or is it the courage?

“Mr. Attlin?”  It’s Noah.  “We just need your signature right here.” He’s pointing at the dark line on the paper.  

“Gimme a minute.”

When something unpleasant needs to be done, there’s no point dragging it out.  If you wait, you start to think.  Thinking doesn’t change things.   Father taught me that when I was ten.  We found my dog by the side of the road, run over and hurting.  Father got the rifle to shoot him but I begged him to wait.  I held that dog and cried and the longer I sat the less I was able to let him go.  Finally, Father pulled me away.  Then he shot the dog.  I pick up the pen and turn the paper slightly toward me. 

Near the top of the form, Grace’s name is written in dark green ink.  Grace likes green.  And writing lists.  And taking car trips, and reviving dead plants and lipstick that’s not too dark.  My heart starts to wobble.

Maybe I can put more locks on the windows.  And that security system that buzzes if a door is open the guy on the phone tried to sell me.   I feel the thumping against my chest, a fist trying to break through.  I put down the pen.  The kitchen table wobbles as I push back and stand up.  Noah steadies it.  He looks confused.  Laurie doesn’t.  “Dad… Please…. We’ve got to do this.”

Now my chest is tight.  I grab my walker and head for the back door. 

“Dad.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow.” I hear Noah say.  “He’ll get there.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“No worries.  He isn’t my first.”

That’s just it.   I’m supposed to be first.   I’ve always known, always felt it in my bones.  Grace used to laugh at my certainty.  “Go ahead and die on me,” she’d tell me.  “But if you go first, I’m getting a horse.” She knew that would get me.  I hate horses, refuse to have one on the place.  I wish I’d let her have a horse. 

The air is lighter on the porch and I grab for it.  Easy, I tell myself. Slow and steady.  Like when you’re hauling a full load and have to stop the truck on ice. 

Finally, this day is over.  I cleaned up the kitchen and took out the garbage.  The rain stopped about noon so I filled the bird feeders for the first time this fall.  I tried to take Grace for a walk but she said she was cold and started to cry.  Now I’m in bed, half hoping Laurie will call; half glad she hasn’t.  What’s there to say anyway?  It’s a mess.

“What’s a mess?” says Grace.  Her voice is clear and confident.  I feel the little glow in my gut that happens when she finds me.  Just when I figure she’s gone for good; she finds her way back.  I reach across the bed and take her hand.  She squeezes it back. 

“Nothing, Gracie.” 

“Are you doing okay, George?  You’ve got such a load.”

“I’m fine Gracie.  Don’t you worry about me.”

“But I do.”

There’s nothing to say so I don’t.  I just lie beside my wife, feeling the life in her hand.  She speaks again.  “Is it time to go?” 

The question punches like an airbag.  I turn to face her.  She’s looking at the dresser where the little blue suitcase is still sitting.

Last summer, it seemed that Grace carried that suitcase everywhere. One day, I looked inside.  I thought I might find something I recognized.  Something that might help bridge the darkness between us.  Instead, I found a stash of pills.  Thirty at least, small white tablets, neatly wrapped in a beige silk scarf I had never seen her wear.

After I got over the shock, it made sense.  A few years ago, when the medically-assisted dying law was coming in, we’d agreed it was a good thing.  Grace’s cousin’s cousin died of ALS.  We heard enough about her struggles to believe we’d choose a different ending if the option was there.

But Grace didn’t tell me about the pills.  And I couldn’t find the right time to ask her.   One day she put the suitcase down and that was that.

Grace is still looking at it.  She’s frowning.  Does she remember the pills?  There’s no glow in my gut now.   It starting to fizz like someone just dropped in a dose of alka-selzer.   What if she asks? And then, what does it change?  Another familiar thought, are there enough for both of us?  The fizz is boiling.  Would Laurie hate me?  Would Grace?  I swallow, trying to work up some spit for whatever is going to come out of my mouth. 

“Time to go where, Gracie?”

“On the road of course.  Are you heading out already?”  The fizz flattens and settles into a hard lump as I watch Grace sit up and start to climb out of bed.  “It can’t be Sunday night.  I’ve got too much to do.”

I pull her back. “Shh, Gracie.  I’m not leaving until morning.”  She lies against me and I listen as she lists her chores.  Her nightgown is soft and smells faintly of lemon.  

And now it’s morning.  Laurie is back.  She hasn’t said anything about yesterday but she sees the paper is lying on the desk exactly as she left it, and I can tell it’s making nervous.  Noah is here too.  He greets me at the door and asks if I’m feeling better.  “Yes, thank you.”  I curse myself for sounding like a guilty schoolboy.

The paper is back in front of me.  A neighbour has dropped by and is sitting with Grace.  I hear music coming from living room, John Denver singing about country roads.  Just for a moment, I let myself remember.  Heading out for the week.  The throb of the engine as I shifted gears.  The sound of the tires as I slowly moved down the drive, trying not to throw gravel on the lawn.  Grace calling “Cake or pie when you get back?”  Like she didn’t know the answer.

Don’t think.  I feel Laurie’s touch on my arm.  Somehow, I’ve picked up the pen.  It’s heavy.  I start to write, but it doesn’t leave a mark.  I put it down and Noah grabs it.  He scribbles on the supermarket flyer announcing this week’s sales. The ink flows smoothly and Noah offers the pen back.  Now, John Denver is leaving on a jet plane.   I hear Grace talking to her friend.  “George will be home tonight.  I must get started on that pie.  Cherry today, I think.”  I empty my head and pick up the pen again.

Deb Stark lives in Wellington County, Ontario, with her husband, two cats and too many raccoons. Her work has appeared in magazines, several anthologies, including CommuterLit, From the Cottage Porch (Sunshine in a Jar Press), and You are Not Alone, 52 stories of hope (One Thousand Trees) and the Globe and Mail (Facts & Arguments).

“Holding the Dog” won second place in the Toronto Star short story contest, winning Deb $2,000 (yay, Deb!) and was published in The Star on May 2.

See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, New Tecumseth, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.