Puppy by Deidre Jaye Byrne

Puppy | Deidre Jaye Byrne

She wants a puppy. The desire permeates her like smoke from a wood fire, clinging to her hair, her skin, her heart. She doesn’t know when it started, exactly, but one day she joked to her friends, “If that s.o.b. gets elected, I’m going to need a therapy dog,” and let the joke lie. Sit. Stay.

Wednesday mornings at the diner, while Dina waits for her poached eggs on dry toast to arrive, she watches. She watches mothers and fathers walk their children to school, carrying their children’s too-heavy backpacks, believing they can shoulder their children’s burdens. She watches ancient seniors toddle from their 55 and over apartment complex across the street, up the ramp to the diner, slowly filling the booths, grateful she hasn’t yet joined their ranks. And she watches all the people walking their dogs.

The big ones she’s pretty sure are mostly rescues, the ones she sees at shelters. Large muscular dogs with square heads, broad chests, pit bull silhouettes, dogs she could never own herself, never really love. But she is happy to see them out in the world, knowing someone loves them, gives them homes. A mastiff goes by, pulling hard at the leash, its owner following like an awkward marionette, and Dina thinks, poor training there, then relents, reminds herself dog and owner are doing the best they can.

The cute little dogs, with their jackets and smart outfits, are the ones Dina waits for. She loves to see their short legs moving them along with brisk, crisp contentment. Some, she knows, are just puppies on their way to becoming larger dogs. Small dogs are just cuter, she thinks, easier to keep. Who knows. Everyone, it seems, has a dog these days; Dina feels conspicuous for what she lacks. She wants a puppy.

Sitting on the sofa alongside Hal one evening, dinners on their snack trays, watching the nightly news, she’d tried to tell him about the puppy thing.

“Why would you want a dog? A puppy of all things?” Genuinely curious, he sounded surprised rather than accusatory, yet she felt suddenly embarrassed for her need, her inability to articulate her yearning. It wasn’t Hal’s fault; he was a good man, a kind man. For thirty-five years now he’d been pushing a broom at the school, worked a second job nights and weekends to pay off the bills from their daughter Erika’s rehabs and hospital stays.

“And what about vacations?” he asked, and she wanted to say, “As if.” 

She’d laid her hand gently on his arm. She wanted to sound reasonable, or at least not desperate. “When would we have time for that, Hal?”

But Hal was scrolling through the channels, looking for “Nature” on PBS. He loved documentaries about animals in the wild.

Most weeks, after she leaves the diner, she drives to the Petco across town where she watches the puppy kindergarten classes. From behind a towering cat condo—she tries to be inconspicuous—she watches as people work to bond with their playful, unruly pups. Sometimes she paws through the accessories aisle, imagining how a cable knit sweater or rain slicker (with matching boots!) would look on a small puppy of her own. She studies food and water bowls, thinks about where she’d put them in her kitchen, what brush or leash might be best, what toys her imagined pup might like. Back at home, she opens her laptop and watches YouTube videos while folding laundry: Mackay’s First Day Home, Maltipoos From Birth to Ten Weeks, Eight Great Dogs/No Shed Dogs/Easy to Train Dogs for Seniors. Usually.

But today is different, today is THE day, she thinks, as she scoops up her rain jacket, pays the check, leaves a bigger tip than usual because she is feeling excited and expansive. She’d torn the ad from the community board at the supermarket yesterday: “Puppies for sale, small mixed breed. Males and females.” She held the paper tightly in her hand, the address scrawled in the margin.

When they’d first brought Erika home, their sweet baby girl a prize after years of infertility and indecision, Dina couldn’t relax for days, unwilling to trust the adoption could last. Maybe Erika had picked up on that uncertainty; had that been the thing that inhibited their bonding? She’d never been an easy baby, never a cuddly toddler. When Erika was in middle school, running track, Dina and Hal were forbidden to attend her meets. She didn’t like being watched, she said. Being watched by them was what she meant. It disrupted her focus; she meant it was none of their business. She never noticed her parents sitting at the edge of the parking lot, sharing a pair of binoculars, watching her blow past the others on the track. She was small, but fleet.

Dina wishes she could adopt a dog; she’s been to several adoption events. “Rescue dogs are no different than a used car, just passing on someone else’s problem,” Hal had warned her. It had taken some persuading, but when he finally relented on the dog question, that was his only condition. The thing Dina loved was the dogs’ excitement, tails wagging, on their best behavior, orphans in search of some perfect future. But when she asks about the puppies, she wants a puppy, the staff tell her there’s no way to know how big the pups will be. She ends up leaving, relieving her disappointment with justification. The questions, she thinks, so invasive. How many hours will she be away from home? Own or rent? Where will the dog sleep? Is the yard fenced in? List three references, two of whom are current dog owners.

The second time Erika was arrested, Hal’s patience had been stretched to the breaking point. Her failing grades, repeated suspensions, an attitude toward her parents that was both manipulative and dismissive, had left him exhausted, his love frustrated. He wanted to send her to a therapeutic boarding school. How would that help? Dina saw the problems, felt every insult, every lie from her daughter a betrayal, but still, how could they let her go?  

“Sure, she’s a little wild,” she’d said to Hal, downplaying, again, their daughter’s transgressions. “Aren’t all teens?”

“Maybe she got that from her birth mother,” he’d said. “It’s that school or rehab. I’m sorry but the kid’s got to be brought to heel.” 

It’s an hour’s drive to Calville, a place she’s never heard of. Dina is tense but  excited, her skin tingling with anticipation. She imagines how sweet the puppy, her puppy, will be. How nice to come home from errands greeted by an excited, joyful pup, tail wagging, bursting with enthusiasm and affection. She pictures the first few nights at home, comforting her pup, assuring it of her love, promising security. Vivid images light up her mind: the puppy snoozing on her lap as she reads through winter afternoons, the praise she and her baby dog will receive in the puppy kindergarten classes. She’ll finally make use of the stack of books on her nightstand— Pup to Perfect in Ten Days, No Bad Dogs, Decoding Your Puppy. She keeps a tiny notebook in her nightstand drawer with lists of puppy names. 

Dina is wrenched from her fantasies when a police cruiser races up behind her, flashing lights and sirens raging. She pulls over, heart pounding in her ears, a flush of panic overcoming her like a wave, undertow pulling her back in time: Erika on a stretcher, one arm awkwardly twisted, moaning as they pull her from the wreckage, car and tree married in a gruesome embrace, right there on the front lawn. EMT’s working to stabilize her, IV glinting off the light in the ambulance cab. It’s harder these days to push those memories away. Dina signals and pulls back onto the highway. Puppy, puppy, I want a puppy.

The road is pot-holed; gravel pops against the underside of her car. Dina crawls along, looking for the right number. To the left and right, mobile homes reveal a community’s exhausted aspirations. Suddenly, children are bicycling toward her, one girl with wild brown hair riding so close Dina stops her slow rolling car. The children surround her, their thin arms flapping a semaphore of excitement. “You here for the puppies?” Dina nods, feels set upon, though it’s not exactly an ambush. The girl and her companions lead her forward, and she is unsure whether she is captive or hero, led on by this juvenile motorcade. 

They come to a stop in front of a yellowing, rippled fiberglass awning propped up with uneven two-by-fours, an imitation of a porch. “For Sale” signs seem to be attached to everything. On a rusted truck, a flapping sign: “Parts only.” Dina peers into the shaded dark, sees a woman whose girth spills from her sleeveless blouse and her denim capris; she fills the plastic yard chair. Without rising, the woman smiles, brushes back her untidy hair, apparently unselfconscious of the fading bruise under one eye, the blooming purple splotches on her arms and legs. Dina keeps her focus on the woman’s eyes as she introduces herself, does not want to judge. And, she realizes quickly, she doesn’t want to stay, either. It’s too awkward to turn away now, she thinks, especially after such a long ride. But this is not how she’s pictured getting her puppy.

In her fantasy, the puppy comes to her in a basket just outside her front door. Maybe it’s a cold, snowy night and the basket has been dropped off by a stranger, the tiny puppy abandoned and alone. She is the hero, taking in this pup, loving it, raising it, giving it a good home. Dina’s seen sites online that promise almost that. She’s made deep dives into the world of online puppy sales, places promising no puppy mills, proffering corporatized photos of angelic puppies, every breed and size. She finds herself willing to accept the disingenuousness of their adoption fees, grateful for permission to pretend she’s not part of the “puppy industrial complex,” as Hal calls it. She’s tempted every time, a one click solution to her unending ache, but dreads her friends’ righteousness: Why didn’t you get a rescue dog? What about those poor abandoned dogs? And she wishes she had the strength to ask them What about the puppy mill dogs? Why is it wrong to care about them? Aren’t those puppies also victims? 

Dina follows the woman, Annie, into the double wide trailer. The children try to tag along, complain when she denies them: “Don’t you sass Mama Annie now. Go around back till I call you in.” 

Inside, Annie turns to her, “Them kids! Three are mine, the other two, fosters. Gotta love ‘em!” She laughs as the dogs, maybe eight or ten, Dina can’t tell, fill the room. Hefty pugs, corgi-like dogs, and combinations of the two, come rushing toward the women. None of them are puppies, Dina sees. One barks, setting off a chorus. Annie shouts, waves her arms, “That’s enough, get out of here,” and herds them out the back door leading to, Dina supposes, a yard. 

The women navigate a labyrinth of over-filled rooms, rooms packed with the accumulations of people trying to feel like they have enough. On the kitchen table several large bags of dog food take up all the surface, a plastic window box liner serves as a water trough on the floor. Along one wall a cracked fish tank, a screen and a rock on top, hosts a large snake. Chewed rawhide bones and dog toys lie scattered across the floor. The woman explains, “Didn’t expect to have more puppies.” Dina thinks about the two other obviously pregnant dogs she’d just seen, decides not to challenge the story.

They enter a smaller bedroom with two unmade beds, a TV running cartoons, and a wide cardboard box in the middle of the floor. In it, puppies clumsily clamor over one another toward their mother, lying on her side. Exhausted or resigned, Dina can’t tell.

“Here she is, proud mama. Dad’s one of those noisy coots I shushed outside.” The pugs or the corgis or what, Dina wants to ask, then realizes it doesn’t matter, reminds herself she’s not getting her dog here. Annie reaches down, grabs two pups, intercepting them before they reach their mother. 

“Boy or girl, which one d’you like?” Dina hesitates, unsure how to extract herself from a situation that feels wrong to her. “Oh here, just take them both.”

The woman’s acrid scent mixes with the sweet smell of the pups as she pushes them into Dina’s arms, and she begins to feel at risk in a way she can’t name.  

The warm, sweet-smelling pups squirm; Dina holds them close. A low insistent chorus of warning voices fills her head. She remembers the first time she held Erika, the way excitement and fear made her tremble. Hal had put his arms around them and she had choked down her fear that this was a mistake. 

“I guess I should have asked before I came here.” Dina avoids the woman’s eyes, nuzzles the puppies close. Lying, she says, “My husband has allergies. I was hoping for a hypoallergenic dog.” Inwardly she cringes; this is not a woman concerned with allergies.

“Well, why don’t you take one home for a day or so, see how your husband does.”

Dina looked at her and felt a thin thread of panic. “Oh, I couldn’t…”

“Don’t worry. It’s fine; I trust you.” The woman’s too easy familiarity, her constrained desperation reaches Dina, ripples through her. She wants to run. She wants a puppy.

The puppies wriggle in her arms, squeaking, deprived of the mother and the nourishment they need. Memory intrudes and Dina thinks about Erika, just three days old, the mother already on her way home. So much promise in such a small bundle. No one warns you, Dina thought. 

“It’s okay, I know you’d come back. Just take one home and try her out.”

Dina leans down, lets the puppies slip from her arms, watches them eagerly return to their mother and worries they are too young to be separated. 

The room feels small, alarmingly close. Dina wants to leave. She wants a puppy, and here are puppies, and yet…what if this is the wrong dog? Should have asked more questions before driving all this way. Hal doesn’t even know about this trip. Hesitation hangs over her like a cloud.

 “You know, if you think a puppy is too much work, I can let you have one of these other dogs. Half price. I got to clear them all out asap. I just figured people would come to see the puppies. Everyone loves puppies.”

Back on the main road, checking her rearview mirror, Dina’s perspiring and her heart thumps urgently,irregularly. Her hands tight on the wheel, her insides feel like soft serve ice cream, vanilla and chocolate twisted together, relief and sadness, yearning and doubt. Once again she has failed to bring home a puppy, choosing the companionship of an unanswered question and the shallow comfort of not yet. Still, the need runs inside her like a crawler at the bottom of the TV screen. Puppy, puppy…

Dina pulls into her garage as the sun fades; a storm threatens, but has yet to arrive. She can’t stop thinking about Annie, the bruises, the covered-up desperation. And the children, the fostering. She pushes herself from the car and into the empty house. On the hall table she sees another postcard has arrived addressed in Erika’s spiky handwriting, the only proof of life. No message – there never is one,leaving Dina to wonder again whether these irregular mailings are intended as bare reassurance or a taunt. She will put this postcard with the others she keeps tied in a bundle under the book with puppy names. She walks up the stairs, tries not to look at the photos that line the wall, the pictures of her once precious Erika, whose every captured smile feels to Dina like a lie. 

She slips off her shoes, lays on the bed watching the sun sink below the horizon. Puppy, puppy, puppy… 

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