See You in Paradise (37 page)

“Pretty-pretty.”

The punk swiveled. He clearly didn’t like her finger on the poster but didn’t ask her to remove it. He said, “I beg your pardon?”

Ray placed a hand on her shoulder, half-protecting, half-restraining. She was going to say it again, she knew it. Here it came: “Pretty-pretty.”

The punk looked at Ray for some instruction. She still doesn’t know if Ray gave it or not. “Thanks,” said the punk, and pulled his poster out from under her finger.

That night he said to her in bed, as proto-Ryan exerted itself in her belly, “What was that all about? In the copy shop.”

“What in the copy shop?” The invitations sat addressed and stamped on the mail table, just inside the door.

“What you said to that kid.”

“What’d I say?”

“You said, ‘Pretty-pretty.’”

Yes! It was succinct, instinctive, perfect. One pretty because it was, and the other because the first wasn’t quite enough. But she replied, “Is that what I said? I thought it was a nice poster.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” he said.

“Say nice things?”

His “never mind” came much later.

The first pretty was not enough, that was the trouble. And since then nothing has ever been enough. And all that came before, that was not enough either. It is not enough to speak against fossil fuels; one must walk two miles to the doctor’s office, three to the grocery, four to the library. It is not enough to protest development: firebombing bulldozers, that might be enough. It isn’t enough to cry, one must rend one’s garment. It is not enough to love, one must give everything.

Bounder loved, Bounder gave everything. And when the cancers chose him, Bounder accepted his suffering. It is not enough to let him die. No, she has to make him a gift of death; the dog would have done the same for her. And let them all see her mercy, let them watch him accept bliss into his heart.

Those anniversary party invitations disappeared, but not into the mailbox. The party did not occur. The marriage did not end there—really, it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time—but it would, it would.

“I have to tell you something,” she says now to Ray. He actually winces.

“What is it?”

But first: “Where’s Ryan?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “With Julia? I can’t find her.”

“I need him.”

“What is it, El?”

“Something is going to happen.”

The doorbell rings. His doorbell, Ray’s. He rigged the chime so that its factory-installed major triad became the minor seventh that sounded now. How they laughed to hear it, that enigmatic, unresolved chord that transformed every meter reader, every petition-monger and Mormon elder into an omen. Now Ray reacts with a sort of horror, as if the precipitous notes have burst a spore in his memory and let their marriage out. For the first time she sees what a terrible thing she’s about to do. Yes: let Ryan stay away.

She opens the door. The vet is there with his awful box. He’s a shorty, five five tops, with a confectionery smile that congeals on his jaw when he takes note of the crowd. The crowd, in turn, takes note of him and grows silent. There is a moment of calculation, which is cracked by a whine. The whine is Bounder’s. The closet door has fallen open. The old dog drags himself out.

His fur is halfway gone and coarse as twine, the skin studded with cysts. His back legs no longer support his meager weight, and a trail of urine appears, smeared over the floorboards behind him. He is like a bride as the activists part to clear his path. No, Ellen thinks, no, no, no!, and she rushes to him and lifts him off the floor. This seems to hurt him—he howls—and her will weakens. But when she turns back to the vet it is with renewed resolve. Now, she thinks, now.

The tiny doctor says, “Are you kidding me, lady?”

In answer she moves to the table and lays Bounder upon the brilliant sheet. Another yip as he settles, and then a sigh. He closes his swollen eyes and assumes the work of drawing breath.

“Please,” she says, “hurry.”

The vet looks around, a smirk playing at the corners of his eyes. For him, it is already over, and he is telling the story to his friends at their favorite bar. Let him! she thinks, and she nods at the supine dog. He approaches, sets down his box.

“This the dog?” he says.

Someone unforgivably snickers. “Yes,” says Ellen.

It doesn’t take long for him to prepare. The syringe is produced, uncapped, and filled with medicine. She ought to look around at her friends, but instead closes her eyes. She has prepared a speech, but it slips her mind. She is disappointing herself. The sounds of the children playing outside fill the room. Now someone (same someone?) catches her breath and lets out a sob, and from elsewhere in the room comes another, and another. Some of the sobs are her own. A hand has found her shoulder. It is Ray’s.

“I’m sorry,” he says, helplessly, and she leans into him.

“Hold your pet, please,” the vet tells her, compassionate suddenly, and she falls to her knees, and Ray joins her there. It is just like their wedding. Her knees had hurt for days; the vows seemed to go on forever. Sometimes it seems like they still are. She and Ray lean over Bounder and take him into their arms. She tries looking in the dog’s eyes, but like Ray’s, they are shut.

“Don’t worry, poochy,” says the vet, “this won’t hurt a bit.”

I’m grateful to everyone who helped me revise and publish these (and other) stories over the past fifteen years. These people include, first and foremost, Rhian Ellis, but also Jennifer Barber, Ira Glass and Starlee Kine, Brian Hall, Bill Kittredge, Ian Jack, Michael Koch, Cressida Leyshon, Amy Grace Lloyd, Halimah Marcus, Fiona McCrae, Ben Metcalf, Ethan Nosowsky, Ann Patchett, Jim Rutman, Ben Samuel, Denise Shannon, Ed Skoog, Ann Vandermeer, Matt Weiland, and Virginia Zech. Finally, I want to thank everyone at Graywolf Press for valuing short fiction in general and mine in particular. I’ve never been treated better by anyone in my life.

“
Familiar
is as tightly wound as a great Alfred Hitchcock movie. … Lennon has executed a literary puzzle, a marvelous trick of the mind.” —
Los Angeles Times

Paperback / Ebook available

“A brilliant, classical, psychological horror story that sticks to and gnaws at the bones. … Signal[s] an important American writer in full command of his powers.” —
The Oregonian

Paperback / Ebook available

“100 very short stories … in which not a word is wasted, and not one of which could be cut. … A rigorous display of storytelling verve, quantity, and control. … It is his most perfect work so far.” —Wyatt Mason,
London Review of Books

Paperback / Ebook available

    
WWW.GRAYWOLFPRESS.ORG

Many Graywolf authors are available to chat with your book club or classroom via phone and Skype. Email us at
[email protected]
for further details.

Visit
graywolfpress.org
to sign up for our monthly newsletter and to check out our many regularly updated features, including our On Craft series, Pub Talk series, Poem of the Week, author interviews, special sales, book giveaways, tour listings, catalogs, and much more.