The Fate of Mice (7 page)

It takes all the energy you have to get your self out of the study, back into your bedroom. You cry yourself to sleep, and this time Jonathan’s not even across the mattress from you. You find yourself wondering if you should have handled the dinner conversation differently, if you should have kept yourself from yelling at him about the turds in the yard, if you should have tried to seduce him first, if—

The ifs could go on forever. You know that. You think about going home. You wonder if you’ll still know anyone there. You realize how much you’ll miss your garden, and you start crying again.

Tomorrow, first thing, you’ll call Diane.

But when tomorrow comes, you can barely get out of bed. The transition has arrived early, and it’s a horrible one, the worst ever. You’re in so much pain you can hardly move. You’re in so much pain that you moan aloud, but if Jonathan hears, he doesn’t come in. During the brief pain-free intervals when you can think lucidly, you’re grateful that you booked your flight as soon as you did. And then you realize that the bedroom door is closed, and that Jessie won’t be able to open it herself. You need to get out of bed. You need to open the door.

You can’t. The transition’s too far advanced. It’s never been this fast; that must be why it hurts so much. But the pain, paradoxically, makes the transition seem longer than a normal one, rather than shorter. You moan, and whimper, and lose all track of time, and finally howl, and then, blessedly, the transition’s over. You’re on four feet.

You can get out of bed now, and you do, but you can’t leave the room. You howl, but if Jonathan’s here, if he hears you, he doesn’t come.

There’s no food in the room. You left the master bathroom toilet seat up, by chance, so there’s water, full of interesting smells. That’s good. And there are shoes to chew on, but they offer neither nourishment nor any real comfort. You’re hungry. You’re lonely. You’re afraid. You can smell Jonathan in the room — in the shoes, in the sheets, in the clothing in the closet — but Jonathan himself won’t come, no matter how much you howl.

And then, finally, the door opens. It’s Jonathan. “Jessie,” he says. “Poor Jessie. You must be so hungry; I’m sorry.” He’s carrying your leash; he takes your collar out of your underwear drawer and puts it on you and attaches the leash, and you think you’re going for a walk now. You’re ecstatic. Jonathan’s going to walk you again. Jonathan still loves you.

“Let’s go outside, Jess,” he says, and you dutifully trot down the stairs to the front door. But instead he says, “Jessie, this way. Come on, girl,” and leads you on your leash to the family room at the back of the house, to the sliding glass doors that open onto the back yard. You’re confused, but you do what Jonathan says. You’re desperate to please him. Even if he’s no longer quite Stella’s husband, he’s still Jessie’s alpha.

He leads you into the backyard. There’s a metal pole in the middle of the backyard. That didn’t used to be there. Your canine mind wonders if it’s a new toy. You trot up and sniff it, cautiously, and as you do, Jonathan clips one end of your leash onto a ring in the top of the pole.

You yip in alarm. You can’t move far; it’s not that long a leash. You strain against the pole, the leash, the collar, but none of them give; the harder you pull, the harder the choke collar makes it for you to breathe. Jonathan’s still next to you, stroking you, calm, reassuring. “It’s okay, Jess. I’ll bring you food and water, all right? You’ll be fine out here. It’s just for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll go for a nice long walk, I promise.”

Your ears perk up at “walk,” but you still whimper. Jonathan brings your food and water bowls outside and puts them within reach.

You’re so glad to have the food that you can’t think about being lonely or afraid. You gobble your Alpo, and Jonathan strokes your fur and tells you what a good dog you are, what a beautiful dog, and you think maybe everything’s going to be all right, because he hasn’t stroked you this much in months, hasn’t spent so much time talking to you, admiring you.

Then he goes inside again. You strain towards the house, as much as the choke collar will let you. You catch occasional glimpses of Jonathan, who seems to be cleaning. Here he is dusting the picture frames; here he is running the vacuum cleaner. Now he’s cooking — beef stroganoff, you can smell it — and now he’s lighting candles in the dining room.

You start to whimper. You whimper even more loudly when a car pulls into the driveway on the other side of the house, but you stop when you hear a female voice, because you want to hear what it says.

“…so terrible that your wife left you. You must be devastated.”

“Yes, I am. But I’m sure she’s back in Europe now, with her family. Here, let me show you the house.” And when he shows her the family room, you see her: in her twenties, with long black hair and perfect skin. And you see how Jonathan looks at her, and you start to howl in earnest.

“Jesus,”
Jonathan’s guest says, peering out at you through the dusk. “What the hell is that? A wolf?”

“My sister’s dog,” Jonathan says. “Husky-wolfhound mix. I’m taking care of her while my sister’s away on business. She can’t hurt you: don’t be afraid.” And he touches the woman’s shoulder to silence her fear, and she turns towards him, and they walk into the dining room. And then, after a while, the bedroom light flicks on, and you hear laughter and other noises, and you start to howl again.

You howl all night, but Jonathan doesn’t come outside. The neighbors yell at Jonathan a few times —
Shut that dog up, goddammit! —
but Jonathan will never come outside again. You’re going to die here, tethered to this stake.

But you don’t. Towards dawn you finally stop howling; you curl up and sleep, exhausted, and when you wake up the sun’s higher and Jonathan’s coming through the open glass doors. He’s carrying another dish of Alpo, and he smells of soap and shampoo. You can’t smell the woman on him.

You growl anyway, because you’re hurt and confused. “Jessie,” he says. “Jessie, it’s all right. Poor, beautiful Jessie. I’ve been mean to you, haven’t I? I’m so sorry.”

He does sound sorry, truly sorry. You eat the Alpo, and he strokes you, the same way he did last night, and then he unsnaps your leash from the pole and says, “Okay, Jess, through the gate into the driveway, okay? We’re going for a ride.”

You don’t want to go for a ride. You want to go for a walk. Jonathan promised you a walk. You growl.

“Jessie! Into the car,
now!
We’re going to another meadow, Jess. It’s farther away than our old one, but someone told me he saw rabbits there, and he said it’s really big. You’d like to explore a new place, wouldn’t you?”

You don’t want to go to a new meadow. You want to go to the old meadow, the one where you know the smell of every tree and rock. You growl again.

“Jessie, you’re being a
very bad dog!
Now get in the car. Don’t make me call Animal Control.”

You whine. You’re scared of Animal Control, the people who wanted to take you away so long ago, when you lived in that other county. You know that Animal Control kills a lot of animals, in that county and in this one, and if you die as a wolf, you’ll stay a wolf. They’d never know about Stella. As Jessie, you’d have no way to protect yourself except your teeth, and that would only get you killed faster.

So you get into the car, although you’re trembling.

In the car, Jonathan seems more cheerful. “Good Jessie. Good girl. We’ll go to the new meadow and chase balls now, eh? It’s a big meadow. You’ll be able to run a long way.” And he tosses a new tennis ball into the backseat, and you chew on it, happily, and the car drives along, traffic whizzing past. When you lift your head from chewing on the ball, you can see trees, so you put your head back down, satisfied, and resume chewing. And then the car stops, and Jonathan opens the door for you, and you hop out, holding your ball in your mouth.

This isn’t a meadow. You’re in the parking lot of a low concrete building that reeks of excrement and disinfectant and fear,
fear
, and from the building you hear barking and howling, screams of misery, and in the parking lot are parked two white Animal Control trucks.

You panic. You drop your tennis ball and try to run, but Jonathan has the leash, and he starts dragging you inside the building, and you can’t breathe because of the choke collar. You cough, gasping, trying to howl. “Don’t fight, Jessie. Don’t fight me. Everything’s all right.”

Everything’s not all right. You can smell Jonathan’s desperation, can taste your own, and you should be stronger than he is but you can’t breathe, and he’s saying, “Jessie, don’t bite me, it will be worse if you bite me, Jessie,” and the screams of horror still swirl from the building and you’re at the door now, someone’s opened the door for Jonathan, someone says, “Let me help you with that dog,” and you’re scrabbling on the concrete, trying to dig your claws into the sidewalk just outside the door, but there’s no purchase, and they’ve dragged you inside, onto the linoleum, and everywhere are the smells and sounds of terror. Above your own whimpering you hear Jonathan saying, “She jumped the fence and threatened my girlfriend, and then she tried to bite me, so I have no choice, it’s such a shame, she’s always been such a good dog, but in good conscience I can’t — ”

You start to howl, because he’s lying,
lying
, you never did any of that!

Now you’re surrounded by people, a man and two women, all wearing colorful cotton smocks that smell, although faintly, of dog shit and cat pee. They’re putting a muzzle on you, and even though you can hardly think through your fear — and your pain, because Jonathan’s walked back out the door, gotten into the car, and driven away, Jonathan’s
left
you here — even with all of that, you know you don’t dare bite or snap. You know your only hope is in being a good dog, in acting as submissive as possible. So you whimper, crawl along on your stomach, try to roll over on your back to show your belly, but you can’t, because of the leash.

“Hey,” one of the women says. The man’s left. She bends down to stroke you. “Oh, God, she’s so scared. Look at her.”

“Poor thing,” the other woman says. “She’s
beautiful.”

“I know.”

“Looks like a wolf mix.”

“I know.” The first woman sighs and scratches your ears, and you whimper and wag your tail and try to lick her hand through the muzzle.

Take me home, you’d tell her if you could talk. Take me home with you. You’ll be my alpha, and I’ll love you forever. I’m a
good
dog.

The woman who’s scratching you says wistfully, “We could adopt her out in a minute, I bet.”

“Not with that history. Not if she’s a biter. Not even if we had room. You know that.”

“I know.” The voice is very quiet. “Wish I could take her myself, though.”

“Take home a biter? Lily, you have kids!”

Lily sighs. “Yeah, I know. Makes me sick, that’s all.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. Come on, let’s get this over with. Did Mark go to get the room ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. What’d the owner say her name was?”

“Stella.”

“Okay. Here, give me the leash. Stella, come. Come on, Stella.”

The voice is sad, gentle, loving, and you want to follow it, but you fight every step, anyway, until Lily and her friend have to drag you past the cages of other dogs, who start barking and howling again, whose cries are pure terror, pure loss. You can hear cats grieving, somewhere else in the building, and you can smell the room at the end of the hall, the room to which you’re getting inexorably closer. You smell the man named Mark behind the door, and you smell medicine, and you smell the fear of the animals who’ve been taken to that room before you. But overpowering everything else is the worst smell, the smell that makes you bare your teeth in the muzzle and pull against the choke collar and scrabble again, helplessly, for a purchase you can’t get on the concrete floor: the pervasive, metallic stench of death.

“The ironic thing,” Jenny says, “is that your dad always believed he was living in the middle of a huge conspiracy, and this time he’s actually right.”

That’s already occurred to me. “He was probably right the other times, too,” I tell her. “At least some of them.” I’m trying to concentrate on the traffic ahead of us. Jenny offered to drive, and I should have let her. I thought driving would take my mind off the mess with Dad, but instead I’m just driving really badly. I try to switch lanes and wind up almost hitting a pickup truck in my blind spot. The kid behind the wheel, thirtyish and bearded, taps his horn, and when I’m safely back in my own lane, next to the truck, the woman beside him in the passenger seat rolls down her window.

“Hey,” the passenger yells out, “you okay?”

“Fine,” I call weakly. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem! No harm, no foul! As long as you’re okay!”

“I—just—blind spot,” I yell back miserably. Next to me, Jenny sighs.

“Nate, stop the car. Let’s switch. I should be driving.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll pull over.”

“No, sweetie, just stop now. We’re not going that fast, and there’s a red light up there. It will be fine. You have too much on your mind, that’s all.”

So I stop the car, and we do the Chinese fire-drill. The cars behind us have stopped too, of course, but nobody’s honking or yelling, because that’s how we all are now. I can still remember the time when the kid in the pickup truck would have screamed at me or flipped me the bird or, God forbid, pulled out a gun and shot me, the time when the drivers behind us would have been cursing, honking, spitting, and reporting me to the cops.

Cops. I remember when there were cops. I remember when we needed cops.

I remember when being stopped in this much traffic would have meant that I was choking on exhaust, the days before all the car companies cheerfully switched over to hydrogen-cell technology, even though it required a huge investment in a new infrastructure, just because it was the fuel-efficient and environmentally correct thing to do.

My kids, Sam and Julie, don’t remember those days at all.