Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [87]
“Are you sure it’s her?” Nancy says.
“If I’m not mistaken.”
“She don’t remember,” Mother says to Nancy. “Her mind gets confused.”
Granny removes her teeth and lies back, her bones grinding. Her chest heaves with exhaustion. Nancy sits down in the rocking chair, and as she rocks back and forth she searches the photograph, exploring the features of the young woman, who is wearing an embroidered white dress, and the young man, in a curly beard that starts below his chin, framing his face like a ruffle. The woman looks frightened—of the camera perhaps—but nevertheless her deep-set eyes sparkle like shards of glass. This young woman would be glad to dance to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” on her wedding day, Nancy thinks. The man seems bewildered, as if he did not know what to expect, marrying a woman who has her eyes fixed on something so far away.
LYING DOGGO
Grover Cleveland is growing feeble. His eyes are cloudy, and his muzzle is specked with white hairs. When he scoots along on the hardwood floors, he makes a sound like brushes on drums. He sleeps in front of the woodstove, and when he gets too hot he creeps across the floor.
When Nancy Culpepper married Jack Cleveland, she felt, in a way, that she was marrying a divorced man with a child. Grover was a young dog then. Jack had gotten him at the humane society shelter. He had picked the shyest, most endearing puppy in a boisterous litter. Later, he told Nancy that someone said he should have chosen an energetic one, because quiet puppies often have something wrong with them. That chance remark bothered Nancy; it could have applied to her as well. But that was years ago. Nancy and Jack are still married, and Grover has lived to be old. Now his arthritis stiffens his legs so that on some days he cannot get up. Jack has been talking of having Grover put to sleep.
“Why do you say ‘put to sleep’?” their son, Robert, asks. “I know what you mean.” Robert is nine. He is a serious boy, quiet, like Nancy.
“No reason. It’s just the way people say it.”
“They don’t say they put people to sleep.”
“It doesn’t usually happen to people,” Jack says.
“Don’t you dare take him to the vet unless you let me go along. I don’t want any funny stuff behind my back.”
“Don’t worry, Robert,” Nancy says.
Later, in Jack’s studio, while developing photographs of broken snow fences on hillsides, Jack says to Nancy, “There’s a first time for everything, I guess.”
“What?”
“Death. I never really knew anybody who died.”
“You’re forgetting my grandmother.”
“I didn’t really know your grandmother.” Jack looks down at Grover’s face in the developing fluid. Grover looks like a wolf in the snow on the hill. Jack says, “The only people I ever cared about who died were rock heroes.”
—
Jack has been buying special foods for the dog—pork chops and liver, vitamin supplements. All the arthritis literature he has been able to find concerns people, but he says the same rules must apply to all mammals. Until Grover’s hind legs gave way, Jack and Robert took Grover out for long, slow walks through the woods. Recently, a neighbor who keeps Alaskan malamutes stopped Nancy in the Super Duper and inquired about Grover. The neighbor wanted to know which kind of arthritis Grover had—osteo- or rheumatoid? The neighbor said he had rheumatoid and held out knobbed fingers. The doctor told him to avoid zucchini and to drink lots of water. Grover doesn’t like zucchini, Nancy said.
Jack and Nancy and Robert all deal with Grover outside. It doesn’t help that the temperature is dropping below twenty degrees. It feels even colder because they are conscious of the dog’s difficulty. Nancy holds his head and shoulders while Jack supports his hind legs. Robert holds up Grover’s tail.
Robert says, “I have an idea.”
“What, sweetheart?” asks Nancy. In her arms, Grover lurches. Nancy squeezes against him and he whimpers.
“We could put a diaper on him.”
“How would we