What Soil Sounds Like
I hear them at the ass crack of dawn, as Rob would have called it. I flitter in and out of sleep, their voices wrapping around my quick dreams; something about pancakes, hurrying, and not going downstairs. A couple of false screams.
Its full day by the time I climb the green carpeted stairs and round the corner of the kitchen. It is fresh and shiny in here. It smells like lemons. My house was never like this; we had books all over the counter, the dishwasher always needed unpacking, and there were plants everywhere. Rob and I used to joke, “Never trust people with tidy houses.”
I mix what is in the bottom of the coffee maker with some Lactaid milk and stretch high on my toes, high, high to the top shelf above the stove to get my meds. One pink one, Ativan, one white, Paxil. I swallow them and say a little prayer for them staying down, all the while picturing myself puking them up. I lie face down on the leather couch until they kick in. The signals of this are a loosening of the jaw, and the extinguishing of the held breath and the feeling of wanting to run.
The phone rings, and I check the caller ID. Gina.
“Hi, Gina.”
“So, you won’t answer it in general, right? You knew it was me, right?”
“Yeah.” I open the fridge and poke around absently inside.
“Okay…so, Hello! How are you feeling? How’d you sleep?”
“Alright…Hey, do you...?”
“Listen, I am not sure how long I can keep the girls from going down there. I mean, they’re really excited about having a visitor, or uh, guest. Hey, so what time is your interview at Pet Smart?”
Not for the first time, I imagine I am cousin Gina, floating benignly in the luxury of sanity. She is in a whole better solar system; her rotating thoughts of the girls and her husband and what she will make for dinner. I know that planetary system. I lived there for fourteen years.
“Leslie?”
“I'm sorry, Gina, I have to go now.” I feel myself crumbling.
“Okay, Sweetie. Listen, can you..?”
Click.
My lower lip curls into an upside down U and my fore brows involuntarily draw tight together like thread being pulled. The thing about the meds is that I can’t cry. When I first started taking them I panicked at not being able to panic. Its not like the train isn’t chugging, its that its not getting anywhere.
You’re breathing
When I called 911 the third time in as many days, they took me with them and didn’t even turn on the lights and sirens. I met them on the front porch, same as before, but this time the two paramedic men squatted down on the rotting wood steps with me. The one with the red mustache, slightly graying said, “Ma'am, I think you’re breathing.”
“I’m not. I can’t.” I said, concentrating on a funny mole on his left eyebrow.
He smiled just enough, “Well, if you weren’t you wouldn’t be able to talk.” He shoulder glances to his associate while
I look to the side, squint my face a little and say “Can we just sit here for awhile?”
“We're gonna have you come with us, Mrs. Nelson”
During the ride to the hospital we talked about whether there would be one more snowfall, or if this was it. I looked out the back window to the people in the cars behind us as we held at a stoplight and I saw myself reflected back; a thirty-six year -old woman, 2 kids, a husband, a master’s degree in political science, and I didn’t cringe in the least. No, I felt like this was right. Someone should be taking care of me.
Petsmart
“So...” says Wayne the manager at Petsmart; a short, scruffy young man who reminded me slightly of my oldest son Andy. “We don’t have any managerial positions open. Just floor, ya know? Retail, customer service?”
“I am aware of that.”
“Uh huh.” He eyes me.
I make a weak smile, “I'm kind of in a place in my life when I’m starting over, ya know?”
“Dig it”, Wayne says, nodding. “You know we start at $8.25? There’s a raise after ninety days if you get a good eval.“
“Sure.” Oh God, really? Last year my tax bracket was in the mid-double digits.
“That’d be fine”
“Okay, well, how about Saturday?”
“To start? You’re giving it to me?”
Andy furrows his sparse brow, “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Yeah? Great! That sounds great. Yep."
“Two to ten PM. You’ll be training with Linda.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot!” I reach for, then pump, his limp hand while he pulls away awkwardly and walks leisurely to the back of the store.
I skipped little as I walked back to Gina’s, passing the grade school and a McDonald’s. I giggled and conversed inwardly- I have a job! I’m back in the functioning adult world! How long has it been, eleven months since I was given a medical leave from Pulsar-Temple?
Saturday I am dressed in jeans and the red Petsmart polo shirt and stand at the front of the store, looking around like I am admiring everything, like:“THIS PLACE IS GREAT!”
“ Sheila, this is Linda,” says Wayne the manager.
“ Hi! Its Leslie, actually,” I say to a large, square-shaped woman with a grey fuzzy braid going down her back. Something about her reminds me of a Clydesdale. She runs me through the paperwork with an air of total disinterest and then while I am reading the employee manual she walks out the emergency exit for a smoke.
“ Can I have one?” I ask, for the first time ever.
“ Yeah, but listen, I only bum one a day. I’m sick of all this ‘I don’t really smoke, I don’t buy them’ bullshit”.
She settles herself on the back sidewalk and cups her hand over the cigarette to light it. She passes me one and then the lighter. I twirl both of them in my palm for a moment then ask,
“Could you light it for me?”
“ You’re shittin’ me.”
“. No, I…I”
“Fine, Miss Priss, I am honored to light your cigarette.” I laugh, and the sound of the little bells dancing in my ears startles me.
“You,” she points at me. “I don’t know what you’ve got playing. You’re this tiny thing, all eyes and air…you look like one of those wandering lost dogs.”
“Its identity.” I say, matter-of-factly. “I don’t have one right now", I say, eyes widening seriously.
In response Linda raises the side of her lip just barely as she blows the smoke out.
I keep going, assuming an audience, “ You know, like if you don’t have all the things you identify with as YOU, like…like your job, or your degree? Or that you love someone. If you don’t have those things, if you have a day or a month or a year without those things, what ARE you, ya know?”
“You smoke weed or somethin’?”
“Um, no.” I say, sobering.
“Yeah, right”
I look off across the parking lot, “ I just have a lot of time to think and I dunno, I guess a lot to think about. “
“Well, think about cleaning out the rodents’ cages because that’s where you’re going next.”
Dog
I swallow my afternoon Ativan with a can of Pepsi and follow Linda back into the store, past the cat food and aquariums to where the rodent “apartments” are stacked three across, three tall.
“And so, you go like this, they wont bite, well...sometimes they bite. So, be real quick and take the bottom out. Throw some of this recycled paper crap in and then check the food and water.”
“ Can I pet them?” I ask.
“ Sure.”
“ Can I pick them up?”
“Um, yeah” Linda opens her palms and looks up at the ceiling snarkily.
I smile, enjoying feeling light, feeling okay.
“And the bunnies- you have to take them out and DO NOT place them in the others areas while you are cleaning. They will rip each other to shreds.”
“No way!”
“Oh yeah. They are vicious when it comes to territory”
I look at the powdery white dwarf rabbit and try to imagine a horror picture scene, all teeth and blood and screaming animal noises.
Linda is wearying to my enthusiasm, “Anyways, set them in the laundry basket while you clean and then plop them back in. Oh, I need to show you how to hold the butt.” She reaches in a pen and grabs an enormous rabbit out by the scruff of his neck, then places her had tightly under his bottom. “You gotta do this, or they’ll kick, they can break their spine trying to kick away. Okay. This here’s Dog.”
I let out a laugh, “He looks like a dog!!”
“Well he’s a Lop. They got the long ears and they get real big. So, there you are Prissy. I’m off to my hell hole at the cash register. Try to look busy.”
I like Dog immensely from the first second. He has silky brown eyes that remind me of cow eyes. Velvet. I pick him up clumsily, he kicks a little, then noses his head under my chin, and makes a little clicking sound. I freeze. I hadn’t touched anything, anyone, in so long. I feel suddenly maternal, and I would never use that word to describe how I felt with my boys. But this big lug of fur; I melt.
I hear a clear voice in my brain, or in the air around me, “Take me home. It sucks here”
Whipping my head up I see that there is no one near me. There are a few kids peeking at the hamsters but they are talking amongst themselves. I look down at Dog.
“Take me out of here.”
I don’t question.
I say “Okay.”
Dog Days of Summer
I have been taking Dog with me to work. I bundle him into the crook of my elbow under my windbreaker and we stroll to the store in the fresh morning light, chatting and just plain enjoying being alive and having somewhere to go. I dump him in his old cage and put the sold sign on it. Throughout the day I pick him up and carry him around like a mama monkey and nobody seems to mind, so far.
Today it is slow and Linda hoists her ample butt onto the cashier station table and centers in on me, “How come you carry that thing around?”
I laugh sweetly, “I don’t know." I scratch his nose, smiling. "He makes me happy. Just look at his little apple head!”
“There’s nothing little about that rabbit. His turds are the size of gumballs.”
“They are not.” I shake my head slightly, undisturbed, and place my chin over his head.
“You know what you’re doing when you do that, right?”
I look up sharply, worried I am hurting him somehow.
“Rabbits show pecking order by placing their heads under the other’s chin. Basically you’re the bitch now.”
When I laugh this time it vibrates in my chest. Meanwhile, I feel Dog’s mouth chittering against my throat canal.
“I’m cool with that.”
Public Weeping
Gina knocks on my door, while at the same time opening it and popping her head around. I look up from my book, glance quickly at the bunny cage and inwardly say “FUCK!”
“Haven’t seen much of you…how’s the job? You working today?” Her whitened teeth are framed by classic pink Clinique lipstick. The frame collapses into a pink puddle when she catches sight of the rabbit cage. She looks back at me squarely.
“Its GREAT! Yep. Really good…haaa. Yeah,(inhale)nah,(head shake)not working. Finally got a day off, ha...ha...yep.”
(Don’t look at the cage, don’t look at the cage) I look at the cage; she follows. Gina steps fully through the door now, leaving it to yawn open behind her, and I can hear the entertainment news show on the tv in the kitchen.
The look she gives me holds disappointment and restrained upset-ness. I almost smile in admiration; she has this mother thing down cold. “Rob has asked to come by for dinner tonight. He has some papers for you. I told him that would be fine.”
I scratch at my eyebrow and make a small face, regretting that she’s already gotten out of me that I don’t have to work.
“He’ll arrive by 6 or 6:15. You should meet him at the Metra.”
Gina pauses then adds, “That’d be nice, to meet him there.” I think she is trying to be nice, like in her mind giving me some how-to-be-a-wife tips.
The Metra is the city train. It arches through Chicago, northern Illinois, and all the way up to Milwaukee even.
I stare at the carpet for a moment and when I look up at her finally, she is watching Dog. He has sat up on his hind legs like a person, and is licking his paws, then rubbing them on his ears; the sweetness of it is like watching snow fall at the beginning of the season.
“Thanks, Gina.” I say, and I don’t hold back any of the feeling in my eyes; gratitude, apologies, looser-ness.
“You’re welcome Leslie,” she says solidly, then turns and nearly runs up the stairs, away from my drippy gaze. I look over at Dog who seemed to be smirking, if that is possible. “You’re one lucky Dog.” I say, giggling at my own dumb joke.
The Last Time I saw Rob
Rob had pulled the boys out of school to come pick me up from the hospital. When I came down to the minivan they all remained inside as I look through the tinted side window, first focusing on the reflection a thin face and strange eyes that I didn’t recognize as me anymore, and narrowing in on my sons faces, seated and gawking back at me. The look that they had was the one from that Halloween when Rob surprised them in the Dead-Guy makeup- green skin, eyes all hollowed black and blood on his mouth. Like eggs cracking, the boys slid one-by-one into fear and bawling. Rob hugged them up, rubbing the make-up off with his sleeve, while I went to answer the door and pass out candy bars. I think that was last year, but I am not sure.
So, leaving the hospital, we drove to Pizza Hut for lunch. There was a buffet thing where they had three or four kinds of pizza ready to grab, and a salad bar. The boys chewed their pizza and sipped their soda with a carefulness that killed me.
“Hey, time for dessert!” Rob said cheerily, clapping his hands together and standing up. “Who else wants some of the cinnamon sugar stuff?”
Both boys nodded, and in Rob’s wake I saw the light ghosts flash by, (I was taking buspar at the time and it made light trails). In response, zingy surges cursed down my spine and I held tight to the edge of the table because I wasn’t sure I would not stand up and run. Staring wild-eyed into the pizza on my plate, I viewed myself from above afar as a floating thing. Unmoored. Broken. In the same image, I saw my sons on a dock, staring, waving. I look up and see them cleanly now as dry, safe, and coiled in their life of common cares and rituals, and me soaked and drifting off in the dayless, middle-of-the-ocean continuum of un-saneness.
I had the sharp knowledge of death, faceless and formless, ready to gobble me up and but not let me be ended. I pushed my lips together tightly, as I again pictured the boys waving near shore. The un-crossable distance to them rose up in my throat, opened wide my mouth and noises came out that I had never heard before. The best word for it is wailing, like men in Jerusalem slumped over the bodies of their slain brothers.
Rob came running over while I sat with my hands clenched tight in my lap, my mouth and face an organ of low chords filling the Pizza Hut dining room. His palms on their necks, he led the boys out, as their heads turned back to stare at me until the double doors banged behind them. Once they were gone, I felt the depths of the room, the true spectacle of it, and I looked around at the horrified and uncomfortable faces. A tiny Latina woman in the far corner was crying. Everyone else just looked really uncomfortable. I stood up, stuttering in a breath and grabbed a slice of the desert pizza that Rob had set down before he ran the boys out. I shoved it in between my teeth and chewed, gasping, as I walked out.
Rob called Mom on the ride home, who called cousin Gina, who picked me up the next morning.
Rob: Dog, Dog: Rob
I have to be at the Metra stop by 6:12 to meet Rob, so at 6:04 I take an extra Ativan, just a half, bundle Dog to my chest under my sweater and begin the eight block walk to the train stop.
Rob and I catch sight of each other simultaneously as I round the corner of the last block. It is a slow unavoidable hell to be observed arriving. He waits and when I am near, I stop. Looking down at the wet street, I turn and start the rewind of the route, down Lilac Street.
Rob walks slightly behind me at first, then sneaks up, even. For a terrifyling moment, his eyes settle on my face, and then to my bulging sweater.
“What’s in the coat?” He asked hesitantly.
“Oh, um, it’s Dog, my rabbit.” I try to sound offhandish. I have one arm slung around Dogs bottom from the outside and this little job, of holding him up, makes me feel safe and content and makes the strangeness of being near Rob again dissolve in importance.
“So, couldn’t you have mailed me everything?” I ask quickly, still not looking over at him, but feeling his gaze.
“Shouldn’t you be asking how the boys are?”
I watch a truck go by, then throw out, “I got a job.”
“I heard.”
I turn slightly to take in his face from the side, and he lets me. I see in the lines in his neck, (I don’t have them, do I?) I see his large-lobed ears, and the skin of his cheek, a little dry but well scrubbed and clean looking.
When he looks over I look back at the road. I want desperately to watch him from far away and just remember us, real slow, like someone telling me a story of what we were. He’d be in the kitchen making grilled cheese and tomato soup while the boys lie on the leather sofa, the controls of the video games in their hands. When he yells out “Boys!” they immediately obey and wander to the table. Rob looks over to me as the orangey liquid slops into bowls, “You eating with us?” he asks, and the boys look over to where I am in the other room, reading a book, drinking a glass of wine like, “Who is he talking to?” I smile demurely and scratch my neck a little “No thanks.”
The truth is I am not worried about the boys at all. The truth is, besides right now, I never think about them.
“Look, couldn’t we just talk, do whatever we need to do, here?” I plead, suddenly unable to go on a second more.
“Right here in the middle of the street?” Rob scrunches up his face as he says it.
“The street is there, Darling,” I point condescendingly, it all coming back to me, “We are on the sidewalk.”
“You lost the right to call me “darling” two months ago.”
I groan, “Come on. Really?… REALLY!? You want to sit across a table from me and pause between bites and do some slow, painful game of emotional table tennis while we plan the end of our life together?”
“Yes, Leslie, I believe that is how normal people do it.”
I drop myself to the curb, bring my knees up to my chest and cuddle Dog up high to my collarbone. I can hear his little chattering, smell his musky fur.
“Oh God, Leslie, just STOP IT! Get up! NOW!”
I stay.
“GET UP!” He seems not only angry but desolate. Like a man whose car broke down on a crappy deserted road in a foreign country.
I stare the stare of the stubborn. Rob curses and stalks away in the direction of Gina’s.
What Soil Sounds Like
When he is out of sight the energizing power of defiance leaves me and I notice a small park just down the street. I decide that I will let Dog loll in the open space for a bit. I have never let him loose before but I figure he probably has to pee or something.
“You want to run?” I smile and whisper to him.
“Yeah, I want to feel free” I hear him reply.
I chuckle, “Don' I hear ya, Sweetheart.”
He touches down on the grass, and begins a slow dance of hop, pause, hop, pause. A few minutes later he races in circles, fast, fast, and kicks his feet up and shakes his big ears while in the air. I giggle openly. Finding a clean spot, I lie down on my back and drop shut my eyes, listening to the evening birds and the sound of the soil beneath me, its slow and steady hum. Dog comes up and nibbles at my hair, and I mumble dreamily, waving him off, “Cut it out.”
In my bones a song rises- it is free and safe and joyous, and it sings to me that I have found a place to be. A safe home of my own, in this very body.
"I'm going to be okay,” I smile stupidly and say to the night as I hold this okayness tight and close The feeling fills me like a blood gun until I am almost delirious.
I am maybe dreaming when I hear a rustling from the far hedges and it takes me a second to come-to and raise my head. Then a girl is shrieking as a large black retriever plunges after Dog. It seems impossible but immediately the dog has Dog in its teeth and in slow motion shakes, whips his head, once, twice then drops him. Now the girl is there, I am there and Dog is in my hands, his neck fur soggy, his eyes glossy but somehow sweet, adoring as he looks at me. The girl, a lanky red haired, tan thing, starts to cry. “I’m sorry…. I’m sorry.”
I avoid her and carefully curl Dog up tight in my sweater, up below my chin, and start to walk down Lilac. Both my arms curl tight over him. I kiss him on the ears over and over, weeping.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”, I stammer. The night is coming in slow, like a whisper.
“Its okay.” I hear him reply tiredly.
“I’m SO SORRY! Oh GOD! I SO FUCKED UP.”
“Its okay.” He murmurs, his eyes glassy, wet-like, “I love you anyways.”
I whimper. “Why? Why do you love me? WHY! I don’t understand?!”
“I just do.” He says with absolute gentleness and I hear it loud in my heart and it makes me bawl.
“But wwwwwhhyy?”
Dog seems very fatigued now, “You are nice to me. You give me raisins. You are soft with me.”
“But that’s nothing.”
“No. It’s everything.”
I keep weeping and walking. I think of the godlessness, the thoughtlessness of nature. The illogic of love.
“I’m honest when I say I don’t know what love is”, I say earnestly as I check on him. His eyes are closed now.“I know. But you did it anyways.”
“But I let you get hurt, I didn’t love you right!” I look up and watch a girl sitting on her step, watching me.
To Dog, I add, “Ya know, if there was a God, wouldn’t it protect the soft, the small, the fragile?”
“Maybe that is your job, you humans.”
“I have a job” I say irritably, “Remember?”
I come to Oak Lane and instead of turning right towards Gina’s I keep going straight on Lilac Street. I can still feel heat coming from Dog, though he feels lighter now. Crouched a little, I press my mouth to his ears and keep walking.
