Free Dog Medicine by Julie Barton Page A

pointed to Mrs. Rankins’ house.
    â€œBut, I can’t not be there!” I screamed. My mother wanted to protect me; she didn’t understand that I felt that Blarney was
mine
. She was my love, my solace in this family I didn’t understand. I couldn’t let her die without me.
    I wasn’t given a choice. Mrs. Rankins held my forearm and led me up her driveway. “You can’t see that, dear,” she said. I barely knew Mrs. Rankins. The image of Blarney’s body hitting the bus and falling to the road looped endlessly in my mind. I found myself silenced. The tears stopped abruptly. My lips tingled. I stole a glimpse of one of the neighbor boys putting Blarney’s limp body into the back of my mom’s station wagon. Blarney’s head dangled, inert, lifeless.
    After my mom drove away, Mrs. Rankins took me inside her house that smelled like mothballs and disinfectant. Everything was dark brown: the carpet, the walls, the rug, the stove, the refrigerator. She offered me graham crackers and milk, and I took them without words and waited for my mom to return.
    When the doorbell finally rang, I went to the door behindMrs. Rankins and knew immediately when the door revealed a sliver of my mom’s face that Blarney was gone. She had died; I had missed it.
    I remember watching my father cry that night as he played piano. Our whole family separated during the mourning. We ate alone, we wept alone, and we went to bed early. Later that night, I lay in bed reeling. Through the wall, I heard Clay crying. I held up my knuckle, thinking about knocking, if only to indicate to him that I felt sad too. Chances were he’d shout an obscenity through the drywall, but I took that risk and pulled my fingers down, then rapped them gently, three times. Silence. No longer the sound of our big, beautiful dog bounding down the hall. Then, when I thought it was past all hope, three knocks back.

L AKE B EAUCHÊNE, Q UÉBEC
    M
A Y 1996
    A few hours after I threw the pillow at my mom, she returned from her lunch and found me still in bed. She walked into my room, opened the windows, and left without saying a word. I appreciated her silence and the fresh air, the sound of the wind in the trees, the birds singing. Nature thrived in the forest outside my bedroom window, and life could go on while I slumbered. It really didn’t matter if I was there or not. The earth would turn, the sun would rise, the moon would wax and wane. I found the continuity consoling and further proof that I need not be alive.
    Hunger eventually pulled me out of bed and I went to the kitchen to pour a bowl of cereal. I ate sleepily at the kitchen table, and my mom sat across from me. The clock read 1:30 p.m. She had a cup of coffee and the newspaper. I didn’t know what day it was, whether my mom had called in sick or it was a weekend.
    â€œLynn says hi,” she said, before taking a long sip of her black coffee. “She’s glad you’re home. She lived in New York for a few years and said she couldn’t leave soon enough.” I stared blankly at the wall, swallowing a pang of defensiveness for Manhattan. Part of me loved New York—the energy, the potential, the noise. “Oh, and Dad called,” she said, holding the newspaper in front of her face. “He’s looking into taking you up to Lake Beauchêne in a few weeks.”
    Lake Beauchêne was a remote fishing preserve in Québec that my dad loved. He had taken Clay there every summer for the past few years. Sometimes my parents went with friends. I’d neverbeen. The last time my dad and brother went to the lakes, they took my brother’s friend and his terminally ill father. This man, who had only a few weeks to live, wanted to spend some of his final days on these sacred waters in a boat with his son, to say words only the two of them and the loons would ever hear. I thought this was so beautiful and tragic, and I understood Lake