Jerry
is their 10-year-old pug. The dog is, put simply, a clown. Like all the best
clowns, his clown-ness is not deliberate. He’s a sunny one, Jerry, generous of
spirit and of licks to the hand, face and beyond. They got him as a puppy and
Leigh swore she’d never get through it. The energy, the propensity to levitate
around the backyard and then settle down to a good session of shoe- and
sock-chewing. Somehow she made it through, as most of us do. Now a decade later
he’s finally showing some signs of slowing down, and she misses that puppy, of
course. She misses him in a way that makes her chest ache, makes her remember
the nature of impermanence, as if she could forget.
“I’m
just concerned,” she says. “That’s all.”
“What
are you concerned about?”
“What
aren’t I concerned about? What if he gets out? What if he eats something he
shouldn’t? What if –”
“We
keep the doors closed. We keep the food in the pantry. No pug is getting up to
the pantry. Not even Jerry.”
“But
that’s just it. We keep the doors
closed and the food out of reach. But who knows what Shasta does?”
They’re
barreling through Marin now. Leigh doesn’t know much about Marin except for a
great-aunt who lived in Sausalito. Visits to her smelled like Vicks Vap-O-Rub
and felt like a peach-fuzz cheek pressed to Leigh’s own. But she knows the
stereotype: a place of guilty liberal cash and redwoods, a place that is so
utterly consumed by itself as to be its own joke, self-referential like that. When you grow up in San Francisco, Marin is
not just the suburbs. It’s way the hell across the Golden Gate Bridge, and with
everything to do in the city, why would you bother to cross it?
She
did, though. She and Sid. They rattled across in his old Sentra and there she
made the memory that departed from childhood. They went to Muir Woods, got
high, wandered amongst the trees. Then they went back to the car, tucked away
in a shady corner of the parking lot, and had sex. Was it making love? Sure, if
you want to call it that. Thirty-eight-year-old Leigh isn’t sure that she knew
the meaning of making love at eighteen, or perhaps love was different then, It
tastes different at different ages. At eighteen love tasted like soda, fizzy
and sweet. Now it tastes like something to which she can’t put an easy
metaphor, so slippery is it even in its structured security. It’s a taste often
interrupted, confused by its sheer stature. It throws the tongue and baffles
the brain.
Evan
chews on his lower lip. He’s annoyed. This is always the sure signal. It’s a
warning to proceed with caution, something that’s not exactly Leigh’s
specialty. “I interviewed her,” he
says. “You were there. Remember?”
“Yeah,”
Leigh says, picturing Shasta the dog-sitter sitting cross-legged on her couch,
exposing the holes in the soles of her shoes without shame.
