A Bad Dog, a Good Dog, a [Dog]
Lily-of-the-valley looks like it was made for a dollhouse, or for illustrations of fairies. Among the stinky onion grass and weeds and dirt, the perfect white bell flowers seemed man-made. The air was tense like rain coming, like hands reaching up to catch. As the sun disappeared behind clouds, the heat and humidity cooled to a stuffy lukewarm. When the wind blew, the lilies-of-the-valley whispered urgently to each other. The grasses bent, and if they had not been cut short they would have shined like glossy hair. The thousands of maple leaves on the old tree rustled, a sound like thunder. Insects were swept away by the breeze. Forty gnats and forty mosquitoes danced in the air like pixies, like insects who wished to bite. On the railing of the porch, a shiny black ant marched, and behind it another, and his cousins, and their nephews, and their friends. Some carried crumbs, but many carried nothing at all. Everyone bent their faces up to the sky, hoping for rain to fall.
Spring air is sweet and suffocating. So many lilacs, so much honeysuckle. Their scent is syrupy, perfumed, heavy–like a memory of being pulled into a hug against fine fabrics, inhaling Chanel No.5 and expensive creams. Like many teeth, artificially straightened and whitened, smiling around in circles. Congratulations, the memory says, for graduation and preceding reputations and vacations, publications, ovulations, gratification. It is good that all of that is in the past. Those people in the memory would not approve of the neighbors’ tense voices from across the yard, angry with each other and shouting at Dubie to get the fuck off the flower beds. There aren’t any flowers in the beds anyway, just a few cigarette butts embedded into the dirt like scattered seeds. But one day there might be flowers, the neighbor’s wife thinks.
There is another dog (other than Dubie who stands in the flowerbeds), the white one that can be seen every day laying out in his owner’s yard. Everyone says, oh he is such a good boy for staying on his lawn even though there is no fence. And the dog is good, he finds various ways to be comfortable, lying flat in the grass or curled up on the cement walkway or sniffing at the open window, listening to the voices of his owners inside. Despite his goodness, he does not wish to be left outside all day. The sun is hot. The yard is lonely.
A voice that previously could not be heard becomes audible as the screen door squeaks open and closed. An apology from a brother over the phone, and news about Mother. She will be re-writing the will. She’s met with the lawyer. She feels rejected, and she feels it is only fair to exclude others in response. The ‘She’ like a god that says over and over ‘I AM ALL POWERFUL. I AM ALL KNOWING.’ Gods that say those things are rarely anything at all. A gust of wind blows, and the head nods to the voice in the phone. The hair falls down in the face and is swept away in the wind. The phone is adjusted against the ear. The news he called about is not news at all. Brothers cannot fathom the lives of their siblings, no matter how much love they give, no matter how much conversation is had. A child who is belittled will grow to be a teenager who is quiet, who will become an adult you no longer know. Brothers do not understand this. Mothers always prefer boys.
Darkness grew in the shadows of the maple tree. The shadows shifted as the branches bent. The air was filled with the rumblings of a giant who had thrown his sweater over the sky. Light poked dimly through the clouds, but the sky was suffocated, grey, and heavy. The mosquitoes were constant. The traffic was constant. Rustling of a thousand wings and a thousand tires on the pavement and a thousand maple leaves, all sounding like shhhhhh shhhhhhh shhhhhhh. The shushing of a parent to a distressed child was softer and slower than this; this was the shh!ing of danger you have not yet escaped. Yellow-green pollen made eyes water like suddenly breaking down into tears, but the sky was unaffected. Its steely silver back was turned and did not promise rain. The bright blossoming of daffodils and dandelions was joyful, a release from the oppression of winter, but not a release. The air had warmed after months of freezings, but it was not the respite that had been hoped for. Released but not released. Dubie pisses on the flower beds and is whacked on the rump. He barks and barks but no one can understand what he says. His whines start to sound like please, please. Your need cannot be satisfied if we do not understand what you are asking for.
Socked feet accumulate static electricity against the weatherproof paint on the porch. The cellphone grows hot, unaccustomed to long phone calls. Brothers apologizing for the acts of their mothers. Cursing at the bugs that land on flesh, and the ones that learned to needle their noses through fabric. Swatting, swatting, and even if the rain came it would not deter the mosquitoes that had grown to look a turkey in the eye flat-footed. The neighbors shout at each other. The skin was supposed to heal. The dermatologists always say to get a little bit of sunlight and it will do wonders, but the skin is still raised. Now, sweat burns against the cracks in the elbows. Sunscreen cannot be applied to broken skin, so the skin sees mostly overcast days. There will be relief. There will not be relief. Brother laughs and tells an old joke, and it is better for a moment. The air is so humid it feels heavy, like the world is already underwater.
In the summertime, evening seems like it will never arrive. The winter was so dark, pitch black before anyone returned from work, and black still in the morning. Now, it’s well past dinner time and the sky is a comatose sort of grey. Undying, unsetting, the sun grasps onto the world, afraid. God created Light and Dark, Heaven and Hell, Man and Woman, Good and Bad. The world is now without God.
The phone beeps three times when the call is ended.
The brother does not know about the neighbor’s wife who is so glad to have gotten divorced from the man who yelled at her for every thing she did, to be freed from that anger and that callousness, to have found her current husband who she knows does not yell at her for everything, he yells at her when Dubie pisses on the flower beds and he might yell at her that she will never plant flowers in the beds because she has not so far and they have lived there for several years, but he does not yell at her for every thing she does. And she knows Dubie is so happy to have them, to be patted and fed, but also that Dubie thinks his kibble is bland and he does beg for scraps of bacon and pulled pork and even the voting registration letter he saw her opening because the tearing of the paper sounded delicious like there could be a treat inside. Dubie looks jealously over at the white dog across the street who must be so peaceful all the time because his owners never yell at him, they never bang pots together to scare him or run him off of the flowerbeds or shout, though maybe sometimes that dog wishes his owners would say something to him, or to yell, because nothing ever happens at all. The white dog had been listening to the call on the porch with the screen door and he huffed his doggy breath thinking that person is talking to no one at all. People are silly to think they can bark and snarl into their little bright rectangles, as if anyone hears. As if anyone is listening.
Squirrels hide in their homes. Chipmunks disappear between garden stones. The bees have left, and only the mosquitos remain. The air becomes very still and suddenly not humid at all, but not dry; a sort of nothing temperature, a nothing wetness. The huge maple tree held its breath like a child poised at the end of the diving board. Some mothers have children when they do not want to, and they try to love them, they try harder than is comfortable to imagine. She wishes for relief from a child she did not love, or relief from not loving the child, or something. And for now, it is ended. Sometimes when crying is very well-deserved it comes out like throwing up, like a heaving that starts in the stomach. Instead of one polite drop, the rain starts with one thousand raindrops drenching the world. The lilies-of-the-valley bow their heads, weighed heavy by water they would have died without.
KP is an Armenian-American currently working in the medical field. An inhabitant of both Philadelphia and Southern New Hampshire, KP is stranded somewhere between wild green mountains and the parking lot of a Wawa. A weekly newsletter called Fever, written by KP, can be found on Substack.
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