Single, Carefree, Mellow. Katherine Heiny
over to the veterinary clinic.
The vet had done a biopsy and had called to tell Maya that Bailey had an extremely aggressive form of cancer, and would most likely not live more than six or eight weeks.
Maya hung up with the vet and immediately called Rhodes. Because the problem was, of course, that although sometimes Maya’s heart was gone, sometimes it came back. Sometimes she could actually feel it thump back into her chest so hard it made her rib cage rattle. And then she would have to see Rhodes, would have to put her arms around his thin body and kiss him, even though he was too tall to kiss comfortably, would have to touch his face and brush his hair out of his eyes, and hear his voice, even if he was saying something unbearably boring about computers to somebody else, like, “NFS keeps timing out and locking up my whole system.”
There were times when nothing but Rhodes would do.
That night, Maya and Rhodes had dinner at Rhodes’s parents’ house, which was just across town. They did this about once a week and Maya had always been grateful that she and Rhodes were not required to give up their weekends, just one weeknight. Rhodes’s family was accepting and relaxed, and for the most part, it was easy to be around them. As opposed to her own family, who lived across the country and when they were there for Christmas last year, Rhodes had hugged her mother and her mother had asked if he was drunk (which he had been, incredibly so, but that was not the point).
But today Rhodes’s mother, Hazelene, rushed up to Maya and embraced her so fiercely that Maya wondered if there had been a terrorist attack or natural disaster in the fifteen minutes it had taken her and Rhodes to drive over.
“My dear,” Hazelene said. “You must be devastated. Rhodes called me in tears as soon as you got the news about Bailey.”
“Oh,” said Maya, understanding. “Yes, well, it’s horrible.”
She was a little shocked to learn that Rhodes had called his mother, called her in tears apparently. She tried to think if she would have done this if things were reversed. Rhodes did not have any pets but he did have a lumpen sixteen-year-old sister named Magellan (they all had idiotic names, the whole family; there was a brother named Pegasus). Would Maya have called her own mother in tears if Magellan were given six weeks to live? In all honestly, she wasn’t sure she would have. But then Bailey lived with them (Magellan, thank God, did not) and Bailey loved Rhodes with a devotion, which, in a human, would border on the insane. Whereas Magellan, apart from a brief period of infatuation two years ago when she painted Maya’s fingernails dark blue, did not seem to like Maya all that much.
Like later, during dinner when Rhodes’s father, Desmond, said, “Can someone explain to me who the Jonas Brothers are and why they wear chastity belts?” and Maya attempted to catch Magellan’s eye to exchange a look of commiseration and Magellan said, “Why are you staring at me? Do you want me to pass the butter?”
What could you do with a person like that? Maya was an only child and she had always hoped she would be close to her boyfriend’s sisters, that they would become like her own sisters. And right at that moment, during dinner, she realized that this still might happen. Not with Magellan (obviously) but with some other boyfriend’s sister, the boyfriend after Rhodes. The idea of this filled Maya with a feeling so sparkly, so effervescent, that she could only gaze around the table, wondering why everyone did not sense this about her, why they could not see she was poised for flight.
Maya worked two days a week as a collection management librarian at the university, and the other three days a week, she worked from home as a website designer, mostly for schools and libraries. The director of the library was a man named Gildas-Joseph, who had a very faint French accent and the first glints of silver showing in the hair by his temples. Maya found him wildly attractive, although she knew that if she were actually single and started dating him, she would quickly find something about him highly annoying, most likely the fact of his wife and children.
Maya told Gildas-Joseph that she had to leave early, for personal reasons, and didn’t add that the personal reason was taking Bailey to the vet.
Gildas-Joseph just looked at her with his dark eyes, and said, “Of course, Maya,” and Maya thought again how sexy he was.
She took Bailey to the clinic, and this time they saw a different vet, Dr. Drummond. He was tall, with a short, almost military haircut, and very light blue eyes. Maya found him attractive, too. This was part of why she felt she should leave Rhodes, this business of finding all sorts of other men attractive.
Dr. Drummond sat on the floor, petting Bailey and stroking the unswollen side of her face while Maya said, “She’s not eating very much, and when she does, sometimes her mouth bleeds a little. Also that thing on her cheek looks bigger to me.”
Dr. Drummond gently pried Bailey’s mouth open and shone a light inside. “The tumor is invading her mouth,” he said. He paused. “I think we may be talking about two weeks or so now.”
Maya did not think she would cry but when she tried to talk, her voice was all wobbly. “Two weeks? That’s all?”
Dr. Drummond nodded. “I can give her a shot, a painkiller, but I’d like to see her again in a few days.”
Maya said nothing. Dr. Drummond gave Bailey the shot, which made her whimper, and then he broke a dog biscuit into tiny bits and fed them to her slowly.
Then he glanced at Maya’s face. “Let me walk you to your car,” he said.
Maya went to the receptionist, but was just waved away (evidently when your dog was dying, they billed you later) and she and Dr. Drummond and Bailey walked out to the car. Dr. Drummond helped Bailey climb in and then he stood next to Maya.
“Are you okay to drive?” he asked.
She nodded, and he held her hand. There in the parking lot, he held her hand.
In just a few days, Bailey had gone from an old but healthy dog to a sickly frail animal who panted with the slightest exertion and coughed when she barked. And the tumor in her cheek was now the size of a golf ball and distorting her face. She wouldn’t eat dog food anymore, or even scrambled eggs. Now the only thing she would eat was raw hamburger mixed with bread and milk.
They were out of milk, so in the evening, Maya and Rhodes and Bailey walked down to the convenience store on the corner. Even this walk of two blocks left Bailey wheezing.
“I’ll wait outside with her,” Maya said.
Rhodes went into the store and Bailey flopped down on the sidewalk. A little white fluffy dog was leashed to the bike rack, but Bailey didn’t go over to sniff her.
Maya knew that dog by sight, as well as the dog’s owner, a fiftyish woman, who was presumably in the store. They lived in the neighborhood, and could be seen going for walks and running errands in all sorts of winds and weathers. Maya thought the dog’s owner was probably single because she had never seen the woman with anyone else (or without the dog).
The dog’s owner and Rhodes came out of the convenience store at the same time, and the little white dog danced around happily.
The woman looked at the dog, and said, “I love you.”
She didn’t say it in high, excited dog-speak. She said it exactly the way a woman might say it to her husband or lover. Maya and Rhodes looked at each other.
On the way home, walking slowly, slowly, for Bailey, Rhodes put his arm around Maya and she leaned against his side.
“At least,” she said, “I’ll never become that kind of person now.”
Rhodes was thoughtful. “I wouldn’t mind being that kind of person,” he said.
That was Rhodes. He honestly wouldn’t mind; she would. Did they complement each other or were they doomed? Maya could never figure it out.
Rhodes was gone on Thursday nights, so he could attend the project status review in Arlington for his department on Fridays (he worked with computers, and was an assistant professor, but that was actually as deep