As they took the first few steps of the evening stroll toward the sloped driveway, the dog had looked up at its master and tried to lick its own odd, pink tongue. Hal presented a treat and looked to the evening sky, explaining that a dog—a real dog—had proudly been shot into space in October of ‘49 like an unlucky, oversized guinea pig. Hal dropped the pinkish, meatish treat to the ground, and the dog scooped it up, tried to swallow, gagged, spat it back to the sidewalk, then tried its luck again, with the same results. Hal further explained, grimly, that this first brave dogstronaut had actually died a few hours after takeoff, due to panic and heat and an eventual awareness of betrayal. Hal ended the gag cycle by breaking the regurgitated treat in half, making it the size and shape of the last segment on his pinky finger. Hal spat on it, and placed the treat-fingerling back in the dog’s mouth where it rolled around like leathery treat jerky.
Hal looked up to the spent clouds and raised his treat bag. I know how you feel, he said to the remains of a dog scattered above the atmosphere, and then also to the upright remains of a dog at his side.
Hal tested the harness once more and looped the business end of the leash around his wrist. He straightened up to full height, stretching his back and pumping his legs. Hal was often asked if he had played basketball in a previous life, for the usual reason, and he would nod, but not mention his spot on the JV squad—his long, bony arms and legs had provided more of a distraction than an obstacle for the first team. Hal promised himself again he would splurge and order the extra-long leash to lessen the strain on his L4 and L5—his L6 was not much better, but better than his knees. He then assessed his lack of callouses and blisters. His hands had more in common with a banker’s, although even in retirement he was invested more in the work of words than money. His fingers were smooth and their nails were soap clean, down to the quick. His wife had ordered one of those scrubbing brushes, with the little plastic edge for scraping. Hal missed the satisfying days of rusted fingernails after dinner.
The remarkable thing about the barbecue sauce, other than the color, and the taste, was how it sealed itself to the bottom of the pan like a deliciously caramelized pink barnacle. Hal usually gave the pan a good try and so his fingernails began to resemble the rusty dinge.
Earlier during lunch, Hal and his wife had shared grilled feta with tomato, arugula, prosciutto and Havarti on rustic French bread, and, as usual, a side of rotten explanations about his identity, their supposed relationship, and the cleanliness of cooking surfaces.
“Even if we did cook on this…thing,” Hal remembered she had said with her cross-examiner’s eyes peering over a half-eaten sandwich, “why won’t it come clean?”
Hal got right to scrubbing and scraping with his fingernails and looking out the window with his back to her, which gave them both time to think, and for her get used to this man scrubbing and scraping in her home again.
“And, a place like this,” she persisted, “would have more than one of these…things.”
“Maybe it’s the cook’s favorite pan?”
“Bawww,” she said. She was still a tough customer before noon, but there were cracks forming.
“Maybe,” Hal said with raised eyebrows, “a lot of things around here are the cook’s favorite?” He winked with the whole side of his face, then checked that the other patrons in the kitchen had not seen. And her cheeks had turned bright pink. He could still make her blush.
“The cook’s favorite,” she said, less like a question. “And where did all these…things…come from?”
“Books?”
“These are my books?”
“Our books,” he repeated into the sink, scrubbing with a little more vim than vigor. And that’s when he relaxed. That’s when one of the knots inside him began to wiggle loose.
Standing atop the driveway Hal had re-stretched his lower lumbar and checked his watch one last time before they began the walk around the waterlogged loop in earnest. Her dog stood at attention at an unknown noise, then cowered behind Hal’s leg as a chipmunk scurried away from the log pile. The log pile was neat and straight, and the shadow of its original height lingered on the vinyl siding closest to the mailbox area. The mailbox area was a mess, and deserved more respect since it was ground zero for all of their news from the outside world.
The post that supported the mailbox was loose, and the box was looser. The pink courier flag hung on for dear life, although it had given up its bright red color long ago, and like Hal’s sideburns, had conceded to pale. A fallen limb was javelined into the ground and leaned against the mailbox, waiting to regale the mailman with its exciting escape. The wood area and the mailbox area were behind the rusty but otherwise pristine basketball goal area set to regulation height, in front of the free throw line marked at regulation distance. Everything had its set-aside, regulated area, and everything had its own needs.
Fix it, Hal had commanded down the short stretch of leash, but in return he received a sappy look at the treat bag. He clipped the leash to his tool belt and manufactured another soggy kibble. Sometimes Hal imagined how it would be walking with someone more helpful than the dog, but anything more helpful would also have required more attention and more complex snacks. More conversation. More patience. More baths. More everything.
Hal squatted in defiance of his knees and steadied himself with a hand on the wobbly mailbox post, the wet mulch daring him to sit more comfortably.
The house did not have a mud room, and so the front foyer was set up for decontamination. All the houseguests were thus escorted around to the ingress on the side of the house. Or, in theory, Hal clarified to himself, they would be, if the need ever arose again. The days of guests appearing at all hours of the evening to demand spiced Italian meats, Gruyere cheese, raspberry jalapeno jelly, sparkling wine and sparkling conversation were no longer circled on the calendar. The calendar no longer gave warnings about family or friends or even repairmen who would be knocking on the door.
When her sister had visited—yes, from the west coast—she had enjoyed discussing her own ailments more than those of Hal or his wife’s or of their walled-off world. She must have visited, at least once or twice. But it had to have been many years before the dog was born, even before its unlucky parents were alive. More likely that she had barged through the front door soon after they got married and were still settling into the house—that would be more her style. Hal primarily remembered her overly-ripened figure and the oversized cackling at her inside jokes. The sallowness of her skin and eyes. She was not unhealthy, but carried a thick torso and limbs, like she used to lift weights and was left with all this extra body mass that had nowhere to hide. She resembled his wife somewhat, but only if his wife had let herself go, as they said, and then if she were to have kept on going and going and going…
“You’re looking…full of life,” was how his wife had phrased it, after the perfunctory sisterly hug in the doorway.
“Fit as a fat fiddle,” her sister said, with a laugh that barely squeezed in beside her. “Fellow professor,” she said to greet Hal, her head bobbing like an impressed penguin.
This was definitely soon after they were married, back when Hal was still an assistant in the classroom, but getting closer to full professorship every semester. And back before the sister had lost all the weight, as Hal’s wife would have said, although she clearly did not ever lose all the weight. She had liked the functional aspect of the fireplace in the abstract (who says that about fire?) but as Hal had readied the kindling she had deemed it not worth the smoke. She had preferred to make use of their small, spare blankets, instead. She carried around extra bundles for her hosts, too, or maybe she required all of them to warm her total square footage of chilled flesh, Hal mused, like a snowman trying to warm itself with nothing but colorful napkins.
She always had something in her hands for Hal. Carrying, yet concealing. Something up her ruffled sleeves with which to deceive him. When her short, sticks of arms did protrude from her rotund belly she looked even more like a hastily made snowman. And even while obscuring her girth, she was always within easy reach of his homemade guacamole. In between chips drenched with the stuff she complained it was not up to snuff with what she could get down the street from her place. She had raised one green-stained chip and smiled at Hal when his wife had gone for more sea salt.
“Maybe this was really the lucky, secret weapon,” she had whispered to Hal’s baffled but polite smile. “You’re a good man.”
When she cackled, her belly almost jostled itself free, and more than once Hal wondered if her entire midsection would tumble to the floor and become wedged in the foyer corner until spring. His wife smiled and beamed like little sisters do, except when the two of them were holding hands and crying, which was often. On those occasions Hal would nod grimly and head to the kitchen to refill the chip ‘n dip.
So instead of a cozy fire and a relaxing drink the three of them had sat stone cold sober all weekend, or maybe over a few weekends. Hal suffered the listing of his wife’s sister’s persistent skin conditions, and the listing of her equally persistent fine-art grad students who kept asking, allegedly, for her scaly hand in marriage. But she has a great personality, he imagined them all saying to themselves, lying in that regard, too. Oh, she knew her way around a photography lab, and sketching stills of rotten fruit, but she knew more about life than living. Knew more about completing punny crossword clues than knowing answers people actually cared about.
“Not my thing,” she had said about her so-called suitors, with an unsubtle wink.
Hal took that to mean she had no interest in men, but maybe she had meant marriage, or maybe both. He had looked at his wife to catch one or more of her eyes rolling, but she had held back. The things we did for family.
The problem with the mailbox was the screws, stripped ever since Hal and his wife had moved in, back when the mail was reliably delivered on horseback. Hal tried to match the jagged end of the branch to an equally jagged spot on the tree above. He tapped the head of the mailbox.
“Another couple of inches,” he said in that tone humans use to intimidate inanimate objects.
The screws could not be replaced due to their rare combination of length and width and history, and they seemed to know it—just as the mailbox flaunted its knowledge of their personal business. Hal thought it was a funny notion, the mailbox reading its contents—bills, announcements, cards, anything from professionals on letterhead to him or his wife, but usually to her. If the envelope were addressed to his wife, Hal would wait for her to share the gist with him as needed, which was not often. She was his conduit, and filter, to the world through all of its outlets.
There was the mailbox again, thought Hal, tipped a bit more forward than the day before, caught in a slow-motion, knowing sort of nod, letting Hal know he would always be one step behind. Hal thought it was a funny notion, but he did not smile.
The long screwdriver was easy to find in the shoulder bag, and easy to use on a post, but then, there was the dog, who had grown more curious than scared of the wood pile. Hal turned his body so the dog could nose through the brushwood behind him, and he could view the street without appearing to want to view the street. Probably lots of posts around the loop needed fixing. It had been that kind of a storm. Maybe it would be one of those kinds of walks. The handyman hero could be rewarded on his return home with boxed wine and adult playtime. It could really happen this time. Hal had smiled almost naturally.
The evening sky was an orange, streaky slate—a whiteboard washed by a kindergartner. The revived grass stood at attention, watching the dark spiderweb of streams on the driveway stretch into the street. Hal envied water. Water always knew where to go. Water was sometimes the solution, and sometimes the problem, but it would say it was only being water.
Hal hadn’t actually been ducking behind the mailbox, but he stayed low when a cluster of walkers strapped to dogs crossed the end of the drive. Water never found itself in this kind of a situation. Water played it cool. Water made everyone else wonder what to do.
The convoy stopped and talked at the end of his driveway, and Hal continued to investigate the very interesting undercarriage of the mailbox. Seeing the mailbox every day, Hal would either be triggered into remembering something important, or triggered into remembering that he had forgotten something important. Either way, the mailbox, with its arrogant, knowing sort of nod, was a worthy opponent to overcome at the beginning of each walk. But easier to contend with than the logjam of walkers and talkers.
Hal wetted another treat and tried to distract the dog’s wishful eyes from the pack of naïve, tasty canines on the street. Hal then remembered what he was begging for. The last time there were such clear signals from his wife before a walk he had not played it cool. Not at all. Upon his triumphant return in record breaking time, he had not been revived. He had been too impatient to let time and the vitamin drip, drip, drip their energy into him.
The clog of neighbors was eventually washed away downstream, and Hal gave the back of their heads a hardy wave. The dog turned away from the road, and then looked up at Hal like his wife does so often, like he was not understanding it at all.
One day Hal might stop referring to the dog as the dog or her dog, but the dog and Hal had not yet reached that level of understanding. The difference between willful ownership and forced obligation must still be drilled into its head, like the need to only poo in the messy world, and not in the tidy den, or on the patio next to the very important star watching equipment.
Hal felt for a specific non-metallic doodad in the tool bag, but extracted the matchbook.
“I do understand you,” he said to the dog. “That’s the good and the bad of it.”
He fingered open the book of vintage matches, and re-counted the unused, lucky sticks. Still lucky, or lucky enough.
Hal tried the bag again, and found the colorful hair tie he was after. A twisted spectrum, it was easy to spot against any screw, any paint, any godawful wallpaper pattern. He pressed it into the wide opening of one of the rusted-out screws, and surgically inserted the chipped screwdriver head. Slivers of the long wooden handle splintered under the torque of his palm, and two of the carved star-points cracked off. Instead of a quaint design, the handle looked more like it had natural scratches from wear and tear. Hal had been looking to get rid of the driver, so maybe he finally had a good enough excuse.
The screw sighed when it was back into place, good and tight. Hal removed the rainbow band and poked again at the flush head. It held. He did three more like it and heard three more sighs, and only got a few more splinters for his trouble. He gave the mailbox a good side-smack and the screws made a swaggering screw-you face. We are back in business. We got this. He gave the screws a supportive nod, and they maintained their tightlipped smiles, like they had been having this conversation long before there was all this rust. Long before there was a need to relieve a hair tie from wrapping around nearby hair.
Hal stashed the tools and kissed the scrunchy tie. Best tool in the bag, but getting frayed. It barely snapped back. And snapping back was all it needed to do. If Hal were going to pick a tool, or an ingredient or a person or a magnifying eyepiece, would he pick this exact one again, as-is? And if not, then why drop it back into his bag? About everything in his life he would eventually ask those questions, and then continue on as if he hadn’t asked those questions at all.
The dog sniffed at the limb leaning against the mailbox post as Hal glanced around at all of the other broken pieces of the world. The tree with several other amputated limbs. The leaves that had abandoned ship in the storm. The Rorschach spots of rust under the goal post. So much was broken, but satisfied to be left the hell alone. All part of the plan, they seemed to say, and the plan is perfect.
Water continued to run down the driveway, quietly edging around Hal’s feet, not the least bit frustrated at needing to make yet one more detour. He gave the repaired mailbox one last stare, daring it to deliver anything unsolicited.
Hal tossed the frazzled hair tie into one of the streams dribbling down the center of the driveway, and the water continued its silent trip downhill happily burdened with one more passenger. The dog waited for more instructions now that the post job was complete, and Hal refastened the leash on his wrist while his eyes followed the slope of the driveway. The small band of color seemed happy to be on its way, beginning an exciting adventure riding down the driveway rapids without a helmet. It had led a productive life, and was happy to be told it had outlived its worth. How lucky to be told that directly, with no smug rolling of eyes. You were a good elastic band, but you have become snapless, and so useless, and so no longer needed in a bag that is made to carry only useful things. You are free to rest and reflect. No more vitamins need be prescribed for you.
The tool bag felt much lighter than Hal would have guessed, only one torn and ragged scrunchy shy of the usual load. Hal could even imagine the lightness if all the imperfect items around him were washing toward the gutter.
The dog watched Hal watching the discarded tool until it grew bored and leered at the bag of treats, and then at the discolored concrete under its nose. It gave a fruitless lick.
Hal noticed the tool bag itself was also torn and ragged. And the bony hands that carried it, torn and ragged in their own way. He checked for the chipmunk, but it had better things to do than watch an old man and a dog mesmerized by water, acting the only way water could.
The broken branch was still spiked into the ground, still casually leaning against the mailbox post, waiting to relay its escapades to anyone who might wander by. It was tall and slim, like a popular bachelor waiting at the bar, waiting for someone to buy him a drink. Everything in nature was smug and perfect because it had no choice but to be smug and perfect.
“What’s the matter,” Hal asked, “a little storm too much for you?” The dog looked at Hal, then back to the stick. “Decided you had hung on long enough?” Hal grinned. The branch didn’t smile, but it didn’t not smile.
“Compost is nice this time of year,” Hal said, but the large stick didn’t tremble. “Think this was a good plan?” Hal looked up at the overhanging branches, but the stick continued to lean against the mailbox just as carefree, with no second-thoughts about the dying tree it left behind.
And you? the mailbox asked Hal.
Yeah, added the stick. What about your plans?
Hal glanced again toward the dog, but it had found a cool place to lie down. It could rest in peace anywhere.
“The truth?” Hal asked.
We always prefer the truth.
Hal looked back at the house. At the basketball hoop. He wasn’t even sure if there was a basketball in the garage.
“Perfect plans are overrated,” he said.
In two strides Hal was at the branch, and then in two breaths he unplugged it from the ground and raised it over his head. In two blinks he had it swinging in full force at the perfect mailbox. The branch snapped into two smug sticks, then three, then four. Each time new pieces of kindling sprayed from the epicenter of a fresh metal dent towards the wood pile area. When all that remained of the branch was a small handle in his fist, he flung it end over end where it had no choice but to make a satisfying, smugless whack against the side of the house.
Another blink, another heavy breath, and Hal was looking back at the dog which had stood with its ears raised as much as they could. The mailbox was still there, not worrying over a dent or two. Still remembering all it had been fed through the years. The dents are perfect, it was thinking. I’ll remember this happened, too. Hal faced down the driveway and watched the spent band floating away, not away to freedom, but away.
He took a breath.
Maybe two.
Hal yanked the leash halfway down the drive, but the circle of rainbow fabric kept meandering away from reach, the way things he wanted to reclaim always did. He lunged further down the slope and dammed a shoe across the small stream while the dog dragged its tongue across the surface of all the nearby puddles. Hal thought maybe a different companion would have looked at the band then up at him with I-told-you-so eyes, if a different companion hadn’t already run crying inside after the incident with the branch.
A few flicks of his wrist, and the mostly-dry hair tie was stashed back into the bag with the chipped screwdriver.
“But an experienced tool,” Hal explained to the dog, who didn’t give a shit about why it had been given an opportunity to bathe its tongue.
What Hal would have asked a companion who had fewer legs, who understood analogies and complex language structures and the like, was if he needed to pick a different question to carry around. A different question to ask about the items inside and outside of his bag which were experienced and loved and yet also unsound. The new question he kept to himself was this: Should he throw all the questioning to the water, instead?
Hal continued down the driveway underneath branches that were still shaking off the rain. A plop landed on the dog’s head, and it shook exactly like the tree had. The same drop of water then plopped onto Hal’s chin. Hal wanted to shake his body, too, but after making sure the dog and the tree were watching, he illustrated one of the few benefits of having ancestors who had been burdened with free will.
“We want to act like an imbecile, too,” he said, “but we can choose not to.” Hal brushed off his hands, made a point of not looking back up the slope toward the mailbox, then gazed through the abandoned tree’s remaining bare branches, searching the twilight for the first few stars. “Sometimes we even choose right.”
Now that they chose to remain at home every single night, Hal spent almost every single evening on the back patio, refreshed by the dark sky and the occasional grapefruit martini while finagling the new eyepiece. Most nights, the astronomy book lay flat at the halfway mark beside the telescope display. The book had been a steady, dogeared companion when they were a young married couple, and his wife frequently remarked on the number of revisions the book had undergone. She wondered aloud at a dinner party if it weren’t about time for our perspectives to change once again, while the heavens above had not changed since there were people under it.
“We have been so wrong about so many large things, for so long—we have to be just as wrong about so many small things.” The topic was taxes and funding the arts. Or stop signs. Climate change. Education bonds. The death sentence. Free medical assistance. Banning books. Hal didn’t remember the topic, or if the hosts had then opened another bottle or ushered them out straightaway. Hal remembered staring across at his wife, knowing without a doubt he had not been wrong in his choice.
Now they chose not to attend dinner parties. Hal liked to believe it was a choice. They didn’t even attend the easy, slutty ones, with the Whats-their-names, where he knew how it would start and how it would go and how it would end, and which topics to raise and which to save until they were in the car on the way home. They didn’t go on group vacations to New York with her theater group or have weekend staycations downtown so they could walk to the concert, or visit old college friends or old family anymore, because—they didn’t even say why. They didn’t even talk about why they stopped talking about it, the way family members didn’t talk about the sisters and brothers and sons and daughters they’ve never had. Hal was sure that even the crowing rash of a left-coast lesbian had completely vanished from their lives, like she had over-committed to Weight Watchers and lost every single ounce of the weight. The truth of the heavens and the world and the family they never had used to be more relevant, to both of them.
Stopped at the lower lip of the driveway, Hal held out a palm and tried to feel the heft, the texture of the branch. The charming one that had been waiting for the mailman. Seemed eons ago. Had he just scooped it up and taught the mailbox a lesson it would not soon forget? He checked his hand for fresh scrapes and splinters. Felt if his pulse was slowing, or had simply remained slow.
More than once in the shower this week Hal had looked at the bottle of shampoo in his hand and wondered if he had already washed his hair, or if he was just about to begin. He had felt his scalp for suds. Checked the drain. He stood there thinking, weighing alternatives, until the water ran cold. He then reached for the towel, knowing he had at least rinsed his hair, that was for goddamn certain, and he was not going to be the kind of a guy who double-shampooed.
Hal didn’t turn around to look up the slope of the driveway. He was not going to double-shampoo when it came to branches or mailboxes, either. Instead, he looked down the street and smiled. If not right then, maybe he had dealt with them another time. It needed to have been done, he told himself, that was for goddamn certain. He could already imagine the scene later tonight out back, raising a special pink cocktail to the night sky, congratulating himself for a job well done.
His wife had said you can make anyone believe anything, if you say it with conviction and they either didn’t care too much about the topic, or, they did care too much. Hal knew he had to be careful not to pull that trick on himself, at least not too often.
Another thing Hal believed was that there was no better place than out there on the patio with a drink, under the moon, under the stars, under the influence, and under the window where his wife, who was also not his wife, was safe and unsound and asleep in his toolbag of a life.
He also believed there was no worse place.
A small twig was lying across the end of the driveway, and he kicked it to the curb. Didn’t smash it to smithereens.
