Patricia Gaffney Read Free Page A

a—”
    Hobbes finally noticed the puppy and jumped back—much as Andrew had on the front porch. Hobbes, Andrew’s father’s fourteen-year-old cocker spaniel, is the only furred creature I’ve ever known Andrew not to be allergic to. Which is interesting since, in so many ways, Andrew is allergic to his father.
    “I left a message at the vet’s,” he told me from the doorway. “They’re supposed to call back. In the meantime—”
    The phone rang.
    “Wow. Fast,” I said, and Andrew went away again.
    Under my coat and my amusing red cape, I had on velvet pants and a fancy silk shirt that buttoned down the front. I unbuttoned the shirt and put the puppy next to my skin, noticing in the process that it was a female. I pulled my clothes around her, coat and all, making a cocoon, and after a little while she wasn’t a deadweight anymore. Her soft, solid body twitched, her little toenails grazing my skin, the breath from her cold nose tickling me. I got up from the floor and carried her into the kitchen.
    “I don’t know,” Andrew was saying, “lethargic, yes. I think so. Did it shiver?” he asked me.
    “She’s shivering right now.”
    He reported that to the vet, a man we’ve gotten to know well because of Hobbes’s arthritis. “That’s a good sign? A good sign,” Andrew relayed. “It means only mild hypothermia.”
    “But what should we do ?”
    He held up his hand. “Yes. Right, right. Four teaspoons in a pint. But first—okay. Yes.”
    Finally he hung up. “That’s the first thing he said to do, put it next to your skin.”
    “Really?” I hugged the puppy closer, feeling relieved and gratified and smart. This was going to have a happy ending.
    Fill bottles with warm, not hot, water, the vet advised, and lay them next to the puppy’s body, especially her chest and armpits. Don’t overheat, and definitely don’t use a hair dryer. Try to feed her a little sugar water.
    We did all that. She went through a phase of violent shivering—an excellent sign, Andrew reported; shivering increased metabolism and generated heat. Gradually that subsided and she began to relax, sprawled out on a towel in my lap, her silky belly rising and falling with natural breaths. She had short, woolly soft black fur all over, except for that one white foot.
    I was asking Andrew if he thought it would be a good idea to let her sleep between us tonight so she could get nice and warm, and running names by him like Lazzy, short for Lazarus, or what about Feeney for Phoenix—when he sneezed.
    “Of course we can’t keep it,” he said between honks into his handkerchief, as if I’d suggested adopting a wild boar, a baby python. He was getting out the little enamel pan he heats a cup of milk in every night just before bed. I’m married to a man who drinks warm milk. The horror of that closed in on me, like being sealed in an envelope, like being buried alive. Mama! I thought—I did, I had that very conscious thought. I wanted my mother back, and Tramp, and my youth, my freedom, I felt like running away so fast and so far that nothing looked familiar.
    I should’ve left right then. The die was cast, and it would’ve been easy—I still had my coat on. I’m not sure why, it seems a bit mad to me now, but I was beyond angry. I had skipped that step and gone directly to finished.
    So I should’ve left, but instead I stayed to say hurtful things about Andrew’s father’s dog, already snoring again in his smelly bed beside the refrigerator, and how convenient, no, how bogus Andrew’s allergies were. Which naturally led to his hypochondria, and somehow that led to a rant about the colossal stupidity of a world order that would let a horrible old man like Edward Bateman draw one more breath after my sweet, loving, tenderhearted mother was gone.
    Andrew thinks I’m a drama queen, he was sure this was just another pointless emotional flare-up that would die out sooner if ignored, so he didn’t fight back, even when I gave