LITMIR.BIZ

       EIGHT

      It was a short honeymoon. Heloise slept for about an hour, allowing me to make dinner, but then it declined from there. I’d pulled out the old baby gate, so she was confined to the kitchen, but she’d peed on the tile floor not once, not twice, but four times before bedtime. She’d also demonstrated an endless appetite for chewing: fingers, clothing, Lainey’s and my hair, shoelaces, her crate, the desk chair legs, the cat – although he was learning to stay just out of her reach. Neil and the kids had played with Heloise a bit right after dinner, but between my anxiety about how we should play with her, and her propensity to relieve herself at inopportune moments, all three decided she was too much trouble and were downstairs watching TV before her second pee. Finally, at about nine, she collapsed in fatigue, and I’d carried her up to her crate in our bedroom. Then I, too, collapsed into bed.

      Now it seemed I’d slept mere moments and she was whining. Again. I hadn’t even gotten back to sleep from the last time she’d woken me. Us. I couldn’t help but wonder if the person who’d made the requirement that the puppies sleep in the bedroom of the raiser was in fact a puppy raiser himself. I fumbled for the small alarm clock by my bed: 1:49. A.M. She hadn’t even made it an hour. She’d woken twice already, once around eleven thirty, and again shortly after one a.m. I’d taken her out to the front lawn, into the cold night, both times. The first time she’d peed; the second she’d just chewed on a stick.

      Neil groaned angrily, wrapped the pillow over his head and rolled over. Heloise started barking. I stumbled out of bed, felt my way across our dark bedroom to her crate, making shushing noises. Before I could open the door, Neil sat up in bed. ‘Deena! Shut the damn dog up! I’ve got patients in the morning!’

      All I could think was, You sure don’t have patience at night. But I said nothing.

      ‘Put it in the basement.’

      ‘I can’t. She’s supposed to be with me.’

      ‘Then put it in Sam’s room and sleep in there.’

      ‘Fine,’ I said, kneeling by the crate.

      ‘Fine,’ he said, then grunted, pulling the covers over his head.

      When I opened the door to her crate, Heloise was in my arms in a single leap, all wags and licks, delighted at my touch. But I was aching with fatigue, and her charming ways were losing their appeal as the night wore on.

      ‘It’s okay, girl,’ I whispered. After my interview, Bill had brought over an extra crate for Heloise to sleep in so I wouldn’t have to carry one up and down my stairs each night and morning. He’d also told me that the puppies could usually make it through the night by the time they were twelve weeks old or so. I had a minimum of two more weeks of this. I wearily rubbed the back of my neck with one hand. But, weary or not, I had to take her out again, just in case. As I rose, Heloise in my arms, my knee banged into the corner of the metal door, slamming it with a clang. Still gripping Heloise in one arm, I grabbed my knee with my other hand, holding my breath in a silent scream of pain, trying to balance on one foot with a puppy in my arms. My balance wasn’t up to the task, and I took several hopping steps, banging my shoulder into the wall. ‘Shit!’ I whispered loudly. Neil groaned again under the covers.

      With Heloise chewing on the sleeve of my pajamas, I leaned against the wall till I could breathe. I looked at Neil in our bed, in a cocoon of covers, already using the whole bed, his legs forming a long L across my side. I tucked Heloise back into the crate, closing the door. I quickly lifted it by its carrying handle and walked out of the bedroom.

      I paused in the hall at Lainey’s room, her door open to let Hairy come and go. Her old fairy nightlight that she still loved, but hid when she had a friend over, cast just enough glow to see that she was on her side, face resting peacefully on just the lower corner of her pillow. Hairy was contentedly sprawled across the rest of it. I tiptoed on. Matt’s door was shut.

      At the end of the hall, I stopped at Sam’s door. I’d kept it pretty much closed since he’d left, entering only to dust and sigh. I held Heloise tight with my arm and turned the knob with my free hand. The door opened with a small creak. The single wedge of light from the hall made the trophies, team pictures, and memorabilia on the shelves look somehow historic.

      Heloise started squirming, so I stepped in and set her crate under Sam’s desk, next to the twin bed. Before she could start up again, I grabbed her leash and we headed downstairs, and out into the night. Again.

      It was colder than even an hour ago, but this sky seemed to be yielding up a second layer of stars. I snapped on her leash, set her on the lawn, shivering in just my flannel pj’s and Matt’s boots, praying for her to quickly do her business. I’d only read chapter one in the manual, overwhelmed by the many rules, not the least of which was that the puppies were always supposed to be on their leash when eliminating. Heloise looked up at me, wagged her tail, and began sniffing the grass. Good girl. But she soon found a small stick and plopped down with it, the ends protruding from either side of her mouth. It pushed her lips up in the back, giving her a toothy grin. I sighed. She didn’t have to pee. She needed a puppy cigarette break. I was in no mood to enable her habit. I pulled the stick from her mouth and carried her back upstairs. At the top, I started to turn right, to the master bedroom, remembered, turned again, and carried her into Sam’s room. I tucked her into her crate and closed the door. Immediately she began to whine.

      ‘Shhh, Heloise!’ I whispered. I stuck my finger through the silver squares and she mouthed it. I withdrew. Sitting, she pointed her little snout up toward the ceiling of her crate, barked twice, then twice more.

      ‘Shh!’ I whispered with more urgency. Heloise stood, wagged her tail and barked again.

      ‘Mah-amm! Shut the dang dog up!’ Lainey yelled from her bedroom, her voice cracking with sleep and anger. I opened the crate again and took Heloise out, just as the door to Sam’s room opened. I turned, startled. Matt stood in the doorway, wearing only his pajama bottoms, his broadening chest incongruous with the little-boy knuckle rub he was giving his eyes.

      ‘What’s wrong with her?’

      ‘I don’t know, honey. I guess she misses her mom.’

      He nodded sleepily.

      ‘Everything’s okay, honey. Go back to bed.’ Matt shuffled back into his room. I waited, breathing only when I heard his bed creak.

      ‘Are you too young to have left your mother?’ I whispered, kissing Heloise’s soft ear. I left her on the floor and moved to Sam’s desk, did a little figuring with a pencil, but couldn’t get the seven-years-to-one ratio to work out in weeks. But it seemed like she was comparable, developmentally, to a human one-year-old, mobile, exploring the world with her mouth.

      A one-year-old taken from her mother?

      That didn’t seem right! I turned in my chair and reached for her. There was no Heloise. Panicked, I peered under the desk, in her crate, calling her name in an urgent whisper, ‘Heloise! Hell-oh-wheeze!’

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