Luna's Reprieve
Dennis Donoghue
After Luna ate the plug off the vacuum cleaner, Margaret brought the appliance to a repair shop.
“We get a lot of this,” said the proprietor as he inspected the chewed end. “Liability-wise I’ll have to replace the cord. Yank too hard and the plug stays in the outlet. Then your house burns down.”
“How much?”
“Thirty dollars.”
“I can’t afford it. Can you sell me a plug?”
Terry had been dead six weeks and Margaret was doing okay, so she told everyone because that was what they wanted to hear and who could blame them? She’d call his name before she remembered or see him standing beside their bed asking if she’d seen his windbreaker. It was weird, the death of a spouse. Here one minute, gone the next, then back again, business as usual. He’d slipped on a patch of ice taking out a bag of trash and spent three days in ICU, forearms lashed to the bed rails, legs kicking, teeth in a cup. Without his combover he wasn’t the man she’d married all those years ago. Every morning he raked strands over the top and sprayed them in place with AquaNet.
She never had a chance to say goodbye, not so much as an I love you or even a nod. As if that wasn’t enough, she’d told him off right before he’d left the kitchen. Of all things to fight about, animal crackers hadn’t made the list. He’d unscrewed the lid on the big plastic teddy bear and fished her out a horse, a cat, a donkey, a rhino. How about three crackers for once, he’d teased, or maybe five? Why was she such a damn peculiar woman anyway? Well, she’d snapped, she wanted four crackers and had always wanted four crackers and if he didn’t like it he could take a flying leap.
“And take that bag of garbage with you.”
She’d found him at the bottom of the deck stairs -- jaw broken, glasses flung onto the snow, blood sprayed as far as the bulkhead doors, calling for his brother who’d been dead twenty-two years. She wasn’t offended. They’d been twins.
“Back out the screws on the plug face,” the proprietor instructed, tapping the yellow circle on the thick black cylinder. “Release the clamp and the plug comes apart. Separate black and white wires and screw them down separately. Then it all goes back together.”
She could do anything a man could do, had she any interest. Now, along with grieving, she’d be fixing plugs, mending dining room chairs, repairing leaky faucets and God knows what else. She stood there, a ray of morning sun bending itself across the countertop.
“What do I do again?”
“Go on YouTube.”
The idea was to keep busy and stick to a routine. With your hands occupied, your mind got tricked into forgetting. Except right from the bell grief had come out swinging, like the fighters in one of those crazy cage matches her twelve year old grandson Devin loved to watch, crushing her so she couldn’t see straight. Her husband was dead. She’d seen him with her own two eyes as they waited for the undertaker, Jessie sobbing with her head on her father’s chest while Dana stood back, hugging herself, peeking and not peeking. Margaret sat holding his hand, doing her best for the kids’ sake, feeling as if she was spinning away from herself. Since those awful moments she’d hardly eaten and no longer cared a wit what she looked like, a twist which would have astounded her husband, given the time she took to make herself presentable.
Now, with Terry gone, Luna was behaving worse than usual, chewing up pens, bottle caps, coasters, chair legs and anything else within a foot of the floor. A few more years, Margaret figured, maybe less if she switched from the organic chicken and rice pellets Terry fed her to the cheapest stuff on the supermarket shelf. Luna had put on weight and judging from her labored breathing wouldn’t survive half that time. Positive signs for sure but she’d eaten a plug and gotten away with it. She’d outlive Margaret.
When she was a kid dogs were chained to back porches, surviving on table scraps of potato peels, beef fat, and bread heels. With no leash laws strays ran free, rooting through garbage cans and getting run over by cars and buses. No one cared. Who had money to spend on pets when you couldn’t put food on your own table? These days dogs were regulars at tony restaurants, sporting events, outdoor concerts. They were like children--everyone knew how messed up yours was except you. Her best friend Caryn brought her Snickerdoodle Ben everywhere. During a visit last summer he’d torn up a screen door though Caryn didn’t notice and Margaret didn’t bring it up. Caryn would have probably blamed the screen door from preventing Ben getting inside.
As soon as she got home Margaret found what she needed on Terry’s workbench. Since the funeral she’d avoided going down there but she couldn’t last another day without a vacuum cleaner. The gathering house dust was more than she could tolerate, even in her state, and Luna’s hair clung to every surface. The dog followed her downstairs, sniffing the spot on the basement floor where Terry had stood tinkering for hours. Margaret watched, terrified, as if Luna had discovered a crack in the concrete into which Terry vanished. Above his workbench three vertical bars spanned the foundation window to keep trespassers out and let dry air in, the ends handpacked with cement to hold them in place.
“If the police ever come for me,” he’d told her the day when he called her down to inspect what he’d done, “they can match the fingerprints with these ones right here.”
Now she touched those fingerprints.
“Okay,” she said, giving herself goosebumps. “Very funny. I know you’re hiding behind the oil tank.”
He’d loved to play tricks on her. He’d come up to the kitchen for a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tea when he got hungry. She found a needle nose pliers and a Phillips screwdriver and started up the stairs, grasping the handrail to steady herself. Dizzy and feverish, as if she was coming down with a bout of the flu, she was overtaken by a spasm of grief.
There’d been no symptoms, follow-up tests, discoveries of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s -- all the maladies afflicting the lucky whose loved ones had plenty of time to say goodbye. His cousin Ernie whispered at the wake how fortunate Terry had been never to know what hit him. Wasn’t it a blessing to be spared months of the misery most dying people had to endure? And imagine having to care for him while he withered away to nothing? He’d clutched Margaret’s hands, his eyes wet and gleaming, a peppermint clicking in his dentures to hide the whiff of Seagrams. She nodded, numb and speechless.
At the kitchen table she pulled the plug apart and separated the black and white wires from the cord before securing each under the brass screws. Was that how he’d said to do it? Terry would have pointed out how she’d neglected to insert the cord through the back of the rubber cover. Luna lay under the table, a thirty pound sack of potatoes, while Margaret started over until she got it right. Chancing it, she plugged the machine in. To her surprise it ran like new. Luna got up and went after it, shifting her weight back and forth in sync to Margaret’s pushing and pulling. What exactly ran through its primitive brain? One minute it sniffed Terry’s essence with some kind of paranormal sensitivity, the next it attacked the vacuum cleaner as if it were a badger loose in the living room.
“If you go before that dog, she’s going straight to the vet for a needle,” she’d warned him.
“Isn’t one stiff enough?” he’d replied.
Later that morning Margaret met Caryn at a coffee shop run by two brothers from Nepal. A couple of dogs lay on the wooden floor. Ben made three. If you didn’t cater to dogs as if they were celebrities you went out of business. Word got around. A woman at the next table used a handful of napkins to pick up after her cairn terrier. She deposited the waste in the trash can by the door before consoling the dog as if it was a child, saying it wasn’t his fault, etc. Margaret, repulsed, pushed away the rest of her pecan bran muffin.
“I’d love to say something but I’m afraid I’d be assaulted by one of these dog nuts.”
“What do you mean?” asked Caryn as she fed Ben pieces of her blueberry scone, each smeared with a dab of yellow butter.
For over thirty years Caryn had been married to a functioning alcoholic who’d drunk himself to death. Three weeks after she buried him she’d purchased Ben through a breeder in Pennsylvania, driving home in a snowstorm. Ben slept next to her and wore a fitted wool suit in the winter. Every Tuesday he received a professional massage for his hip dysplasia. At times listening to her speak of Ben, Margaret got confused.
“This morning when we woke up we decided it was a perfect day for the beach, even with the windchill. So we packed some snacks, bundled up and off we went.”
“Are you seeing someone?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Terry stands next to my bed.”
“He’s worried about you. Tell him you’re fine. He’ll find something else to do.”
“I told him to take a flying leap. Those were the last words out of my mouth.”
Caryn caressed Ben’s ears. Strange music played Margaret couldn’t place, not even a single instrument. Umesh, one of the brothers, came around the counter with a bowl of water and a plate of dog biscuits. He put the bowl on the floor and asked permission to give each dog a biscuit, first listing the ingredients.
“He didn’t hear you,” Caryn said. “Men never listen.”
“Luna chewed the plug off the vacuum cleaner.”
“She’s grieving too.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
Terry had found the website, photos of neglected dogs with sad faces rounded up from all over the South. One minute Luna had been penned in a yard in some godforsaken Arkansas backwater, the next stuffed into a plastic crate flying down the interstate with eleven other rescues. On a frigid Sunday morning he brought Margaret to a Walmart parking lot where a stout short-haired woman in blue overalls shouted dogs’ names through a megaphone before handing out a dozen vaccinated and neutered mutts from the back of her van. Even as Terry held Luna in his arms for the first time, Margaret assumed he was doing a coworker a favor.
“Where’s the owner?”
“Meet our new addition,” he said as he wrapped Luna in a bath towel.
“Please don’t tell me that animal belongs to us.”
“Look at this face.” He lifted a corner of the towel. The puppy had a blunt muzzle, floppy ears and a streak of white between her eyes that fanned out over her forehead.
“She’s cross-eyed,” Margaret said. “She smells like dog shit. How could you do this to me?”
“Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted a dog. You wouldn’t hear of it. Not when the girls were little, not ever.”
“That doesn’t make me an ogre.”
“Except it’s not always about what you want.”
He’d never spoken to her like that. He’d always been a pushover. He acknowledged it himself. In every marriage, one led, one followed, like some kind of natural order. But this was different. She could sense it but wasn’t one to give up without a fight.
“Why couldn’t you volunteer at a shelter like every other normal person your age?”
“I’m not a normal person,” he said, “and this is not a normal animal. We’re a perfect match.”
Once all the dogs had been handed out the woman in overalls climbed behind the wheel and drove south. At the first intersection Margaret blared the horn to get her attention. The woman looked straight ahead and accelerated as the light turned green, apparently used to this sort of thing. After the dog peed through the towel onto his lap, she told Terry at least it was good for something.
Luna’s bark, a sharp eruption whenever anyone pulled into the driveway, cleaved Margaret’s skull in two. There were plenty of other times the dog went berserk for no reason, at least none that Margaret could decipher. She chased birds across the sky from one side of the yard to another, “patrolling” Terry called it as he’d watch her from the porch, egging her on when some Canada geese angled overhead. Some days she clawed at the door to go out, then spun right around and clawed to come back in. Other days she wouldn’t come in at all, racing along the picket fence yapping at Ed and Gloria, their retired neighbors who existed for the purpose of doing yard work. Terry would have to bribe the dog inside by shaking a can of grated cheese. His patience never wavered, even after Margaret reminded him he’d been seduced, gotten the runt of the litter, an animal no one in his right mind would offer a home to.
Now Luna followed her around the house as if expecting an answer to the whereabouts of the person who’d loved and cared for her. Lately she’d grown protective of Margaret and whenever the girls visited they would open the door just enough to see a growling Luna’s bared teeth.
“That goddam dog is going to kill someone,” said Dana as her mother held Luna by the collar.
“She misses Dad,” said Jesse.
“She’s been like that since day one,” said Dana.
The girls came over a couple of nights a week to check on their mother, bearing cartons of vegetable lo mein and shrimp egg foo yong, or a large pepperoni pizza and barbecued wings, along with a couple of bottles of wine. They weren’t ready to talk about Terry. They needed time. They’d let Margaret know. Even the mention of his name was too much. They wanted to relax and not think about all they’d gone through. Instead they discussed The Crown, their favorite show, which Margaret had never seen. Had they the chance to do it over again they would model their lives after Princess Margaret who was free to act like a total bitch and do whatever she pleased. Elizabeth, as monarch, had to hold it together and look perfect at all hours of the day and night. It was the worst.
“Who wants the dog?” Margaret interrupted.
The girls had problems of their own, thank you, with ungrateful kids, shitty jobs, inconsiderate husbands and the usual ridiculous amount of housework.
“Think of her like a mortgage, “ said Jessie. “Every month you get closer to the payoff.”
“I think she heard you,” Dana said. “Look at her.”
Luna lay on the rug by the buffet staring up at them. A couple of years ago she’d gnawed a corner leg, prompting Terry to fashion an aluminum sleeve to protect what was left of it. Now Margaret couldn’t care less if she devoured the entire piece.
“He never told me why.”
“He knew what you’d say.”
“I’m his wife, damn it.”
“Can we change the subject? He didn’t even tell us, his own kids.”
“I’m putting her down anyway, just so you know.”
“See what happens when you don’t eat?” Dana said. “You’re losing your mind, or what’s left of it.”
They wouldn’t leave until Margaret took six bites. They sipped their wine and counted. One more, they said, as if she was a two year old.
“And don’t spit any into the napkin,” Jesse scolded.
Slowly she lifted her fork and chewed while they watched. What was she trying to do, turn them into orphans? Wasn’t it bad enough they’d already lost you-know-who? Their mother becoming a skeleton before their very eyes wasn’t a sight they had the time and energy to deal with, frankly.
Mornings and evenings Margaret dumped a cup of pellets into a plastic bowl. She refilled the water dish next to the stove. Once a week she used Terry’s pointed shovel to bury what Luna left in the backyard. It was a horrible chore made worse by the shovel’s handle, darkened by sweat and worn smooth from years of his turning over the vegetable garden. As Luna stood appraising her work, Margaret found herself talking to the dog, not forcing on her any of life’s big questions, like the guilt she lugged around or where exactly Terry had gone to, just one-sided small talk about the weather or whether she’d remembered to pay this month’s electric bill.
“It didn’t happen, in case you’re wondering,” she reminded Luna. “He’ll be back here any minute now.”
Her breath would escape her lungs and she would cry out, the shovel handle steadying her as she wept.
Luna had nipped Ed when he delivered a loaf of his Irish bread after hearing about Terry, tearing his pant leg and bruising his shin. He told Margaret not to worry. It wasn’t his first dog bite. She apologized, offering him rubbing alcohol and a gauze pad.
“She’s protective of you,” he said. “I violated her space.”
“You just gave me the perfect excuse to put her down.”
“Oh God no. I would hate to think it was because of me.”
“For the benefit of humanity,” Margaret said. “The world is overrun with dogs as it is.”
For the time being Luna was safe. The money to euthanize her had gone toward the funeral. What it cost to bury a person was insane. Margaret had to take a loan for the headstone. The kids wanted to help but she wouldn’t hear of it. They had money problems of their own and had suffered enough, seeing their father naked under a johnny that fell open every time he twitched. In a stuffy conference room they’d gathered--the girls and their husbands, Rocco and Ken, along with a neurologist and a hospital social worker--to stare at a CT scan of Terry’s brain. Dr. Adeke, in his mid-thirties from some African country (Ghana was Margaret’s guess), used a laser pointer to encircle the damaged areas. Encouraged by what he saw, he expected Terry to come around by the end of the week provided he had their permission to insert a nasogastric tube.
“Wait,” Margaret said. “What do you mean by ‘come around’?”
“I would estimate six months in rehab,” he said in a measured and maddening tone. “Possibly, even likely, wheelchair-bound along with speech and memory impairment.”
Margaret listened. She wasn’t furious. His job was to use technology to increase Terry’s chances of transitioning from a coma state into that of a severely handicapped person.
“Best case?” she asked.
He nodded.
“And if no feeding tube?” asked Dana. She was the dried eyed one and asked the direct questions. Jessie, unable to lift her head, plucked tissues from a box in front of her.
“A few days, perhaps a week.”
He studied them, awaiting an answer. Dana asked what he would do had Terry been his father.
“My father’s been dead for many years,” said Dr. Adeke.
“Okay, so your mother then. Jesus Christ, you know what I mean.”
He paused. All of them knew what he would say.
“Yes, for my mother. Yes.”
“Shame on you for sentencing her like that,” said Dana.
“I’m sorry,” said Ken as he squeezed his wife’s hand. “She didn’t mean it. This is a difficult time for all of us.”
“Don’t apologize for me. Who would want to come back as a brain damaged eighty-two year old?”
“We cannot gauge his progress at this point,” said Dr. Adeke.
“Dad would never forgive us,” Jessie gasped as Rocco pulled her to his chest and patted her head.
“Can you please just tell us that the right thing is to let him go?” Dana begged. “I mean, can you just be honest?”
“It depends what your definition of right is,” he said.
“What exactly was the point of this meeting?” Margaret asked.
Every afternoon all summer and into the fall Terry poured her a glass of white zinfandel with a couple of ice cubes and took it along with his can of Budweiser and a plate of Ritz crackers and cheddar slices out to the deck where they watched blue jays chase sparrows from the feeders and the same two squirrels scramble over the low stone wall, tumbling off into the black eyed susans and bounding up again as if springloaded. Luna, between them, ignored the wildlife while she gnawed on a piece of rawhide. Just a few months before Terry had passed his physical and renewed his driver’s license. Margaret’s colon cancer had been in remission seven years, knock on wood. There was no shortage of tragedies afflicting friends and relatives. Every week something new. Once you hit a certain age look out. But why obsess over it? He drank his Budweiser. She asked for another glass of wine when he had the chance. In the shade of the patio umbrella he tilted for her, she stayed protected from the sun after her skin cancer scare. Allergies got to him this time of year, all that sneezing and nose blowing, but who died from allergies?
There would be no feeding tube. It was unanimous. Instead of giving Terry half a chance they would stand around and watch him starve to death. When Margaret asked for a priest, Dr. Adeke and the social worker excused themselves, now that the petition to implement technology had been denied. The priest was in his mid-fifties and grew up in the parish next to where Margaret and Terry had raised the girls before downsizing to a small ranch on the South Shore. He was soft-spoken and witty and asked to be called Father Jerome. To her surprise he agreed with her. She’d been taught as a Catholic if hope existed measures should be taken, no matter how extreme.
“God would say you’re doing the right thing,” Fr. Jerome reassured her. “I happen to have his contact information.”
Jessie laughed through her sobs while the rest of them smiled at the surface of the table. At Father Jerome’s suggestion they went into Terry’s room for the Anointing of the Sick.
Gathering around the bed, everyone touched Terry as directed. Margaret held her husband’s warm hand, his fingers thick and curled from arthritis after decades of operating a backhoe and jack hammer. He squeezed back. She was sure of it. She would call everything off. The words were in her throat. But the pressure lasted a brief second, a reflex of some sort. His eyes never opened. Father Jerome went ahead, anointing his forehead and palms. Standing at the head of the bed he cupped Terry’s ears and prayed aloud. Margaret and the kids followed. To be doing something after three days of doing nothing provided solace. She imagined waves of spiritual energy flowing into him.
“Whatever you do,” Father Jerome said afterwards as he washed the holy oil off his hands. “Do not second guess your decision.”
And Margaret didn’t. Or tried not to.
“What happens,” Dana asked as they walked out together past the nurses’ station, “if Dad wakes up two days from now and wants a ham sandwich?”
“Can we talk about something else?” Jessie said.
That night Margaret prayed, rolling each bead in her thumb and index finger. Jessie, exhausted, slept in the spare bedroom while Luna gnawed a frozen marrow bone in the kitchen. Margaret had said the rosary every day since she was seven years old. As it was Sunday, she meditated on The Glorious Mysteries and the resurrection of Jesus, asking God to relieve her husband’s suffering and take him into the glories of heaven. Though she prayed fervently, she felt as if she was banging her head against a wall to get rid of a migraine. What kind of wife asks for such a thing? Still, miraculously, by morning Terry was gone. He’d passed an hour before Margaret and the kids arrived at the hospital. Two young nurses met them at the elevator. They’d held his hand until the end.
“I want to kill myself,” Margaret told Devin who sat next to her in Olive Garden where they’d gone for something to eat after they’d left the hospital.
“Please don’t want to do that, Nana,” he said as he picked up his chicken parmesan sandwich and stuffed a quarter of it into his mouth.
“Jesus Christ, Ma,” Dana scolded across the table. “What the fuck?”
Margaret passed Devin her untouched baked haddock. He held a fork in his closed fist as if the fish was still alive. What the hell was wrong with kids these days? She wouldn’t say a word. She’d shut up. She’d disappear. She’d start by not speaking. Not eating would get her there too. If she wore loose fitting blouses and sweaters to hide her diminishing self by the time anyone noticed it would be too late. Her life was behind her now. It had been a good one. She had no complaints nor any interest in what lay ahead. The kids and grandkids would be fine. What troubled her was how long she’d have to wait.
When she returned home from the coffee shop, leaving Caryn to take Ben for cosmetic dental work, she continued with her vacuuming, using the hose attachment to get into ceiling corners and behind the couch. She sucked up a clump of hair under Luna’s fleece bed with its memory foam Terry had purchased from Orvis.
“Apparently Adirondack green isn’t her color,” Margaret had told him when he’d tried to coax the dog on to it with a trail of salami slices. “Maybe you should have shown her the catalogue selections before you ordered.”
A few times a week he took Luna for a swim in a weed-choked pond a mile from the house. Afterwards he carried her upstairs for a bath, a decaying stench trailing them and filling the kitchen. Then he gently towelled her off and wiped down the tiles and soap dish.
“What does a person have to do to get that kind of attention?” she asked him.
“I can’t very well let her go around with burrs on her coat,” he said.
“How about building her a doghouse and saving on the water bill?”
“You’re not being serious. Winter’s coming.”
“She had a fur coat last time I checked.”
The noise from the vacuum dulled the racquet in her head. Debris spun in the clear cylinder. As she emptied it she noticed Terry’s windbreaker on a peg by the door where he’d left it. Maybe you really could take it with you, at least a jacket. All her years of saying the rosary had gotten no closer to understanding what had become of him. Eventually he’d find other things to do besides come to her bedside. He’d move on, like he did whenever she ran into someone as they left the supermarket. He’d wait in the car while she gabbed away, listening to the radio or organizing the glove compartment. He never got angry or annoyed. He was just happy to see her enjoying herself. She knew how lucky she was yet couldn’t stop herself from taking him for granted, or being outright short with him, as if harboring some perplexing desire to sabotage her own good fortune.
His gold band, engraved with their initials and wedding date, she’d left on his finger.
“It’s engraved,” she told the undertaker when he asked if she’d wanted it. “What good would it do anyone?”
The ring had been father’s. After her mother had offered it to Terry, he’d taken it to a jeweler to have it inscribed. She did ask for his carved Celtic rosary beads with the Waterford Chrystal cross because Jesse wanted them, the undertaker swapping the set with plastic ones just before he closed the lid.
While she wound up the cord she noticed Ed crossing the yard. He waited on the back deck without knocking, his hands in his pockets. He was the type who apologized even before he said anything, as if every act in his life was an imposition. Perhaps being married to Gloria had something to do with it. Ever since they’d moved into the ranch, Terry had heard it from her about bittersweet vines creeping over onto her lawn. One time she’d charged over the property line shaking a pruned vine in each hand, as if they were poisonous vipers threatening to invade her house. Another time she’d called the police when Terry’s 80th birthday party ran past ten o’clock. It was a pleasant August night, the crowd in the backyard laughing and drinking beer too much for her. Margaret had nothing but seething hatred for the woman and hadn’t spoken a word to her in years. To her relief Ed came through the receiving line at the wake apologizing that Gloria had a head cold.
Margaret stepped onto the deck for Ed’s protection.
“We’ll take the dog,” he said.
He pointed to Luna who barked on the other side of the storm door as if he was an armed intruder.
“She’ll destroy your life,” Margaret said. “Why would you make such a ridiculous offer?”
He gazed around, avoiding eye contact, a small round bandage stuck to his forehead.
“What you have in mind traumatized Gloria,” he said. “Her sister sends us photos of places she and Leonard visit with their rescue dog, including one of Samantha in front of the Lincoln Memorial.”
“Samantha’s the dog, right?”
Ed nodded.
She remembered when Terry came home with a canine toothbrush and a tube of beef-flavored toothpaste. When Luna ate the toothbrush, he went out and bought two more.
The windbreaker, she knew now, was a ruse. He’d come to check on Luna. When the girls became women he’d stopped being a father, at least in the usual sense. They didn’t need him like they once had, yet he was still a vessel brimming with paternal love and devotion with no place to put it. In desperation he’d sought out the website. His life had purpose again. Just a week ago Margaret had seen an older woman pushing a Pomeranian in a baby stroller and was certain the woman had lost her mind. Now she wasn’t so sure. Ed waited for her answer, staring at his shoes.
“It goes against my better judgment but I’m keeping her.”
“Gloria will be relieved,” he said. “But our offer still stands.”
Tonight when Terry showed up she’d apologize for what she’d said about the flying leap. She’d keep Luna as penance. He’d laugh and call her Saint Margaret. After Confession didn’t she double whatever the priest gave her while he halved his? It was a joke between them. He’d sit in a pew while she knelt at the altar rail until her knees went numb. Caring for that miserable creature would provide absolution for every sin she’d ever committed and then some. And maybe, God forbid, she’d come to tolerate its existence. But there’d be no tailored outfits or monthly groomers, no trips to restaurants or museums. She’d care for Luna so Terry could find something else to do with his time. And if he needed his windbreaker for wherever it was he planned to go, he’d find it hanging next to the back door, exactly where he’d left it.
Dennis Donoghue
After Luna ate the plug off the vacuum cleaner, Margaret brought the appliance to a repair shop.
“We get a lot of this,” said the proprietor as he inspected the chewed end. “Liability-wise I’ll have to replace the cord. Yank too hard and the plug stays in the outlet. Then your house burns down.”
“How much?”
“Thirty dollars.”
“I can’t afford it. Can you sell me a plug?”
Terry had been dead six weeks and Margaret was doing okay, so she told everyone because that was what they wanted to hear and who could blame them? She’d call his name before she remembered or see him standing beside their bed asking if she’d seen his windbreaker. It was weird, the death of a spouse. Here one minute, gone the next, then back again, business as usual. He’d slipped on a patch of ice taking out a bag of trash and spent three days in ICU, forearms lashed to the bed rails, legs kicking, teeth in a cup. Without his combover he wasn’t the man she’d married all those years ago. Every morning he raked strands over the top and sprayed them in place with AquaNet.
She never had a chance to say goodbye, not so much as an I love you or even a nod. As if that wasn’t enough, she’d told him off right before he’d left the kitchen. Of all things to fight about, animal crackers hadn’t made the list. He’d unscrewed the lid on the big plastic teddy bear and fished her out a horse, a cat, a donkey, a rhino. How about three crackers for once, he’d teased, or maybe five? Why was she such a damn peculiar woman anyway? Well, she’d snapped, she wanted four crackers and had always wanted four crackers and if he didn’t like it he could take a flying leap.
“And take that bag of garbage with you.”
She’d found him at the bottom of the deck stairs -- jaw broken, glasses flung onto the snow, blood sprayed as far as the bulkhead doors, calling for his brother who’d been dead twenty-two years. She wasn’t offended. They’d been twins.
“Back out the screws on the plug face,” the proprietor instructed, tapping the yellow circle on the thick black cylinder. “Release the clamp and the plug comes apart. Separate black and white wires and screw them down separately. Then it all goes back together.”
She could do anything a man could do, had she any interest. Now, along with grieving, she’d be fixing plugs, mending dining room chairs, repairing leaky faucets and God knows what else. She stood there, a ray of morning sun bending itself across the countertop.
“What do I do again?”
“Go on YouTube.”
The idea was to keep busy and stick to a routine. With your hands occupied, your mind got tricked into forgetting. Except right from the bell grief had come out swinging, like the fighters in one of those crazy cage matches her twelve year old grandson Devin loved to watch, crushing her so she couldn’t see straight. Her husband was dead. She’d seen him with her own two eyes as they waited for the undertaker, Jessie sobbing with her head on her father’s chest while Dana stood back, hugging herself, peeking and not peeking. Margaret sat holding his hand, doing her best for the kids’ sake, feeling as if she was spinning away from herself. Since those awful moments she’d hardly eaten and no longer cared a wit what she looked like, a twist which would have astounded her husband, given the time she took to make herself presentable.
Now, with Terry gone, Luna was behaving worse than usual, chewing up pens, bottle caps, coasters, chair legs and anything else within a foot of the floor. A few more years, Margaret figured, maybe less if she switched from the organic chicken and rice pellets Terry fed her to the cheapest stuff on the supermarket shelf. Luna had put on weight and judging from her labored breathing wouldn’t survive half that time. Positive signs for sure but she’d eaten a plug and gotten away with it. She’d outlive Margaret.
When she was a kid dogs were chained to back porches, surviving on table scraps of potato peels, beef fat, and bread heels. With no leash laws strays ran free, rooting through garbage cans and getting run over by cars and buses. No one cared. Who had money to spend on pets when you couldn’t put food on your own table? These days dogs were regulars at tony restaurants, sporting events, outdoor concerts. They were like children--everyone knew how messed up yours was except you. Her best friend Caryn brought her Snickerdoodle Ben everywhere. During a visit last summer he’d torn up a screen door though Caryn didn’t notice and Margaret didn’t bring it up. Caryn would have probably blamed the screen door from preventing Ben getting inside.
As soon as she got home Margaret found what she needed on Terry’s workbench. Since the funeral she’d avoided going down there but she couldn’t last another day without a vacuum cleaner. The gathering house dust was more than she could tolerate, even in her state, and Luna’s hair clung to every surface. The dog followed her downstairs, sniffing the spot on the basement floor where Terry had stood tinkering for hours. Margaret watched, terrified, as if Luna had discovered a crack in the concrete into which Terry vanished. Above his workbench three vertical bars spanned the foundation window to keep trespassers out and let dry air in, the ends handpacked with cement to hold them in place.
“If the police ever come for me,” he’d told her the day when he called her down to inspect what he’d done, “they can match the fingerprints with these ones right here.”
Now she touched those fingerprints.
“Okay,” she said, giving herself goosebumps. “Very funny. I know you’re hiding behind the oil tank.”
He’d loved to play tricks on her. He’d come up to the kitchen for a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tea when he got hungry. She found a needle nose pliers and a Phillips screwdriver and started up the stairs, grasping the handrail to steady herself. Dizzy and feverish, as if she was coming down with a bout of the flu, she was overtaken by a spasm of grief.
There’d been no symptoms, follow-up tests, discoveries of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s -- all the maladies afflicting the lucky whose loved ones had plenty of time to say goodbye. His cousin Ernie whispered at the wake how fortunate Terry had been never to know what hit him. Wasn’t it a blessing to be spared months of the misery most dying people had to endure? And imagine having to care for him while he withered away to nothing? He’d clutched Margaret’s hands, his eyes wet and gleaming, a peppermint clicking in his dentures to hide the whiff of Seagrams. She nodded, numb and speechless.
At the kitchen table she pulled the plug apart and separated the black and white wires from the cord before securing each under the brass screws. Was that how he’d said to do it? Terry would have pointed out how she’d neglected to insert the cord through the back of the rubber cover. Luna lay under the table, a thirty pound sack of potatoes, while Margaret started over until she got it right. Chancing it, she plugged the machine in. To her surprise it ran like new. Luna got up and went after it, shifting her weight back and forth in sync to Margaret’s pushing and pulling. What exactly ran through its primitive brain? One minute it sniffed Terry’s essence with some kind of paranormal sensitivity, the next it attacked the vacuum cleaner as if it were a badger loose in the living room.
“If you go before that dog, she’s going straight to the vet for a needle,” she’d warned him.
“Isn’t one stiff enough?” he’d replied.
Later that morning Margaret met Caryn at a coffee shop run by two brothers from Nepal. A couple of dogs lay on the wooden floor. Ben made three. If you didn’t cater to dogs as if they were celebrities you went out of business. Word got around. A woman at the next table used a handful of napkins to pick up after her cairn terrier. She deposited the waste in the trash can by the door before consoling the dog as if it was a child, saying it wasn’t his fault, etc. Margaret, repulsed, pushed away the rest of her pecan bran muffin.
“I’d love to say something but I’m afraid I’d be assaulted by one of these dog nuts.”
“What do you mean?” asked Caryn as she fed Ben pieces of her blueberry scone, each smeared with a dab of yellow butter.
For over thirty years Caryn had been married to a functioning alcoholic who’d drunk himself to death. Three weeks after she buried him she’d purchased Ben through a breeder in Pennsylvania, driving home in a snowstorm. Ben slept next to her and wore a fitted wool suit in the winter. Every Tuesday he received a professional massage for his hip dysplasia. At times listening to her speak of Ben, Margaret got confused.
“This morning when we woke up we decided it was a perfect day for the beach, even with the windchill. So we packed some snacks, bundled up and off we went.”
“Are you seeing someone?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Terry stands next to my bed.”
“He’s worried about you. Tell him you’re fine. He’ll find something else to do.”
“I told him to take a flying leap. Those were the last words out of my mouth.”
Caryn caressed Ben’s ears. Strange music played Margaret couldn’t place, not even a single instrument. Umesh, one of the brothers, came around the counter with a bowl of water and a plate of dog biscuits. He put the bowl on the floor and asked permission to give each dog a biscuit, first listing the ingredients.
“He didn’t hear you,” Caryn said. “Men never listen.”
“Luna chewed the plug off the vacuum cleaner.”
“She’s grieving too.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
Terry had found the website, photos of neglected dogs with sad faces rounded up from all over the South. One minute Luna had been penned in a yard in some godforsaken Arkansas backwater, the next stuffed into a plastic crate flying down the interstate with eleven other rescues. On a frigid Sunday morning he brought Margaret to a Walmart parking lot where a stout short-haired woman in blue overalls shouted dogs’ names through a megaphone before handing out a dozen vaccinated and neutered mutts from the back of her van. Even as Terry held Luna in his arms for the first time, Margaret assumed he was doing a coworker a favor.
“Where’s the owner?”
“Meet our new addition,” he said as he wrapped Luna in a bath towel.
“Please don’t tell me that animal belongs to us.”
“Look at this face.” He lifted a corner of the towel. The puppy had a blunt muzzle, floppy ears and a streak of white between her eyes that fanned out over her forehead.
“She’s cross-eyed,” Margaret said. “She smells like dog shit. How could you do this to me?”
“Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted a dog. You wouldn’t hear of it. Not when the girls were little, not ever.”
“That doesn’t make me an ogre.”
“Except it’s not always about what you want.”
He’d never spoken to her like that. He’d always been a pushover. He acknowledged it himself. In every marriage, one led, one followed, like some kind of natural order. But this was different. She could sense it but wasn’t one to give up without a fight.
“Why couldn’t you volunteer at a shelter like every other normal person your age?”
“I’m not a normal person,” he said, “and this is not a normal animal. We’re a perfect match.”
Once all the dogs had been handed out the woman in overalls climbed behind the wheel and drove south. At the first intersection Margaret blared the horn to get her attention. The woman looked straight ahead and accelerated as the light turned green, apparently used to this sort of thing. After the dog peed through the towel onto his lap, she told Terry at least it was good for something.
Luna’s bark, a sharp eruption whenever anyone pulled into the driveway, cleaved Margaret’s skull in two. There were plenty of other times the dog went berserk for no reason, at least none that Margaret could decipher. She chased birds across the sky from one side of the yard to another, “patrolling” Terry called it as he’d watch her from the porch, egging her on when some Canada geese angled overhead. Some days she clawed at the door to go out, then spun right around and clawed to come back in. Other days she wouldn’t come in at all, racing along the picket fence yapping at Ed and Gloria, their retired neighbors who existed for the purpose of doing yard work. Terry would have to bribe the dog inside by shaking a can of grated cheese. His patience never wavered, even after Margaret reminded him he’d been seduced, gotten the runt of the litter, an animal no one in his right mind would offer a home to.
Now Luna followed her around the house as if expecting an answer to the whereabouts of the person who’d loved and cared for her. Lately she’d grown protective of Margaret and whenever the girls visited they would open the door just enough to see a growling Luna’s bared teeth.
“That goddam dog is going to kill someone,” said Dana as her mother held Luna by the collar.
“She misses Dad,” said Jesse.
“She’s been like that since day one,” said Dana.
The girls came over a couple of nights a week to check on their mother, bearing cartons of vegetable lo mein and shrimp egg foo yong, or a large pepperoni pizza and barbecued wings, along with a couple of bottles of wine. They weren’t ready to talk about Terry. They needed time. They’d let Margaret know. Even the mention of his name was too much. They wanted to relax and not think about all they’d gone through. Instead they discussed The Crown, their favorite show, which Margaret had never seen. Had they the chance to do it over again they would model their lives after Princess Margaret who was free to act like a total bitch and do whatever she pleased. Elizabeth, as monarch, had to hold it together and look perfect at all hours of the day and night. It was the worst.
“Who wants the dog?” Margaret interrupted.
The girls had problems of their own, thank you, with ungrateful kids, shitty jobs, inconsiderate husbands and the usual ridiculous amount of housework.
“Think of her like a mortgage, “ said Jessie. “Every month you get closer to the payoff.”
“I think she heard you,” Dana said. “Look at her.”
Luna lay on the rug by the buffet staring up at them. A couple of years ago she’d gnawed a corner leg, prompting Terry to fashion an aluminum sleeve to protect what was left of it. Now Margaret couldn’t care less if she devoured the entire piece.
“He never told me why.”
“He knew what you’d say.”
“I’m his wife, damn it.”
“Can we change the subject? He didn’t even tell us, his own kids.”
“I’m putting her down anyway, just so you know.”
“See what happens when you don’t eat?” Dana said. “You’re losing your mind, or what’s left of it.”
They wouldn’t leave until Margaret took six bites. They sipped their wine and counted. One more, they said, as if she was a two year old.
“And don’t spit any into the napkin,” Jesse scolded.
Slowly she lifted her fork and chewed while they watched. What was she trying to do, turn them into orphans? Wasn’t it bad enough they’d already lost you-know-who? Their mother becoming a skeleton before their very eyes wasn’t a sight they had the time and energy to deal with, frankly.
Mornings and evenings Margaret dumped a cup of pellets into a plastic bowl. She refilled the water dish next to the stove. Once a week she used Terry’s pointed shovel to bury what Luna left in the backyard. It was a horrible chore made worse by the shovel’s handle, darkened by sweat and worn smooth from years of his turning over the vegetable garden. As Luna stood appraising her work, Margaret found herself talking to the dog, not forcing on her any of life’s big questions, like the guilt she lugged around or where exactly Terry had gone to, just one-sided small talk about the weather or whether she’d remembered to pay this month’s electric bill.
“It didn’t happen, in case you’re wondering,” she reminded Luna. “He’ll be back here any minute now.”
Her breath would escape her lungs and she would cry out, the shovel handle steadying her as she wept.
Luna had nipped Ed when he delivered a loaf of his Irish bread after hearing about Terry, tearing his pant leg and bruising his shin. He told Margaret not to worry. It wasn’t his first dog bite. She apologized, offering him rubbing alcohol and a gauze pad.
“She’s protective of you,” he said. “I violated her space.”
“You just gave me the perfect excuse to put her down.”
“Oh God no. I would hate to think it was because of me.”
“For the benefit of humanity,” Margaret said. “The world is overrun with dogs as it is.”
For the time being Luna was safe. The money to euthanize her had gone toward the funeral. What it cost to bury a person was insane. Margaret had to take a loan for the headstone. The kids wanted to help but she wouldn’t hear of it. They had money problems of their own and had suffered enough, seeing their father naked under a johnny that fell open every time he twitched. In a stuffy conference room they’d gathered--the girls and their husbands, Rocco and Ken, along with a neurologist and a hospital social worker--to stare at a CT scan of Terry’s brain. Dr. Adeke, in his mid-thirties from some African country (Ghana was Margaret’s guess), used a laser pointer to encircle the damaged areas. Encouraged by what he saw, he expected Terry to come around by the end of the week provided he had their permission to insert a nasogastric tube.
“Wait,” Margaret said. “What do you mean by ‘come around’?”
“I would estimate six months in rehab,” he said in a measured and maddening tone. “Possibly, even likely, wheelchair-bound along with speech and memory impairment.”
Margaret listened. She wasn’t furious. His job was to use technology to increase Terry’s chances of transitioning from a coma state into that of a severely handicapped person.
“Best case?” she asked.
He nodded.
“And if no feeding tube?” asked Dana. She was the dried eyed one and asked the direct questions. Jessie, unable to lift her head, plucked tissues from a box in front of her.
“A few days, perhaps a week.”
He studied them, awaiting an answer. Dana asked what he would do had Terry been his father.
“My father’s been dead for many years,” said Dr. Adeke.
“Okay, so your mother then. Jesus Christ, you know what I mean.”
He paused. All of them knew what he would say.
“Yes, for my mother. Yes.”
“Shame on you for sentencing her like that,” said Dana.
“I’m sorry,” said Ken as he squeezed his wife’s hand. “She didn’t mean it. This is a difficult time for all of us.”
“Don’t apologize for me. Who would want to come back as a brain damaged eighty-two year old?”
“We cannot gauge his progress at this point,” said Dr. Adeke.
“Dad would never forgive us,” Jessie gasped as Rocco pulled her to his chest and patted her head.
“Can you please just tell us that the right thing is to let him go?” Dana begged. “I mean, can you just be honest?”
“It depends what your definition of right is,” he said.
“What exactly was the point of this meeting?” Margaret asked.
Every afternoon all summer and into the fall Terry poured her a glass of white zinfandel with a couple of ice cubes and took it along with his can of Budweiser and a plate of Ritz crackers and cheddar slices out to the deck where they watched blue jays chase sparrows from the feeders and the same two squirrels scramble over the low stone wall, tumbling off into the black eyed susans and bounding up again as if springloaded. Luna, between them, ignored the wildlife while she gnawed on a piece of rawhide. Just a few months before Terry had passed his physical and renewed his driver’s license. Margaret’s colon cancer had been in remission seven years, knock on wood. There was no shortage of tragedies afflicting friends and relatives. Every week something new. Once you hit a certain age look out. But why obsess over it? He drank his Budweiser. She asked for another glass of wine when he had the chance. In the shade of the patio umbrella he tilted for her, she stayed protected from the sun after her skin cancer scare. Allergies got to him this time of year, all that sneezing and nose blowing, but who died from allergies?
There would be no feeding tube. It was unanimous. Instead of giving Terry half a chance they would stand around and watch him starve to death. When Margaret asked for a priest, Dr. Adeke and the social worker excused themselves, now that the petition to implement technology had been denied. The priest was in his mid-fifties and grew up in the parish next to where Margaret and Terry had raised the girls before downsizing to a small ranch on the South Shore. He was soft-spoken and witty and asked to be called Father Jerome. To her surprise he agreed with her. She’d been taught as a Catholic if hope existed measures should be taken, no matter how extreme.
“God would say you’re doing the right thing,” Fr. Jerome reassured her. “I happen to have his contact information.”
Jessie laughed through her sobs while the rest of them smiled at the surface of the table. At Father Jerome’s suggestion they went into Terry’s room for the Anointing of the Sick.
Gathering around the bed, everyone touched Terry as directed. Margaret held her husband’s warm hand, his fingers thick and curled from arthritis after decades of operating a backhoe and jack hammer. He squeezed back. She was sure of it. She would call everything off. The words were in her throat. But the pressure lasted a brief second, a reflex of some sort. His eyes never opened. Father Jerome went ahead, anointing his forehead and palms. Standing at the head of the bed he cupped Terry’s ears and prayed aloud. Margaret and the kids followed. To be doing something after three days of doing nothing provided solace. She imagined waves of spiritual energy flowing into him.
“Whatever you do,” Father Jerome said afterwards as he washed the holy oil off his hands. “Do not second guess your decision.”
And Margaret didn’t. Or tried not to.
“What happens,” Dana asked as they walked out together past the nurses’ station, “if Dad wakes up two days from now and wants a ham sandwich?”
“Can we talk about something else?” Jessie said.
That night Margaret prayed, rolling each bead in her thumb and index finger. Jessie, exhausted, slept in the spare bedroom while Luna gnawed a frozen marrow bone in the kitchen. Margaret had said the rosary every day since she was seven years old. As it was Sunday, she meditated on The Glorious Mysteries and the resurrection of Jesus, asking God to relieve her husband’s suffering and take him into the glories of heaven. Though she prayed fervently, she felt as if she was banging her head against a wall to get rid of a migraine. What kind of wife asks for such a thing? Still, miraculously, by morning Terry was gone. He’d passed an hour before Margaret and the kids arrived at the hospital. Two young nurses met them at the elevator. They’d held his hand until the end.
“I want to kill myself,” Margaret told Devin who sat next to her in Olive Garden where they’d gone for something to eat after they’d left the hospital.
“Please don’t want to do that, Nana,” he said as he picked up his chicken parmesan sandwich and stuffed a quarter of it into his mouth.
“Jesus Christ, Ma,” Dana scolded across the table. “What the fuck?”
Margaret passed Devin her untouched baked haddock. He held a fork in his closed fist as if the fish was still alive. What the hell was wrong with kids these days? She wouldn’t say a word. She’d shut up. She’d disappear. She’d start by not speaking. Not eating would get her there too. If she wore loose fitting blouses and sweaters to hide her diminishing self by the time anyone noticed it would be too late. Her life was behind her now. It had been a good one. She had no complaints nor any interest in what lay ahead. The kids and grandkids would be fine. What troubled her was how long she’d have to wait.
When she returned home from the coffee shop, leaving Caryn to take Ben for cosmetic dental work, she continued with her vacuuming, using the hose attachment to get into ceiling corners and behind the couch. She sucked up a clump of hair under Luna’s fleece bed with its memory foam Terry had purchased from Orvis.
“Apparently Adirondack green isn’t her color,” Margaret had told him when he’d tried to coax the dog on to it with a trail of salami slices. “Maybe you should have shown her the catalogue selections before you ordered.”
A few times a week he took Luna for a swim in a weed-choked pond a mile from the house. Afterwards he carried her upstairs for a bath, a decaying stench trailing them and filling the kitchen. Then he gently towelled her off and wiped down the tiles and soap dish.
“What does a person have to do to get that kind of attention?” she asked him.
“I can’t very well let her go around with burrs on her coat,” he said.
“How about building her a doghouse and saving on the water bill?”
“You’re not being serious. Winter’s coming.”
“She had a fur coat last time I checked.”
The noise from the vacuum dulled the racquet in her head. Debris spun in the clear cylinder. As she emptied it she noticed Terry’s windbreaker on a peg by the door where he’d left it. Maybe you really could take it with you, at least a jacket. All her years of saying the rosary had gotten no closer to understanding what had become of him. Eventually he’d find other things to do besides come to her bedside. He’d move on, like he did whenever she ran into someone as they left the supermarket. He’d wait in the car while she gabbed away, listening to the radio or organizing the glove compartment. He never got angry or annoyed. He was just happy to see her enjoying herself. She knew how lucky she was yet couldn’t stop herself from taking him for granted, or being outright short with him, as if harboring some perplexing desire to sabotage her own good fortune.
His gold band, engraved with their initials and wedding date, she’d left on his finger.
“It’s engraved,” she told the undertaker when he asked if she’d wanted it. “What good would it do anyone?”
The ring had been father’s. After her mother had offered it to Terry, he’d taken it to a jeweler to have it inscribed. She did ask for his carved Celtic rosary beads with the Waterford Chrystal cross because Jesse wanted them, the undertaker swapping the set with plastic ones just before he closed the lid.
While she wound up the cord she noticed Ed crossing the yard. He waited on the back deck without knocking, his hands in his pockets. He was the type who apologized even before he said anything, as if every act in his life was an imposition. Perhaps being married to Gloria had something to do with it. Ever since they’d moved into the ranch, Terry had heard it from her about bittersweet vines creeping over onto her lawn. One time she’d charged over the property line shaking a pruned vine in each hand, as if they were poisonous vipers threatening to invade her house. Another time she’d called the police when Terry’s 80th birthday party ran past ten o’clock. It was a pleasant August night, the crowd in the backyard laughing and drinking beer too much for her. Margaret had nothing but seething hatred for the woman and hadn’t spoken a word to her in years. To her relief Ed came through the receiving line at the wake apologizing that Gloria had a head cold.
Margaret stepped onto the deck for Ed’s protection.
“We’ll take the dog,” he said.
He pointed to Luna who barked on the other side of the storm door as if he was an armed intruder.
“She’ll destroy your life,” Margaret said. “Why would you make such a ridiculous offer?”
He gazed around, avoiding eye contact, a small round bandage stuck to his forehead.
“What you have in mind traumatized Gloria,” he said. “Her sister sends us photos of places she and Leonard visit with their rescue dog, including one of Samantha in front of the Lincoln Memorial.”
“Samantha’s the dog, right?”
Ed nodded.
She remembered when Terry came home with a canine toothbrush and a tube of beef-flavored toothpaste. When Luna ate the toothbrush, he went out and bought two more.
The windbreaker, she knew now, was a ruse. He’d come to check on Luna. When the girls became women he’d stopped being a father, at least in the usual sense. They didn’t need him like they once had, yet he was still a vessel brimming with paternal love and devotion with no place to put it. In desperation he’d sought out the website. His life had purpose again. Just a week ago Margaret had seen an older woman pushing a Pomeranian in a baby stroller and was certain the woman had lost her mind. Now she wasn’t so sure. Ed waited for her answer, staring at his shoes.
“It goes against my better judgment but I’m keeping her.”
“Gloria will be relieved,” he said. “But our offer still stands.”
Tonight when Terry showed up she’d apologize for what she’d said about the flying leap. She’d keep Luna as penance. He’d laugh and call her Saint Margaret. After Confession didn’t she double whatever the priest gave her while he halved his? It was a joke between them. He’d sit in a pew while she knelt at the altar rail until her knees went numb. Caring for that miserable creature would provide absolution for every sin she’d ever committed and then some. And maybe, God forbid, she’d come to tolerate its existence. But there’d be no tailored outfits or monthly groomers, no trips to restaurants or museums. She’d care for Luna so Terry could find something else to do with his time. And if he needed his windbreaker for wherever it was he planned to go, he’d find it hanging next to the back door, exactly where he’d left it.