Creature Discomforts

something. Is that it? I’m so terribly sorry. I’m so tired. My head aches. I hurt all over. We just have to go to sleep. That’s all I can do. Maybe in the morning, I’ll know what you want. I am so, so sorry.” I was again close to tears. Then, finding a king-size sheet folded neatly across the foot of the bed, I hoped for a moment that I’d deciphered the dogs’ expectations. “Aren’t you good dogs!” I exclaimed. “You sleep on the bed, don’t you! Of course you do. And you know to wait until I spread a sheet over the comforter, so we don’t get dog hair on it. Good dogs!”
    It’s now strange and rather wonderful to look back on what I took for granted. For example, I found nothing startling or ludicrous about the idea that preparing the bed for dogs was my way of turning down my own covers.
    After I’d finished spreading out the sheet, however, the dogs were still restless. They zoomed out of the bedroom. Something clattered. I was too weary to investigate. The dogs zoomed back. When I patted the bed, both dogs leaped onto it, but then immediately jumped off, circled around, and eyed me with trust and mystification. So what did I do? Instead of sensibly ignoring the dogs, crating them, or even offering another apology, I burst into a crying fit. I sank to the floor, threw my arms around Rowdy’s neck, and buried my scratched, stinging face in his thick, deep coat. Pushing her way into the mass of big, hairy dog and exhausted, sobbing person, Kimi nuzzled me, licked my face, and then gave Rowdy a monumentally rivalrous shove that bothered him not at all, but sent me sprawling.
    So there I lie, fragile, addlebrained, aching, scared, and suffering from a maniacal crush on a stranger who must be my vet, but is another woman’s lover. Also, I’m coated in dog spit and undercoat, and all of a sudden? I’m happy. For the first time since I awoke on the mountain, I have this sharp, clear sense that everything —in particular, who I am and the situation I’m in—has this magical quality that it seemed as if nothing would ever have again. And the magical quality is, of cours e, familiarity. And it’s not a creepy, déjà vu, malfunctioning-brain-cells kind of familiarity, either. Far from it! I really have been here before. Indeed, I have often been jolted by big dogs. I recognize the sensation. It is mine. I am happy.
    And my nose is running. I’m thirsty. Lobster and clams? That ever-so-obvious explanation of my thirst entirely eludes me. I wash my face at the bathroom sink, but cannot find a drinking glass. With a stupid smile on my face, I make for the kitchen. The dogs follow. I choose a blue plastic tumbler from a shelf, fill it with cold bottled water from the refrigerator, and drink the entire eight ounces. Meanwhile Kimi picks up a stainless-steel bowl sitting empty on the kitchen floor. She drops it. It rings. Ah-hah! The clatter!
    Rational thought emerges: Rowdy and Kimi are restless because they are thirsty. They are thirsty because their water bowl is empty. They have been asking for water.
    Water! Helen Keller’s first word, right? Magic! The key to everything else. I fill the dogs’ water bowl. I congratulate myself: I am beginning to reacquire my native language.
     

Chapter Fourteen
     
    AT TWO IN THE MORNING , when loud banging dragged me from a stupor, I was in the thick of a guilt dream about forgetting the dogs’ water. The source of the sound that awakened me could not, however, have been the metal water bowl. The bedside light revealed Kimi stretched on top of the covers and Rowdy on the floor in a sled-dog tuck, tail curled over his nose. I stumbled to the kitchen, switched on the bug light, and flung open the back door. The noise had stopped. The bungee cord and cinder block were securely in place on the plastic barrel. Still, I prayed aloud for divine retribution against every raccoon in the state of Maine. Back inside, I opened the refrigerator for some milk, and the dogs bounced into the kitchen. Alaskan malamutes are superb watchdogs, ever on the alert for the whisper of a refrigerator door. They watch you open it, they watch in case you accidentally leave it ajar, they watch you eat whatever you took out, they watch for crumbs you might drop. Watch, watch, watch! The bathroom cabinet yielded a bottle of ibuprofen tablets. I swallowed three and went back to bed.
    Comforting reflections lulled me to sleep. This infatuation of mine with the vet? With Anita