Tadd's dog

The funeral was tomorrow.

Tadd strolled through the gray park, shoving his calloused hands deep into the pockets of his worn jacket. There were already a few leaves that crunched under his black loafers. The drops of water from a puddle in the sidewalk crack, gleamed off the shiny black leather of his shoes, illuminated in the pale yellow streetlamp glowing through the vague darkness.

The street lights here were all yellowish-green like the color called spring grass in the crayon box you used to use when you couldn’t find normal green. They were newly installed on account of new city policies on light pollution.

It was the opinion of Tadd Wellsbury, that light polluting a city that mostly wanted to be dark was still light even if it was spring-grass colored instead of piercing white, but he wasn’t an electrician or an environmentalist.

Barney was, in general, both, in the sense that he could do minor repairs on electrical equipment and had a passion for things that were alive, which is, in many ways, the same thing as someone who protests.

He’d done some minor rewiring on the apartment Tadd had gotten with Lisa when they’d first been married, and as a result, the proud first investment of Tadd and Lisa had three switches that turned things on when you flipped them down, and the deceptive switch over the garbage disposal, turned on an actual light.

Nothing turned on the garbage disposal.

The first two years they’d been married, Tadd and Lisa hadn’t had much to dispose of anyways. He’d gotten on better terms with Lisa’s mother, and was promoted to the role of regional manager at his work, which meant he wore a different sort of nametag and got an office with a door.

Lisa joined a book club which consisted mostly of young women, newly married, who talked about their lives and meant that Lisa had new friends now who lived in Oregon and shared her life, while Tadd spoke less and less to the friends he’d had before.

They were always too busy.

He couldn’t help Barney move because on that day he was having dinner with Lisa’s parents and she was very anxious he get home early and help her stage the illusion of successful young married life to the rather doubtful Jeffersons.

Barney couldn’t stop by Tadd’s office party on account of the fact that he was going out with A New Girl, and the girl was very mysterious, and very beautiful and possibly french. And she insisted on rendezvous at nearly impossible times as a sort of test to the commitment of a man who promised to be always at her beck and call.

She’d eventually left him, because he was not.

This did not surprise Tadd, and he inquired no further when she stopped being brought up in conversation, like a sad little ghost, and empty hole in recent anecdotes, not because she’d had any practical substance but because the absence of her revealed the truth, which was that she was a bubble of air, filling space without mass.

Tadd passed beneath another streetlamp and checked his ticking watch screen under the greenish light, an anniversary gift from Lisa who was very much attached and sentimental towards things which did not need electricity and technology to function, though those things were machines, which are just more complex versions of the intricate gears behind the clockface, which are, in essence, just more complex versions of wheels on carts, and so Tadd didn’t think it mattered all that much. But it had mattered to Lisa.

He rubbed his wrist. There were two red marks on his arm. One where the watch had clung on for five hours and one day, and another forming where he pushed the watch back.

He never removed it.

Barney was not the sort of person who kept the promises he made to pretty girls at the beginning of relationships. That was because he was not the sort of person who made promises.

The french girl knew it, and Tadd knew it, and Lisa knew it after a while.

All the people that worked for him or beside him, or vaguely in the same context of him learned it. They could see it on him, smell it in his restless smile.

Lisa heard from some of her book club friends, about how precious their new babies were, and she wanted one. Pretty soon, there was one on the way, and the Wellsburys were searching for a new place to live.

“A bigger apartment is all we need, a little more space for when the baby comes,” Tadd had insisted.

“No! The city’s no place for a baby to grow up! It’s awful and smelly and cars are driving practically through our backyard!”

“That’s cause we don’t have a backyard.”

“”Exactly!” She’d turned around, clutching her belly as she leaned over the newspaper clippings laid out on the dining room table.

“What about this one? It’s a nice little townhouse with an upstairs and a little vegetable garden and three bedrooms so we have space to think about…”

“A dog.” Tadd interrupted suddenly.

Lisa had stared at him for a moment. “What do you want a dog for Tadd?” she asked quietly.

He’d shrugged. He hadn’t really known why he wanted a dog, or why they fought later that night, or why they put their things in boxes and spent the better part of a week moving to the nice little townhouse on the corner of Caper street and 57th. But he did get a dog.

Lisa and Tadd arrived home from the hospital with a shriveled red thing that was apparently a child, and a barking shaggy thing greeted them at the door. For a moment he wasn’t able to tell which thing was his favorite.

There was a hint of something that might’ve been the sun in the air. Tadd could feel it’s lingering presence as the dusk was suddenly less indigo blue and more vaguely slush in texture. A noise overhead startled him.

Tadd glanced up suddenly, as a squawking crow announced its presence from the rustling leaves of a ghostly maple tree. It ruffled its feathers and leapt from its branch, fading into the early morning like a metaphor for something, though Tadd couldn't be certain of what.

Barney liked dogs. He used to come over more often after Tadd got a dog. Of Barney, he could be certain it was the animal and not the child he preferred, which worked out to be a good thing, because Lisa wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving him alone with little Jackson. He was, however, deemed by her responsible enough to look after a dog. And so he often did. This arrangement suited them both quite well if not Lisa.

“How many people do you know who are still in touch with their old highschool buddies?”

“By our age? Not many.”

Barney cracked open a beer, “No sir, by now most of em’ have lives about something else, and only see eachother every ten years at reunions,” he frowned, “It’s sort of like interactive social media, a way to check up on all the people you used to see every day and make sure none of them are doing any better than you.”

Tadd tapped his glass bottle thoughtfully, “I’m glad that we’re not just friends to compare our lives,”

“Yeah, I think the ones that do that were never really friends in the first place, just cell mates.”

“Just cell mates,” Tadd echoed,

and then they both peered at each other uneasily because Tadd had a wife who was still pretty, and functional children, and had held a steady middle class job at the same company for twelve years, which was a very real definition of success, and Barney was head of a thriving law firm and had run for electoral offices twice, but lost both times on the account of his lack of a “family image.” because after the french girl there had been Denise, and then Laura, and then one who smelled of fruit gum and cigarettes, and half a dozen after her, and Barney had long since stopped making promises, and the new ones had stopped expecting him to.

They were as interchangeable as sport jackets in different makes and models to hang off his arm, and changed as often as his backdrop of pale Portland studio apartments with succulents growing on the back porch. But he never ran out of sport coats, and that was a very different and equally recognized by other circles, definition of success.

Barney cleared his throat and crouched down to pet the shaggy dog who’d just wandered in the back door with muddy paws and a gently waving tail.

Tadd was getting close to the middle of the park now, and the path was winding around more often, as if it couldn’t quite make up its mind about where to go. Finally it paused, did a little dramatic twirl, and deposited him near a rotten park bench with ornate rusty legs.

Tadd sighed heavily, and withdrew a copy of the day’s paper from his left coat pocket. He sank down to the bench clutching the newspaper in one hand, and leaned back, staring up at the sky. There were no stars.

The city of Portland could abolish light pollution but they couldn’t blow away the clouds.

The sky was a thick soup hovering hundreds of thousands of miles into the universe or five feet above his nose.

He hadn’t had to plan for a funeral in a long while and the thought rather disturbed him.

He withdrew his rough hands from his pockets and rubbed them across his face. His children had grown up a long time ago, into teenagers that could be left alone for awhile. His wife, Lisa, has aged less than they had, judging by her relative inability to face the same fate.

They’d both begun to work longer hours, taking on extra shifts at wherever it was that she worked and the same company he’d been with for eighteen and a half years.

There was hardly any time to breathe in between the artificial respirators couple shove in between themselves when they’re not sure anymore if there would be enough oxygen for them both if they remained in the same room longer than the time it took for one to pass in or out in the early or late hours, a breathless greeting passed between their faces, half-hidden by shadow.

It turns out there wasn’t.

The company Tadd worked at was offering a special prize for the most dedicated employee of the year, which he found out, after climbing onto a stage in some surprise to accept a shiny plastic trophy to the semi present applause of his coworkers, mostly underlings. The prize was a weekend in a cabin in the mountains for him and his wife.

The cabin was small and the electricity needed turning on from the outside. They reluctantly unpacked their suitcases, I say reluctantly because taking all of one's things out of their box and spreading them round an unfamiliar place is an uncomfortable feeling when you know you’re not going to be staying long, and Tadd attempted to turn on the electric fireplace before discovering this.

“Maybe it’s not plugged in.” Lisa interjected from the kitchen.

Tadd placed a hand on his knee and straightened, biting back the things he wanted to say. He’d gotten good at that lately.

“Wait, no the toaster oven won’t turn on either, and it’s plugged in,”

He could hear her clicking knobs in the kitchen,

“You sure?”

She frowned at the device, “yes, I’m certain.” She missed the obvious irony in his voice. “Maybe you oughta go check around the cabin and see if it’s a problem with something outside.”

Tadd placed his hands on his hips and sighed heavily into the dead electric fire. “Yeah, I think that would be best.”

She nodded even though he couldn’t see her, “And see if you can turn on the wi-fi too while you’re out there, I’m getting no reception.”

Lisa didn’t see her husband press a palm into his forehead.

She did hear the door slam.

During the weekend they mostly ignored each other but the cabin was small, and eventually they tried to have a conversation. When that didn’t work they did other things that didn’t require as much conversating. Then on the last day, when their suitcases were half-way packed and Lisa was busy deciding whether or not to vacuum the carpets and load the dishwasher, or just strip the beds, and how that might reflect negatively on their guest review, they fought.

“I just don’t like him is all,”

Tadd crossed his arms, becoming slightly defensive the way he always did when the particular subject was breached,

‘What’s wrong with Barney?”

He was secretly pleased to have someone to get defensive about, because it seemed like the sort of thing a much younger man would have. Someone much more irresponsible than he, with equally irresponsible friends that he could get in fights with his girlfriend about.

“I just think he’s a bad influence on you!”

This was exactly the sort of thing that Tadd wanted to hear. He didn’t have nearly enough bad influences in his life.

“So you’re monitoring who I can be friends with now? I’ve known him since high school, and I never say bad things about your friends!”

Lisa shrugged in a tired way, “What would you say?”

Tadd was beginning to enjoy himself. “I’d say that they’re shallow members of the PTA who only hang around you because your life makes them feel better about themselves.”

Lisa’s bottom lip trembled. She pressed a palm into her eye and sniffed.

“You don’t mean that,” she said.

Tadd realized his mistake too late. He uncrossed his arms and stared at her, making indecisive motions with his feet for a long while as she sniffed and struggled to regain her composure.

“Barney only likes your stupid dog.”

Tadd took this as a long awaited invitation to cross the room and put his arms around her.

“You know,” She sniffled into his shoulder, “Why the other, why I make them feel better about, themselves,”

She wiped her eyes. “Because they have husbands that love them.”

Tadd could feel her soft hair against his hand. “Lisa you know that’s not true,”

“You don’t.”

“Lisa!”

“You don’t love me!” She wailed, her voice increasing in pitch as she reached the end. She trembled and leaned over, sobbing into his shoulder.

The power went out and the dishwasher stopped humming with an imperceptible click.

He held her tightly, and they stayed like that for a long time.

Tadd shifted his weight on the rough wooden bench. He worked his fingers underneath the watch face, feeling for the engraving on the back. Tadd’s worn lips formed a smile, and he unclasped the band. He studied the watch for a long time, rubbing his thumb along the initials carved in the chrome metal. The newspaper crumpled softly as he set it down beside him on the bench.

Tadd drew a deep breath, and released it softly into the night, where it lingered for a moment, white smoke in the pale air. He slipped a rough hand into the right pocket of his jacket and drew out a small silver flask. There was no moonlight to reflect off the shiny vessel, but his drink was well illuminated in the foggy light from the eco-friendly streetlamp overhead.

He raised an invisible toast to whatever other creatures of the night perambulated parks alone 2 o’clock in the morning, and took a swig.

Lisa filed for divorce on the fourth of July.

He found the papers in the dark on the dining room table, as beautiful symphonies of color praised Our Country’s First War outside his window.

On the fifth, a bus with frayed brake lines blew through a red light and hit Lisa’s car as she was crossing an intersection on her way to work.

The crash was fatal.

Tadd squinted and swallowed the stuff in his mouth. It burned all the way down his throat like it was supposed to.

There was only one last thing in his left pocket. He shifted slightly to pull it out. He sighed, and stroked the folds in a small piece of paper. Tadd swallowed and placed it beneath his watch on top of the newspaper.

The newspaper might be interesting to him tomorrow, or after whenever the funeral was. He’d heard they usually did obituaries, though he’d never flipped to that section. Tadd took another drink and rested his head on the back of the bench. The backboard wasn’t high enough to support his neck, so his head lolled slightly.

Barney Gileman, senior partner at Gileman and Johnson’s law firm, woke up with a hangover on the eleventh of September. He stumbled out of his room wearing what he imagined to be the clothes he’d gone to sleep in.

There was a strange woman on his couch wearing his t-shirt.

She was gone by the time he got out of the shower.

He put on a pot of coffee, pulled a bagel apart with his fingers, and turned on the radio. Barney whistled as he poured the coffee, paused and slowly set the pot down.

His smile faded.

He could feel the cold linoleum floor beneath his socks.

A dog trotted into the kitchen, tail gently waving, and began to whine for it’s breakfast. Barney sank slowly into a dining room chair. He pressed his hands into his head and swallowed. His palms slid slowly across his face, as he rubbed them through his eyes and back again.

The sink was dripping.

Tadd’s dog whined and it’s tail thumped the floor expectantly. Barney swallowed again, and dropped an arm beneath the table, burying his hand deep in its thick fur. After a while he picked up the phone. He stared at the wall as the device buzzed in his hand.

“H, Hi,” Barney swallowed, drawing a shaky breath and pressing a fist into his forehead. He cleared his throat.

“I heard about your dad. I’m real sorry, Jackson,” the soft mumble on the other side of the phone sounded like the voice of a teenage boy. “

If you need anything, a place to stay, some help with CPS, anything you need….” Barney nodded and bit his lip, “yeah,” He swallowed and nodded again,

“yeah he was my best friend.”