So Much Love to Give

by Suzy Eynon

It began with a glance in the morning while she licked jam from toast, between checking her ovulation tracker app and deleting the junk email on her phone: she pulled up the local animal shelter websites and clicked through the pictures of dogs. Madeline preferred the small dogs, particularly the unlovable or misshapen, those whose heads were disproportionately small for their bodies or with beagle ears suspended from a chihuahua skull. They reminded her of a computer game she used to play with her sister when they were children that allowed them to mash together features of different dinosaurs, like a stegosaurus head pasted onto a T-rex body. She read their bios, memorized their names, bookmarked her favorites for later. She forwarded the top contenders to her husband, Bobby, with the hope he would concede to getting a dog.

Within weeks, Madeline expanded her search efforts to include shelters further north, trawling the sites before work, during lunch, and on her commute. As her bus slid up the freeway toward home, she committed to memory the picture of a chihuahua mix named Harold with prominent crossed eyes who enjoyed napping, per his bio. She thought of a future including Harold: maybe she worked from home, walking him before she dug into work for the day, or maybe Harold traveled to the beach with Madeline and Bobby, inadequate legs scuttling over coastal Oregon sands.

Madeline asked her husband to look at the dogs once she found one she was destined to save from shelter life, which happened with increasing frequency.

“Look,” she said, turning her phone around to show Bobby. “The site says she’s been at the shelter almost three months.”

“She’s kinda big,” Bobby said. “She looks like she’s part shepherd?”

“Look how sweet she is.”

“Our house isn’t big enough for a large dog. She’d knock over everything in here, and what about Kyle?” The cat stretched out at the end of the couch, digging his front claws into the fabric before emitting a smacking yawn. “He’d be terrified.”

Bobby worried it wasn’t fair to keep a dog with their schedules. A dog would need to be walked, let out to use the yard. They had a fenced backyard, the perfect space for a dog, but not the time.

Madeline didn’t stop looking. She grew attached to the theoretical dogs, though she did not know them, only their faces and their bios. She tracked their status. If she fell in love with Petal on a Monday, and Petal was no longer listed on the site as “available” by Thursday, Madeline felt a sense of loss she knew was unearned.

Then she found Mikey. He was just ugly enough to tear her heart out, his sweet potato body capable of filling her arms like a newborn. The day she found him online, she waited until Bobby was settled, post-dinner, to fill him in on the life she imagined, life with this creature.

“Can we meet Mikey this weekend?” she asked. She thrust her phone with the saved picture toward her husband.

Bobby sighed and lowered his book to his lap. “Maddie, I just don’t know…”

“Please,” she said. “I really want him.” She felt drawn to the dog. He looked forlorn in the pictures, his body strangely thrown together, like a creator had played mix-and-match with fragments of dissimilar dog breeds, creating a beautiful monster only Madeline could love. If she had this horrid creature, she would love it without restraint. She pictured a happier version of herself, walking and holding and sleeping next to Mikey.

Bobby looked away. “When you cry because I’m the bad guy, how do you think that makes me feel? I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

She didn’t want him to feel like the bad guy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just have a lot of love to give.”

“I know you do,” he said, and patted her foot. “We can get a dog someday. I want one too.”

Over time, his refusal to say yes burned Madeline. That she had to ask permission. For him to come around could take years. Bobby moved carefully through life, planning each step or expense or life alteration. It occurred to Madeline she could just return home one day with a dog in the passenger seat of her car, carry him into the house, and go on as if the new family member had always been present. Either Bobby would become irate at her discounting of his feelings and needs, or he would put up a short fight then settle into acceptance.

Weeks later, Madeline recognized Mikey on the street: the cow-spotted barrel body, the right-sided snaggletooth. She checked the time: ten minutes left in her lunch hour. She followed the man and the dog on their shuffle up the street. The man and the dog came to rest at a corner, waiting for the light to turn. The monorail shot by above their heads. The dog cowered at the sound, just as Madeline had shriveled when she first started working downtown and took a beat too long to process the thunder overhead as the monorail, not a falling sky. She was an animal, like the one she pursued.

The man wore mismatched clothing and walked the dog on a length of graying rope. The dog wore a medical cone on his head, which he had not had in the online photo.

“Cute dog,” Madeline said to the man. She had to jog a bit to time the sidewalk meeting at the stoplight. He turned around. The dog followed andt flicked his tongue over the prominent tooth jutting from his jaw.

“Thanks, I just got him,” he said. “They were having a reduced-fee day at the shelter.”

“Yeah,” said Madeline, because she knew this already, and didn’t feel like feigning interest in the logistics.

“I’m actually more of a cat person,” he continued. “I have a cat at home already, but I don’t know if I can keep both the cat and dog. Might send the cat to go live with my friend.”

Madeline did not bend to examine the dog. She thought of her cat at home. “I’m a cat person, too,” she said. Was he bragging he had this beautiful dog even though he didn’t intend to obtain it, that he preferred cats and was just putting up with this dog? He had so many animals now, he had cats to spare, to give away as gifts.

The man glanced at Madeline’s left hand. The way she held the coffee cup indicated it was nearly empty. She wondered if he thought she was hitting on him, the dog an excuse for conversation. 

He continued, “I live in this apartment down on 4th and I’m not supposed to have the cat but…” Madeline stopped listening.

“If you’re not equipped for him, I can help you out. I’ve actually been looking for a dog.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, oh I see you’re married there.” He scratched at his red beard.

“I can pay you back for the adoption fee. I have cash.” She paused, stiffened. “Not on me. But I can get it and meet you back here.”

He was confused by her eagerness, her glances at the dog, the way she was squeezing the coffee cup. “Money...for the dog? They had lots of other dogs there, at the shelter.”

She smiled. She could tell it was over. “Of course. Well, good luck with him,” she said, and she crossed the street to avoid walking further with the duo.

***

Madeline liked to walk the three blocks to Belltown Espresso, buy a latte, and sit at a roomy wooden table to read or think or waste time on her lunch hour. That day, her period arrived as predicted by the tracking application. Her body ached. She felt bloated with disappointment at the loss of possibility. Each passing month clicked closer to Geriatric Pregnancy, which she couldn’t believe was the medical term and which she saw as a line drawn in time. No doctor had told her this, nor had they seen a doctor for their perceived infertility. Bobby didn’t see the point in knowing whose fault it was, he said. She remembered her fear of pregnancy as a teenager, a friend driving to an out of town grocery to get a test for Madeline, which she was relieved to fail in a gas station bathroom.

She brought the cup to her lips as a figure interrupted the rectangle of light in the doorway. It was the man again, with Mikey, now without the head cone. Madeline stared without shame. Mikey was still plump with legs at least two inches too short for his potato body, but pleased and oblivious, his tongue unrolling and flipping from side to side. Her dog.

She brought her phone to chest level in a way she hoped was covert and snapped a blurry picture of Mikey. She sent a text to Bobby with the picture. It’s Mikey! From the website!

When she had told Bobby about seeing Mikey and his new owner on the street the first time, he had seemed less surprised by the story than expected. Seattle wasn’t such a small place that one could expect to stalk a dog online, then notice it on the street days later. She thought the story was hilarious and repeated it to friends: Can you believe the luck?

She thought Bobby believed her, that this was the same Mikey, though she could never be certain what Bobby believed. It sounded like something a desperate woman would imagine. But Madeline would recognize Mikey anywhere. She’d spent hours gazing at his kind face, imagining their life together.

***

Madeline sat at one of the window tables facing the door so she could see them coming. She watched as the man led the dog into the coffee shop, his chest out, a barely perceptible swagger to his stride. He chose a table in the center of the room, where he said something to the dog and left him, leash uncoiled on the green carpet. She bet he hated when people named their pets human names like Stan or Frank. This dog was a mighty animal, not someone in line at the DMV.

The door was propped open, the heat of the sunbaked room hitting Madeline’s face as another person shuffled through the doorway. Madeline scanned the room to look disinterested in the dog specifically but saw that his potato body was where the man had left it, short legs pressing into carpet and displacing berry cobbler crumbs. The man talked to the barista as she handed him a cup of free water. Madeline heard as he asked the barista about her woodworking.

She had taken care not to bring anything that required carrying, no tote shoved full of lunchtime reading. She moved from the chair and was halfway to Mikey in one fluid movement, like a wave flowing from the front of the shop with the heat of the street. Mikey was heavier than she expected, but she scooped him into her arms and began for the door. Carrying him would be faster than trying to walk him on the rope leash, which she curled around her forearm as she supported him. Mikey looked up at her with a grunt but made no other noise.

She didn’t waste time looking back into the depths of the shop as she reached the door and walked onto the sidewalk, parting a couple as they tried to enter. She didn’t apologize for the forceful movement, just carried Mikey in the opposite direction of the shop and her work, away from the wall of windows. He filled her arms, and she remained blissfully uncaring of the midday heat, her disappearing lunch hour, her lack of direction or destination as the city stretched before her.

***

Suzy Eynon is a writer from Arizona. Her work has appeared in Autofocus, X-R-A-Y, South Dakota Review, Rejection Letters, Variant Lit, King Ludd's Rag, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, and lives in Seattle with her cats.