She Named Him Hank

Alice folded the newspaper in thirds so the crossword faced up. From her bedside table, she selected a mechanical pencil and tapped the top to draw the lead. Henry hated when she did the crossword in ink. She used to do it anyway. “To get your goat,” she’d tease. Now she only uses pencil. 

She sipped her coffee and placed the mug on a square of laminated coaster made by her grandson. He sent a set of four to her for Christmas last year. Each had a printed letter colored by his small hand: love, it spelled. 

For the next hour, she penciled answers and sipped coffee. 

Forty years they were married. They were too young, she knew then as well as she knows now. Henry had just turned 19. She was barely 18. They had children young, too. Four altogether, though they lost one at birth. Two daughters and a son lived scattered around the globe. After the funeral, she knew the children made up a calling schedule to check on her regularly. She didn’t know who forgot first, but after a few months, the calls dwindled from every Friday evening at 8 to once or twice a month. They have such busy lives. Work, kids, travel, friends, spouses. 

She scratched in a clue but couldn’t recall how to spell perseverance. Is it an –ance or –ence? She checked the cross-clue, erased her mistake, and wrote the a. Erasing looks so much neater than pen scratches, Henry said. Neatness was something he prized, and even though she could overlook the kids’ clothes on the floor or rings of milk left on the kitchen table, she tidied it all up for 40 years because it mattered to Henry. For several months she couldn’t stop cleaning the house, folding the towels and stacking the linens so that the folds faced out, arranging and rearranging the pantry to twist all the labels forward all. These things never mattered to her, but they did to Henry.

And, little by little, she stopped. She unloaded groceries into the pantry and didn’t arrange each jar to face the labels out. She folded the sheets and towels and stacked them in the closet, of course, but she didn’t bother to line up the edges. She started drinking coffee in bed with her puzzle in the mornings, which would’ve made Henry crazy. He would’ve worried about spills, about pen marks on the duvet. 

Alice finished the puzzle, drained the last sip of her now-cold coffee, and stretched. She placed the pencil back in her bedside table and stood up, sliding her feet into her slippers. For some anniversary – 20th? 25th? who could remember? – Henry brought her a thick bathrobe from a hotel he stayed in for a conference. A little luxury for her quiet mornings, he said. The robe hung on a hook inside her closet for decades. She hated the color, a wilted mint green, and never wanted to wear it. Since he died, though, she found herself tying it tightly around her waist each morning. 

She padded into the kitchen and washed her mug in the sink; she had a dishwasher, but hand washing gave her something to do. The calendar tacked to her cupboard was blank. Her shopping list contained a single item – honey – which she could do without. The house was clean enough. 

Alice told her friends and children that, yes, she was lonely, but that’s to be expected. Nothing to worry about, she reassured them. 

Truthfully, most days the loneliness crushed her. She found herself gasping for air, clutching the table to stay upright. Her heart felt empty and heavy; it tugged her chest until she feared she was having a heart attack. She pulled the robe tighter around her. Climbed under the covers. Slept. 

Her friend Agnes lost her husband ten years ago. “Not a day goes by I don’t mourn,” she told Alice over coffee a few weeks after Henry’s funeral. “Not necessarily for Jack anymore, but for the life we would’ve had together, the conversations we could’ve had.”

She got up, turned on the tea kettle, and stared out the window. What, she thought, what today? 

Little crystals of ice curled around the edges of the kitchen window. The clock above the oven ticked away seconds, then minutes. She stared at the ice crystals, lost. Not in her thoughts but in the emptiness of her home, her time. 

In the corner of her mind, she felt a scratching.

No, not felt. Heard. 

She glanced at the ancient clock. Perhaps the face needs dusted, she thought. She pulled a cloth from the basket under the sink, and dragged the step ladder out from behind the fridge. The face popped open. She swiped the cloth, closed the face, climbed down.

She listened. The clock ticked. Ticked again. 

She shook her head, unfolded another clean rag, and wiped down the counters. She picked up the phone and dialed her friend Kate. A few months after Henry’s funeral, Kate offered to set her up on an online dating site. “You’re not too old for this to be out of the question,” she said. Alice laughed, but she declined. She couldn’t imagine opening her heart to anyone but Henry. It seemed impossible.

It went to Kate’s voicemail, so Alice left a quick message about dinner or cards or something. She stood still. Listened. 

There it was again. A distinct scratch.

For a moment, her breath caught in her throat. Months ago she would’ve called Henry. “There’s something out the back door,” she would’ve said. “Go look.”

She debated tightening her robe and climbing back under the covers. I can face it tomorrow, she thought.

The scratching continued. Alice sighed. She pulled on her rain boots and grabbed the broom. She slouched toward the back door, cracked it, and peered out. There, just to her left, she heard the scratch.

She raised the broom and opened the door six more inches. She held her broom aloft and sucked in her breath. 

In the garden, where she'd grown tomatoes every spring for 30 years – as long as she’s lived in this house – an animal scratched at the partially-frozen ground. Twirled. Scratched. Twirled. Not a rat, thank goodness. Too big for that. A cat? No. Something else. Something ragged.

With the broom high above her head, Alice clicked her tongue. The animal whipped around and shivered.

She saw instantly it was a dog--a filthy little dog almost frozen to the bone. His eyes were bright, but his ribs and hip bones stuck out above tangled, matted fur. She clicked her tongue again. He turned his entire body toward her. He wagged.

Alice crouched down and held out her fingers. The dog cowered but crept closer. 

Alice opened the door all the way, and the little dog trotted through and stood on the doormat. Clumps of ice and mud puddled around his feet. He shook off. Water and mud splattered the walls and floor. Alice panicked. Henry will be so angry. 

The kids begged and pleaded for a dog for years, decades really, and Henry always refused. The mess. The expense. The time.

 She dashed into the kitchen to grab the paper towels. The dog shook harder, sending dirt and fur – and probably fleas, she thought – over the walls, the floor, her bathrobe. I need to clean this before Henry finds out, she thought. He’ll be so mad. 

And then she froze, her feet mid-step in her mad dash to the kitchen for towels. No. He won’t. He won’t be mad because he will never know.

Alice crumpled. The broom she’d been clutching clattered to the floor. She hunched over, forehead to the cold tile, and wept. 

The little dog watched from his spot on the doormat. Gingerly, he inched closer. Her shoulders shook as Alice sobbed.

The dog tiptoed a step closer. He put his nose to the floor next to her ear. He sniffed. He leaned forward and inhaled deeply. As Alice gasped for air, the little dog poked his nose into her mess of hair and licked her cheek. 

The coldness of his tongue startled her. For a moment, in her grief, she’d completely forgotten the little dog was there. She lifted her head and stared, agape, at this filthy, foul-smelling dog. He stood directly in front of her face, dripping icy, muddy water all over her clean floor. He looked her in the eyes. He wagged his tail. Then, he leaned forward and slurped the tears dripping off her chin.

Air rushed into Alice’s lungs, and she laughed. She laughed for the first time in months, for the first time since before Henry got sick. She laughed until the crisp air – and the little dog’s tongue – dried the last of her tears. 

She stood, brushed hunks of mud off her robe, hung the broom on its hook, and patted the little dog on the top of his matted, curly head. 

She locked the door and led the dog into her kitchen and into her heart.