Seligman's Dogs

“Just allergies,” Marshall said, rubbing his nose raw with his sleeve in the library bathroom.

A fellow psychology major, Byron, rinsed his hands in the neighboring sink. “Ugh, sounds awful, man.” He turned off the faucet. “I guess you can’t help it, though.”

Marshall sniffled. It felt like someone had shoved soggy newspaper up his nostrils. “No, I guess I can’t.”

Byron shook his hands dry and followed Marshall out. The arrhythmic clacking of keyboard keys rang through the library as students hastened to finish final papers. Some teetered in the line for the printer as though waiting on bathroom passes. The aroma of coffee tailed them.

“So, the ‘learning and behavior’ exam,” Byron began intensely as though he was whispering the coordinates of buried treasure. His red curls sprung around his ears. “I’ve tried to remember the theories by the animals in the experiments: chimpanzees, mice, babies...”

Marshall patted his jean pocket as they walked. Through them, he rolled something round like pearls. He exhaled. There, just in case.

Byron continued, “The one I can’t remember is the thing about the dogs.”

“Dogs?”

“Yeah, there’s one about dogs and a bell.” Byron mused, “Why was there a dog and a bell?”

Marshall shrugged. “I don’t remember that one.” He prodded his shoulder.

“Drop the pretense,” his younger brother had grumbled when he’d come home for a week in March. “You have a problem. Admit it.”

“It hurts,” he’d defended himself. “Give me a break.”

As they passed a snack cart with free pudding cups, Byron said, “You used to always have the answers like you were ‘MarshallGPT.’” Giving him a crooked smile, he added, “I bet if you think a little harder, you’ll know.”

“Maybe.”

To break the silence, Byron asked, “So, uh, what are your plans? After graduation?”

Marshall felt like he’d just been sucker punched. “Um, I don’t know.”

Byron’s voice became muted in Marshall’s ears when he saw her at a table, perusing her notes. He buzzed with complex feelings. Like an outlet teeming with voltage but nothing to plug into it, no direction, no insights.

Sweeping a hand through his unkempt hair, Marshall scurried to Cassie, his backpack as heavy on his shoulders as his heart in his chest.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out!” Byron called.

Cassie glanced up at Marshall. She didn’t smile.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hey.” Her blonde hair was neatly pulled into a French braid. The pattern mesmerized Marshall, as though a fractal spanned her head.

“Finals, woo. It’s been rough so far, that’s--definitely,” he said.

She smirked. “Well, it’ll be over soon.”

“Yeah. Too soon.”

Cassie averted her eyes. “Well, I better get--"

“Maybe I can join you?” Marshall held the back of his neck.

She sighed. “Oh, come on, Marshall. Don’t.”

“Please, just study,” he pleaded. “I need someone to motivate me.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “I’m not interested in anything more.”

Cassie stared at him, testing his intentions. “Sure,” she murmured, scooting her materials aside so he could take the seat across from her.

Marshall threw open his textbook.

“So. Where do you want to start?” she asked.

“How about…,” he began, ignoring the temptation to apologize for the past.

“Oh,” she blurted. “Can we do the hierarchy of needs? It’s one hundred percent going to be on there, and I can’t seem to remember the order.” He followed her nimble fingers as they weaved through study guides like they used to his hair.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, taking out a crude drawing of a pyramid divided into five tiers.

Marshall swallowed down what felt like wet cement in his throat. The taste made his expression sour. “I can’t believe we’re going to have that on our exam. I mean, it’s not like it’s psyc one-oh-one. It’s basically over now.”

Cassie snorted. “Yeah… It is.”

He worried she might take the opportunity to say something petty. But she wasn’t a petty person. She volunteered at the homeless shelter, participated in bake sales, and had forgiven him the first, second, and third time she found a medicine bottle with someone else’s name on it in his stuff.

Instead, she joked, “Gah, maybe I should have just applied at the deli instead of college.”

He chuckled. “Cutting classes or cutting salami, which do you like doing more?”

She afforded him a half-smile.

After giving her a full one, he said, “Okay, so anyway…”

“At the bottom,” Cassie began, “it’s shelter, food, that kind of stuff.”

He checked his notes. “Right.”

“Um, okay. The next one up is…” She playfully covered her eyes. “Tell me if I’m right,” she whispered. “It’s like…being safe?” Pursing her lips in thought, she continued, “But that’s like shelter, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Well, the bottom is like basic stuff, I think, like food, too.”

Grinning, she asked, “So, I’m still right, aren’t I?”

Before she lowered her hands, Marshall wondered what she might see when she did; him when they went on their first ice cream date or him zonked out on the floor?

“Yeah, you’re still right.”

When she revealed her eyes, her face went from cheerful to wounded.

A thin, chalky fluid seeped out of Marshall’s nose.

“So, next?” he asked, wiping the trickle of mucus on his sleeve. He felt a pang of shame when he did.

Cassie uncapped her pen and took a deep breath. “Video games.”

Marshall gaped at her. “What?”

“Am I right?”

“Come on, Cassie.”

“Okay, okay. Let me think,” she said, slipping the cap back onto the pen. “Is it…relationships?”

He grabbed his neck again. “Yeah. Next?”

“Is it yourself?”

Their eyes met. “Self-esteem, yes.”

Cassie pulled the cap off the pen, then snapped it back on with a click. On and off, on and off.

He couldn’t breathe through his nose. “Okay. What is the next one?” he asked, pinching the bridge.

“Are we at the top or are there two more?” she asked, swallowing back her emotions.

“At the top.”

“So, the most important thing?”

“Yeah. Maslow,” he reminded her in case she forgot whose pyramid they were talking about.

Cassie missed when she tried to replace the cap, so a streak of ink went down her finger like a seam. As though she were a doll made of stuffing and not feelings.

 “Zyrtec?” she murmured. “Claritin? Whatever it is now?”

Marshall leaned back in his chair, his eyes glazing over behind droopy lids. He should’ve just said something romantic: You’re at the top of my pyramid.

“Is that correct?” she asked.

“I was in a car accident, Cassie.”

Her voice trembled. “Yeah, a long time ago.”

“My shoulder hurts. All the time.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she snickered.

      "And I do have allergies.”

Sighing, she conceded, “You know what. I’m sorry,” and shuffled her papers. “We’re just studying.”

Laying his palms open on the table, Marshall began, “Look, I—"

Thump! Byron dropped his book on the table between Marshall and Cassie. He started to shed his backpack. “Dude, I figured it out,” he began, a smug smile on his face. “It was Seligman with the dogs.”

The dogs, the dogs, the dogs. Marshall raked sweat through his hair. “The dogs, the dogs—”

Other students paused in their work and craned their necks. At least things hadn’t gotten so bad that they’d been reduced to echolalia.

“What about me?” Marshall cried. He jumped up. “Forget the dogs. All anyone thinks about are the dogs.”

“What are you talking about, man?” Byron asked, taking a step backward.

Pushing away from the table, Cassie scooped up her papers and closed her book. “There’s no point trying with him,” she advised.

Sneering at Marshall, she said, “I always came second to you. You forgot I even existed.”

Marshall grabbed her wrist in desperation. Her face was crisp and enigmatic at the same time.

“Never,” he said, forcing a couple fingers into his jean pocket. Then, he laid a turquoise, bead bracelet in her hand in a coil.

“You forgot it in my car a long, long time ago, and I—”

“I know, you’ve tried to give it to me before, and I’ve told you I don’t want it,” she exclaimed, tossing the bracelet on the table like loose change.

“I kept it all this time, though.”

She tried to yank away from his grip. “Let me go.”

“I thought it was your favorite bracelet. You told me. It’s from when--”

Cassie’s face twisted in disgust. “I don't like it anymore.”

“Doesn’t it mean something to you?”

Her face twitched in anger. “Not anymore.” She tore away from his grasp. “I might as well have been sitting here with a cardboard cutout,” she said. “It would have been more present.”

He watched her go, slack-jawed and shrinking further into complacency the farther she got from him.

“Good luck,” Byron murmured, snatching his book, and disappearing as suddenly as he’d appeared.

But Marshall didn’t believe in luck or trying, just pills, so he folded his materials and dropped them into his backpack. "Those dogs," he fumed.

Rising, he rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand. A tear ran down his cheek. He saw the fractals in her braid.

Students breezed by behind him like fleeting memories. One shot him a backwards glance and saw the puffiness of his eyes.

“Just allergies.”