Mutterseelinallein

After her sister’s funeral, she sat on her sofa and binge-watched six episodes of the next item in her Netflix list before she realized she didn’t remember any of it.  Something about doctors, doctors from the past, living in some strange version of London. Maybe there had been an island?

“Well, that’s it. I’m well and truly alone.” 

Their parents had died some years before. She and her sister had never been particularly close, although they kept up the habit of spending major holidays together. They knew their mother would have wanted them to (because she cared) and their father would have expected them to (because he was big on obligations, and holidays were a family obligation whether or not anyone enjoyed them).

Elizabeth, her sister, had always hosted these holidays, because she had the bigger house, to accommodate her six children. Logistically, it made sense for Eleanora to go to them for these celebrations. It was much less fuss to pack up just herself (and, before, her husband), two adults with working brains and working cars, than it would be to load up a family of eight ranging from age 1 to 35, with all its gear, just to head across town to Eleanora’s cottage. Plus, Eleanora didn’t have any of the entertainments the kids insisted on – video games and such. 

But that had been years and years ago. Now Elizabeth’s kids were all launched. Four were in other cities from sea to shining sea (one was even across a shining sea somewhere in another country, but she couldn’t remember where. That one had always moved too often to keep track).  One had died in his twenties.

So she had no family to speak of. Eleanora’s husband had been dead fifteen years. She rarely even thought about him anymore. They had never had children. 

Eleanora was getting sick of all the dying and wondered how much more there was ahead. According to the actuarial tables, she had about another twenty years to go. She sighed, imagining all the funerals, all the deviled eggs, all the cold cut platters from the grocery. The tissue boxes on every horizontal surface. 

She had friends, of course – good friends, friends you could count on to do things like agree to be the executor of your will and make sure whatever money you had left went to the right places. Friends who would ask you to stay at their houses when they went on long trips for work, because you took good care of the dog/cat/plants. Friends who would stop in on their way home from work to water your plants when you went on vacations with other friends. To return the favor.

She’d also grown tired of her plants and gave them to a neighbor, realizing as soon as she got home that she was the only living thing in the house, unless you counted things like mites and mold and the occasional interloping nocturnal tree roach.  (She did not.)

Or her own biome. She pondered the notion of the millions of creatures living inside her gut, churning out their tiny existences, keeping her alive but oblivious to her as a sentient presence. It was comforting, to an extent, all the hard work on her behalf, but their complete insensibility to her being, even though they lived their entire lifespans inside her body, could not be described as companionable. They were on her team – they were her team – but they didn’t even know it. They literally didn’t know anything.

Maybe she needed to reframe her attitude.

Was she lonely? She wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel like the pangs she’d experienced as a younger person, when her best friend in sixth grade had chosen to sit next to someone else on the bus, or the crippling homesickness of her freshman year at college, or when her husband hadn’t come home from work, but instead the blue lights on the street suddenly illuminated the fact that she was no longer part of a pair. This was duller. Boredom, pragmatism, fatigue, and dread, all swirling together. 

At four o’clock, she got up from the couch, put on her shoes, grabbed a towel, and got into the car. Twenty minutes later she pulled into the small parking lot.

Ten minutes after that, she was stooping and reaching through the narrow entrance of a cage, a disinterested, uniformed woman pulling some paperwork off the cage door behind her. The stench of dried urine and fresh feces rose up from the concrete floor in a wave. Indeed, the little dog huddled at the far back of the enclosure looked like he had been stewing in a lot of unpleasantness, and it had dried all over him. Her short arms could barely reach him, but they did. He didn’t resist. He just let her pull him out, avoiding eye contact, not going along with her touch but not rejecting it, like a matted canine Gandhi. Everything about him emanated passiveness and hopelessness.

She wrapped him in the towel and walked through the long gauntlet of all the other barking hopefuls, each behind a chain link gate. Now she was the one avoiding eye contact. The little dog looked ahead stoically.

The disinterested woman in the brown polyester uniform pushed some papers across the high counter. “He’s got a heart murmur,” she said, pointing at the word. “You still want him?”

Eleanora nodded, signed the papers, and they were out in the white Georgia sun, squinting. “It’s okay, buddy,” she whispered into the back of his head. “I know that things have probably really sucked for you lately, but that changes starting today.” 

He rode in the car, still wrapped in the towel, as he had in her arms, staring into the distance. Their first stop was a self-wash dog spa. It took two baths with lots of scrubbing for the water to run clear. The pet supply store next door advised her on food, treats, a collar and leash, a veterinarian, a bed, and toys. The toys seemed optimistic, but she bought one. 

The dog stared ahead through it all, but his eyes began to follow her movements.

Back at home, she set him on the floor and prepared his water bowl and dinner. She placed those next to the wall and showed him. His tail waved almost imperceptibly, not quite a wag, as he examined her face for permission. “Go ahead,” she said, gesturing to the bowls. He ate and drank, then followed her outside, where he peed prodigiously. She nodded.

Back inside, she sat on the couch, and patted the cushion beside her to call the little dog up. He hopped up quickly and squeezed into the space between her body and the arm of the couch, molding his frame to the narrow space. She rested her hand on his side, and his breath pushed her hand up and down.

She started the Netflix series again. This time, she could follow the plot.