He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. He shook his head and jogged up the stairs.
Dr. Bree told my mother she shouldn’t feel bad. He didn’t think she’d waited too long. As he said this, he filled two slim syringes and set them both on a metal tray. He was unshaven, wearing jeans and a blue hooded sweatshirt. If he minded coming to his office on Christmas morning, he didn’t let on.
“You brought him in just last month. And he was doing okay then.” He had a latex glove on just his right hand, and he used his left to smooth down the fur on Bowzer’s shivering back. My mother had brought him in wrapped in the afghan. She’d had me and Elise fold it over the exam table before she set him down. But the room was cold. The vet apologized; they’d turned down the heat for the holiday.
“It sounds as if things turned for the worse only recently.” He looked up at my mother. “I think you’ve been good to him, Natalie. I would say you’ve done a pretty good job.”
My mother nodded once. She was dry-eyed, quiet. She had one hand gently rubbing Bowzer’s chest, the other unmoving between his ears. When Dr. Bree picked up the first syringe, she held her breath. Bowzer looked up then, his old eyes weakly peering up at the three of us.
“This one is just a sedative,” he said. “Once it goes in, no more pain.”
“Good dog,” my mother whispered. “Good boy.”
The only sound was his labored breathing. I leaned forward to rub his warm neck, my fingers grazing my mother’s. Elise put an arm around her waist.
“Did you hear that?” she asked, ducking a little. “Did you hear that? Mom? I want to make sure. He said you did a good job.”
We could leave the body there, the vet said. It would be cremated, the ashes scattered over his neighbor’s farm, unless we wanted to make special arrangements. My mother shook her head. Scattered ashes would be fine. She asked if she needed to pay just now. She’d prefer it if he could send her a bill.
Even when it was just the three of us, walking back out to the van, she didn’t cry. She kept her hands in the pockets of her coat, her purse slung over her shoulder. She’d left the afghan inside with Bowzer. She had nothing to carry out.
When we got to the van, she turned around. “Incineration. It’s not a nice word.”
I shook my head. “He didn’t say incineration, Mom. He said cremation. It’s different.” I didn’t know exactly how it was different, but cremation sounded much better.
She nodded, but she did not seem consoled. Her mouth was hidden by the red scarf, but her eyes looked worried. She’d done the right thing, of course. She had no money for special arrangements, and asking Elise to pay for it would have clued her in to our mother’s circumstances. But now she was maybe thinking about fire, about images that might bother her later.
“Scattered ashes are nice,” I said. The wind was blowing cold from the west. I put on my hat and stepped closer to the van. “Scattered over a farm, right? That’s good.” I shook my head, searching for words. I didn’t want to say fertilizer. That was sort of the idea moving through my head, but I was looking for a softer word: I thought change; I thought space. “Like the dinosaurs,” I said, my voice uncertain. “They turned into something else…”
Elise shook her head as if she felt sorry for me for trying to think. But my mother moved toward me quickly. She pulled her scarf down below her chin.
“I can’t believe you remember.” She leaned back, squinting. “You remember I taught you that when you were little? Do you remember that? We were in the car? Waiting for the train?”
Her face was full of happy expectation, so I nodded, though I had no idea what she was talking about. On that hard, cold day, I would have said anything to make her feel better. If she wanted to think she was the one who taught me about dinosaurs turning into coal and oil, fine. Maybe she was. I only knew it was true, and that it was for the best that they had all died when they did, so there would be room for everything good still to come.
Epilogue
FOR MY NEPHEW’S first Christmas, I knit him a hat. I