Wake

She plunges her paintbrush into the jar of turpentine and shakes the sleeping dog’s leash at her. Lamia wakes and scrambles to her feet. Want to go for a walk? Susan says. It is 2 a.m. and this is their routine since Susan’s brother left and never came back. Try not to let her miss me too much, he’d said as he handed the dog over. But she did. One night Susan was going through her old voice mails and the dog heard her master’s voice. She jumped up whimpering and knocked the machine out of Susan’s hands in an effort to free her master from it, in the process erasing his message.

Susan moved into his house mostly for the dog’s sake, Too much change was no better for dogs than children, and Lamia bonded hard with Susan. Followed her everywhere. After a night of painting, Susan was relaxed enough to take the dog out. It was almost an apology for inverting Lamia’s schedule and synching it with her own, but Susan was a night owl. She needed the simmering down of the day’s noise to access the images she would find and lose many times on the canvas. It was how she told her own story to herself.

Once outside, she exhaled all that, and let the sounds of the dark green neighborhood fill her. Tugged along by the dog as if she was the one leashed, she passed windows that were all dark except for one, where someone was softly playing piano. Pity the poor sleepless pianist. People should live regular lives. And be grateful for them.

 Susan heard a dog in the distance bark. So did Lamia. She bolted, yanking the leash out of Susan’s hand. She leapt over the low gate of the home several houses down, splashing into the pool, yipping the whole time. Susan stood there, not wanting to call out to her for fear of waking anyone human, when a whiskey- voice said, “Lamia! Where have you been, darling? Brutus has missed you.”

It was Mrs. Hoopes, skinny-dipping in her luminous pool. Susan’s brother had often mentioned the old actress, her eccentricities, her elegance, her room papered with awards. “She loves the sun and is afraid of the dark. Can’t sleep through it. She’ll nap naked on the rug in the middle of a winter sunbeam, no matter how the neighbour gawks.” Susan teased him about having a crush on her.

“Come on in,” she said now, catching Susan’s eye. “Watch the pups’ reunion. They remember each other no matter how long it’s been.”

“How do they know each other?” Susan asked, pulling of her shoes and letting her feet dangle in the water. She tried not to stare at Mrs. Hoopes’ plastic breasts floating above the rest of her.
 
“They’re from the same litter. Your brother gave me this one as a gift, dear. We were very good friends.” Answering one of the questions that rose on Susan’s face while ignoring the one that was none of her business, Mrs. Hoopes said, “You look like him. I would have recognized you even without the dog.”

They watched the dogs for a while. When the pair had exhausted themselves and curled up together to sleep, Mrs. Hoopes asked if Susan had heard from her brother. It was the kind of question that hung the night with syllables sounding far-off, as if coming from a seashell.

She finally said, “No. It’s like he disappeared into thin air.”

She stood up at the edge of the pool, shucked off her clothes and dived into the water where her tears wouldn’t show. She kicked a furious wake. It was probably over the legal limit, if you want to know. 

by Cheryl Snell