The Newlyweds

Along the road were seven kittens in a box: say it out loud. The words coming from my mouth feel wet and swollen with possibility. You did not let us take them home. They were small, small enough for their mother, had she been there, to fit two or three of them in her mouth at one time and carry them around. Smaller than one of my small hands. Immediately, I loved them. I wanted them. How could anybody not?

I lifted them out one at a time along the dusty road. Dust had dried around each of their little nostrils and clumped at the edges of their eyes, which were still blue; I could tell from the way they looked around without really looking at anything that they couldn’t see yet, they were still too young, and somebody had left them this way along the road. They looked at my face when they heard my voice, but they looked without seeing me. I held each of them for a little while, and when I’d held all of them, you said let’s go, and we left them there to love each other in the dark, alone.

*

At home we have a dog whose name is Wags, a German Shepard who, after she shits in the yard, turns around and eats her own shit. She does so happily, unknowing. I took her to the vet to see about this problem, and the vet gave me a powder to sprinkle on her food twice a day.

“What’s this going to do?” I asked.

“It’s an enzyme,” the vet said. “It will make the feces taste bad.”

*

It hasn’t worked. The powder was $25 for a two-week supply. The two weeks are over, and Wags still loves the way shit tastes. We figure, let her eat it, if it makes her so happy. The whole thing is pretty funny, if you don’t get too close to her face.

*

When we got home I took a shower to wash off the dirt from the road that was on my palms and in my hair. The shower in the new house is too cold; there’s only a flimsy curtain, so the air never heats up around you. We need a new tub, which will cost two thousand dollars. We have it, but not for a new tub.

I got out of the shower and came downstairs in my robe, but you weren’t there. It was just me and Wags and you hadn’t left a note. A few minutes later you came back, and your palms were dirty like mine had been. I asked where you’d been and you said you went back for the kittens — I’d cried all the way home — and driven them to the animal shelter.

“It’s late. The shelter is closed,” I said. “Where did you leave them?”

“Somebody was there. They took them. They’re all safe,” you told me. It was a lie; I know, even if I don’t know.

*

Tonight all the noise in the house has been turned off, except for the sound of Wags’ tail thumping against the hardwood floor downstairs, thumping like that shit-eating dog knows what we’re doing up here, and under the covers we’re both clean, clean sweat filling our pores as we rub together in the night.

Your voice is low and thick. You ask, “What are you thinking about?” and I make something up, because what I’ve been thinking about should stay right in my head where it belongs, or in the still space above us, covering me. Our life together is everywhere: Wags downstairs, thumping away; the almost imperceptible decay beneath the tub in the bathroom down the hall; your clean hands molding themselves to my body; and the whole house sinking a little, almost completely still except for you on top of me, soundless but all the time moving, prodding, glowing quietly in the night like an eel swimming back and forth in a bucket of cream.