Nine
SUE WAS SUPPOSED to come over the next day for week two of our doomed portrait sessions. But I called her when I got back from the clinic and postponed.
“I’m not in a good place,” I told her after giving the lowdown on Peanut.
“But painting makes you feel better.”
“Not anymore.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
“I painted a hundred faces the other night, and it was pure torture.”
Sue took that in. “Okay. If that’s how it is right now.”
“That’s how it is right now.”
“Take some you time, then. Binge-watch something.”
“I can’t watch TV anymore,” I said.
Sue was aghast. “Why not?”
“Because of the face blindness.”
“I keep forgetting about that.”
“I can’t tell the characters apart.”
“Wow,” Sue said, “what a nightmare.”
“It’s been a nightmare this whole time!”
“But now I really get it.”
“That’s what made you get it?”
“That,” Sue conceded, “and those images you texted me of upside-down faces. I, like, couldn’t recognize any of those people. Not one. And then you sent the right-side-up version, and I was like, ‘Oh! There’s Michelle Obama! And Julie Andrews! And Liam Hemsworth!’”
“Are you telling me,” I said, “that if Liam Hemsworth walked past you with his face upside down, you wouldn’t even know?”
“I’d have no idea.”
“Welcome to my life. I pass a hundred Liam Hemsworths a day.”
Sue sighed like she was really getting it. Then she said, “It’s his loss, though. Never forget that.”
* * *
SO THAT’S HOW I spent my me time for the next few days: trying to shrink the edema in my fusiform face gyrus through sheer force of will and delivering meals of international delicacies to my beloved dog several times a day as he fought for his life in the ICU.
I confess that, after that first day, I always got a little gussied up before heading to the vet clinic. “It’s for Peanut,” I told Sue on the phone. “He wouldn’t want to see me looking dowdy.”
But, in truth, I had to redeem those baby-doll pajamas.
In general, I made it a rule to never not be okay in front of anyone. Especially not future husbands. All I could do was hope that Dr. Addison had been far too fixated on Peanut that first morning to really notice the falling-apart me.
I mean, he probably hadn’t missed the copious sobbing. But maybe he saw that all the time anyway.
The point was, some things couldn’t be helped. But from now on, I would not burst into any more tears at that clinic. I would show up looking a hundred percent “Fine, thank you, and yourself?” As a point of pride.
Which was the only saving grace on the evening of Peanut’s third overnight stay there, when the pad Thai I’d ordered from his favorite spot got held up in traffic during delivery—and, desperately trying to move fast when I was still forbidden to run, I race-walked the two blocks in a ridiculous pair of heels—only to arrive just as Dr. Addison was locking up.
I knew it was him with certainty. Because all the other vets in the practice were female.
Also because of his godlike glow.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, out of breath. “The delivery was late.”
I held up the takeout bag.
“Is that for Peanut?”
I nodded. “Pad Thai.”
Dr. Addison sighed at me then, like I was a real lunatic. But at least I was wearing my favorite sundress. And I’d taught myself how to do a crown braid around my head that perfectly hid my surgical scars. And I’d gone to the trouble of finding my raspberry lipstick after it rolled under the bed.
With a headshake like he couldn’t believe he was an accomplice to the moral atrocity of feeding noodles to a sick dog, he unlocked the door.
“He needs meat,” he said, stepping over the threshold.
I followed, and we were once again surrounded by pop oldies on the sound system.
“This is chicken pad Thai,” I said, raising my voice a bit.
“Can’t you get him hooked on barbecue or something? This is Texas.”
“He likes barbecue,” I said. “He just likes pad Thai better.”
Three nights in, Peanut was doing much better. He’d had his second transfusion by now, and he’d soon be getting a third. That plus the IV fluids and the appetite stimulants had him looking much more like his usual self.