Cate Marvin
Lindens
While walking the dog I want nothing to do with
along the bend of a cove that cusps salt marsh, it
feels far too early to be awake. The air does not
serve the nose a single spoonful of salt but wafts
belligerently between sugar and sweat. Lindens
laden with the scent of honey and semen. Charlie
always moves eagerly in his greetings, needing
his nose to arrive at knees and groins, he barrels
toward any piss-scented weed, so we lurch, start
again, and often, I often curse at him. I used to love
the smells the lindens gave off; they’d pitch me
into recollection. I even sometimes stuffed
into my pockets to share with my husband once
I got home, though I always forgot, later pulling
crumbling petals from those pockets, pitching the
pants into the washing machine. Charlie used
to be my least preoccupying household concern,
but now I appreciate how he launches me down
the streets, because he and I are alone together.
Even though he tugged me down the stairs that
time I twisted my ankle. I hated him back then,
lying on my back on the sidewalk, as he panted
above me. He was 80 pounds then. Now he’s 70.
He cries with joy when I come home nowadays,
and if there is a heaven it will involve me lying
beneath covers on a bed and Charlie curled next
to me. Later this week, I’ll get Charlie trimmed.
I like to have his mangy coat made clean so I can
see his shape, make sure he’s not getting fat. It’s
not vanity: weight hurts the joints on a dog big
as that. All tonight, I ignored Charlie, after I had
walked with him three miles down Washington
Ave., him striding ahead of me, as if all of this was
his idea; I forgot he existed because I got caught
up in looking up a gravesite on the Find A Grave
website, because there was her name, carefully
etched, on a piece of rose-colored marble. I like
walking Charlie beneath the row of lindens that
line the Back Cove, because there is no destination,
because people leave water bowls for dogs like
him by the water fountains. Because Charlie will
never kill himself, nor has he the intelligence to
betray me. Charlie just is. Charlie is a dog, that’s
all. My friend’s grave proves one of two things:
she would have been better off as a dog, or she
should have been a better dog. Tomorrow, when
I go to walk Charlie beneath those fragrant Lindens,
I shall try much harder to not think of these things.