The Dog
She’d been gone for a couple of hours, most
of the afternoon – he wasn’t sure – but she looked like she’d been
in Spain. Or the Sahara. She’d been tied down and tortured, under a
big round sun. She was suddenly tanned.
He watched her taking off her coat. He didn’t know
what colour her hair was, the name for it. He sat still and said
nothing.
It went back.
They hadn’t coped well. He knew that.
His ear had been the start of it. Or a start. Years
ago now. Mary had been kissing him. But she’d stopped and he’d
heard something, trapped in her throat.
—What’s wrong? he’d said.
—Nothing, she’d said.—Your ear.
She’d stiffened beside him, but then he felt her
kind of unfold, relax again.
—My ear?
—There’s a hair on it.
—Hair? he said.—There’s hair in everyone’s
ear.
—On, she said.
—What?
—It’s on your ear.
—On?
He saw her nod.
—I’ll have to see this, he said, and got up.
But he couldn’t see it. He put his face right up to
the bathroom mirror. He turned his head, so his ear was nearly the
only thing he could see. But he couldn’t see a hair. He took off
his glasses. And he saw it. All on its own. At the bottom, the
lobe. Like a moustache hair. He put the glasses back on. The hair
was gone. He took them off. And there it was.
He went back to the bedroom. He got into the bed.
She was pretending to be asleep, breathing like a baby in an
ad.
He dated it back to then. Five years, four years –
he wasn’t sure. When they stopped growing old together.
He’d shaved it off. He’d never had a moustache and
he didn’t want one now, growing on his ear. He’d taken his glasses
off to do it – he’d had to. He needed the glasses but sometimes he
could see better without them. He took them off to read the paper.
He had to put them on to find the fuckin’ paper.
She was still taking her coat off. It looked new.
He didn’t think he’d seen it on her before. It was nice,
soft-looking. He didn’t know what to call the colour of that,
either. She was being careful. It must have been new. He said
nothing.
Her knickers came after his ear. His revenge, he
supposed, but he hadn’t meant it that way. It had just happened.
He’d been sitting up in the bed, reading. Berlin: The Downfall
1945, or Stalingrad – one of those big books he always
liked, about a city getting hammered in the Second World War. He
loved history. He could hear her locking the doors downstairs, and
coming up the stairs, shoving the bedroom door open, coming in. It
must have been the Stalingrad book, because he’d got to the bit
about people eating the rats, and he’d looked away from the page.
She was taking her jeans off, her back to him. She was kind of
vague there, so he put his glasses back on, and saw them. Her
knickers – her thong. New, and black. She was bending, to get her
feet out of the jeans. Four decades of arse parked inside a piece
of string.
He pretended he was going to vomit. He still
regretted it. He made the gagging sound, and leaned over the side
of the bed and let on he was emptying himself. He’d done it before,
and she’d always laughed. Not this time.
He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d thought he was
just being funny. She’d said nothing about it.
He googled menopause, but he soon gave up.
Age of onset, cessation of menses; it was boring. Hot
flushes – he had one of them every time he went up the stairs.
But he kept an eye on her. He clucked sympathetically when he saw
her sweating. He brought her a glass of water and put it beside the
bed. She stared at him before she thanked him.

The chest hair was next. His. He woke up sweating
one morning. The room was bright. The sun was already pushing
through the curtains. She was leaning right over him, looking
straight down at his chest.
—Grey, she said.
—What?
There was something there, a pain – the memory.
She’d done something to him while he was asleep.
—There’s grey in your hair.
He was sure of it. She’d pulled the hair on his
chest. She looked now like she was going to peck him, the way she
was hanging there. It felt like she already had.
—Did you pull my hair? he said.
He could hear himself ask the question, almost like
he wasn’t the one talking. He wasn’t sure he was awake.
She didn’t answer.
—And white, she said.
—Did you?
—What?
—Pull my hair.
—What? Why would I do that?
She said it like she was miles away, or on the
phone to someone else. Someone she didn’t think much of.
He got up on one of his elbows. He looked down at
his chest; he tried to see it properly. His eyes swam a bit. Her
back was to him; she was getting up. She held her nightdress down
as she stood out of the bed.
—It’s not really something you think about, is it?
she said.—What happens you when you get older.
She was standing now, looking behind the curtain,
out the window.
—It’s a bit horrible, she said.
—It’s only hair.
He’d had grey hair for a good while. It had started
in his early thirties, on his head. A few at the side, just above
his ears. She’d liked it; so she’d said. She’d said it made him
look distinguished. A bit like Bill Clinton. You expected the hair
on your head to change; you knew it was coming. But not the chest
hair, or the pubic stuff. So she was right; it was a bit
horrible.
He’d examined himself that morning. He’d looked no
different. He took his glasses off so he could look at his face
properly. He was still there, the same man. It was frightening,
though, how little time you got. You only became yourself when you
were twenty-three or twenty-four. A few years later, you had an old
man’s chest hair. It wasn’t worth it. He put his glasses back
on.
He didn’t decide to throw out the statue. One of
the saints – he couldn’t remember which one, a woman. A present
from one of her aunts. He’d just picked it up, walking past it in
the hall. Kept walking, into the kitchen, threw it in the bin. Tied
the bag, brought it out to the wheelie, dropped it in. Went back to
the kitchen and put a new biodegradable bag into the bin. The mark
was there on the table, where the statue had been; the varnish was
much darker, like a badge – ‘Something Used To Be Here’. She’d
never asked about it; she’d never said anything. He’d never felt
guilty. She’d never tried to cover the mark; she’d never rearranged
the crap on the table, and neither had he.
But she’d thrown out his medal. Not that he gave a
fuck. But she had.
The statue first. They’d both laughed at it, when
the aunt was in the taxi, going home, the night she’d given it to
them. The saint’s big blue eyes, the snakes at her plaster feet.
He’d put it on the table in the hall; he’d made room for it. It was
him who’d done it. He’d made a ceremony of it. This was the first
Christmas they’d been in the house, two years after the wedding.
They’d laughed, and she’d kissed him.
He just picked it up and threw it in the bin. He
didn’t know he was going to do it. He just did. He’d often hoped
she’d ask him about it, because he could have told her. It could
have been the beginning of something; they’d have talked. But she
didn’t, and he didn’t.
The medal. It was the only one he’d ever won. The
Community Games, football. Under-10s. North Dublin. Runners-up. He
remembered the final, losing three – nil, and not caring once he
had the medal. And not caring much about the medal either. His
mother had put it away, in the glass cabinet in the front room.
She’d given it to him when he’d moved into his own house, along
with all his old school reports and his Inter and Leaving Certs,
and a few photographs: the team in their stripy jerseys, him at the
front, smiling and freezing; him and his big sister on the back of
a donkey-and-cart, both of them squinting; him in his first suit,
the flared trousers, grinning and squinting, the day before his
first real job. He could remember his father with the camera.
‘Smile, smile. Stop bloody squinting.’ He’d told his father to fuck
off and walked straight out to the street. He could remember the
noise of the trouser legs rubbing against each other.
She hadn’t taken anything else. Just the medal. He
hadn’t been looking for it. He’d just noticed it, gone. He’d kept
the stuff his mother gave him in the big envelope she’d put it
into, with ‘Joe’ in her shaky writing on it. He’d kept it in a
drawer in the bedroom, under socks and T-shirts. Over the years,
the shape of the medal had been pressed into the paper of the
envelope. Not the little footballer, or the ‘1969’, or any of the
other details. Just the circular shape. He’d been looking for a
sock to match another one, and – he didn’t know why
– he’d put his finger on the circle and realised
there was nothing under it. He took out the envelope and opened it.
The medal was gone.
He searched the drawer. More than once. He took
everything out. He shook all the socks. He slid the whole lot out
of the envelope, and put it all back, one thing at a time. He tried
the other drawers. He pulled the chest of drawers away from the
wall and looked behind it. He took all the drawers out to see if
the medal had slipped to the side, if it was standing on its edge
on one of the plywood slats that held the drawers in place.
He put everything back.
He had no doubt at all: she’d done it.
But then the dog came into the house. They got a
dog. She got the dog. A Jack Russell, a thoroughbred, papers and
all. A mad little thing. It was there yapping at his heels when he
got home from work.
—What’s this? he said.
—What’s it look like?
—A dog.
—There you go.
—Whose is it?
—Ours, she said.—Mine.
—Serious?
—Yeah.
He looked down at it.
—Let go of me fuckin’ trousers, he said.
But he’d liked it, immediately. He’d had dogs when
he was a kid. There’d always been a dog. Dogs were alright.
She gave it the name. Emma. From a book she liked,
and the film, by Jane Austen. But it still ran around the kitchen
in circles and knocked its head against the rungs beneath the
chairs. It never stopped. It was always charging around the gaff,
or asleep, beside its mat at the back door. Never on the mat,
always right beside it. It was a great dog. Didn’t shed too much
hair, was too small to jump onto the good furniture, learnt to
scratch at the door and yap when it wanted to get outside. Only
shat in the kitchen now and again, and always looked apologetic.
So, it was grand. But he soon began to realise that they weren’t
living with the same animal. She talked to it; she had a special
voice she used. She’d buy a bag of jelly babies and share them, one
for her, one for the dog. There was a child in the house, before he
really understood.
He got up one morning and she was down there before
him, filling the kettle. The dog had taken a dump beside the
mat.
—Emma had an accident, she said.
—As long as it wasn’t you, he said.
She laughed and he bent down, got the dog by the
scruff, and pushed its snout into the shite. He unlocked the back
door with his free hand and threw the dog outside, lobbed it
gently, so it would land on its feet.
And she exploded. She actually hit him. She smacked
him on the back, a loud whack that didn’t hurt but shocked him. She
hit him again. More of a thump this time – his shoulder.
—What was that for?
—What d’you think you’re doing?
The two of them breathing hard.
He didn’t hit her back. He didn’t even think about
it, or lift his hand or anything.
He knew immediately what she meant, and why she was
furious. Now that she was. He could see.
—That’s how you train them, he said.
—No, it isn’t.
—It is.
It was how they’d trained their dogs at home, when
he was a kid. Nose in the dirt, out the door. It had always
worked.
—What other way is there?
He never mentioned the fact that she’d hit him. He
never brought it up again, that the only one who’d ever been
violent was her.
She signed them up for training classes. One
evening a week, for eight weeks. They brought the dog to a big barn
of a place, an actual barn beside an abandoned farmhouse, at the
back of the airport. It was a strange, flat landscape. There was
the ruin of a castle on one side of the road and the airport runway
on the other, just a couple of fields away. He could look straight
up at the bellies of the planes. The dog trainers were lovely,
three soft-spoken girls who loved the dogs and the racket and the
smell. He enjoyed it. They both did. The dog was quick on the
uptake, all the sits and the stays, and she was fine with the other
dogs. He enjoyed getting there, and coming home. They had to drive
through Ballymun and over the M50 motorway. They’d comment on the
changes, all the old tower blocks knocked down, the new buildings
going up. There was once, on the road that ran right beside the
runway, they saw something ahead – two things – getting clearer and
sharper. It was two horses, pulling buggies, racing, on both sides
of the road. He drove onto the hard shoulder, and they watched the
horses trot past, and two Traveller kids in the buggies – they
didn’t even look at the car as they flew by.
—Jesus.
—That’s disgraceful.
—Is it?
—It’s dangerous.
—That’s for sure.
He got out of the car – she did too – and they
watched the buggies till they were too far away, waiting to see if
any other cars or trucks came at them. But the road was
empty.
—I wonder who won, she said.
—Don’t know, he said.—A draw. I’d love to do it
myself.
—Yeah, she said.—Not here, though.
—No.
They got back in and went on to the training
centre.
Another time, they drove past a family of
Romanians, gypsies, about seven of them, walking along the same
road, beside the runway. It was like they’d just climbed over the
perimeter fence and they were making a break for the city. But,
really, they were strolling along and he’d no idea where to. He
couldn’t even imagine. There wasn’t a shop or a house.
—Why would they want to be out here? she
asked.
—Reminds them of home.
—Stop that.
—They’re left alone out here, he said.—That’s my
guess.
—You’re probably right, she said.—It’s like a
noman’s-land, isn’t it?
—Yeah, he said.—It’s nowhere.
—It’s sad, though. Isn’t it?
—I suppose it is.
Driving back home, after the training, they saw the
Romanians again, off the road this time, on the island in the
centre of the M50 roundabout; there were kids going into the
bushes. He realised it slowly, and so did she. The car was off the
roundabout and going through Ballymun before she spoke.
—They live in there, she said.
—What?
—The Romanians, she said.—They’re living on the
roundabout.
—It looked like it, alright.
—In the bushes.
—Yeah.
—Jesus.
—Yeah.
They brought the dog to the barn every Wednesday
night, for the eight weeks. The dog could walk, stop, sit, stay and
shit and there were no more rows or misunderstandings. She fed the
dog. He picked the shit up off the grass in the back garden. And he
brought the dog down to Dollymount strand for a run, on the
mornings when he didn’t have an early start. And those mornings
were the best thing about having the dog. He’d park the car and
walk towards the wooden bridge and the docks and the city behind
it, and Dun Laoghaire to the left, across the bay, and the
mountains. He saw herons one morning, two of them, standing still
in the water. He’d never seen herons before; he hadn’t even known
that there were herons in Ireland. They didn’t budge when the dog
ran at them, until the last second. Then they were up together, and
they flew off slowly, dragging their legs behind them, and they
settled again, in the shallow water further down the beach. It
thrilled him to see that. He loved the whole thing. Even when it
rained – when the rain came at him sideways, straight off the sea,
and he was soaking before he’d really started – he loved it. But
he’d never have done it on his own. He’d never have been
comfortable by himself, walking along the empty beach in the
morning. He’d have felt strange. What was he doing there, all by
himself? But with the dog it was fine. He didn’t have to explain
anything, to himself or to anyone else. He was walking the dog.
Throwing a ball. Both of them getting their exercise.
Then the dog went missing.
He came home, and Mary was already there. Her eyes
were huge and angry and terrified.
—You left the gate open.
—I didn’t, he said.—What gate?
—The side gate.
—I didn’t.
—It was open.
—I didn’t touch it, he said.—Oh fuck, the
dog.
He’d forgotten about the dog.
—I went out, she said.—I couldn’t find her.
—She’ll be grand, he said.—Hang on.
He went out to his car and came back with the
street atlas. He divided the neighbourhood; he stayed calm. They’d
get into their cars. She’d go right; he’d go left.
—She can’t be gone too far.
He didn’t believe that. He was already thinking
about the next dog.
—D’you want a cup of tea before we go? he asked
her.
He thought he was handling it well. She was crying.
He wanted to hug her, but it was a long time since they’d done
that. He knew she was angry. He’d look – he’d genuinely look for
the dog. He’d stay out all night. He’d search everywhere. And he’d
be delighted if he found it – he could feel it in his chest. But
they’d been away all day. Nine hours. He’d left first – he
remembered shouting ‘Seeyeh’ up the stairs, just before he’d closed
the front door. But he hadn’t been outside, in the back garden.
He’d let the dog out – he remembered that. He’d been first down to
the kitchen. The dog had stood up and stretched. He’d gone straight
over to the door, to let her out. He’d had his coffee and his
banana, and he’d gone. But the gate. He hadn’t opened it. The night
before? No. He couldn’t remember touching the gate. It hadn’t
happened.
They went out to the cars together.
—What if she comes back when we’re gone?
—It’s not likely, is it?
—I just thought—
—I know, but she’s never been out on her own
before.
—I know.
—Let’s stick to Plan A, he said.—What d’you
think?
—Okay, she said.
He was looking at the side gate now, open.
—Would you prefer to stay here? he said.—In
case.
—No, she said.—It’s better if we both do it.
—Grand.
They didn’t find the dog. He stayed out till after
midnight. He drove past the house, twice, until he saw her car
parked outside. Then he parked his own and went in.
—No luck?
—No, she said.
She didn’t look at him. She was sitting at the
kitchen table. Then she looked, and stopped.
—The bloody gate, she said.
—It wasn’t me, he said.—I don’t think it was. It
isn’t bin day.
—Bin day?
—Yeah. Bin day. The day in the week when I put out
the bin. When I open the side gate. Every fuckin’ week for the last
twenty fuckin’ years. Sorry.
He sat. He stood up. She looked at him.
—I’m sorry too, she said.
He sat.
—What’ll we do?
—I don’t know.
They went up to bed together and fell asleep, more
or less, together. He was first out again in the morning. He didn’t
shout ‘Seeyeh’ up the stairs. He couldn’t.
He hadn’t opened the gate.
He looked at it before he started the car. It was
still open. He got out of the car and shut it.
It was open again when he got home.
—In case Emma comes back, she told him.
—Oh, he said.—Fair enough.
They were out again that night, putting up little
posters she’d designed and photocopied, in the shops and on
lampposts. ‘Missing’, and a photo of the dog, then ‘Emma – Beloved
Pet’. And their phone number, and her mobile number. He went left,
she went right. He was home first. He fell asleep on the couch. She
was in bed when he went up. She wasn’t asleep – he knew – but she
didn’t move or say anything.
They got a few calls.
—I seen your dog.
—How much is the reward?
—I ate Emma.
Kids mostly, messing. And a couple of weird ones.
At three in the morning.
—Hello? Are you Emma’s dad?
—Emma’s a dog.
—Yes.
He was putting the phone down. He could hear the
woman at the other end still talking. He put it back to his
ear.
—She asked me to tell you she’s fine. She’s
happy.
—She’s a fuckin’ dog.
—Yes.
He lay back on the bed and knew he’d be getting up
in a minute. Sleep was gone.
—Was that someone about Emma? Mary asked.
—Yeah.
—Another nut?
—Maybe we should take the posters down.
—No.
—Okay. You’re right. We’ll keep at it.
Then there was the website. She showed it to him –
www.missingdogs.ie. She’d
opened her own page. The same photo of the dog; the location last
seen – a little map, their house filled in red. The dog’s
personality: ‘outgoing’.
—Will people look at this? he asked.
—Yes, they will, she said.—Dog lovers will.
—Grand.
—And there are links to other sites, she said.—All
over the world.
Some prick in Hong Kong was staring at the picture
of their dog.
He said nothing.
Nothing.
That was the way their life had drifted. They never
recovered from the dog. They didn’t get another one. He wasn’t
blaming the dog. Things had been heading that way before the dog.
The dog had even saved them for a while, or slowed down the drift.
They’d had something new in common for a couple of months, and the
excursions to the land behind the airport.
He hadn’t opened the gate. He hadn’t left it
open.
But he’d failed. He could have pretended. Cried a
bit, let her console him, take over – he didn’t know. It wasn’t
about the gate. It was about grief. She grieved. He didn’t. Simple
as that. He should have pretended. It would have been a different
kind of honesty. He knew that now. He thought he did.
He’d said they should get a new one. She’d stared
at him and walked away. It wasn’t a house you could walk away in;
she had to walk out. She came back. They had another row, and he
walked out. It was his turn. He stayed away for hours. He went to
the pictures. He came back.
The walking out stopped. The rows stopped. The
talking too; it was a wordless life. They’d drifted. But, actually,
they hadn’t drifted, and that was another problem. One of them
should have gone. They should have looked at each other one night,
over the dinner or something, and smiled, and known that enough was
enough. But that wise moment had never happened. He hadn’t let it.
He’d wished for it, but he hadn’t let it happen. He hadn’t let his
eyes sit on hers.
Now she was taking off her new coat.
He didn’t know her. Didn’t know her hair, didn’t
know why she’d have wanted a tan in January – didn’t really know
how it was done. Some sort of a lamp, or a bed. He didn’t
know.
—Your coat’s nice, he said.