Page 24 of Gave Proof Through the Night

Zoe looks at me. I shrug.

“He loves me,” Tanya says. Quieter now. “That’s the whole problem. He loves me and he made me promise in front of God and seventeen witnesses, and I don’t…” She stops. Sets her mug down. “I don’t want to break that.”

Waffles comes back. He no longer has the bag. He has a bathroom towel. He drops it at Tanya’s feet like a peace offering, sits on it, and looks up at her.

“Who brought Mama a present? Who did that? You did. Yes, you did.”

His little knob of a tail wiggles back and forth. He puts his chin on her knee.

She coos and scratches behind his ear.

I watch this happen and think, not for the first time, that I would like a dog.

Practically, it makes no sense. A dog needs a home base, a routine, someone who is where they said they’d be. I am none of those things. But if I were, if I had a house (a real one, with a yard, and maybe a husband), I think I’d get a husky. Or a black lab. Or a great dane. Something large and unserious. Something that would eat the couch and I wouldn’t even be mad about it.

I’d learn to make sourdough from scratch and actually understand what that meant, the feeding of the starter every day. Going to bed at ten o’clock. Joining the PTA.

That one actually makes me chuckle. Me! At a PTA meeting. Volunteering for the bake sale. Wearing a name tag that says Hello, my name is Erica.

Yeah right.

But then I think, maybe it actually would be nice. Genuinely. The bake sale and everything. It would be a refreshing way to live. And I’m so tired. Just this one last job. After this one I could figure out the rest.

And then, unbidden, I think of Jeremiah.

I don’t mean to. He just turns up in the margins. I find myself wondering, for no productive reason whatsoever, what kind of dog he’d have. Probably a golden retriever. Something sunny and emotionally available. Or one of those crusty white dogs. Or a chihuahua.

I try to imagine finding someone like him. Not him, of course. Someone in the same general vicinity of him. Easy in his own skin, shows up when he says he will, helps old ladies at airports. In some other version of my life, maybe. A version where I go to hockey family barbecues and stand around with a paper plate making conversation with people who have normal jobs and a 401K.

What would they think of me? Would I even fit in with the whole trad wife set? Someone would eventually point at me and say, “Who let in the riff-raff?”

“Erica.”

I blink.

Zoe is watching me with an expression I know very well.

“What?” I say.

“Your cheeks are pink.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“The air conditioner is on full blast.” Her eyes narrow. “You’re thinking about that guy, aren’t you?”

Tanya perks up. “What guy?”

“There is no guy,” I say.

“He’s a hockey player,” Zoe says, and unlocks her phone, undoubtedly to give Tanya the hockey thirst trap low-down.

“I’m listening.” Tanya leans in, resting her chin on her hands.

“He’s just a mark,” I say, before Zoe can take Tanya down the hot-guys-on-the-internet rabbit hole.

“Dale was a mark,” Tanya supplies, matter-of-factly.

“That’s completely different.”