Pink Spots

It was on Tuesday morning that I got the email from Dad. It had been nearly a year since we had talked. I dreaded reading it. The last exchange hadn’t gone well. If I opened the email, I’d have to spend another six months thinking of how to reply. It was the late afternoon when I finally opened it and learned that our dog had died.

He was 14 and nearly blind. Illnesses had piled up, and he struggled to walk down the porch steps when going out to pee. Mom and Dad and my older sister Mina took him to a veterinarian and he passed away peacefully, surrounded by owners who loved him, as the euthanasia swept through his bloodstream.

I read the email again, sitting back in my chair when I finished. I imagined the three of them wrapping their arms around each other in a pastel-colored room, a tripod of collective grief and warm memories. Maybe they would talk about him together over dinner that night, a toast to years of good doghood.

A winter sun blared in through our window, and I squinted at the computer screen until it was too hard to read.

I had last seen the dog six years ago. I was back west for a weekend in the summer after my junior year. He was older than I remembered — he came down my parents’ porch steps tenderly to greet me, instead of his youthful hurtling stride — but his eyes were still bright and vivacious. I set my duffel bag down on our gravel driveway and opened my arms wide, all smiles as he barked and leapt around me. My first night, he slept in my twin bed through the night, as he did every night until I went back. On a lazy Saturday afternoon, we sat together on the porch, him pooled on a cushioned pad, acres of forest between us and the next house. After I stepped in the taxi to the airport, leaving the dog in his dreams on the twin, I engaged in the self-congratulatory questioning of every pet owner: Will he miss me?

Soon, I was up in the air, flying away, thoughts absorbed with the new semester, the friends I hoped to make, the new relationship I was anxious to preserve.

* * *

I sent an email to the office with a work summary before putting the computer to sleep. It was time to leave and meet Jason in Midtown. I slipped a jacket on, locked my front door, and descended the four stories of the apartment to the street.

Outside, two men screamed about a parking space. At the end of the block, I found that the A line and its express train were closed. A twisted string of hazard tape stretched across the entrance. It was only a 10-minute walk to the next train line, but it was an elevated train that rattled through the Upper West Side and would put me well behind schedule. Around the corner, past the bodega, down the street lined with parked and double-parked cars. There was a pit bull tied to a fire hydrant, waiting for its owner inside. It had a gray coat like chipped slate, and a white belly that extended up the front of its chest, ears pasted back against its head.

I got to the platform of the open-air station. The waiting passengers puffed little clouds of steam into the cool air. I shot a text to Jason, explaining that I’d be late. The cold was congealing the blood in my fingers, turning them to sausage, until I finished the text and slammed them back into my pockets.

* * *

When the dog was a puppy, we kept him in a waist-high pen that took over the living room. I could hold him in my hands. I did algebra homework on the back porch and listened to Dad teach the dog how to sit and heel. I walked him along nature trails while he sniffed mailboxes and tree stumps. I had explored the woods around our house for years. The dog breathed novelty back into these familiar sights. Every stump had potential for discovery. Ferns needed to be marked. When other dogs and their owners passed by, he would curl into a defensive stance between my legs, nostrils flaring. With people, he was curious and interested, unflinching in his willingness to bump his nose against every pant leg. “How old is he?” said a woman, passing by.

“J-just a year,” I shyly replied.

“Still a puppy then! May I?” she extended a delicate hand. I nodded. The dog liked the attention. I did too.

* * *

Jason idly swirled his drink while I perfunctorily updated him on my life. He had asked and I had answered, but he was never a good listener. Law school had made his negligent tendencies worse, filling his hours with reasons to be distracted.

I trailed off. “Is there something on your mind?” I asked, cautiously.

“Oh, sorry!” he replied, eyes jerking back toward mine with hamsterian movement. “I got distracted. I’m sorry. It’s my ADHD, you know.”

Jason had diagnosed himself ADHD after watching a TikTok about it.

“Anyways, I have got to tell you about this concert I went to on Sunday!” He leaned in, hands flickering as he recounted his stories. Jason always had good stories. An endless flood of sudden friends, hook-ups, and humorous mishaps.

Drinks ended early. Jason had another dinner to get to, with other friends.

“It was so good to see you!” he said with a wide smile but with his feet planted in an outward stance, like a sprinter preparing to shoot away in the other direction.

“We should do this again,” I said.

“We will, for sure!” Jason bounded away, disappearing into the crowd before he had finished his sentence.

* * *

“We were at campus today,” Dad said over the phone. He was on speaker. I was folding laundry, my sophomore year at college on the East Coast, waiting for a text from Amanda who had said yesterday that she wanted to talk. I had replied right away, and she had said that she was busy with homework, but she would reach out after she was out of class tomorrow.

“Is that so,” I said.

“It was a beautiful day out,” he replied. “So many students around. I kept thinking about how nice it would have been if you went to school here and stayed close.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied. “Would have been convenient.”

“Anyways, we were sitting on the lawn. The dog was sleeping most of the time, but at one point he got very excited when a group of students were approaching us. There were four students, including a young boy with dark hair like yours. The dog stood up, oh he was so excited! But as soon as the students got closer, he sat back down. They wanted to pet him,” Dad paused. “I think he probably mistook that student for you.”

I had a limp T-shirt on my knee. “You think he misses me?”

“Oh, he definitely misses you,” my father said. “And we do too. You should come back sometime.”

A ding rang out from my phone. The long-awaited text had arrived, with an unpromising preview. “I’ll catch up with you later. Thanks for talking.”

“Okay, later then. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

* * *

Three girls, Caucasian, chic, adorned with camel coats, swished by with urgency. “I’m dead! I’m actually dead!” said one. They were zipping toward the pet store at the street corner. Dachshund puppies wiggled in a front window, playing with each other and rolling around in bedding made of white paper. The camel coats cooed, snapping pictures with long painted fingernails. $400 OFF YOUR FIRST PURCHASE screamed a banner over the glass.

I had been walking, aimlessly, and was at a corner that I only now realized was familiar. Mina had visited me last summer, and I took her to a now-closed brasserie on this same street. There had been the same pet store, with different dachshund puppies then. Mina had looked vibrant and youthful, happy with her new boyfriend. She was in Manhattan for a work convention and wanted to see her long lost brother.

Mina was so happy then, her mood turned dark only when she asked me if I had talked to Mom and Dad. She knew the answer to the question. I hated that she had asked anyway.

“It’s been hard on them, you know?” she said. “I don’t understand why you can’t just apologize.”

“I did apologize,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m hurt.” My potatoes were getting cold.

“They’re hurt too. Mom was devastated.”

“Nobody apologizes to me.”

Mina is a light, a spark of joy. She sewed hand puppets on the weekends and visited kindergartens to act out stories with them. She loved living close to our parents, where she and her boyfriend had weekly dinners like they were the Gilmore Girls. I was their ink splotch in the corner of an idyllic family painting. I wanted to blot myself out, curl up so tight that maybe they would forget about me.

We hugged a one-armed goodbye, my other hand carrying a takeout box of half-eaten gratin.

“It was good seeing you,” she said, but she didn’t mean it. It was terrible to see me, to be reminded of what was broken. When she walked away, I hoped she wouldn’t look back.

* * *

At the pet store, the camel coats had moved on. The puppies remained, blissful and in each other’s company. I turned and headed to the subway.

* * *

The argument would rage over emails for months. I was furious. They were offended. Mom and Dad had visited for a few days after my graduation. Reina was renting a house that summer — her roommate had left right after the ceremony — and I was staying with her since my apartment lease was up. Hot mid-Atlantic humidity breathed in through the cracks in the hundred-year-old structure. Reina was in the bathroom, the door locked. “I’ll fix this over email,” I said through the keyhole.

The email exchange soon spiraled out of control. Paragraphs of warm platitudes, single dagger strikes of vitriol. We respect your judgment and think the world of you. She’s not the right person for you. I would seethe, pacing back and forth, dreaming away the summer of what spite I could throw back. I can’t say I’ll ever talk to you again, I spat back, flush with satisfaction about my own victimhood, instantly tormented by my own villainy.

As the August heat began to subside, Reina and I prepared for the move.

“Maybe you should go home to visit,” she suggested, as we packed underwear around mugs.

“I think things have deteriorated too much for that.”

“You can clear things up,” Reina continued. “You should have your family. You didn’t get to see your dog.” She was persistent, and earnest. Her aptronym suited the guidance she gave me now. “He’s getting old, isn’t he? You should at least go back to see him.”

I pursed my lips. “Maybe after the move,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

A month later, I went online and saw that there was no direct flight from New York back west. That step made things easier. It was easier to back out of going home. It’d be expensive and inconvenient. My cursor hovered over the checkout button. I blinked, and then switched to another tab. Maybe I’ll decide tomorrow.

The airline website remained open on that tab, silently waiting, for a month, then two. One day I restarted the laptop for an update and the browser closed out of all its tabs. The plane rumbled down an airstrip and flew away.

* * *

I was walking back from the subway. The streetlights had flickered on as the sky darkened. I passed a pit bull, colored gray and white, tied with a leash around a fire hydrant.

I stopped and turned my head back. It was the same one from earlier. No one else was stopping. I glanced up and down the street, to see if there was an owner. The pit bull looked at me earnestly. I could see its legs trembling from the cold.

I hastened my step down the block, around the corner, and entered the blaring fluorescent lights of a bodega. I went up to the register, where a man wearing a Giants beanie draped himself over the counter.

“Do you know if someone came in here and left their dog outside?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Up the street.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “It looks cold.”

“People, cruel, eh?” he shrugged.

I looked around the store. On a shelf next to cat litter was a set of faux wool blankets. “I’ll take one of those,” I said, pointing.

I left the store, a pink spotted blanket under my arm, and set out up the street. It was darker now. I could feel the cold nipping at my skin underneath my jeans, animating me, driving me forward. Heroics commenced by my empathy.

I neared the fire hydrant and I saw the pit bull, still on its leash. Two women were with it, one wrapping a fabric around the dog’s body and the other typing into her phone. My pace slowed as they turned their heads toward me.

“Is this your dog?” The woman on the phone tensed, suspicious and angry all at once. “She’s been left all alone outside.”

I shook my head. “I saw him when I was passing by. I thought something was wrong,” I added, limply gesturing to the bodega blanket.

“Hmmph. Who does something like this?” she said to her companion. “It’s inhumane — people, horrible!”

Her companion nodded vigorously and spoke directly to me, “It’s not a him. It’s a girl, actually. See? No penis.”

Another neighbor walked up. “You should call an animal shelter, see if they’ll take him in for the night.”

“We’re calling around already and it’s a girl actually.”

A small crowd was forming, answering the bat signal of an animal in distress. The pit bull soon had a blanket and a water bowl. A tattooed man in an oversized coat piped up, “We gotta take care of him. Somebody ought to get ’im taken care of.”

“What a sight, right?”

I looked to my side. It was a middle-aged woman with red hair, her own terrier on a leash, straining to sniff the commotion.

“Who says that New Yorkers are cold and uncaring?” she said. “The whole neighborhood is coming together!”

“Right, right,” I said.

“This will make a great story. I can’t wait to tell my niece about it.”

The tattooed man had stepped to the side. He formed a peace sign with his finger, and took a selfie with the pit bull in the background.

* * *

The dog could fit in my two palms. A small life. Like me. Soft ears. Soft fur. A life to take care of. “It’s good to have a dog,” Dad said, gently taking him from my hands. “When I was a young boy, we lived in the countryside. The Communists made us leave the city so we could be reeducated.” I had heard this story many times before, but I still listened.

“I was playing with my sister in the village,” he continued. I imagined rice fields, dusty country roads, and open-air huts.

“There was a mutt that attacked me. Bit my leg. It chased me down the street until I jumped in the creek.” Our dog yawned, stretching a tiny pink tongue out to the sky. “Your aunt never liked dogs after that. She has always been scared of them,” my father continued. “But I still liked animal companions.” He smiled at me, a glint behind his thin, clear-rimmed glasses. “I think it will be good for a family to take care of.” I nodded, vigorously. An animal to love.

* * *

I closed the apartment door behind me.

“You’re back!”

Reina’s voice drifted to me from the bathroom. I heard the bathroom door open and then quickly shut, light footsteps padding along the creaky hallway. Her head poked up around the corner.

“Did you have a good time?” she asked, before looking down. “Why do you have a blanket?”

I shrugged. “It was — it’s a bit of a long story.”

“Well,” Reina said, mischief in her eyes, “I have a surprise for you.”

I raised an eyebrow, then followed her around the corner, down the uneven floor, toward the bathroom. She put her index finger to her lips, grasped the handle, and gently pushed the door open.

A small plastic bowl of water was on the ground, alongside a soup mug of kibble. A turquoise litter box crowded the space between the toilet and the wash basin. To the left, curled behind the radiator, was a black and white cat, wide yellow eyes looking up at us.

I turned to Reina, face split by a wide smile. A cat? I mouthed to her. Reina nodded, reaching her hand out to the radiator. The cat sniffed, and then incautiously pushed its head into Reina’s palm.

“Where did you get the cat?” I asked.

“I stopped by the shelter today,” she said, softly rubbing her delicate fingers behind the cat’s ears. “It’s a tuxedo,” she added, “and he’s four years old.” The cat’s white chest was in full view, as it opened itself up to Reina’s petting.

I remembered the pink spotted blanket, still under my arm, and crouched down. The tuxedo cat looked up, taking me in. “We’re keeping him in the bathroom for tonight,” Reina said, “at least until he’s comfortable.”

I held up the blanket, and Reina nodded. I unfurled it, laying it down on the floor around the radiator.

“I’m allergic to cats,” I said.

I leaned against Reina as we crouched together. She leaned back.

“Do you think he’ll like the blanket?” I asked. The tuxedo cat sniffed it, pink spot pressing against its pink nose.

“I’m sure he’ll love it,” Reina said.

We crouched there for a long time.