A Lost Labradoodle

Monday

They took Max on a Monday. After those men left, Beth sat completely flummoxed on her bed and drank a cup of kombucha. She thought of what led up to the day’s, shall we say, dognap, because Max was Beth’s Labradoodle.

She went to Jake’s man cave, stared at her mostly mentally absentee husband, and asked, “Jake, some rude people showed up at the door. You had your headphones on, as usual. They took Max.”

He paused the computer game on, took off the headphones and asked, “Say what?”

She told Jake the story once more.

“So what am…?” Jake stammered, stuck on words.

“Cat caught your tongue?” she asked, and then added, “At least keep your ears open when people are at the door.”

“Just let them keep the dog?”

“Over my dead body.” Beth stomped her foot down hard.

“Sorry, babe.”

She frowned best she could and pondered what to do next. Jake heartlessly went back to the computer game. Beth hated games. After all, every day was a puzzle for her already.

She called her Mom and told her what happened.

“So, another new problem that you caused?” Mom muttered.

“Can you help me?”

“You have a husband. Your problems are someone else’s problem–”

Beth hung up before her mom went any further. She looked over at Jake focused on the computer game.

She hoped to get some real empathy from someone, someday.

Maybe those people would escort Max home. Or maybe Max would escape and run all the way back.

She was overwhelmed and needed a day to process what happened.

Tuesday

Beth cooked breakfast: eggs and bacon, then heard Jake wake up.

“Babe?” Jake shouted from the bedroom. “Have you seen our dog yet?”

“No. He’s at…well, you know,” she yelled back. “Can you go and get Max back?”

“Don’t you remember someone never leaves the house?”

She groaned. That someone was Jake. Sure, he followed her rules, he cleaned, he called her by her new name. She enjoyed that. Her Mom used her old name, the one from before Beth removed the front letters.

Beth also rarely went out, but duty called. She would go and talk to the man next door and ask for help. He probably thought she was crazy, but people need to help other people, don’t they?

After breakfast, she headed over and pushed the man next door’s doorbell.

After he opened, she told the man, over the course of an hour, what happened to her and Max the day before. The man next door mostly stared far away and looked bored.

At last, the man spoke, and asked her, “So, your dog was taken?”

“Yes.”

“You could have told me that…” he groaned. “You talk a lot for someone who can’t say the letter— ”

“Ahhhh!” Beth screamed, at a volume that could shatter glass. There was one word, one letter, she never wanted to hear.

“Ok, ok! Sorry,” the man mumbled. “So, yesterday your dog was taken by a van from the…you know.”

“Yeah. Can you go and talk to them?”

“Jake not home?”

“He doesn’t go out, much.” She added the last word to make Jake sound better.

“Let me uhmm…” The man looked stuck on what he wanted to say. “Well, me, myself, and you know, go over there soon, and see what can be done.”

“Thank you!” Beth turned around and went back to her house.

“That sure was hard work,” she heard the man mumble as she left.

Back home, Jake lounged on the sofa. He jumped up to greet her.

“You talked to the man next door?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He agreed to go,”

“And what about…?”

She guessed Jake wanted to know whether he used the letter or not.

“The letter? No problem.”

Her face felt warm. She hated to talk about her problem. Embarrassed, she went to her room and shut the door.

Wednesday

Why has she become such a mess? Because she spent her teenage years the target of her mom’s resentment. Maybe the resentment was at her, maybe the resentment was at motherhood. Regardless, Mom vented her anger often by use of the three worst words anyone could say to another person.

Beth yearned that her mom understand her better. Nowadays, people called her adherence to rules and patterns as ‘on the spectrum’. Back then, her Mom had no answers for Beth’s odd manners, no other way to deal, than to be angry.

Three hurtful words. Natural for her to not want to hear them, ever. To never want to hear personal pronouns and hateful words.

She prepared breakfast: scrambled eggs and toast.

“Jake, breakfast!” she called out. “And, we are low on pet food.”

“But we don’t have a dog!” he yelled back.

She went over to the cave and threw the last handful of dog food at Jake’s face.

“Ok, ok. Pet food.”

For a man who could never go out, he sure opposed her a lot. What were Jake’s other…? And, she knew he would turn around later at the front door. But at least he agreed to go. They ate, and she told Jake, “You can stay home today. You don’t need to go.”

“Thanks, Beth, love you.”

There were other thoughts she wanted to say, but some concepts were too hard to speak out her way. They say people who speak another language often lack vocabulary words for some concepts. She thought about herself the same way.

Later that afternoon, she went to Walmart, bought Max’s dog food, and gathered food for supper.

As they ate, Jake remarked cheerfully, “Great steak!”

Beth nodded. She was too exhausted from the journey to the store to speak.

“How do you cook steak so perfectly?” he asked.

“Just don’t talk any more today, Jake.”

Beth just wanted to eat her steak, and not hear a word before Max was home.

Jake’s face changed to one of deep regret.

Thursday

Most people couldn’tt see how much he cared, but Jake loved Beth deeply

Change was hard, but he would manage for her. He turned off the computer and set to work. The man next door wasn’t far away. He had been there before.

He chewed some eucalyptus flavored gum, dreamt of sandy beaches, and step by step, got to the man next door’s door and rang the bell. The man next door answered, and the two men talked about Jake and Beth’s problem.

Later, that afternoon, Beth heard a knock at the door. She looked out and saw, not the man next door, but someone else completely.

“We are from the Los Angeles Mental Health….” the woman paused, “Group.”

Beth began to shut the door.

“We know!” the woman blurted out. “Not to use the letter you don’t want to hear.”

“How do you know?”

“Let’s talk?”

Beth nodded. The woman told her why she came.

“We want to ask you about how you take care of Max. How he eats. Where he sleeps.”

Beth answered all the stuff the woman asked. A few of Beth’s deeper thoughts were a stretch to get across, but the woman never became frustrated.

“Thank you for today,” she told Beth, her face looked pleased.

Beth was also happy for someone to hear her out so well. She told the woman goodbye and closed the door.

“You were great today!” Jake looked at her. “They call Los Angeles a laboratory for psychology, and we are the lab rats.”

The Day Max Came Home

She heard a knock. She looked out the peephole of the front door, and saw the man next door. She opened the door, looked down, and on a leash below the man was her dog Max.

“Uhmm,” the man next door mumbled. ”We talked to the pound and got your dog back. Jake handled the paperwork.”

“How?”

“Anyway, here he…” A befuddled look came upon the man’s face as he searched for the correct word. “Barks!”

He let go of Max, who jumped all over her.

She wondered what Jake had done. Everyone has secrets. Maybe he wasn’t as useless as he appeared. And Max was home! She hugged her dog as hard as she could.

She looked up. The man next door hadn’t gone away yet, and he went on to tell her, “You are Max’s foster parent. When they come to do a house check. Don’t scream when they say the letter. Call me over to help. Ok?”

“Understood. Thank you, man next door.”

“No problem, and you can call me Rob.”

“Thank you, Rob.”

The man next door nodded warmly, turned around and went home.

Beth felt she made real progress. And Max was home! Beth looked at her husband. She could tell he had another lesson to teach her.

“There are so many good people and so much to talk about, maybe someday you could try to…?”

“No, never.”

“Ok, honey.” Jake’s face softened, then he hugged her and patted Max on the head.

Beth had one last thought. “Jake, why does the man next door help us so often?”

“Because the man next door needs my help too.”

“Your help?”

“He’s…” Jake stumbled over what he wanted to say. “He doesn’t have.. He can’t… He can’t see. ” Jake put a hand over an eye.

“Oh! So that’s why he helps so often.”

“We all need each other, don’t we?”

Beth nodded. “Yes we do.”

Beth hugged her husband, then they snuggled on the sofa, a Labradoodle squeezed between them, and drank kombucha.