Dark Matters
For a long time, I thought I had it all figured out. Okay, maybe not everything, but the most important stuff. I had a wife who loved me. We were going to start a family. We’d deal with everything else as it came to us.
What did I know? It’s not like I was an astrophysicist.
Maybe I’d been too confident, too cocky. I won’t argue with that. Still, I don’t know how I could have anticipated, how I could have been prepared to hear Sylvan tell me she hated me. Not that she was disappointed in me. Not that she disagreed with me. Not even that she no longer loved me. Just: she hated me.
That was the darkest moment.
I poured myself another glass of pinot gris, then topped off Sylvan’s and returned the empty bottle to the aluminum ice bucket with beads of sweat sliding down its side. We’d chosen to sit side-by-side so we both could look out over the woods that abutted the three-bedroom home we’d purchased a couple of years earlier.
I don’t know what the official distinction is between suburbia and rural America, but if one walked ten minutes through the woods in our backyard, one reached a river that was barely wider than most creeks. Across the river, farmland became more prevalent, stop signs less so.
We’d pushed aside the plates after finishing off the salmon and asparagus that I’d grilled, along with the farro and salad Sylvan had prepared inside. While we sipped our wine, a pair of eagles flew overhead, and a flock of wild turkeys trekked their way through the woods onto our neighbor’s property to retrieve food that fell from a bird feeder.
Sitting without conversation taking place, it was hard not to recognize we no longer had the omnipresent sounds of our former life in a condo downtown to act as white noise. There were no more sirens, no more blaring music, no din of partygoers. Sometimes we heard lawnmowers, or an occasional propeller plane headed to the nearby municipal airport. More often, we only heard birds chirping and hooting or leaves rustling when coyote or deer traversed the woods. It was just enough to remind one you weren’t alone. Other life forms existed too.
“Should I open a second bottle?” I asked.
Sylvan didn’t immediately answer my question. Whether I’d caught her in thought or if she just preferred silence these days, the lack of a response wasn’t that unusual anymore.
Five minutes passed before she adjusted in her seat. “No, we have to get up early to meet with Alais.”
That was right. After months of looking, Sylvan had found a responsible breeder of pugs willing to consider allowing us to adopt one of her puppies. So responsible was Alais that she wanted to meet everyone in whose home she was considering for adoption.
“You still think that’s what we should do?”
Sylvan responded without any delay this time. “I can’t accept the void any longer, and I’m tired of trying the other way.”
“We talked about another possibility, right?”
“We can always revisit that.”
“I’m not saying we should rush.”
“Maybe bringing a dog into our lives will help.”
I wasn’t sure. I’d never lived with a dog before. Growing up, my parents told my brother and me that our lives were too full given all the sports Ryder and I played. By the time Ryder needed a dog, I was already nearing the end of college life.
Sylvan hadn’t grown up with pets either. Her parents had turned her onto the world of books, and while science had occupied a large part of her early life, the focus was on the universe in its entirety, not the little world known as earth and its various inhabitants.
True to her nature, once Sylvan decided she wanted to bring a dog into her life – and mine – she exhaustively researched the subject. She read about breeds and breeders, training and obedience, dog parenting and dog learning.
As a lawyer, I’ve always understood the importance of preparation, but after reading so much about human babies and childcare the preceding couple of years, I just didn’t have it in me to tackle another subject. I figured I could apply what I’d already learned to another young creature.
It was late summer, early Fall, when day turned into night quickly, regardless of the temperature. We’d gotten a late start with dinner after going out for a ride together for the first time in years. We used to be able to bike 30 to 40 miles at a good clip, but now we were lucky to complete 20 lethargic ones.
It had become dark. I looked at the stars and had a thought I wanted to share with my wife. I turned to her and saw Sylvan looking down at the deck. I returned my gaze to the heavens. I blinked a few times to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me. “It’s one of those nights. More stars appear the longer you look.”
“Let’s go inside. I’m getting bit.”
I smacked my right leg, then my left arm, as Sylvan carried plates towards the sliding door that led to the indoor sundeck.
“You’re going to have bites all over. Don’t you feel them?”
I continued to whack body parts while looking skyward. “A little.”
“Why don’t you help me bring the dishes inside?”
I followed my wife’s directive. I placed dishes and glasses near the dishwasher then went back outside to collect some more.
Sylvan was pre-rinsing when I returned. “What were you thinking about that was so important you were willing to be attacked?”
“Dark matter.”
“What about it?”
“What did you tell me? That scientists created it because the universe didn’t make sense without it.”
Sylvan stared at me for longer than a moment. “Is there anything else out there?”
“That’s just it, right? People like you say there has to be.”
“I was talking about the deck.”
I turned my head. “A few things. I’ll get them.”
I hardly knew anything about pugs when Russo came into our home as a six-month-old puppy. I knew they were a smaller breed, but I guess I thought all dogs, especially puppies, liked to run and jump and play, so I rolled balls towards him. He watched them go by but rarely chased after them once he realized they were not food. He never returned one to me.
Russo followed Sylvan everywhere through the house, including using his head to push his way into the bathroom if the door wasn’t completely shut. He tended to leave me alone, except when he wanted to study me or when he came beside me while I ate, hoping to be given a small portion of the meal.
Although somewhat disappointed that my new roommate didn’t seem interested in becoming a playmate, I accepted Russo because of his positive impact on Sylvan. She assumed the role of primary caregiver, giving Russo bowls of food, brushing and cleaning him, speaking to him lovingly as if he were a baby.
After a couple of months, Sylvan no longer recoiled when I placed my hand on her shoulder, and she occasionally reached for my hand when we watched television at night. Russo usually joined us, placing his body behind Sylvan’s knees and resting his head atop them, whereupon, more often than not, he began to snore.
At first, we put Russo in his kennel at night. He appeared to need time alone as the initial days and weeks in a new home exhausted him. But after a month, he’d whimper when we put him in, and more often than not, Sylvan allowed Russo to join us in bed.
Each night, I inched closer to Sylvan. After spending one where our bodies stayed in continuous contact, the next evening I placed a hand between her legs.
“Please don’t.”
“We haven’t in a long time.”
“Couldn’t we just cuddle?”
“You don’t want to have an organism?”
I soon heard Sylvan sniffle and knew tears were rolling down her cheek. “What’s wrong?”
“That word.”
“We’ve always called it that.”
“Not since we stopped.”
“Have we stopped?”
“There’s no use.”
“It doesn’t have to be just for that.”
For a while I thought I had a good sexual relationship with Sylvan. Maybe at the outset I was primarily attracted to her mind and she to my heart, but our bodies fell for each other and worked in harmony. When we decided to try to have a child, we increased the frequency of our lovemaking. I didn’t object until Sylvan stopped expressing affection and began dictating when and how we’d do it, according to some schedule she’d developed after researching the best ways to become pregnant.
We stopped it all abruptly, as if pausing our attempts to reproduce meant we no longer needed to, or even could, make love. Once more, I did not mind at first. I needed a break too as the pressure had made it all exhausting, but that time had come and gone.
We got closer with in vitro, but that only made things worse. Twice, Sylvan became pregnant. Twice, she miscarried. She gave up at that point, though I didn’t immediately realize this. I’m not just talking about trying to have a child or being close to me. She also took a leave of absence from her research position. Said she couldn’t do it anymore. “It’s so cold and dark and empty there.”
I told her I understood even though I didn’t. I said I was disappointed too, which was true, but maybe not to the same degree or for the same reason. I guess I’m not a pound-the-table kind of lawyer. I’d rather make the best of the facts as they are and reconsider my philosophical positions than throw a fit.
I told her we could take a break and then try again. We could adopt. We could accept that maybe there’d be just us. No matter what, I thought we needed to stay close if we were going to make it.
Sylvan responded by saying she hated me. She said she’d never wanted to get married, never wanted to have a child until she met me. I’d heard all this before. Other than the part of her hating me.
Sylvan was an only child. A brilliant girl and then young woman to whom only math and science and mysteries of space had seemed a worthy companion.
We met in the campus cafeteria during my last year of law school. She was sitting by herself in a corner of the room, focused on a book, not her smart phone. Her hair and clothes were disheveled. I knew she wasn’t a law student.
I stood with my tray in hand straight across from her. “What are you studying?”
She looked over the top of the book, her bangs largely obscuring her eyes. “Cosmology.”
I paused to consider a reply. “You mean like Neil deGrasse Tyson?”
“Most of my parents’ friends say, ‘like Carl Sagan?’”
“Your grandparents’ friends must reference Einstein.” I slowly lowered myself into the seat across from her.
Her smirk notified me she was less than impressed, but she nevertheless placed the book flat on the table, stared at me, and didn’t make an excuse to leave. “At least you didn’t ask if I intended to open my own salon someday.”
Sylvan tolerated my presence during lunch. She stayed with me even as I purposefully ate slowly and made a concerted effort to ensure our conversation wouldn’t come to a quick end.
Blown away by her brilliance, I pursued Sylvan over the course of the following weeks. I don’t think she was interested in the law in the least, but my professed commitment to serving individuals with disabilities intrigued her enough that she eventually consented to go on a date. Afterwards, she told me it wasn’t her first, but it was the first one she actually enjoyed.
At some point, like me, she fell in love. We moved in together when we moved to a new city the following summer. A year later, we married. A couple more passed before we decided we wanted to have a child. Because we were unable to have one, she came to hate me. Maybe it was more than that. What she said was, “I hate you. I hate you for whatever it is that made me love you. You’re good-looking and caring, but that’s not it. I know that much. No, there’s something else. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s there, and it pulled me somewhere I never wanted to go. I hate you for making me want a child so much that nothing else matters. I wish I could go back to being a person who only cared about math and science, but I can’t, so I hate you for that too.”
I shivered while waiting for Russo to pee into the snow piled high at the end of our cul-de-sac. I watched the pug sniff, dance, and raise his leg. When urine didn’t flow, he moved to another quadrant and repeated the process without successful culmination.
“C’mon, buddy, it’s time to go.”
I watched my breath freeze in the air before my face. I wore a headlight beneath my hat and tilted my forehead towards the ground so I could see if Russo went and if I needed to pick up anything with the plastic bag I held with my gloved hand. As Russo hopped from one leg to another, I wondered if the stages of the moon had an effect on dogs. Maybe he couldn’t go when a new moon appeared. At the very least, the lack of any moonlight whatsoever made it feel even colder.
Sylvan had waited for us right behind the closed front door. “How’d it go?”
He went. Eventually. Number 1 only.” I returned the plastic bag I had for number 2 to the box we kept beside Russo’s leash.
“He gets anxious when you’re anxious.”
“I wasn’t anxious when we first went out. I only got that way when he wouldn’t go. It’s really cold out.”
“I’ll take him tomorrow night.”
“No, I’ll do it. Just wish he’d go faster during the dead of winter.”
“It’s his first.”
I looked at Russo on the floor between us and watched him shift his head back and forth from one speaker to the other. Russo was primarily faun colored but his muzzle and ears were black. Some of Russo’s canine relatives were chosen to be in commercials. Others competed in dog shows.
“This one’s missing some teeth,” Alais had told us during our visit. “He can’t compete.”
Rather than being disappointed, Sylvan was happy to know Russo had imperfections. We never had any intention of having a celebrity canine in our family.
I bent down and spoke to Russo. “You’re trying to understand, aren’t you? That’s good. I just want you to go right away when it’s cold out. It’s better for you too because then we can come back inside where it’s warm.”
“He can’t understand you like that.”
I sighed and got to my feet. “You’re saying he only understands your words?”
“No, watch him. And watch him watching you.”
I again saw Russo look back and forth, though he seemed more focused on me.
Sylvan put her hand on my hip. “Look to see if his tail is curled or straight, if he moves to be closer to the front door, if he’s staring at you as he’s doing right now.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s trying to figure out what’s going to happen and especially what you’re going to do. He knows you’re upset.”
I removed my long puffy coat and placed it in the hall closet. “I was just cold.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
I went to visit my brother the next day after dinner.
“Uh-oh.” Ryder hadn’t turned around. His wheelchair still faced his wife, though Sam, his golden retriever, lifted his head and looked my way.
“What?”
“I know there’s trouble whenever you show up unannounced.”
“There’s no trouble.”
Jacy left her seat and came close enough so we could air kiss one another.
“How are you?” I asked.
She was almost eight months pregnant. “Tired but okay.”
I bent to say hello to Sam. “Sam helping you two?”
“Poor Sam. I’ll leave you three. I need to lie down.” Jacy headed for the ramp that led upstairs. She’d met my brother long after the accident, long after our parents had gotten Sam to help Ryder, but she came to love both nonetheless.
“What’s wrong with Sam?”
“Same thing that will be wrong with you and me someday. He’s old.” My brother spun around and gently stroked his closest friend. “How’s your dog?”
“We’re still getting used to each other. I’ve been trying to remember how it was when you first got Sam.”
“That’s not an apt comparison, counselor. Red’s a service dog.” Ryder always called Sam “Red,” due to his mahogany coat. Sam refused to recognize anyone else who tried to address him by that name. “He was trained extensively before he was brought to me. You have a pet.”
“Sylvan thinks he’s family.”
“He should be. Your wife know you’re here?”
“I don’t think so. I just decided to come after dinner.”
“Just as well, I suppose, with Jacy and all.” Ryder wheeled past me. I followed and took a seat in the recliner. Sam sat beside my brother. “I hope she’s okay.”
“We’re all right.”
My brother’s raised eyebrows revealed he knew the truth to be otherwise. “She still not working?”
I shook my head.
“You getting by?”
“That’s an accurate account. I’ve been thinking if I should look for something new. What do you think?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because…” My arm involuntarily fell towards Ryder’s chair.
“I never said you needed to move back here, and I certainly never suggested you work for a non-profit focused on disability law.”
“I know but…”
“You want to make more money, make more money.”
“I don’t, it’s just that…”
“You need more if you’re one income, right?”
“When we bought the house, we had different expectations.” I got on the floor beside Sam. “Can I touch him?”
“He’s not working right now.”
I softly petted Sam, then put my head against his. “You going to have to put him down?”
“Someday.”
“Will you get a new one?”
When I didn’t hear a response for some time, I looked up at my brother and saw tears rolling down his cheeks. It was the first time since right after the accident that I recalled seeing him cry, though I had to imagine tears having been shed often when I wasn’t around.
“Ry?”
“There’ll never be another. I may or may not get another service dog. Or maybe Jacy and I will just add a pet to our family someday. But I wouldn’t be here today, not in this house, not with Jacy, not with a child on the way, maybe not even on this planet, if not for Red.”
Ryder’s body noticeably collapsed into itself, and Sam dashed from my side to his. My brother almost instantly recovered.
“I’ll give you a piece of advice, little brother: try to become the best Dog Dad you can. At the very least, Russo will improve your life immensely if you do that. Maybe he’ll even be able to do more.”
My relationship with Russo developed not unlike my relationships with my human friends. By doing things together rather than speaking at great length.
I played softball or poker or watched sports with guys who qualified as friends. Russo and I ate meals together in silence, with me sitting at the table and Russo on the floor beside me, his endearing eyes fixed on his dog Dad until I gave him a small piece of meat or a stick of broccoli or some other veggie.
Other times, Russo would scoot like a rabbit, his behind barely above ground as he zigzagged while I chased him, either in the park or in our basement after Sylvan had given Russo a bath. I interpreted this form of play as Russo’s practice of avoiding predators that might come after him.
I understood my relationship with Russo had developed without words exchanged between us when my pug occasionally moved beside me and pressed his body against mine while Sylvan and I watched television or a movie. After a year in our house, he no longer positioned himself solely next to Sylvan. Now he tended to alternate between both his parents. From that point on, I knew he knew we were all part of the same pack. Every day, he’d wait for me in the kitchen at various points of the day as if he’d somehow learned to tell time and knew the hours at which breakfast, lunch, and dinner were scheduled.
I don’t know if it was cause and effect or just correlation, but soon after Russo expressed signs of complete acceptance, Sylvan began taking my hand and leading me to the bedroom. She unbuckled my belt then let me take charge. With one exception.
“Not inside,” she said the first time we resumed lovemaking. “I want you to come but not inside of me, all right?”
I knew as soon as she uttered those words, we probably should talk about them. I also knew my body had far more control than my mind at that moment, so I accepted the act for what it was, or what I thought it was: a positive first step towards a return of what had previously been the norm.
There was one other difference. Sylvan now wanted Russo to be on the bed with us. She taught him to sit on a corner near the edge until we had finished. Then he could come closer and smell us and snuggle with us in the afterglow.
During grilling season, Russo positioned himself beside me, eyes focused on the plates where I treated steaks with olive oil and kosher salt in the kitchen, then galloped alongside me as I carried them through the sunporch to the grill on the deck. Russo sniffed the air beside the grill as the meat cooked, panting because of the heat. He followed me back inside to watch me cut in half the roasting potatoes I had microwaved for a few minutes. I dumped the potatoes onto aluminum foil and added butter and salt before dropping the packet on the grill.
When it was time to eat, Sylvan carried Russo’s bowl with his food and placed it in a shady part of the deck. Russo thrust his face into the bowl and ate nonstop so that he was able to finish his meal and lick the interior of the bowl clean in two minutes’ time. Then he rushed to be beside me while Sylvan and I ate our dinner. From time to time, I’d cut a small morsel of steak for Russo who caught it out of the air and then waited for the next piece.
“All right, buddy, why don’t you relax now?” I refilled Sylvan’s and my wine glasses after finishing my steak and concluding Russo had had enough.
While we sat in silence, Russo lowered himself from his seating position so he was prone and spread out across the shade of the deck. When he began closing his eyes, I realized the excitement that was dinner, the racing back and forth, and the heat had tired him out.
Sylvan reached over and took my hand. “I like it when it’s calm like this.”
“Me too. It’s fun seeing him all jazzed up, but it’s nice when he relaxes too.”
A small propeller plane flew overhead. I liked its sound. Unlike jets or highway traffic, small planes seemed to transport me to sometime in the past, to a period even before I was born.
“Is this enough for you?” Sylvan asked.
I looked at my wife and saw she was looking straight ahead at the woods or maybe into the future. “I don’t need more.”
“Now. What about five years from now?”
“I’ll be with you and Russo.”
“How do you know?”
I looked up to the heavens, understanding the seriousness of the moment, hoping for some cosmic inspiration, if not divine intervention. But it was still early in the evening, long before dusk even. The sun, unimpeded by clouds, seemed to exert power, not knowledge. “I can’t say exactly why I know. I just do. We fit. Life wouldn’t make sense without you two.”
When I looked at her, I saw my wife staring at me, her mouth uncharacteristically agape. “I was so sad before.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to be like that again.”
I got to my feet and moved behind Sylvan. I placed my hands on her shoulders, then slipped one down the front of her blouse. “Can we start making love again?”
“Haven’t we been doing that?”
“Sort of.”
“Sex isn’t just penetration.”
“I know but that can be part of it.”
When Sylvan sat in silence, I bent down and kissed the back of her neck. “I just really like being inside you.”
My wife looked over her shoulder. “There’s not another reason you want to be inside?”
“No.”
“I’m worried what might happen.”
“Worried?”
“I don’t want to start hoping again.”
I spun Sylvan’s chair around and lifted her up. She wrapped her legs around my waist. Unlike the first time, she retained some of the weight she gained from the last pregnancy. I thought it fitting. She looked and felt softer and had lost her hard edge.
“It’s just for us.”
“It’s not that you think I can’t be a woman unless I’m a mother or you can’t be a man unless you get me pregnant?”
“Is it so hard to understand I just want to make love to you the way we used to before…”
“Before…”
“Yeah, before.”
“And Russo?”
I saw our pug open his eyes when he heard his name mentioned. “He can watch.”
I carried my wife inside and waited for Russo to escape the heat before closing the door to the deck.
When we had finished, Russo sniffed at the bed and its inhabitants more forcefully than normal. Our pug ran his nose along the sheets then jumped onto and over us.
Sylvan pulled him to her bare chest. “It’s a different kind of smell, isn’t it?”
Russo smiled, then pulled away and danced about the bed.
“He’s happy,” she said.
“Are you?”
Sylvan pulled herself into me. Because Russo would not stay still, we eventually arose and put on robes and moved to the sofa. We found a national dog show on television. Russo positioned himself between us and fell asleep, though he awakened when a sheltie barked. Our pug popped his head up, then darted towards the television. He stood on his back legs and placed his head close the screen and barked himself a few times. When the television disturbance subsided, Russo ran back to us and sandwiched himself between us once more.
“There are so many breeds I’ve never heard of.”
“Me either.” Sylvan rested her head on my shoulder, behind Russo.
“I used to think of dogs as dogs. Maybe ten breeds and mutts.”
“They call them All-American dogs.”
I wondered if like me, listening to the commentators’ discussion of breeds and breeding and preferred characteristics of lineage, especially so soon after our sexual activity that had included the potential union of sperm and egg for the first time in years, made Sylvan think about the possibility of motherhood again. And, if so, how she felt.
She’d said she was happy with just me and Russo but was that really the case? I could have asked but would I have believed her response? Would she even know?
I wasn’t sure myself. I knew I wanted to be happy but wasn’t sure if long-term that required a child or not. And if so, whether the child had to be biologically ours.
Russo’s legs began twitching and he made a series of grunts that were almost like squeals.
Sylvan put her hand on him. “He’s dreaming.”
I placed my hand atop my wife’s wrist. “What do you think he dreams about?”
“Who knows? What do we dream about?”
Russo suddenly awoke whether due to his dreams, the touch of his humans, or some other reason. He leapt to the floor as if he were frightened and turned in a circle before he must have realized where he was. He came back to his parents. I looked directly into his eyes, but he turned his head away. I’d already learned this about him, so I put one side of my face close to his nose to allow him to sniff my whiskers, my hair, and inside my ears.
I concluded Russo didn’t know what he didn’t know and didn’t care. He knew what he knew. He knew his Mom and Dad loved him and offered him food and protection. They played with him when he wanted to play. They let him snuggle beside him when he wanted to rest. What more did he need to know?
I wondered if what was good for the pug might also be good enough for the man. And woman. Maybe we couldn’t escape a world of known unknowns but might nevertheless focus on the known knowns. Maybe this was the best way to live, be one canine or human.
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