Wednesday

He had left before she’d stirred that morning, not even daring to jostle her sleeping form. It was comforting to think of her sleeping there, warmly nestled on the bed as he walked out of the warm apartment into the frost and cold of the street. The soft crunch of his footsteps on virgin snow made him remember how it had been when she used to join him on his daily jaunts.

He journeyed through the crowded lonely streets of the city, passing people whose eyes never met his as he said “hello,” to each of them with a slight tip of his hat. He didn’t care that to them he was a strange old man and just another one of the city's oddities that they purposely ignored. He knew what their lives were. He knew that they spent years going from threshold to threshold in unhappy pursuit of corner offices and objects to fill the empty shelves of their perfectly decorated lives. So, he continued to greet them because they were miserable and because he felt the miserable deserved respect, if only from an unknown man on the street.

While contentedly making his way through the throng doing errand after errand, he began to wonder what she was doing while he was away. He saw her waking, yawning and stretching before going to the kitchen in search of food.

“So good,” he said after having his breakfast at the usual spot, a little dive on Love Street that served cheap meals, followed by “Wonderful” after swallowing whiskey-smooth liquid fire that he kept in a flask to soothe it all down and prevent its return. He used to bring her there in the old days, before it was allowed and they’d received odd looks until he took her out through the backdoor. Now she was welcome, but old age had caught up with her, so she rarely joined him anymore.

Even so, everyday Crystal, his usual waitress would ask the same question, “Where’s Jenny?”

And everyday he’d respond, “I don’t know. I don’t know. My old girl isn’t what she used to be.”

“None of us are sir,” she responded wondering if he was aware that Jenny’s soul didn’t have long for this world. Then they’d both retreat to their various tasks of serving customers or being served until he’d finally get up to pay his bill.

“I saved the day old Danish for you to take to her,” said Crystal handing him the bag.

“Thank you.” His dulled eyes twinkled with tears. “You remember how much she always loved sweets,” he said before tipping her and then his hat and disappearing out the door.

He sat on a park bench. It was the same one he’d come to for years. This is where he came to remember bygone days when the two of them had walked there side-by-side joyously anticipating a moment of green escape from the cold stone of sidewalks and unrelenting caravan of traffic-jammed streets. His mind’s eye traveled him back further; to the days when the earth hadn’t journeyed as many times around the sun as now. Those were happier times. Old age hadn’t forced him to give up driving then, so he’d take her on long rides in the country to escape the wilds of city living. But now those days were gone and there was no bringing them back.

She had bound into his life when everyone else had either gone or died and helped fill in all the empty spaces formed by time. He crushed up one of the Danish and threw its crumbs at the pigeons that gathered around him. They came everyday to this same spot in anticipation of a daily feed knowing he’d be there to provide it to them.

After all the crumbs were gone and only a few errant birds remained, he continued to sit waiting out the day and the long journey home. He had done everything he could to escape the reality that stared back at him from her age-worn eyes. He had needed a break from watching her suffer.

A policeman on a horse paused nearby. So he rose from the bench and began his walk home. Still not wanting to return, he walked around the block two times before exhaustion forced him to the stoop and up the stairs and back to her.

“I’m home Jenny,” he said not expecting a response. She hadn’t greeted him in days.

But this time she came limping, barely able to wag her tail, making tiny yelps and grunts before raising her head to lick his hand.

“There’s a girl,” he said bending down to pet her.

She stumbled away and returned with the tail of his wife’s fox fur in her mouth. It had become Jenny’s favorite toy ever since his wife had given it to her when the fox fur had become moth eaten and beyond repair.

It was then, that finally, all the tears he’d been holding back finally surfaced and fell. He’d lost his wife, but Jenny had helped him get through it, just as she was trying to now. But who would be left to comfort him after Jenny was gone? The thought frightened him. There had been too many sad goodbyes in his life and he couldn’t face the possibility of another one. Even after the vet had told him it was cruel not to put her down, he knew that there was no way of letting her go. Just the same, the vet’s way was not the way he wanted it to end. He imagined her in that cold impersonal setting on a cold examination table, with nothing but a needle stick to oblivion.

He petted her head again and walked over to the window, hoping to somehow see the answer to his dilemma. Jenny licked his hand again; her reassurance calmed him even as he continued to contemplate how alone he would feel when there finally was no one to come home to anymore. She had hid him from that and now she was going too and there was nothing but his own sad oblivion before him.

He had carried her to bed that night; her already limp body heavier with every step. He had done it. She was asleep and free of pain and he would join her shortly after finishing the last of the day old Danish. And this is how it would end, with him watching the wintertime world dim into darkness while cradling her in his arms in the gentle glow of moonlight.