Katherine Tunning
Maisie Ascends
There’s my dog, Maisie. At least I think she’s my dog. And I’m almost certain she’s called Maisie.
I’m surprised she was allowed into the operating room. I would think the sanitation requirements in an OR would be a little beyond her, though I did read once that a dog’s mouth has far fewer germs than a human’s. On the other hand, Maisie often licks her own asshole with a sound like someone slurping melted ice cream from the bottom of the cone.
I don’t say anything, though. I can’t. I’m supposed to be sedated, but something has gone wrong. Fortunately it doesn’t hurt; I’m a total coward about pain. I can’t move, but I can see and I can hear—sort of. The voices above my head are distant and muffled, like Charlie Brown’s mom is up there with the scalpel. There was a slight pressure when they made the incision and peeled back the mudflap of my scalp, and then a loud vrooom as the drill went in through the skull. The hole’s only the size of a nickel—that’s what the surgeon told me beforehand, making a circle with thumb and index finger and inserting his other finger in it. If he said something after that I don’t know what; I was busy trying not to snicker. The growth is almost certainly benign, but it is apparently pressing on some nerve it shouldn’t be pressing on, and as the surgeon said while I stared out the eighteenth story window of his office, trying to get all the little specks to resolve into cars and people and dogs, it might begin to encroach if something wasn’t done.
Maisie walks over to the biohazard bin, toast-point tail wagging, like she hangs out in surgery all the time. I hope that thing has some kind of locking seal because Maisie is a trash-can wizard. There aren’t enough bungees in the world to keep her snout out of the garbage when there’s something good in there, and in her boundless wisdom she knows that all garbage is good. Cheese rinds, blue ends of bread, empty chip bags—in the present case, I shudder to think—polyps, appendixes, all those fleshy odds and ends? She turns around like she knows I’m watching. Her eyes sparkle: this is Maisie’s “I Know I Shouldn’t But I’m Gonna” face.
Don’t think I haven’t considered the possibility that the dog isn’t actually here at all. One of the shiny metal tools up there on the tray is called a brain spatula. I shit you not. I looked it up beforehand, like that would be reassuring somehow, knowing the name of everything they might jam inside my head. Apparently, I confuse knowing stuff with being able to control it. That’s what Val told me last time we talked. I can’t say she’s wrong, though I definitely said she was wrong at the time. At least I’ve got Maisie; she never tries to analyze me. I think I have her, anyway. For all I know there’s a brain-button labeled, in some molecular sense: dog. Press it with your spatula—or your growth, I guess—and shazam! You get Maisie, a six-year-old shepherd mix, sixty pounds, five of which the vet keeps telling me she could stand to drop, who sheds like a yak year-round and licks the sofa whenever my back is turned.
Licks the sofa. Even my brain couldn’t make up something that dumb.
The first time Val stayed over we ended up fooling around in the living room and dozing off on the sofa after, all warm and drowsy, until we heard the sound: shhhhlup . . . shhhhlup . . . shhhhlup. Real slow like that. Val got up on one elbow and looked down at Maisie, lying on the floor and just licking the side of the sofa over and over, in a trance. Then Val stuck out her tongue, just the soft little point of it, and dabbed it on the upholstery. I cringed. Val shook her head and looked Maisie right in the eye: nope, she said, nope. It’s not very good. And Maisie stopped dead, and licked her chops, looking sheepish. I laughed until my sides ached.
After I left the surgeon’s office I called Val, even though she said she wasn’t going to pick up any of my calls. It seemed like there should be an exception: I know I screwed up, but I just found out I have a brain tumor. There wasn’t, though. I left a voicemail, really rambling and sorry for myself, until the beep cut me off and I nearly pitched the phone into a passing garbage truck. She didn’t call back.
I told work I was having a minor procedure to repair a hernia. I don’t even know what a hernia is. But it sounds like no big deal, not like brain surgery, nothing that would affect my performance. I didn’t think about the fact that they would have to shave half my head and then staple it back together. One more thing to deal with later, I guess. To explain somehow.
Maisie comes over to the table and gives me her most tragic look. My roommate Pete calls it her Evolutionary Sadvantage. Whenever I yell at him for feeding her from his plate—pickles, cheese, General Tso’s, even refried beans, God help me—he says, I couldn’t help it, man! She used her Evolutionary Sadvantage on me! But he’s not the one who has to take her out a dozen times a night when something doesn’t agree with her. I told Pete last night that if I dropped dead in here, he’d have to fight my dad for Maisie. I think my dad likes the dog more than he likes me, but I can’t really blame him. I might like Maisie better than me too. Anyway, Pete looked shaken up and said, don’t even joke, man. So I called him a pussy and went to bed.
I didn’t tell my parents any of this was happening. It seemed like the sort of thing you’re better off explaining after, when all the dust has settled and it doesn’t sound so bad. I might be confusing knowing and controlling again. If my brain wants to think about Val so bad, it could at least show her to me, preferably in that one red bra with the lace, instead of just replaying her voice telling me what my problem is. Maybe the growth is what makes me act like such a shit sometimes. Maybe after it’s gone I’ll get Val to come out, just for coffee, so I can tell her she was right and I was wrong and it’s only kind of the tumor’s fault. Maybe I’ll tell Pete I’m sorry and take him out for beers at that place I hate, where you have to listen to some guy with a waxed mustache present his dissertation on different kinds of hops before you’re allowed to order.
Maisie circles the room a few times and then stops and looks right at me, and says she wants to go home. She doesn’t really say it, like a CGI dog with those freaky black rubbery lips. She’s just standing the way a dog stands when it’s ready to be somewhere else, limbs quivering, all points of her aimed at the door. I could get on board with that. I don’t know when they’re going to be done up there, though. The voices near my head drone on and on. Maisie flops down on the blue and white grid of the floor. She looks wiped out, flat from ears to tail back legs doing that froggy thing. I’m with you, Maisie, I try to say. But of course I can’t. Home, Maisie, I try to say. Home!
Maisie stands up. Her tail wags gently. She begins to float, just a few inches off the tile at first. My field of vision is limited; I’m lying on one side so the surgeon can get in there with his saws and spatulas. Maisie goes on rising until all I can see is her legs, her shaggy sweatpants, her big dumb mitts with the nails she won’t let me trim, the nails she scratches me with every time I come home from work, because she’s so excited to see me and I just yell down, Maisie, for fuck’s sake, this is a new shirt—get down!
Up above me, where the rest of the dog must be, the voices get louder. Maybe they’re telling the dog to get down, too. There’s another sensation of pressure, stronger this time, and then a sort of flood, a feeling of release, a hot rush. I want to laugh, it feels so good, but of course I can’t laugh, either. Someone up there says clearly: fuck! And that makes me laugh even harder, or try to, remembering how that pasty-faced surgeon pursed his lips when I said fuck! in his office, like you can’t cut a guy who just found out he has a brain tumor a little slack?
All I can see of Maisie now is her paws.
Down, Maisie! I try again. This time, I think I hear myself make a sound.
Down, girl!
But Maisie ascends.