Meg Pokrass
Mud Puddle
Consider the light ray: how it needs to land on something in order to generate heat. This is about momentum. You wake up and say to yourself, the time is now. Living conveniently is no longer interesting. Your hands are cold. Grieving has turned you into a beast, a savage—a human capable of loving a potbellied pig.
Reassurance is not what a widow should expect at a pig rescue agency. At first the adoption woman glares as if you’re some sad, lonely freak who just happens to be wasting an afternoon at a pig shelter.
But you win her over. You tell her about your open-plan living room, no barriers or doors, how large but unused your home has been feeling.
You meet all of the requirements, and present photos to prove it. Your home and backyard are ready, but you’re feeling just a little bit afraid, you admit.
“Of course you are. But keep in mind that a rehomed baby will be just as scared as the mom,” the adoption woman beams, as if this is great news. “A pig may seem a bit manic at first. Be prepared for an adjustment.”
She shakes both of your hands, congratulates you, and takes you outside to meet your new baby.
Mud Puddle is a sturdy, pale pink creature with black spots, a 150-pound male whose person died suddenly. Perhaps his person suffered a heart attack, just like your Bob.
You give her a thumbs-up. These days people don’t seem to trust your face. Ever since Bob died, you have an unstable smile, sad floppy-looking lips. “We’ll deliver your baby this afternoon,” she says.
Bob never really dies. He’s never really gone, that is—he’s right here with you. His voice is muffled but it’s still his voice and face, and you don’t worry about his presence in your dreams. In the theater of your sleeping brain, Bob is still waiting for the delivery of plastic boards to protect your garden from snails.
“Why plastic?” you ask him.
“So nothing underneath can breathe,” he explains, which seems distressing, but most of what he said and did had deep, practical logic. This is why you needed him so much. Even in dreams Bob is answering adult questions.
Mud Puddle is frantic. Runs around snorting, squealing, ripping the arms off chairs. Thrashes and rolls all over your once-fluffy carpet as if he’s burning. Swooshes his bitter head, charges your stand-up lamp. Even outside, he roots around frantically, as if trying to dig to China. The yard looks like a freshly worked cemetery.
His face appears sewn together by stress. You want to hug him, to hold him and let him grieve, but you stand your distance.
“A new baby only wants two things: security and love,” the YouTube Pig Goddess says, petting her adoring baby.
“When I adopted Willow, she had deep emotional wounds.” They look so damned happy. Her and that pig, a freaking pair.
“Just remember! Their preference is to be with you all the time. Steep a pig with love.”
As if on cue, Mud Puddle clonks over to the window, bashes his snout into the glass and lunges at the door, barking. Screaming. Like Bob near the end. The pig seems determined to break free of this world. But you tell yourself this is temporary. This will pass.
Even a year after Bob’s death, there are moments you just can’t seem to face. For example, Bob’s glue gun is entombed in the basement and you have no idea what to use it for, but you don’t have the heart to sell it. You talk to Mud Puddle about it.
“Glue guns,” you say. “Why do we cry over these silly things?”
With Mud Puddle with you, you can sometimes go into Bob’s workshop and stare at the strange items Bob kept.
Grief experts say that one should give a dead spouse’s unused items away. Clean starts mean light hearts.
You tell yourself that like other endangered animals, Bob lived and died in the jungle of life, doing what he did best, eating too many potato chips and going to work every morning and loving you and making you feel like you had a home in this world until the day his heart quit working.
“Let’s take a break, Mud Puddle,” you say. He snorts softly. He’s started to remind you of Bob before he had his coffee in the morning.
* * *
Sometimes, near the end of Bob’s life on Planet Earth, you’d leave the house, not say anything to Bob about where you were going, and wander the aisles of Home Depot, blankly imagining the holidays sneaking up like prison bars. You and Bob dreaded the holidays because you’d never started a family, and even then you didn’t much like being at home. In the aisles of Home Depot you would crane your head around to see if anyone noticed how slow you were moving your cart. You needed a pig baby even then, you reckon.
Bob’s eyes had become milky and untrustworthy since his first small heart attack. He hated doctors and refused to go in for follow-ups, would disobey if you tried to push it, so you tried not to dwell. He was the most stubborn human you had ever known. Living with Mud Puddle is easier.
It’s getting wintery, so you wear thick sweatshirts and take long, hot baths. You order Mud Puddle a large fleece bed for his corner of the living room, hoping he won’t dismember it. Your hands are always cold. Bob used to warm them up. You know that your hands will always be cold.
Bob would have been messing with the heat, knocking on the bathroom door to make sure you were warm enough, worried that you were angry at him for not going to the doctor.
“Sugar, you still alive in there?” he’d call. A ray of light would be shining in through the bathroom window. In the tub you’d be listening to your heartbeat, trying to soak him up.