The Dog Doesn't Know

The lead is on the hook by the door and the dog is sitting under it, which is how Beth knows it's past nine. She's been awake since six. Awake is generous. She's been lying with her eyes open, which is a different activity, listening to the boiler and the neighbours' radio and running through the list of things she should be doing in a loop that never gets to the end because the start keeps coming back round. Shower. Eat. Reply to Mum. Shower. Eat. The dog. The dog's name is Morris. He is four, yellow, and he has never in his life had a bad day. This used to be a comfort. Lately it's felt like a rebuke. She gets up. It takes a while, in stages. Sitting. Feet on floor. Standing. Each one a separate decision, like getting out of a swimming pool in winter. "Alright," she says to him. "Alright, I know." He does the full-body thing, the wag that starts at the shoulders. Outside it's grey and dry and cold enough to see her breath. She'd normally go up to the park, the long loop, forty minutes, but she stands at the end of the road and thinks about the park and something in her says no, not the park, not people with prams and runners with their little belts, and so she turns the other way, toward the canal, which is ugly and quiet and has nobody on it. Morris doesn't care. Morris has never cared. He goes ahead to the end of the lead and then comes back to check on her, then goes ahead again. He finds a stick. He loses interest in the stick. He finds the same stick. There's a bench about halfway. She sits on it. She hadn't meant to. Her legs just stopped. Morris sits next to her on the path and leans his whole weight against her shin, which he does when she's still for too long. She puts her hand on his head. The fur behind his ears is the softest thing she owns. "I'm doing it," she tells him. "I'm outside. I'm doing the thing."

A woman goes past on a bike and says "Morning," and Beth says "Morning" back and her voice sounds almost normal, and that's one, that's one human interaction, she can put that on the list. They sit for a bit. The water does nothing. A heron stands on the far side looking like it's been fired from a job. She thinks about her sister, who'd said on the phone last week, "You just need to get out more," in a voice that meant well and landed like a slap. Her sister doesn't understand that "out" is not one place. Out is a hundred small doors, and on a bad day you can only get through the first one, and the first one is the front door, and here she is, through it, on a bench, with a dog. Morris gets bored. He stands up, stretches, looks at her with the expression that means the stick situation needs addressing. "Fine," she says. "Fine." They walk back the way they came. Twenty-two minutes, door to door. Not the long loop. Not the park. But when she gets in she hangs the lead back on the hook and puts the kettle on without having to decide to, and stands there while it boils, and it's not a good day. It's just a day she was in. Which is different from the other kind, and she knows the difference, and that has to count.