LILLY
I put down our dog today. Took her behind the house and held her face in the water bucket.
You, in your sundress on the lawn. The center of the quad. That college was made for you, baby. I watched from afar. We didn’t meet on the lawn. We met at Gary’s. Under the Christmas lights in his backyard. He inherited that house I think. Syracuse looked so good on you, baby. Everything was so new. I guess that’s what it’s like being 18. I only remember you. Everyone was smoking cigs but you. The red and green lights flickered in your eyes. Maybe it was the beer haze, but I remember you smiling at the sky, turning your head, and smiling at me. You, me, the sky. That’s where it started. And it was just like that. Like remembering a dream.
We went out to the one Italian restaurant in town and held hands under the table. We sat side-by-side. You smelled like Chanel No. 5. I probably smelled like beer. You told me about your hometown and how you were the only one to get out. Your dress, dotted with little daisies, was out of season. I loved it. I loved how you seemed unaffected by the flow of time. You weren’t wearing any makeup. Of course you were, but at least, to me, it seemed like you weren’t. And I was the kind of guy who liked that. I thought the other girls were way too put on. You were the kind of authentic I was looking for.
Present tense. A couple years later, we are getting dressed in a Hilton in NYC, about three blocks from Gary’s wedding venue. You, with your face in the little mirror, the orange glow of the bulb. You, putting on a thin layer of makeup, touching up all the spots and wrinkles born by time. And stress. A cancer scare, a dead dog, a few shitty roommates, a not-so-fruitful job search. Your dad died three weeks after we graduated. You ask me to fasten the necklace around your neck, your dad’s old wedding band on a hair-thin chain. I clip the thing into the other thing. It doesn’t matter. I’m looking at your neck. The little dip beneath your throat. The few hairs falling down beneath your chin. You tilt your head to the left and I kiss your cheek, the kind of unconscious loving we do all the time. You gyrate your hips in a way that tells me to back up. We look in the larger mirror and see our mid-twenties in the glow.
The wedding is unremarkable. It’s nice to see some people from college, you say as I unzip your dress. You shower and then I shower. You’re putting lotion on your face in the mirror. I stand behind you naked, shower water making little puddles on the bathroom floor.
We moved out to the country to reconnect with nature. That’s what we’d tell our friends. Your girlfriends thought you were crazy for moving so far from the city. My friends were jealous. They’d just started to talk about crime all the time . They’d say the city’s no place to raise a kid. The implicit assumption was that we were moving out to the country to raise children. Which is funny and painful because we moved out of the city after three years of trying to get pregnant. You brought up the idea of kids after your little sister got pregnant. The conversation grew in intensity as more of our friends and family began to have children of their own. I imagined a little version of you chasing fireflies, sneaking cookies we’d hid under the bread in the cabinet, talking to imaginary friends under her bedsheets. I imagined a little version of me crashing his bike into trees, reading comic books about the end of the world, tearing up his little jeans. It was decided. We’d have two kids. A boy and a girl. Little me, little you. Funny how much power we thought we had over this world.
You crying on the edge of the bed. Another failed pregnancy test. Our future out of focus.
We bought an old house on a big lot about twenty miles from your hometown. Our “nextdoor” neighbors were five miles away. We were recreating the world that created you. My baby. How could I not love it? And I did, at first. We’d go on long walks with our morning coffee, surveying our massive property. We’d rescued a dog from the local(ish) pound. Lilly. She’s something like a Golden Retriever crossed with something else. The perfect dog. I throw the stick, she brings it back. Simple life we’d made.
For the first few months, you loved it here. In fact, you couldn’t stop talking about how much you loved it. This place was made for you. People like you. People who grew up searching for the smoothest stone in the creek. Making games out of sticks and leaves. I secretly missed the bars, my friends, late nights. Our biological clocks had synchronized with the going and coming of sunlight. We didn’t need anything. And that made me feel weak. I’d go out and chop wood. We rarely needed it. Piles and piles of wood. I could tell you had started to realize I was falling out of love with this dream we were living. You’d make me tea in the mornings and ask me what’s wrong. What’s “on my mind”. I never knew what to say. Nothing was on my mind. We had no cable. You described it as “cleansing”. We’d finally found the peace we’d been looking for, you’d say as I tried my best not to say anything at all. I didn’t want you to know that I’d woken up one morning and realized this world wasn’t for me. I couldn’t stand to see your face. So I chopped wood, laid traps in the woods, cut down trees for no reason. I picked up little projects and forgot about them. I started brewing beer. You wouldn’t drink it. Said it’s bad for your skin. I tried to build a back patio, but gave up halfway. Everything was like that. Halfway.
I found a small trap door beneath the bed in the guest room while moving some furniture around for no reason. It led to a cramped little crawl space neither of us knew existed. There was a dirty canvas bag filled with old newspapers, some ammo, and a 12 gauge shotgun. You picked it up, examined the thing, and brought the butt up to your eye. You closed your left eye and focused on the non-existent target. Maybe some old family picture on the wall. Maybe the wall. Maybe me. A moment of silence and then “bang”. You said it. Nothing happened. Nothing happens. I pull the gun from your hands. You look like a little kid with that thing. Your eyes no longer look through me, but at me. And they’re telling me you know I want to leave. Lilly barks at nothing and breaks us out of this. Whatever it is. Recognition. Falling out of love with the world.
I took the shotgun and buried it beneath some old clothes under the bed. You never asked. Some nights when I couldn’t sleep, I’d take the thing out and hold it up to my head. Just to see what it’d be like. If I did it. One time, only once, I held it to yours. The image excited me. Not because I wanted you dead. Thinking of you dying broke my heart. You were the only thing left for me in this world. I hid my pain the best I could. You saw through my walls because you’ve always been smarter than me. We had enough firewood for six winters, then.
One evening, at the break of dusk, I took Lilly out for a swim in the lake. I loved to watch her in her element, jumping five, six feet off the dock and bringing back the stick I’d thrown. After about half an hour, Lilly shook herself dry and ran towards me. I smiled with a towel in my hands, ready to dry off my baby girl. My big muddy baby. About halfway between me and the lake, Lilly tripped in a hole covered up by some old, damp wood and yelped. I dropped the towel and ran to her side. She was whimpering. I couldn’t tell what was happening. I tried to pull her torso out of the hole, but that made her yelp louder. I ran to the house and found you reading a book on the couch, sitting by the fire. You followed me out to the lake and we pried Lilly out of the bear trap at the bottom of the hole. Her whole side was flayed and bleeding, globs of mud and blood gnarled up in her fur. She was breathing fast and shallowly. Her lung was punctured. You could hear it whistle. Her eyes were panicked. And then sad. Knowing. You went into proactive mode, trying to clean her wounds and keep her calm. You were telling me to do a million things at once. The whole thing felt like a dream.
We lifted Lilly into the backseat of my truck and started the two hour drive to the nearest vet hospital. She was whimpering in the back. We sat in silence, your right leg bouncing like it does when you get nervous. Lilly fell asleep about an hour into the drive. We knew she was alive by the whistle of her punctured lung. The towels we’d wrapped her in were soaked crimson with blood and dirt. When we arrived at the hospital, there was a big “FORECLOSED” sign out front. That’s when you cried. For the first time since your dad died. You were on your hands and knees in the parking lot. I was looking around the empty lot for someone or something to tell me what to do. Lilly was curled up on the ground, lung whistling. Slower now. I put my hand on your back and rubbed in figure eights. Your sobs became whimpers and then deep, deep breaths. You scooted off your hands and knees into a seated position. We sat there for however long, holding each other, wondering where the light went. Where it goes when you close your eyes. Lilly’s head in my lap. Your head on my shoulder.
I didn’t say anything, really. We put Lilly back in the truck and drove home. I wish I’d had the balls to tell you I wanted to die. I wish I was enough of a man to tell you how I feel:
Baby, I love you the only way I know how.
Illustrations by Max Shoham.
MAXWELL NORMAN’S ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Drop Nineteens - Delaware (1992)
Most of the classic 90s shoegaze records have already roared countless times through my ears—My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, Swervedriver, the works—so it’s somewhat rare that I find a real titan of old-school gazing I haven’t already heard. Shoutout to my homie Naomi for putting me on to Drop Nineteens’ incredible debut, which I’d heard about but never sat and listened to. What strikes me most is the variety on display; some say shoegaze all sounds the same, and with so many derivative acts blowing up on TikTok now I see the point, but these guys craft distinct sonics for every track. There’s towering instrumental crescendo on “Kick the Tragedy,” noisy pop with “Winona,” screeching aimlessness on “Reberrymemberer,” and lovely acoustic guitar on the duet “My Aquarium”. A great distillation of the blown-out melancholy of shoegaze music, and a 90s standard-bearer I should have heard sooner.