Almost Gone

The Dog

the dog heleNA · 1965 Helena had considered poisoning his food. Well, maybe she hadn’t considered it, but she’d allowed herself to imagine it. Sometimes, while serving dinner, as Nuno just sat there with his arms outstretched on the table, she imagined him clutching at his chest, his face wrinkling in shock. He would cry out for help, but she would just stand there, watching, until his head slumped on the table. She would never do anything like this, of course. Because of Paulo. And because she couldn’t. Helena was fairly certain that one horrible thing happened to each person in their lifetime. Hers had occurred when she was nineteen, and if she was being honest with herself, she’d lied about it ever since. That’s why she felt so trapped sometimes, but that was also why she’d made no real effort to change anything. If it wasn’t for Paulo, things might’ve been different. She’d had two miscarriages before him, and after the second they’d both thought that was it. Maybe they weren’t meant to have a child. Helena remembered how empty she felt, lying in bed with her hands clasped over her deflated stomach. Staring at the pile of white towels stained with blood on the floor. Then they’d had Paulo, surprising both of them, and the doctor had recommended that they stop there. He didn’t think her body could take anymore. Not that they could afford another child, anyway. When they first arrived in the States, Helena had worked in the same auto-parts factory as Nuno, standing on the assembly line with the other women in that huge garage that smelled of oil and stale deodorant. She could feel Nuno’s eyes on her even when he wasn’t there, and she rarely talked to the other women, and didn’t even look at the other men. AlmoSt goNe· 104 · When she did pray, easing onto her already arthritic knees, all alone in the pew because Nuno had stopped going to Mass years before, she prayed for Nuno first, and herself last. But she prayed for herself the longest. She wouldn’t poison his food. Most of the time, she couldn’t even believe that those thoughts crept in. Helena was forty-three years old, and she had the feeling that she could live for another forty years. She just needed to figure out the best way to live. She tried to be the American housewife that Nuno wanted, but to be honest, she never really felt like herself. She tried to be thankful that she didn’t need to work in the factory anymore as she cooked, cleaned, and mothered her way through each day, then gave herself willingly to Nuno at night, if he was in the mood. But sometimes she missed the yelping pulleys, the nonstop roll of the rubber belts, the whine and grind of machinery. At least in the factory, with her goggles fogging up, her tongue scalded by hot coffee, she knew she was alive. Now, the only time she really felt she was there was with Paulo. Helena knew that he was a gentle soul; she could tell by the look in his eyes. She hoped that she and Nuno were doing a good job raising him. She was trying as hard as she could, she knew that. It was harder than she thought, though, definitely harder than she thought. On her knees in the dim church, she squinted as she did at Igreja de Santo António in Lagos when she was a girl, so that the candle flames at the altar flickered violently. She tried to imagine that Deus himself was telling her how to live out the rest of her life. She tried to listen. But she was never quite sure what He would say. Yesterday was when Helena first saw the dog. She was cooking breakfast when it came rooting through the garden behind the house. It was late spring in Narragansett, and as the rains and warmer days came, Nuno spent hours planting and weeding the garden, a cigar dangling from his mouth. Helena remembered the day that Nuno had bought the house, paying ten thousand dollars in damp cash. They’d stood out on the lawn together, and he’d told her proudly that it had been his dream to have a garden. “But,” Helena said, “in Lagos my father had acres of...