Running with the Pack

GESTELLA SUSAN PALWICK

Time’s the problem. Time and arithmetic. You’ve known from the beginning that the numbers would cause trouble, but you were much younger then—much, much younger—and far less wise. And there’s culture shock, too. Where you come from, it’s okay for women to have wrinkles. Where you come from, youth’s not the only commodity.

You met Jonathan back home. Call it a forest somewhere, near an Alp. Call it a village on the edge of the woods. Call it old. You weren’t old, then: you were fourteen on two feet and a mere two years old on four, although already fully grown. Your kind are fully grown at two years, on four feet. And experienced: oh, yes. You knew how to howl at the moon. You knew what to do when somebody howled back. If your four-footed form hadn’t been sterile, you’d have had litters by then—but it was, and on two feet, you’d been just smart enough, or lucky enough, to avoid continuing your line.

But it wasn’t as if you hadn’t had plenty of opportunities, enthu-siastically taken. Jonathan liked that. A lot. Jonathan was older than you were: thirty-five, then. Jonathan loved fucking a girl who looked fourteen and acted older, who acted feral, who was feral for three to five days a month, centered on the full moon. Jonathan didn’t mind the mess that went with it, either: all that fur, say, sprouting at one end of the process and shedding on the other, or the aches and pains from various joints pivoting, changing shape, redistributing weight, or your poor gums bleeding all the time from the monthly growth and recession of your fangs. “At least that’s the only blood,” he told you, sometime during that first year.

You remember this very clearly: you were roughly halfway through the four-to-two transition, and Jonathan was sitting next to you in bed, massaging your sore shoulderblades as you sipped mint tea with hands still nearly as clumsy as paws, hands like mittens. Jonathan had just filled two hot water bottles, one for your aching tailbone and one for your aching knees. Now you know he wanted to get you in shape for a major sportfuck—he loved sex even more than usual, after you’d just changed back—but at the time, you thought he was a real prince, the kind of prince girls like you weren’t supposed to be allowed to get, and a stab of pain shot through you at his words. “I didn’t kill anything,” you told him, your lower lip trembling. “I didn’t even hunt.”

“Gestella, darling, I know. That wasn’t what I meant.” He stroked your hair. He’d been feeding you raw meat during the four-foot phase, but not anything you’d killed yourself. He’d taught you to eat little pieces out of his hand, gently, without biting him. He’d taught you to wag your tail, and he was teaching you to chase a ball, because that’s what good four-foots did where he came from. “I was talking about—”

“Normal women,” you told him. “The ones who bleed so they can have babies. You shouldn’t make fun of them. They’re lucky.” You like children and puppies; you’re good with them, gentle. You know it’s unwise for you to have any of your own, but you can’t help but watch them, wistfully.

“I don’t want kids,” he says. “I had that operation. I told you.”

“Are you sure it took?” you ask. You’re still very young. You’ve never known anyone who’s had an operation like that, and you’re worried about whether Jonathan really understands your condition. Most people don’t. Most people think all kinds of crazy things. Your condition isn’t communicable, for instance, by biting or any other way, but it is hereditary, which is why it’s good that you’ve been so smart and lucky, even if you’re just fourteen.

Well, no, not fourteen anymore. It’s about halfway through Jonathan’s year of folklore research—he’s already promised not to write you up for any of the journals, and keeps assuring you he won’t tell anybody, although later you’ll realize that’s for his protection, not yours—so that would make you, oh, seventeen or eighteen. Jonathan’s still thirty-five. At the end of the year, when he flies you back to the United States with him so the two of you can get married, he’ll be thirty-six. You’ll be twenty-one on two feet, three years old on four.

Seven-to-one. That’s the ratio. You’ve made sure Jonathan understands this. “Oh, sure,” he says. “Just like for dogs. One year is seven human years. Everybody knows that. But how can it be a problem, darling, when we love each other so much?” And even though you aren’t fourteen anymore, you’re still young enough to believe him.

At first it’s fun. The secret’s a bond between you, a game. You speak in code. Jonathan splits your name in half, calling you Jessie on four feet and Stella on two. You’re Stella to all his friends, and most of them don’t even know that he has a dog one week a month. The two of you scrupulously avoid scheduling social commitments for the week of the full moon, but no one seems to notice the pattern, and if anyone does notice, no one cares. Occasionally someone you know sees Jessie, when you and Jonathan are out in the park playing with balls, and Jonathan always says that he’s taking care of his sister’s dog while she’s away on business. His sister travels a lot, he explains. Oh, no, Stella doesn’t mind, but she’s always been a bit nervous around dogs—even though Jessie’s such a good dog—so she stays home during the walks.

Sometimes strangers come up, shyly. “What a beautiful dog!” they say. “What a big dog! What kind of dog is that?”

“Husky-wolfhound cross,” Jonathan says airily. Most people accept this. Most people know as much about dogs as dogs know about the space shuttle.

Some people know better, though. Some people look at you, and frown a little, and say, “Looks like a wolf to me. Is she part wolf?”

“Could be,” Jonathan always says with a shrug, his tone as breezy as ever. And he spins a little story about how his sister adopted you from the pound because you were the runt of the litter and no one else wanted you, and now look at you! No one would ever take you for a runt now! And the strangers smile and look encouraged and pat you on the head, because they like stories about dogs being rescued from the pound.

You sit and down and stay during these conversations; you do whatever Jonathan says. You wag your tail and cock your head and act charming. You let people scratch you behind the ears. You’re a good dog. The other dogs in the park, who know more about their own species than most people do, aren’t fooled by any of this; you make them nervous, and they tend to avoid you, or to act supremely submissive if avoidance isn’t possible. They grovel on their bellies, on their backs; they crawl away backwards, whining.

Jonathan loves this. Jonathan loves it that you’re the alpha with the other dogs—and, of course, he loves it that he’s your alpha. Because that’s another thing people don’t understand about your condition: they think you’re vicious, a ravening beast, a fanged monster from hell. In fact, you’re no more bloodthirsty than any dog not trained to mayhem. You haven’t been trained to mayhem: you’ve been trained to chase balls. You’re a pack animal, an animal who craves hierarchy, and you, Jessie, are a one-man dog. Your man’s Jonathan. You adore him. You’d do anything for him, even let strangers who wouldn’t know a wolf from a wolfhound scratch you behind the ears.

The only fight you and Jonathan have, that first year in the States, is about the collar. Jonathan insists that Jessie wear a collar. Otherwise, he says, he could be fined. There are policemen in the park. Jessie needs a collar and an ID tag and rabies shots.

Jessie, you say on two feet, needs so such thing. You, Stella, are bristling as you say this, even though you don’t have fur at the moment. “Jonathan,” you tell him, “ID tags are for dogs who wander. Jessie will never leave your side, unless you throw a ball for her. And I’m not going to get rabies. All I eat is Alpo, not dead raccoons: how am I going to get rabies?”

“It’s the law,” he says gently. “It’s not worth the risk, Stella.”

And then he comes and rubs your head and shoulders that way, the way you’ve never been able to resist, and soon the two of you are in bed having a lovely sportfuck, and somehow by the end of the evening, Jonathan’s won. Well, of course he has: he’s the alpha.

So the next time you’re on four feet, Jonathan puts a strong chain choke collar and an ID tag around your neck, and then you go to the vet and get your shots. You don’t like the vet’s office much, because it smells of too much fear and pain, but the people there pat you and give you milk bones and tell you how beautiful you are, and the vet’s hands are gentle and kind.

The vet likes dogs. She also knows wolves from wolfhounds. She looks at you, hard, and then looks at Jonathan. “Gray wolf?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” says Jonathan. “She could be a hybrid.”

“She doesn’t look like a hybrid to me.” So Jonathan launches into his breezy story about how you were the runt of the litter at the pound: you wag your tail and lick the vet’s hand and act utterly adoring.

The vet’s not having any of it. She strokes your head; her hands are kind, but she smells disgusted. “Mr. Argent, gray wolves are endangered.”

“At least one of her parents was a dog,” Jonathan says. He’s starting to sweat. “Now, she doesn’t look endangered, does she?”

“There are laws about keeping exotics as pets,” the vet says. She’s still stroking your head; you’re still wagging your tail, but now you start to whine, because the vet smells angry and Jonathan smells afraid. “Especially endangered exotics.”

“She’s a dog,” Jonathan says.

“If she’s a dog,” the vet says, “may I ask why you haven’t had her spayed?”

Jonathan splutters. “Excuse me?”

“You got her from the pound. Do you know how animals wind up at the pound, Mr. Argent? They land there because people breed them and then don’t want to take care of all those puppies or kittens. They land there—”

“We’re here for a rabies shot,” Jonathan says. “Can we get our rabies shot, please?”

“Mr. Argent, there are regulations about breeding endangered species—”

“I understand that,” Jonathan says. “There are also regulations about rabies shots. If you don’t give my dog her rabies shot—”

The vet shakes her head, but she gives you the rabies shot, and then Jonathan gets you out of there, fast. “Bitch,” he says on the way home. He’s shaking. “Animal-rights fascist bitch! Who the hell does she think she is?”

She thinks she’s a vet. She thinks she’s somebody who’s supposed to take care of animals. You can’t say any of this, because you’re on four legs. You lie in the back seat of the car, on the special sheepskin cover Jonathan bought to protect the upholstery from your fur, and whine. You’re scared. You liked the vet, but you’re afraid of what she might do. She doesn’t understand your condition; how could she?

The following week, after you’re fully changed back, there’s a knock at the door while Jonathan’s at work. You put down your copy of Elle and pad, bare-footed, over to the door. You open it to find a woman in uniform; a white truck with “Animal Control” written on it is parked in the driveway.

“Good morning,” the officer says. “We’ve received a report that there may be an exotic animal on this property. May I come in, please?”

“Of course,” you tell her. You let her in. You offer her coffee, which she doesn’t want, and you tell her that there aren’t any exotic animals here. You invite her to look around and see for herself.

Of course there’s no sign of a dog, but she’s not satisfied. “According to our records, Jonathan Argent of this address had a dog vaccinated last Saturday. We’ve been told that the dog looked very much like a wolf. Can you tell me where that dog is now?”

“We don’t have her anymore,” you say. “She got loose and jumped the fence on Monday. It’s a shame: she was a lovely animal.”

The animal-control lady scowls. “Did she have ID?”

“Of course,” you say. “A collar with tags. If you find her, you’ll call us, won’t you?”

She’s looking at you, hard, as hard as the vet did. “Of course. We recommend that you check the pound at least every few days, too. And you might want to put up flyers, put an ad in the paper.”

“Thank you,” you tell her. “We’ll do that.” She leaves; you go back to reading Elle, secure in the knowledge that your collar’s tucked into your underwear drawer upstairs and that Jessie will never show up at the pound.

Jonathan’s incensed when he hears about this. He reels off a string of curses about the vet. “Do you think you could rip her throat out?” he asks.

“No,” you say, annoyed. “I don’t want to, Jonathan. I liked her. She’s doing her job. Wolves don’t just attack people: you know better than that. And it wouldn’t be smart even if I wanted to: it would just mean people would have to track me down and kill me. Now look, relax. We’ll go to a different vet next time, that’s all.”

“We’ll do better than that,” Jonathan says. “We’ll move.”

So you move to the next county over, to a larger house with a larger yard. There’s even some wild land nearby, forest and meadows, and that’s where you and Jonathan go for walks now. When it’s time for your rabies shot the following year, you go to a male vet, an older man who’s been recommended by some friends of friends of Jonathan’s, people who do a lot of hunting. This vet raises his eyebrows when he sees you. “She’s quite large,” he says pleasantly. “Fish and Wildlife might be interested in such a large dog. Her size will add another oh, hundred dollars to the bill, Johnny.”

“I see.” Jonathan’s voice is icy. You growl, and the vet laughs.

“Loyal, isn’t she? You’re planning to breed her, of course.”

“Of course,” Jonathan snaps.

“Lucrative business, that. Her pups will pay for her rabies shot, believe me. Do you have a sire lined up?”

“Not yet.” Jonathan sounds like he’s strangling.

The vet strokes your shoulders. You don’t like his hands. You don’t like the way he touches you. You growl again, and again the vet laughs. “Well, give me a call when she goes into heat. I know some people who might be interested.”

“Slimy bastard,” Jonathan says when you’re back home again. “You didn’t like him, Jessie, did you? I’m sorry.”

You lick his hand. The important thing is that you have your rabies shot, that your license is up to date, that this vet won’t be reporting you to Animal Control. You’re legal. You’re a good dog.

You’re a good wife, too. As Stella, you cook for Jonathan, clean for him, shop. You practice your English while devouring Cosmopolitan and Martha Stewart Living, in addition to Elle. You can’t work or go to school, because the week of the full moon would keep getting in the way, but you keep yourself busy. You learn to drive and you learn to entertain; you learn to shave your legs and pluck your eyebrows, to mask your natural odor with harsh chemicals, to walk in high heels. You learn the artful uses of cosmetics and clothing, so that you’ll be even more beautiful than you are au naturel. You’re stunning: everyone says so, tall and slim with long silver hair and pale, piercing blue eyes. Your skin’s smooth, your complexion flawless, your muscles lean and taut: you’re a good cook, a great fuck, the perfect trophy wife. But of course, during that first year, while Jonathan’s thirty-six going on thirty-seven, you’re only twenty-one going on twenty-eight. You can keep the accelerated aging from showing: you eat right, get plenty of exercise, become even more skillful with the cosmetics. You and Jonathan are blissfully happy, and his colleagues, the old fogies in the Anthropology Department, are jealous. They stare at you when they think no one’s looking. “They’d all love to fuck you,” Jonathan gloats after every party, and after every party, he does just that.

Most of Jonathan’s colleagues are men. Most of their wives don’t like you, although a few make resolute efforts to be friendly, to ask you to lunch. Twenty-one going on twenty-eight, you wonder if they somehow sense that you aren’t one of them, that there’s another side to you, one with four feet. Later you’ll realize that even if they knew about Jessie, they couldn’t hate and fear you any more than they already do. They fear you because you’re young, because you’re beautiful and speak English with an exotic accent, because their husbands can’t stop staring at you. They know their husbands want to fuck you. The wives may not be young and beautiful any more, but they’re no fools. They lost the luxury of innocence when they lost their smooth skin and flawless complexions.

The only person who asks you to lunch and seems to mean it is Diane Harvey. She’s forty-five, with thin gray hair and a wide face that’s always smiling. She runs her own computer repair business, and she doesn’t hate you. This may be related to the fact that her husband Glen never stares at you, never gets too close to you during conversation; he seems to have no desire to fuck you at all. He looks at Diane the way all the other men look at you: as if she’s the most desirable creature on earth, as if just being in the same room with her renders him scarcely able to breathe. He adores his wife, even though they’ve been married for fifteen years, even though he’s five years younger than she is and handsome enough to seduce a younger, more beautiful woman. Jonathan says that Glen must stay with Diane for her salary, which is considerably more than his. You think Jonathan’s wrong; you think Glen stays with Diane for herself.

Over lunch, as you gnaw an overcooked steak in a bland fern bar, all glass and wood, Diane asks you kindly when you last saw your family, if you’re homesick, whether you and Jonathan have any plans to visit Europe again soon. These questions bring a lump to your throat, because Diane’s the only one who’s ever asked them. You don’t, in fact, miss your family—the parents who taught you to hunt, who taught you the dangers of continuing the line, or the siblings with whom you tussled and fought over scraps of meat—because you’ve transferred all your loyalty to Jonathan. But two is an awfully small pack, and you’re starting to wish Jonathan hadn’t had that operation. You’re starting to wish you could continue the line, even though you know it would be a foolish thing to do. You wonder if that’s why your parents mated, even though they knew the dangers.

“I miss the smells back home,” you tell Diane, and immediately you blush, because it seems like such a strange thing to say, and you desperately want this kind woman to like you. As much as you love Jonathan, you yearn for someone else to talk to.

But Diane doesn’t think it’s strange. “Yes,” she says, nodding, and tells you about how homesick she still gets for her grandmother’s kitchen, which had a signature smell for each season: basil and tomatoes in the summer, apples in the fall, nutmeg and cinnamon in winter, thyme and lavender in the spring. She tells you that she’s growing thyme and lavender in her own garden; she tells you about her tomatoes.

She asks you if you garden. You say no. In truth, you’re not a big fan of vegetables, although you enjoy the smell of flowers, because you enjoy the smell of almost anything. Even on two legs, you have a far better sense of smell than most people do; you live in a world rich with aroma, and even the scents most people consider noxious are interesting to you. As you sit in the sterile fern bar, which smells only of burned meat and rancid grease and the harsh chemicals the people around you have put on their skin and hair, you realize that you really do miss the smells of home, where even the gardens smell older and wilder than the woods and meadows here.

You tell Diane, shyly, that you’d like to learn to garden. Could she teach you?

So she does. One Saturday afternoon, much to Jonathan’s bemusement, Diane comes over with topsoil and trowels and flower seeds, and the two of you measure out a plot in the backyard, and plant and water and get dirt under your nails, and it’s quite wonderful, really, about the best fun you’ve had on two legs, aside from sportfucks with Jonathan. Over dinner, after Diane’s left, you try to tell Jonathan how much fun it was, but he doesn’t seem particularly interested. He’s glad you had a good time, but really, he doesn’t want to hear about seeds. He wants to go upstairs and have sex.

So you do.

Afterwards, you go through all of your old issues of Martha Stewart Living, looking for gardening tips.

You’re ecstatic. You have a hobby now, something you can talk to the other wives about. Surely some of them garden. Maybe, now, they won’t hate you. So at the next party, you chatter brightly about gardening, but somehow all the wives are still across the room, huddled around a table, occasionally glaring in your direction, while the men cluster around you, their eyes bright, nodding eagerly at your descriptions of weeds and aphids.

You know something’s wrong here. Men don’t like gardening, do they? Jonathan certainly doesn’t. Finally one of the wives, a tall blonde with a tennis tan and good bones, stalks over and pulls her husband away by the sleeve. “Time to go home now,” she tells him, and curls her lip at you.

You know that look. You know a snarl when you see it, even if the wife’s too civilized to produce an actual growl.

You ask Diane about this the following week, while you’re in her garden, admiring her tomato plants. “Why do they hate me?” you ask Diane.

“Oh, Stella,” she says, and sighs. “You really don’t know, do you?” You shake your head, and she goes on. “They hate you because you’re young and beautiful, even though that’s not your fault. The ones who have to work hate you because you don’t, and the ones who don’t have to work, whose husbands support them, hate you because they’re afraid their husbands will leave them for younger, more beautiful women. Do you understand?”

You don’t, not really, even though you’re now twenty-eight going on thirty-five. “Their husbands can’t leave them for me,” you tell Diane. “I’m married to Jonathan. I don’t want any of their husbands.” But even as you say it, you know that’s not the point.

A few weeks later, you learn that the tall blonde’s husband has indeed left her, for an aerobics instructor twenty years his junior. “He showed me a picture,” Jonathan says, laughing. “She’s a big-hair bimbo. She’s not half as beautiful as you are.”

“What does that have to do with it?” you ask him. You’re angry, and you aren’t sure why. You barely know the blonde, and it’s not as if she’s been nice to you. “His poor wife! That was a terrible thing for him to do!”

“Of course it was,” Jonathan says soothingly.

“Would you leave me if I wasn’t beautiful anymore?” you ask him.

“Nonsense, Stella. You’ll always be beautiful.”

But that’s when Jonathan’s going on thirty-eight and you’re going on thirty-five. The following year, the balance begins to shift. He’s going on thirty-nine; you’re going on forty-two. You take exquisite care of yourself, and really, you’re as beautiful as ever, but there are a few wrinkles now, and it takes hours of crunches to keep your stomach as flat as it used to be.

Doing crunches, weeding in the garden, you have plenty of time to think. In a year, two at the most, you’ll be old enough to be Jonathan’s mother, and you’re starting to think he might not like that. And you’ve already gotten wind of catty faculty-wife gossip about how quickly you’re showing your age. The faculty wives see every wrinkle, even through artfully applied cosmetics.

During that thirty-five to forty-two year, Diane and her husband move away, so now you have no one with whom to discuss your wrinkles or the catty faculty wives. You don’t want to talk to Jonathan about any of it. He still tells you how beautiful you are, and you still have satisfying sportfucks. You don’t want to give him any ideas about declining desirability.

You do a lot of gardening that year: flowers—especially roses—and herbs, and some tomatoes in honor of Diane, and because Jonathan likes them. Your best times are the two-foot times in the garden and the four-foot times in the forest, and you think it’s no coincidence that both of these involve digging around in the dirt. You write long letters to Diane, on e-mail or, sometimes, when you’re saying something you don’t want Jonathan to find on the computer, on old-fashioned paper. Diane doesn’t have much time to write back, but does send the occasional e-mail note, the even rarer postcard. You read a lot, too, everything you can find: newspapers and novels and political analysis, literary criticism, true crime, ethnographic studies. You startle some of Jonathan’s colleagues by casually dropping odd bits of information about their field, about other fields, about fields they’ve never heard of: forensic geography, agricultural ethics, poststructuralist mining. You think it’s no coincidence that the obscure disciplines you’re most interested in involve digging around in the dirt.

Some of Jonathan’s colleagues begin to comment not only on your beauty, but on your intelligence. Some of them back away a little bit. Some of the wives, although not many, become a little friendlier, and you start going out to lunch again, although not with anyone you like as much as Diane.

The following year, the trouble starts. Jonathan’s going on forty; you’re going on forty-nine. You both work out a lot; you both eat right. But Jonathan’s hardly wrinkled at all yet, and your wrinkles are getting harder to hide. Your stomach refuses to stay completely flat no matter how many crunches you do; you’ve developed the merest hint of cottage-cheese thighs. You forego your old look, the slinky, skin-tight look, for long flowing skirts and dresses, accented with plenty of silver. You’re going for exotic, elegant, and you’re getting there just fine; heads still turn to follow you in the supermarket. But the sportfucks are less frequent, and you don’t know how much of this is normal aging and how much is lack of interest on Jonathan’s part. He doesn’t seem quite as enthusiastic as he once did. He no longer brings you herbal tea and hot water bottles during your transitions; the walks in the woods are a little shorter than they used to be, the ball-throwing sessions in the meadows more perfunctory.

And then one of your new friends, over lunch, asks you tactfully if anything’s wrong, if you’re ill, because, well, you don’t look quite yourself. Even as you assure her that you’re fine, you know she means that you look a lot older than you did last year.

At home, you try to discuss this with Jonathan. “We knew it would be a problem eventually,” you tell him. “I’m afraid that other people are going to notice, that someone’s going to figure it out—”

“Stella, sweetheart, no one’s going to figure it out.” He’s annoyed, impatient. “Even if they think you’re aging unusually quickly, they won’t make the leap to Jessie. It’s not in their worldview. It wouldn’t occur to them even if you were aging a hundred years for every one of theirs. They’d just think you had some unfortunate metabolic condition, that’s all.”

Which, in a manner of speaking, you do. You wince. It’s been five weeks since the last sportfuck. “Does it bother you that I look older?” you ask Jonathan.

“Of course not, Stella!” But since he rolls his eyes when he says this, you’re not reassured. You can tell from his voice that he doesn’t want to be having this conversation, that he wants to be somewhere else, maybe watching TV. You recognize that tone. You’ve heard Jonathan’s colleagues use it on their wives, usually while staring at you.

You get through the year. You increase your workout schedule, mine Cosmo for bedroom tricks to pique Jonathan’s flagging interest, consider and reject liposuction for your thighs. You wish you could have a facelift, but the recovery period’s a bit too long, and you’re not sure how it would work with your transitions. You read and read and read, and command an increasingly subtle grasp of the implications of, the interconnections between, different areas of knowledge: ecotourism, Third World famine relief, art history, automobile design. Your lunchtime conversations become richer, your friendships with the faculty wives more genuine.

You know that your growing wisdom is the benefit of aging, the compensation for your wrinkles and for your fading—although fading slowly, as yet—beauty.

You also know that Jonathan didn’t marry you for wisdom.

And now it’s the following year, the year you’re old enough to be Jonathan’s mother, although an unwed teenage one: you’re going on fifty-six while he’s going on forty-one. Your silver hair’s losing its luster, becoming merely gray. Sportfucks coincide, more or less, with major national holidays. Your thighs begin to jiggle when you walk, so you go ahead and have the liposuction, but Jonathan doesn’t seem to notice anything but the outrageous cost of the procedure.

You redecorate the house. You take up painting, with enough success to sell some pieces in a local gallery. You start writing a book about gardening as a cure for ecotourism and agricultural abuses, and you negotiate a contract with a prestigious university press. Jonathan doesn’t pay much attention to any of this. You’re starting to think that Jonathan would only pay attention to a full-fledged Lon Chaney imitation, complete with bloody fangs, but if that was ever in your nature, it certainly isn’t now. Jonathan and Martha Stewart have civilized you.

On four legs, you’re still magnificent, eliciting exclamations of wonder from other pet owners when you meet them in the woods. But Jonathan hardly ever plays ball in the meadow with you anymore; sometimes he doesn’t even take you to the forest. Your walks, once measured in hours and miles, now clock in at minutes and suburban blocks. Sometimes Jonathan doesn’t even walk you. Sometimes he just shoos you out into the backyard to do your business. He never cleans up after you, either. You have to do that yourself, scooping old poop after you’ve returned to two legs.

A few times you yell at Jonathan about this, but he just walks away, even more annoyed than usual. You know you have to do something to remind him that he loves you, or loved you once; you know you have to do something to reinsert yourself into his field of vision. But you can’t imagine what. You’ve already tried everything you can think of.

There are nights when you cry yourself to sleep. Once, Jonathan would have held you; now he rolls over, turning his back to you, and scoots to the farthest edge of the mattress.

During that terrible time, the two of you go to a faculty party. There’s a new professor there, a female professor, the first one the Anthropology Department has hired in ten years. She’s in her twenties, with long black hair and perfect skin, and the men cluster around her the way they used to cluster around you.

Jonathan’s one of them.

Standing with the other wives, pretending to talk about new films, you watch Jonathan’s face. He’s rapt, attentive, totally focused on the lovely young woman, who’s talking about her research into ritual scarification in New Guinea. You see Jonathan’s eyes stray surreptitiously, when he thinks no one will notice, to her breasts, her thighs, her ass.

You know Jonathan wants to fuck her. And you know it’s not her fault, any more than it was ever yours. She can’t help being young and pretty. But you hate her anyway. Over the next few days, you discover that what you hate most, hate even more than Jonathan wanting to fuck this young woman, is what your hate is doing to you: to your dreams, to your insides. The hate’s your problem, you know; it’s not Jonathan’s fault, any more than his lust for the young professor is hers. But you can’t seem to get rid of it, and you can sense it making your wrinkles deeper, shriveling you as if you’re a piece of newspaper thrown into a fire.

You write Diane a long, anguished letter about as much of this as you can safely tell her. Of course, since she hasn’t been around for a few years, she doesn’t know how much older you look, so you simply say that you think Jonathan’s fallen out of love with you since you’re over forty now. You write the letter on paper, and send it through the mail.

Diane writes back, and not a postcard this time: she sends five single-spaced pages. She says that Jonathan’s probably going through a mid-life crisis. She agrees that his treatment of you is, in her words, “barbaric.” “Stella, you’re a beautiful, brilliant, accomplished woman. I’ve never known anyone who’s grown so much, or in such interesting ways, in such a short time. If Jonathan doesn’t appreciate that, then he’s an ass, and maybe it’s time to ask yourself if you’d be happier elsewhere. I hate to recommend divorce, but I also hate to see you suffering so much. The problem, of course, is economic: can you support yourself if you leave? Is Jonathan likely to be reliable with alimony? At least—small comfort, I know—there are no children who need to be considered in all this. I’m assuming that you’ve already tried couples therapy. If you haven’t, you should.”

This letter plunges you into despair. No, Jonathan isn’t likely to be reliable with alimony. Jonathan isn’t likely to agree to couples therapy, either. Some of your lunchtime friends have gone that route, and the only way they ever got their husbands into the therapist’s office was by threatening divorce on the spot. If you tried this, it would be a hollow threat. Your unfortunate metabolic condition won’t allow you to hold any kind of normal job, and your writing and painting income won’t support you, and Jonathan knows all that as well as you do. And your continued safety’s in his hands. If he exposed you—

You shudder. In the old country, the stories ran to peasants with torches. Here, you know, laboratories and scalpels would be more likely. Neither option’s attractive.

You go to the art museum, because the bright, high, echoing rooms have always made it easier for you to think. You wander among abstract sculpture and impressionist paintings, among still-lifes and landscapes, among portraits. One of the portraits is of an old woman. She has white hair and many wrinkles; her shoulders stoop as she pours a cup of tea. The flowers on the china are the same pale, luminous blue as her eyes, which are, you realize, the same blue as your own.

The painting takes your breath away. This old woman is beautiful. You know the painter, a nineteenth-century English duke, thought so too.

You know Jonathan wouldn’t.

You decide, once again, to try to talk to Jonathan. You make him his favorite meal, serve him his favorite wine, wear your most becoming outfit, gray silk with heavy silver jewelry. Your silver hair and blue eyes gleam in the candlelight, and the candlelight, you know, hides your wrinkles.

This kind of production, at least, Jonathan still notices. When he comes into the dining room for dinner, he looks at you and raises his eyebrows. “What’s the occasion?”

“The occasion’s that I’m worried,” you tell him. You tell him how much it hurts you when he turns away from your tears. You tell him how much you miss the sportfucks. You tell him that since you clean up his messes more than three weeks out of every month, he can damn well clean up yours when you’re on four legs. And you tell him that if he doesn’t love you any more, doesn’t want you any more, you’ll leave. You’ll go back home, to the village on the edge of the forest near an Alp, and try to make a life for yourself.

“Oh, Stella,” he says. “Of course I still love you!” You can’t tell if he sounds impatient or contrite, and it terrifies you that you might not know the difference. “How could you even think of leaving me? After everything I’ve given you, everything I’ve done for you—”

“That’s been changing,” you tell him, your throat raw. “The changes are the problem. Jonathan—”

“I can’t believe you’d try to hurt me like this! I can’t believe—”

“Jonathan, I’m not trying to hurt you! I’m reacting to the fact that you’re hurting me! Are you going to stop hurting me, or not?”

He glares at you, pouting, and it strikes you that after all, he’s very young, much younger than you are. “Do you have any idea how ungrateful you’re being? Not many men would put up with a woman like you!”

“Jonathan!”

“I mean, do you have any idea how hard it’s been for me? All the secrecy, all the lying, having to walk the damn dog—”

“You used to enjoy walking the damn dog.” You struggle to control your breathing, struggle not to cry. “All right, look, you’ve made yourself clear. I’ll leave. I’ll go home.”

“You’ll do no such thing!”

You close your eyes. “Then what do you want me to do? Stay here, knowing you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you! You hate me! If you didn’t hate me, you wouldn’t be threatening to leave!” He gets up and throws his napkin down on the table; it lands in the gravy boat. Before leaving the room, he turns and says, “I’m sleeping in the guestroom tonight.”

“Fine,” you tell him dully. He leaves, and you discover that you’re trembling, shaking the way a terrier would, or a poodle. Not a wolf.

Well. He’s made himself very plain. You get up, clear away the uneaten dinner you spent all afternoon cooking, and go upstairs to your bedroom. Yours, now: not Jonathan’s anymore. You change into jeans and a sweatshirt. You think about taking a hot bath, because all your bones ache, but if you allow yourself to relax into warm water, you’ll fall apart; you’ll dissolve into tears, and there are things you have to do. Your bones aren’t aching just because your marriage has ended; they’re aching because the transition is coming up, and you need to make plans before it starts.

So you go into your study, turn on the computer, call up an internet travel agency. You book a flight back home for ten days from today, when you’ll definitely be back on two feet again. You charge the ticket to your credit card. The bill will arrive here in another month, but by then you’ll be long gone. Let Jonathan pay it.

Money. You have to think about how you’ll make money, how much money you’ll take with you—but you can’t think about it now. Booking the flight has hit you like a blow. Tomorrow, when Jonathan’s at work, you’ll call Diane and ask her advice on all of this. You’ll tell her you’re going home. She’ll probably ask you to come stay with her, but you can’t, because of the transitions. Diane, of all the people you know, might understand, but you can’t imagine summoning the energy to explain.

It takes all the energy you have to get yourself out of the study, back into your bedroom. You cry yourself to sleep, and this time Jonathan’s not even across the mattress from you. You find yourself wondering if you should have handled the dinner conversation differently, if you should have kept yourself from yelling at him about the turds in the yard, if you should have tried to seduce him first, if—

The ifs could go on forever. You know that. You think about going home. You wonder if you’ll still know anyone there. You realize how much you’ll miss your garden, and you start crying again.

Tomorrow, first thing, you’ll call Diane.

But when tomorrow comes, you can barely get out of bed. The transition has arrived early, and it’s a horrible one, the worst ever. You’re in so much pain you can hardly move. You’re in so much pain that you moan aloud, but if Jonathan hears, he doesn’t come in. During the brief pain-free intervals when you can think lucidly, you’re grateful that you booked your flight as soon as you did. And then you realize that the bedroom door is closed, and that Jessie won’t be able to open it herself. You need to get out of bed. You need to open the door.

You can’t. The transition’s too far advanced. It’s never been this fast; that must be why it hurts so much. But the pain, paradoxically, makes the transition seem longer than a normal one, rather than shorter. You moan, and whimper, and lose all track of time, and finally howl, and then, blessedly, the transition’s over. You’re on four feet.

You can get out of bed now, and you do, but you can’t leave the room. You howl, but if Jonathan’s here, if he hears you, he doesn’t come.

There’s no food in the room. You left the master bathroom toilet seat up, by chance, so there’s water, full of interesting smells. That’s good. And there are shoes to chew on, but they offer neither nourishment nor any real comfort. You’re hungry. You’re lonely. You’re afraid. You can smell Jonathan in the room—in the shoes, in the sheets, in the clothing in the closet—but Jonathan himself won’t come, no matter how much you howl.

And then, finally, the door opens. It’s Jonathan. “Jessie,” he says. “Poor Jessie. You must be so hungry; I’m sorry.” He’s carrying your leash; he takes your collar out of your underwear drawer and puts it on you and attaches the leash, and you think you’re going for a walk now. You’re ecstatic. Jonathan’s going to walk you again. Jonathan still loves you.

“Let’s go outside, Jess,” he says, and you dutifully trot down the stairs to the front door. But instead he says, “Jessie, this way. Come on, girl,” and leads you on your leash to the family room at the back of the house, to the sliding glass doors that open onto the back yard. You’re confused, but you do what Jonathan says. You’re desperate to please him. Even if he’s no longer quite Stella’s husband, he’s still Jessie’s alpha.

He leads you into the backyard. There’s a metal pole in the middle of the backyard. That didn’t used to be there. Your canine mind wonders if it’s a new toy. You trot up and sniff it, cautiously, and as you do, Jonathan clips one end of your leash onto a ring in the top of the pole.

You yip in alarm. You can’t move far; it’s not that long a leash. You strain against the pole, the leash, the collar, but none of them give; the harder you pull, the harder the choke collar makes it for you to breathe. Jonathan’s still next to you, stroking you, calm, reassuring. “It’s okay, Jess. I’ll bring you food and water, all right? You’ll be fine out here. It’s just for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll go for a nice long walk, I promise.”

Your ears perk up at “walk,” but you still whimper. Jonathan brings your food and water bowls outside and puts them within reach.

You’re so glad to have the food that you can’t think about being lonely or afraid. You gobble your Alpo, and Jonathan strokes your fur and tells you what a good dog you are, what a beautiful dog, and you think maybe everything’s going to be all right, because he hasn’t stroked you this much in months, hasn’t spent so much time talking to you, admiring you.

Then he goes inside again. You strain towards the house, as much as the choke collar will let you. You catch occasional glimpses of Jonathan, who seems to be cleaning. Here he is dusting the picture frames: here he is running the vacuum cleaner. Now he’s cooking—beef stroganoff, you can smell it—and now he’s lighting candles in the dining room.

You start to whimper. You whimper even more loudly when a car pulls into the driveway on the other side of the house, but you stop when you hear a female voice, because you want to hear what it says.

“So terrible that your wife left you. You must be devastated.”

“Yes, I am. But I’m sure she’s back in Europe now, with her family. Here, let me show you the house.” And when he shows her the family room, you see her: in her twenties, with long black hair and perfect skin. And you see how Jonathan looks at her, and you start to howl in earnest.

“Jesus,” Jonathan’s guest says, peering out at you through the dusk. “What the hell is that? A wolf?”

“My sister’s dog,” Jonathan says. “Husky-wolfhound mix. I’m taking care of her while my sister’s away on business. She can’t hurt you: don’t be afraid.” And he touches the woman’s shoulder to silence her fear, and she turns towards him, and they walk into the dining room. And then, after a while, the bedroom light flicks on, and you hear laughter and other noises, and you start to howl again.

You howl all night, but Jonathan doesn’t come outside. The neighbors yell at Jonathan a few times—Shut that dog up, goddammit!—but Jonathan will never come outside again. You’re going to die here, tethered to this stake.

But you don’t. Towards dawn you finally stop howling; you curl up and sleep, exhausted, and when you wake up the sun’s higher and Jonathan’s coming through the open glass doors. He’s carrying another dish of Alpo, and he smells of soap and shampoo. You can’t smell the woman on him.

You growl anyway, because you’re hurt and confused. “Jessie,” he says. “Jessie, it’s all right. Poor beautiful Jessie. I’ve been mean to you, haven’t I? I’m so sorry.”

He does sound sorry, truly sorry. You eat the Alpo, and he strokes you, the same way he did last night, and then he unsnaps your leash from the pole and says, “Okay, Jess, through the gate into the driveway, okay? We’re going for a ride.”

You don’t want to go for a ride. You want to go for a walk. Jonathan promised you a walk. You growl.

“Jessie! Into the car, now! We’re going to another meadow, Jess. It’s farther away than our old one, but someone told me he saw rabbits there, and he said it’s really big. You’d like to explore a new place, wouldn’t you?”

You don’t want to go to a new meadow. You want to go to the old meadow, the one where you know the smell of every tree and rock. You growl again.

“Jessie, you’re being a very bad dog! Now get in the car. Don’t make me call Animal Control.”

You whine. You’re scared of Animal Control, the people who wanted to take you away so long ago, when you lived in that other county. You know that Animal Control kills a lot of animals, in that county and in this one, and if you die as a wolf, you’ll stay a wolf. They’d never know about Stella. As Jessie, you’d have no way to protect yourself except your teeth, and that would only get you killed faster.

So you get into the car, although you’re trembling.

In the car, Jonathan seems more cheerful. “Good Jessie. Good girl. We’ll go to the new meadow and chase balls now, eh? It’s a big meadow. You’ll be able to run a long way.” And he tosses a new tennis ball into the backseat, and you chew on it, happily, and the car drives along, traffic whizzing past it. When you lift your head from chewing on the ball, you can see trees, so you put your head back down, satisfied, and resume chewing. And then the car stops, and Jonathan opens the door for you, and you hop out, holding your ball in your mouth.

This isn’t a meadow. You’re in the parking lot of a low concrete building that reeks of excrement and disinfectant and fear, fear, and from the building you hear barking and howling, screams of misery, and in the parking lot are parked two white Animal Control trucks.

You panic. You drop your tennis ball and try to run, but Jonathan has the leash, and he starts dragging you inside the building, and you can’t breathe because of the choke collar. You cough, gasping, trying to howl. “Don’t fight, Jessie. Don’t fight me. Everything’s all right.”

Everything’s not all right. You can smell Jonathan’s desperation, can taste your own, and you should be stronger than he is but you can’t breathe, and he’s saying “Jessie, don’t bite me, it will be worse if you bite me, Jessie,” and the screams of horror still swirl from the building and you’re at the door now, someone’s opened the door for Jonathan, someone says, “Let me help you with that dog,” and you’re scrabbling on the concrete, trying to dig your claws into the sidewalk just outside the door, but there’s no purchase, and they’ve dragged you inside, onto the linoleum, and everywhere are the smells and sounds of terror. Above your own whimpering you hear Jonathan saying, “She jumped the fence and threatened my girlfriend, and then she tried to bite me, so I have no choice, it’s such a shame, she’s always been such a good dog, but in good conscience I can’t—”

You start to howl, because he’s lying, lying, you never did any of that!

Now you’re surrounded by people, a man and two women, all wearing colorful cotton smocks that smell, although faintly, of dog shit and cat pee. They’re putting a muzzle on you, and even though you can hardly think through your fear—and your pain, because Jonathan’s walked back out the door, gotten into the car and driven away, Jonathan’s left you here—even with all of that, you know you don’t dare bite or snap. You know your only hope is in being a good dog, in acting as submissive as possible. So you whimper, crawl along on your stomach, try to roll over on your back to show your belly, but you can’t, because of the leash.

“Hey,” one of the women says. The man’s left. She bends down to stroke you. “Oh, God, she’s so scared. Look at her.”

“Poor thing,” the other woman says. “She’s beautiful.”

“I know.”

“Looks like a wolf mix.”

“I know.” The first woman sighs and scratches your ears, and you whimper and wag your tail and try to lick her hand through the muzzle. Take me home, you’d tell her if you could talk. Take me home with you. You’ll be my alpha, and I’ll love you forever. I’m a good dog.

The woman who’s scratching you says wistfully, “We could adopt her out in a minute, I bet.”

“Not with that history. Not if she’s a biter. Not even if we had room. You know that.”

“I know.” The voice is very quiet. “Wish I could take her myself, though.”

“Take home a biter? Lily, you have kids!”

Lily sighs. “Yeah, I know. Makes me sick, that’s all.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. Come on, let’s get this over with. Did Mark go to get the room ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. What’d the owner say her name was?”

“Stella.”

“Okay. Here, give me the leash. Stella, come. Come on, Stella.”

The voice is sad, gentle, loving, and you want to follow it, but you fight every step, anyway, until Lily and her friend have to drag you past the cages of other dogs, who start barking and howling again, whose cries are pure terror, pure loss. You can hear cats grieving, somewhere else in the building, and you can smell the room at the end of the hall, the room to which you’re getting inexorably closer. You smell the man named Mark behind the door, and you smell medicine, and you smell the fear of the animals who’ve been taken to that room before you. But overpowering everything else is the worst smell, the smell that makes you bare your teeth in the muzzle and pull against the choke collar and scrabble again, helplessly, for a purchase you can’t get on the concrete floor: the pervasive, metallic stench of death.