The next morning, Rebecca woke up on the couch with a stiff neck and diagonal lines on her face from the throw pillow she’d slept on. She was already late for work. She showered and dressed quickly. As she stepped into the alley behind her house, en route to her car, Rebecca was surprised to hear a dog barking in her neighbours’ yard. The dog was new, but as if prompted by its bark, she remembered the dream in which Lisa forgave her.
With her keys in her hand, Rebecca wondered how she could have believed, even momentarily, that it had been a memory and not a dream. Still, every detail remained as vivid as if it had actually happened: the feel of the flannel pyjamas, the bitter taste of the coffee and the toast, her sister becoming thinner and thinner until she faded away. Rebecca became very sad, and was then overwhelmed by the feeling that something was missing.
The feeling was so strong, and hit her so suddenly, that she began searching her purse for her keys before realizing they were in her hand. She continued looking, easily finding her wallet and her reading glasses. Still the feeling remained. Then the dog barked again, and Rebecca’s attention turned to how she was going to get to her car.
Her neighbours were the only house on the block that didn’t have a fence between the alley and their yard. This posed a problem, since Rebecca’s fear of dogs was profound and she had to pass their yard to get to her car. Taking slow steps, she walked down the alley, past her neighbours’ yard. Looking to her right, she saw the dog before the dog saw her. It faced the house and was tied to a tree in the middle of the yard. It had thick muscles where its legs attached to its body, and ripples of skin at the back of its neck.
Sniffing the air, the dog turned and growled. Rebecca’s fear grew. The dog’s natural ability to sense fear was intensified by Rebecca’s natural ability to project her emotions. The dog curled its upper lip and growled again. Rebecca remained still. This had happened before. It happened each and every time she encountered a dog. She knew that her best move was to remain still and assess. Just below the tree the dog was tied to, Rebecca could see several coils of the chain—but the length of the leash was impossible to determine.
Since she did not know whether the dog could reach the alley, Rebecca closed her eyes and pretended she was wearing workboots. The workboots she imagined were tan. They were well worn and steel-toed. Silver lines showed through scuffs at the toe. The lines glinted in the sun as Rebecca lifted her right boot, pulled it back and swung it forward. Boot met dog. The dog’s head snapped back. Its lower jaw went left and its upper jaw went right. It yelped.
Opening her eyes, Rebecca looked down. The dog took a half-step backwards and lowered its head. She walked directly in front of it. She reminded herself that in four steps she would be past it. Her feet felt heavy. She took three confident strides, but on the fourth she looked down and saw black Italian leather instead of scuffed tan workboots. Her body tensed. The dog’s growl became a loud, angry bark. She heard the chain as the dog begin running towards her. Rebecca looked up. A string of drool hung out of its mouth. Its ears bent back. As its front legs left the ground, it opened its jaws. Squeezing her eyes closed, Rebecca crossed her arms in front of her face.
Rebecca’s fear of dogs stemmed from a very specific moment, when she was eight years old and something had barked in her neighbours’ backyard. It sounded like a dog, but Rebecca couldn’t be sure. She stopped brushing her doll’s hair, sat still and listened. The fence separating her backyard from theirs was six feet tall, much too tall for her to climb. However, her house was in the process of being painted, and the painters had left a ladder leaning against the west side of the house. It was long enough that tipping it backwards would put the end of the ladder against the top of the fence.
Rebecca’s father had warned her and Lisa not to touch any of the painters’ equipment, but when the bark came again, Rebecca became certain it was not the bark of a dog—maybe a tiger, perhaps a wild boar, but definitely something much more extraordinary than an everyday dog. It was something Rebecca had to see. Setting down her doll, she walked up to the ladder. She crawled underneath the bottom step. With her back against the wall of her house, she began to push. It was easier to make the ladder move than she’d expected, although it was also much louder when it fell on the fence.
Rebecca looked up and waited, and when her mother did not appear, she began to climb. Because the base of the ladder had remained relatively close to the house, the arc wasn’t steep. It was, however, very wobbly. Twice she almost fell. When she reached the top, she looked over the fence.
The dog saw Rebecca before Rebecca saw the dog. She tried to pull away, but the dog had already jumped. Though she jerked her head back, it was too late; the dog bit into her throat. Or so she thought as her momentum carried her backwards. In truth, the dog had only managed to get hold of her T-shirt, ripping the collar. But Rebecca thought she was mortally wounded as she fell off the ladder, which jiggled, turned and then fell on top of her. She woke up in the hospital with her arm in a cast and a profound fear of dogs.
Although Rebecca put the ripped T-shirt inside one of the growing number of shoeboxes under her bed, it did not trap her new fear of dogs, only her fear of this one specific dog: T-Bone. While it was true that no other dogs or people could feel her fear of T-Bone, this helped little with her fear of dogs in general. It was an important lesson for Rebecca: objects stored only kept the emotions specific to the moment.
Keeping her arms crossed in front of her face, Rebecca heard the dog’s jaws snapping shut. But then, nothing happened. When nothing continued to happen, she opened her eyes. The dog’s leash was taut. It stood on its hind legs, with its face less than an inch from hers. Its breath was sour. It barked. Flinching, Rebecca took a step backwards. The dog fell to all fours, then jumped back up. It strained against its leash and continued to snarl.
“Fuck you, dog,” Rebecca whispered. She turned and walked away. Four steps later, as the dog continued to bark, Rebecca turned around and yelled “Fuck you, dog!” At the end of the alley, she yelled again. “Fuck! You! Dog!” Standing in front of her car, having already unlocked the door, Rebecca stopped and turned around again. “Fuck you!” she yelled. “Fuck you, dog!”
She was in her car, still muttering “Fuck you, dog, fuck you,” when she realized that her feelings about Lisa were no longer just foggy; they were absent. Rebecca began sobbing, not for the loss of her sister, but for the loss of every emotion she had for her. Rebecca shut off the engine and pulled the keys from the ignition. She cried for some time.
She continued to sniffle as she drove towards the hospital. As she signalled her entry into the parking lot, she had a thought. Was it possible that her feelings about Lisa had been eliminated when she threw away her keepsakes? And if so, would throwing away any keepsake eradicate whatever emotional history was attached to it? It seemed ridiculous. It was the least likely explanation for the sudden absence of her feelings for Lisa. But realizing that the presence of the dog in her neighbours’ yard was the perfect opportunity to test this theory, she turned off her signal and drove directly to E.Z. Self Storage, where she parked and went immediately to the second floor.
Hanging the open padlock on the door of unit #207, she returned to the stack of boxes in the front right corner. She removed the top two boxes and then opened the one marked fears. She tipped it over, spilling its contents across the concrete floor. With the toe of her right shoe, she pushed objects out of the way until she found a child’s T-shirt with a ripped collar.
Rebecca left unit #207 with the ripped T-shirt in her hand. Opening the back door of E.Z. Self Storage, she went straight to the Dumpster. A plywood bookshelf leaned out of the left corner, and two torn La-Z-Boy chairs were piled on the right. She scrunched up the T-shirt, making a tiny ball of cloth, which she threw into the air. It opened while still going up and then drifted lazily back down towards the middle of the Dumpster.
“Fuck you, T-Bone,” she said. “Fuck you.”
As the T-shirt landed amidst the trash, Rebecca felt the pain in her heart again, only this time it was much less intense. It was gone before she reached her car. Checking her watch, she saw that less than an hour had passed since she’d left her house. Just after she started the engine, she had a daydream in which she was a child playing in her parents’ backyard. Digging in her sandbox, she uncovered a set of miniature dogs. She lined them up in the grass and taught them to bark the national anthem. Again, this felt like a memory, though she knew it wasn’t. She’d practically forgotten about it by the time she parked on the side street behind her house and walked back to the alley.
When she reached her neighbours’ backyard, the dog was still there, still tied to the tree. Its muscles were just as thick, its teeth just as sharp. Rebecca walked towards it. The dog did not growl or bark. As Rebecca continued to approach, she thought about the moment with T-Bone when her T-shirt had ripped and her fear of dogs had started. Although the facts remained vivid, emotionally it was if the event had never happened. Her fear of dogs had been completely wiped out. This reality was made impossible to deny by the fact that, as Rebecca stood next to the dog, it still didn’t bark, growl or snarl. It lifted up its head and, when Rebecca reached out her hand, the dog licked it, its tail wagging.