Image credit: Dog photo by Jamie Street (made avallable to SquareSpace gallery).

Carol put in her application to adopt Brute.

“Really?” the attendant said. “We thought he might be too much dog for you.”

“In what way?”

“He’s very strong, you know.”

“That’s okay. I could use some strength around here.”

The attendant, a young woman with hair twisted up in a messy mop, gave her a skeptical look. Carol stared her down. She’d made up her mind. Nothing was going to keep her from Brute.

“It’ll be a couple of days for us to process the papers.”

“Fine.” Carol wrote a check to the shelter and went straight to the pet store where she bought more dog food and treats and a few sweaters although L.A. in September was still warm.

“Maybe we can have a playdate with the dogs,” Dan, her ex, said when he called and she made the mistake of telling him about Brute. Dan had rescued a dog named Big Black after their old dog, Dog, had died under his care.

“Playdate,” Carol said. “You’re a riot.”

“You’ve never met Big Black,” he said. “You might like him.”

“Maybe you forgot, it’s you I don’t like.”

“I put your name down as next of kin, if something happens to me you would get Big Black.”

“I’m not your kin. Maybe you also forgot you have a son.”

“Hardly. He’s coming to visit me.”

Carol felt hot. Fucking shit. Their son was flying across the country and she didn’t even know? “Go fuck yourself,” she said, and hung up.

She was afraid the horrible truth was that Dan and their son were more alike than not, and she hated Dan. But she could never hate her son. Unless maybe he turned out to be a Nazi or something. She imagined there were mothers during the war who hated their Nazi sons. Mothers who had to pretend their sons were dead when they were still alive. Don’t be stupid, she thought. Her son wasn’t a Nazi. Still, she had a nightmare of him with an evil smile and wearing that dreaded uniform. She woke up sweating from the ordeal. She took a cold shower, dressed, and went to work.

When she walked in the office Troy was working on an intricate pattern for a glamorous wedding gown. “You look like shit squared, sweetie. No sleep?”

As head designer, Carol was Troy’s boss, but she also adored him and they were friends. Her dream was one day she would wake up and he wouldn’t be gay and he would take her in his much younger, muscled arms and they would sip martinis in the lavender light of Tuscany in spring.

“I thought maybe my son could be a Nazi.”

“Well, that’ll keep you up all night.” He handed her a fresh cup of coffee. “Drink this, honey. Not all assholes are Nazis.”

“Thanks. That’s reassuring.” Troy had met her son once several years ago. “I’m picking Brute up after work today, wanna come by and meet him?”

“Much as I love the whole idea of anyone or anything named Brute, I can’t make it. Date night with Boris.”

Boris was Troy’s boyfriend and Carol liked him so much it was hard to be jealous. They attended the opera and the ballet; Troy favored elegant bow ties with a contrasting pocket square, while Boris was usually in dark pinstripes and white silk accessories. There wasn’t anyone in Los Angeles who came close to their style.

“If you’re not busy, why don’t you bring Brute around on Sunday? I’ll make brunch.” Troy said.

Carol had never been to Troy’s house and she tingled with anticipation. “I just hope Brute won’t be a bother.”

“Sweetheart, dogs adore me. Though too bad you didn’t adopt a female, because you know how I love bitches.” He smiled his big handsome smile. “I know, bad joke. Come at eleven.”

Carol decided she would bake the apple cider cake recipe she’d seen in the New York Times to bring on Sunday. She didn’t subscribe to the NYT, but she’d figured out how to find the recipes. After work she bought the ingredients, then went to pick up Brute at the shelter. She brought his new collar and leash and had the proper belt to strap him safely in the car. He wasn’t thrilled with any of it, but she gave him a treat and told him everything would be all right and he licked her hand. She already loved him to pieces.

When they got home she took Brute for a long walk. The wind picked up, energizing them both. Then she gave him dinner and he took a nap while she baked the cake, which turned out lopsided. She made herself a tuna sandwich on toast and took Brute for another walk before bedtime. Early the next morning, she found a destroyed apple cider cake and Brute vomiting in the kitchen. She checked with the vet and gave him some cooked rice to soothe his stomach. She didn’t scold him. It was a cake. He was a dog. She took him for another walk and bought more ingredients and baked another cake. Lopsided again. They spent Saturday getting to know each other and Carol tried a couple of different sweaters on him; he seemed mystified, but didn’t balk. Sunday morning at 10:45 they left for brunch at Troy’s.

Boris greeted them at the door. “A cake. How wonderful.” Boris wore a tight pink tee shirt and jeans. His skin glowed. She tried not to stare.

“And Brute,” Troy said. “Come in, you old dog, you.”

“He’s really only two,” Carol said. “Still a puppy in a way.” She cautiously took off his leash and he walked through the house like a detective looking for a dead body. When he finished his rounds, she gave him a chew toy and he crawled under the table. It appeared she had adopted a perfect dog.

Troy had on a chintz apron over khaki shorts and a white shirt, the sleeves neatly rolled. The small house was decorated to perfection: modern mixed with traditional and unexpected splashes of color. “Your house is beautiful,” she said. “I’m not surprised.”

“What’s the point of being gay if you don’t have good taste?” Boris said.

They ate quiche and Brute slept under the table like a gentleman. Hot milk sputtered from the shiny Italian coffee machine as they lingered over lopsided apple cider cake. Brute ventured out from under the table and drank some water, then rolled over to have his tummy rubbed. Troy willingly obliged. Carol’s phone beeped. It was her son, sending her a text. At the airport, it read. Can you pick me up?

“What the fuck,” she said. “My son, who never even told me he was coming to visit his crazy-ass father and hadn’t mentioned seeing me, now wants me to pick him up at the airport.”

“LAX on a Sunday, that’s brutal,” Boris said.

“Tell him to take an Uber,” Troy said.

“Do I dare?”

Troy and Boris nodded.

“You dare because your time is valuable, you are valuable,” Boris said.

“You are.” Troy was down on the floor doing bicycle motions with Brutes front paws.

Carol loved Boris and Troy so much she wanted to cry. She texted her son: Tied up, better catch an Uber, thinking she was a horrible mother, but she felt powerful.

Her son responded, no problem. One of those catch-all phrases younger people used ad nauseum. Instead of you’re welcome, they said no problem. Freaking irritating.

On the way home Carol and Brute stopped at the dog park. A first for them. Carol was aware she had become we, they, them; like a couple, it was just her and Brute. She kept him close to her on the leash as dogs and their owners sniffed them out, circling Brute who seemed both interested and aloof. Carol wasn’t sure what was more unsettling, a pack of unleashed dogs or their unleashed owners.

“Who’s this squat fellow?” said a squat man in a red puffer jacket.

“His name is Brute.” She took a few steps back, holding tight on the leash. It felt like it was just her and Brute against an invading horde.

“Aren’t we cute?” A round woman chirped as she bent down, thrusting her face close to Brute, who appeared alarmed. Then he did something Carol had never seen before: he bared his teeth and uttered a low growl, and she knew for certain, if she didn’t already, that he was her dog for all time. Because if she could she would have growled at the woman too.

The dog owners delivered their critique: “big ears,” “short legs,” references to, “our little fur babies.” All of it in child-like, syrupy voices. What was it about dog ownership that made certain people act insane? She remembered an elderly neighbor who carried around a chihuahua wrapped in a blanket like a baby. Carol thought she was nuts, which was later confirmed when the woman, butcher knife in hand, ran down the street after her husband. Now Carol felt like she’d stepped into a netherworld of doggie weirdos and she hurried to extricate herself and Brute.

“Phew, made it out alive,” she said once they were in the car, and she turned to see him smiling in the backseat.

At home, she changed into pink sweatpants and lounged on the sofa with Brute, who had jumped up after she’d spread out a thin blanket which he waded into a pile, then plopped down, staking his territory. “You’re happy here, aren’t you, Brutie-boy?” He looked up at her like he was. When her phone rang, Carol was pretty sure it was her son.

“Dad and I want to take you to dinner,” he said.

She was so surprised she almost couldn’t speak. “What? Why?” Last thing she wanted was to go to dinner, or anywhere else, with Dan. And she’d already assumed seeing her son was not part of his agenda.

“Some things to discuss,” he said.

“What things? Just tell me now.”

“We’d rather not.”

We? When did her son and her ex become we? Was it like the we of her and Brute? “I have a new dog. I can’t leave him alone.”

“Well then we’ll bring over a pizza, how about seven?”

“Seven what?”

“O’clock. We’ll bring a pizza at seven o’clock.” Her son said like it was something that occurred on a regular basis.

Carol looked around her kitchen as if the perfect excuse that would get her out of what sounded increasingly like an ambush might be posted on the refrigerator door. What the fuck did they want from her? The cat clock on the yellow wall read six o’clock and it was already dark.

Then it started to rain, reminding her of the night years ago when her ex-husband showed up at her door asking to come back after his secretary had left him. Carol’s son had returned at the same moment with his then-wife who wore a beret. That’s when Carol ran out of her own house and drove along the Pacific Coast Highway to Duke’s where she sat at the bar and drank multiple martinis. She couldn’t do that now because she couldn’t take Brute into Duke’s. Maybe she should move to Paris where dogs were allowed in restaurants and bars. She’d gone to Paris right after college and before she’d married Dan and it wasn’t the first time she thought she should have stayed there forever. Now, she realized she couldn’t stop her son and Dan and the stupid pizza.

They arrived exactly at seven with a giant box and a giant dog. Dan had saddled up Big Black and brought him along. They stood out of the rain on the porch.

“Are you out of your mind?” she said. “You can’t bring that dog in here.”

“I heard you had a rescue, I thought they should meet.”

“You thought wrong. No way is he coming in my house.”

“Mom, really,” her son said.

He looked shorter than the last time she saw him, though she wasn’t sure when that was. “Stay out of this. My dog has only been here three days; he’s just learning it’s his house. And, he’s fucking not sharing it with Big Black.”

“We can’t leave him outside,” Dan said.

“No, you can take him, yourself, and that frigging pizza home.” She was thrilled that Dan’s idiot move had given her the excuse she needed to keep them out. If she ever wrote an advice column she would tell women to marry a stupid man so later when you divorced him you would have a constant supply of reasons to affirm you’d done the right thing. Why you married him in the first place was another question.

“I can’t believe you won’t let us in.”

“Sure you can, Dan. I don’t like you.”

Dan took a step back off the porch, taking Big Black with him. Her son took a step forward. “Mom? What are you doing?”

“Saving my sanity.” She remained on the threshold with the front door only partially open behind her. “You look good, by the way. Maybe Sally, the mamo tech, was a good move for you. You should probably get back to her.”

“We wanted to talk to you about the property, and, uh, what will happen if….”

“Oh, now I get it. That small investment my parents left to me. You want to know what will happen to it when I die. Of course, you do.”

“Well, everyone needs to make plans, just in case.” Her son’s appearance had changed and he seemed feverish.

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” she said. “Everything is under control.”

Dan, still standing behind her son, with Big Black’s leash in one hand, pizza box in the other. “Everyone should know your plans.”

“Not really, and certainly not you, Dan.” She thought of her will in the freezer. “And, by the way, you’re older than me and no doubt you’ll die first. But I forgot, you don’t have anything anyone wants.”

Big Black, who had probably sniffed Brute inside, was getting unruly and Dan tightened his grip on the leash, though he seemed to have little control over him. Whatever training Dan had done with Big Black had obviously failed.

“It doesn’t really matter, but if you want to know, I’m leaving everything to the Happy Pup Dog Shelter.”

“What?” her son said.

“Are you crazy?” Dan said.

“You can’t, I mean, you shouldn’t.” Her son stammered. “When did you decide to do this?

“Hmm, let me think. About ten minutes ago.” She backed into the house. “Night now.” She slammed the door in their doughy faces. Big Black barked loud and threatening. There was a crack of thunder.

Brute came over and nudged at her hand. She scratched his ear.

Janet Clare is the author of the acclaimed novel TIME IS THE LONGEST DISTANCE (Vine Leaves Press) and she states: When I first started to write a novel I thought it was the hardest thing I could imagine doing, but it was too late. I had fallen in love with making things up, taking the time to research and discover my characters, continually surprised by what they say and do.

Originally from New York, I live in Los Angeles with my husband. I studied at UC Berkeley and UCLA, and I’ve had short fiction and essays published online and anthologized. Time Is The Longest Distance is my first novel.