A Heartbeat at My Feet

Chapter One: Cicero

Cicero, a terrier of indeterminate breeding from Campania, opens his account in a reflective, philosophical register. He recalls that Plato said a dog has the soul of a philosopher, a notion he wholeheartedly embraced after Giorgio, the man who would become his first owner, shared it with him. Cicero and Giorgio agreed on most everything, and Cicero has always fancied himself something of a thinker. Thinking, he notes with dry wit, is precisely what brought Giorgio to him in the first place.

The Piazza

Cicero was born down in the village with his siblings and, weeks later, herded into an infant corral in the central piazza so neighbors could admire the puppies and decide they needed one. Young as he was, he feels deeply skeptical of the people who appear before him all morning. Children hoist him up in the hot sun with small, sticky hands, exclaiming che bel cucciolo! and bau bau!, slinging him about until he whines. Horrified, he bites several of them with his sharp little teeth. Village women coo at him with sugary words and ridiculous intonations, trying to coax him forward, but he scoots away from their grasping hands, letting his siblings tumble in his stead.

Then Giorgio arrives, and Cicero recalls the moment well. Giorgio is in a dreadful state: his eyes deeply mournful over a gentle smile, his silvering hair like a bit of fog caught on his head. He asks the disinterested breeder what the little white one in the back is called, and when told the dog has no name, he proclaims the puppy should be named Cicero. He appears to be an intellectual, an old soul. He holds out his hand, palm up, the knobs of his fingers unfolding, and Cicero senses it immediately: Giorgio's heart beats within him, big and open, his essence traveling down into his fingerprints. Sometimes a dog simply knows when he has found his match. Cicero gathers his courage and crawls into Giorgio's outstretched palm.

Cicero learns later that it was he who rescued Giorgio that day. Giorgio takes him home to his villa on the hill, a place that smells of prosciutto and furniture polish and echoes with loneliness. For a man with such a large heart, Giorgio is quite dogless, a tragic combination Cicero can rectify.

The Painful Confession

Even now, it pains Cicero greatly to divulge what he must. He lives with Giorgio for eight wonderful years, yet Giorgio is not his final owner, and for this he holds himself entirely at fault. He will never forgive himself for not paying closer attention, for lapsing in his duties, for failing to take fate itself in his jaws the way more athletic dogs snatch flying objects from the sky mid-flight. He could have changed everything. He will not burden his listener with the entirety of his tale now, but his story began once again, a restart, many years after he rescued Giorgio, and in quite a different manner.

The Ruins of Pompeii

The second act commences in Pompeii. Imagine a middle-aged, highly domesticated canine lying on an ancient stone step in the archeological site, alone. The ruins are not a place he has ever set foot before, and he is loath to inhabit them, though he is quite sure he will not live there long. He is dying, he explains, of heartbreak. The ruins smell of shoes from far and wide, of trash cans that overflow every weekend, and of an uncouth collection of feral dogs who have taken up residence well before his arrival, fighting, begging scraps from tourists, and shitting indiscriminately throughout the grounds. Cicero keeps apart from them, observing from his stone stoop, unmoving except for the flick of his eyes.

His thoughts drift to his warm bed back home, to poetry, to the local butcher who calls out ciao, bello! every morning and tosses him something delightful. He will likely never see the butcher again. Here he is, a well-educated dog with rather discriminating tastes, surrounded by mayhem and fleas, lost in every way possible. The word shudders through him. The best of dogs can become lost, certainly, but it is not a predicament he ever expected for himself: Cicero, who trotted alongside Giorgio with nary a leash on his glossy collar, who never lowered himself to chase whatever small flighty animals crossed his path, nor pursue a scent, nor trust a stranger. He always protected his dignity. More crucially, he always had Giorgio to follow.

Now he remains frozen on his stone, gazing up at passersby, ignoring a mop of a dog that comes to sniff at his unwagging tail, trying to avoid the indecency of scratching at his tiny, newly acquired residents. And he waits. It is a lonely place in which he has landed, a low place where the only future he can imagine is death. Dogs, he reflects, do die readily of grief; their hearts beat so fully for those they love that sometimes they cannot carry on without them.

But he does not expire from grief in the ruins of Pompeii. Looking back from his current perch, he understands that while he believed he awaited death, he was not fully resigned to it. Something else lurked in his shattered heart, flitting about like a shadow: belief, perhaps, or faith. He has had time to think on it now, and he is a thinker. Perhaps sorrow cannot be separated from hope. And perhaps, despite everything, he was still hoping to be found.

Chapter Two: Josie

Chapter Two: Josie

Josie Ballard drops a skein of fettuccine into a burbling pot and lets herself imagine the shape of her life about to change. Three more nights in this kitchen, she thinks. Three, and then she and Mark wake up in a different house on the other side of the world for two entire months. It astonishes her, even though she's the one who bought the tickets, booked the apartment, and planned every stop on the itinerary.

That week was her last as a full-time librarian's assistant. Next fall, she'd go part-time and spend the other half of her days forging a new path, finally. She isn't sure yet what the path will be, but the prospect of freedom and choices makes her giddy. Her middle school clientele keeps her grounded, though: kids slouching through the library doors, dropping long-overdue books into the returns bin. Josie chides the worst offenders over bent pages and curved spines and moisture damage, but they shrug, offer fist bumps, and call out, "Have a bussin' summer, Mrs. B!" She grins and lets them off the hook. The kids know she's no disciplinarian. She's just glad they're reading at all. She thinks of her own son, Charlie, now finished with his second year of college, who lost books and left them in the rain and forgot them in the netherworlds of successive lockers, yet still became a reader. That's what really matters, Josie muses as she shelves and alphabetizes, her mind drifting to Italy.

At forty-two years old, she's on her way somewhere new. The word sparkles.

The spell breaks when Mark bangs through the front door calling for help with the groceries. Josie hurries down the stairs, her mind still catching on the thought: our last groceries in Kansas. She's been doing this for two weeks, marking finalities: last haircut, last pharmacy trip, last trash day. Ridiculous, she knows, since they'll be back in August, but she's been nearly nowhere all her adult life, and a little romanticism seeps in. She finds Mark stooped over a grocery bag, his tie rumpled, his tall, slender frame exhausted. He nods distractedly about the marinara and trip snacks, and Josie feels that familiar ache: he isn't fully seeing her, his mind still snagged on some crag of his day. The ache in her heart, she realizes, might be guilt. The trip was her dream, her doing, and it's saddled him with extra pressure: overtime at the insurance office, securing accounts for his absence, even though he plans to work remotely from Italy. She knows he's worried. He's such a good man. She stretches up to kiss his cheek and asks if he knows how much she adores him. His lips quirk. "I have an inkling."

While Mark fetches the remaining bags, Josie climbs the stairs and lets her thoughts run: even with the pressure, won't the trip be good for them? After two years with an empty nest, their days have become as bland as unbleached flour. They need excitement, or fun, or novelty. The pasta is boiling over when she dumps the groceries on the counter, and she's fanning the foam when Mark reappears with the last two bags.

"How was your last day?" he asks. He seems to come back online, suddenly hers again. She tells him it was chaotic, but she kept thinking about how it was her last full day there. "Mark, I can't even believe it, after all these years—"

His smile fades. He lifts his glasses and wipes the lenses, and Josie's elation sinks, shrinking like a pricked balloon. She's known him long enough to sense something coming. Outside the window, the sun dips behind the neighbor's trees, sucking the golden light out of the kitchen.

"Jo. About that." He sighs, and she fills the silence, trying to avoid the trap she feels descending. It's a pattern they've lived before: Josie takes steps to leave her job, and Mark tells her, as departure draws closer, that it isn't possible after all. She tells him the administration already expects her to return part-time. "Can you undo it?" he asks, his blue eyes earnest behind his glasses.

She hesitates. Yes, she could. The school is desperate for her to stay. She's only an assistant, but the librarian isn't fond of work, and Josie has stepped into many of her roles, balancing the entire library on her own slender, poorly paid shoulders. But it seemed like time, finally, to pursue something new. Her mother died early in the year, and her father insisted on giving her money her mom had tucked away. That money was supposed to be her window to leap through, a chance to change her life. Maybe even to open a little flower shop somewhere, or at least work in one. A long-nurtured dream.

"We've been talking about me going part-time for so long," she says, trailing off, searching the linoleum for direction. "I thought it was a firm plan, that I could finally make a change with Mom's gift—"

Mark interrupts. They need the money for other things. Charlie's making noise about medical school. Mark's work is slow, and it's been slow. And now they've taken on the expense of this huge trip. "I don't know why we're even doing it, honestly."

The words hit her like pins. He'd planned the trip with her, months ago, nearly as excited as she was. They figured he could work remotely, and that renting a single apartment for the summer would keep costs low. After twenty years of longing for an adventure, it had seemed almost reasonable. He spent all day crunching numbers. The quarter didn't go like he thought. They need her income.

Josie nods, feeling the steam from the boiling water roll against her back, moistening her neck under her ponytail. Her heart bends with disappointment, but she knows he's right. The trip is for her, after all. Her dream. Her doing. She can't ask for so much all at once. Maybe it's wrong to ask for so much at all. She nods again, unable to say the words but already knowing she'll call the principal in the morning, explain her circumstances, and the principal will call the district office on her behalf, and nothing will change when she gets back.

But still, they're leaving. Her heart straightens out a bit. She manages a smile. Mark leans forward to kiss her forehead. "Mind if I take a shower? We can talk about it more over dinner."

He vanishes down the hallway. Josie sighs and stares through the steamy window at the setting sun. The single-paned window has paint bubbling around it from condensation. She'll need to fix that when they get back. Also the dingy front door could use touching up. She wants to cry but stifles the urge. "It's all right," she whispers aloud, even though the idea of another full year in the school library opens a sinkhole within her.

She turns to the grocery bags. It isn't that she hates her job, she thinks as she opens the fridge and tucks a carton of milk beside half a cooked chicken. She loves the kids, and she loves the books, but they're only a small part of her days. The rest involves the photocopier that always breaks, the never-ending sorting, the damnable computer carts with their constantly missing power cords, and the ever-evolving technology overtaking the library like black mold. She piles yogurts into her cupped forearm and returns to the fridge, frowning as she stacks them.

She did everything wrong, of course. Got pregnant too young, at twenty-two. Got married. Duct-taped her life together ever since. Not that she'd change it. Mark is the love of her life, and Charlie is her sun, her reason. She'd build her universe around them a thousand times over. She'd shelve books and organize computer carts for eternity if it allowed Charlie to shine.

She reaches the bottom of the grocery bag and finds a receipt. Habit takes over from years of shopping sales and stretching groceries: she knows what things should cost, nearly to the penny, and she scans every receipt. Her mind hums on a different frequency, consumed with school next year and her life and all the paths she'll never take, when she reaches the final sum and frowns. Why is it so high?

She straightens, flattens the paper, studies it closer. Her heart beats a bit faster, and she doesn't know why. And then, there it is: in the middle of the grocery list, tucked between the yogurts and trail mix for the airport, something out of the ordinary.

Roses, two dozen, $39.99.

Josie glances from the receipt to the grocery bags, her heart leaping against her sternum. No roses. She detaches from the counter as if they might be hiding, pawing through the remaining two bags, dread expanding like a flood within her, rising, just getting started. Roses. Why would Mark have bought two dozen roses?

The stovetop timer begins to beep. Steam billows, pasta water leaps from the pot, and Josie feels as if she's waking up. Her pulse pushes all conscious thought from her skull. She leaves the kitchen with its shrieking timer, hurries down

Chapter Three: Josie

Chapter Three: Josie

Josie Gardner walks back to the Prius, lifts the roses by their stems carefully, and pinches the note in her other hand as she heads for the front door.

Mark is in their bedroom, a towel around his waist, running a hand over his wet hair and whistling. His glasses are off, his T-shirt tan dark from hours on country roads, and suddenly a fresh thought strikes Josie: has he really been biking all those weekends? When he pedaled away, where did he actually go?

Mark turns, happy in the moment before he takes her in. Then his gaze lands on the roses and the note, and his mouth drops open. "Who is Jen?" Josie croaks.

Mark stands so still it seems someone pulled his plug. "Nobody," he sputters. But Josie holds his stare, and in a flash she sees them as they once were: young and in love, before the pregnancy, before she dropped out of college, before baby Charlie and the house and the proper adulthood they built all at once. She remembers being cradled in his arms. She remembers shared fears and hopes over wine and Thai food in her dorm room. The laughing until they cried. The promises. How did they travel from there to here?

"Tell me the truth, Mark."

A full minute passes. Then Mark confesses: he was going to tell her after the trip. "Do you remember Peter's mom?" The mother of one of Charlie's childhood friends. They reconnected at a corporate event months ago. She is a Realtor, a local businesswoman. "We didn't mean to, Jo, I swear to God. But we've fallen in love."

The "we" and the "love" are undigestible. There is nowhere for Josie in that sentence. Mark sits on the corner of the bed, the towel fanning out between his hairy legs, and says he meant to drop the roses off before coming home but ran out of time. He is sorry, Jo. Josie is freshly stunned. Is he apologizing for the carelessness, or for the affair?

For a second she wants to plead with him, to take an eraser to everything that just happened. You're supposed to love me, she wants to sob. She who had his baby and washed his boxers and bike shorts, made his dinners, reminded him to pick up prescriptions, attended his work parties and smiled at colleagues who rarely remembered her name. His words from the kitchen echo: Can you undo it?

Cold rinses through her like rain. Did he press her to remain full-time at the school library so he could leave more easily? Has he really been working overtime all these months, or has he been somewhere else? Was he actually worried about money, or just trying to extricate himself from her, tentacle by tentacle?

She asks one question: "What were you going to tell me after the trip?"

Mark raises his head from his hands, cheeks reddened, eyes bright. "I want a divorce."

Without thinking, Josie stumbles to her feet, certain she might be sick or detonate into a thousand pieces. In the bedroom mirror she catches herself: hair no longer blond but light brown with silver at the temples, fallen out of its messy ponytail. Face pale as a plate, a slash of pink flaming across freckled cheeks. Plain white T-shirt and jeans in the same wash she has bought for years. She wants to take a hammer to that mirror and shatter the reflected moment. Instead, she goes to the closet and drags out the suitcase she already packed for Italy, passport in her purse. She was ready to go.

"Jo? What are you doing?" Mark follows, towel loosening, voice growing urgent. "Josie. Don't be crazy! Can you just sit down for a minute so we can talk?"

She cannot. She wrestles the suitcase down the stairs while Mark stands at the top in his towel, hands on his hips, shaking his head as if witnessing lunacy. Maybe he is. The oven timer still beeps somewhere behind him. At the door she turns and meets his baffled gaze, freezing her gathering tears into ice. She will not cry, not yet. "Don't follow me," is all she says, and she opens the front door.

Three days later

Josie sits on the bench seat of her dad's old farm truck, clutching her purse to her knees, watching planes rise into a cloudless sky and arc into the distance. Her dad hunches over the wheel, maintaining his usual stream-of-consciousness chatter, though it is peppered with bafflement. He cannot believe that after twenty years, old Mark was not the man he figured. "Far as I'm concerned, that husband of yours can take a long walk on a short dock." He mentions Aunt Mildred, who never liked Mark, who could see through men like a clean window.

Josie tries to steer away from the topic, but her dad talks on, recounting episodes of her broken life. This is his way of working through it, comprehending that his daughter has been shucked like tassels from a corncob. Her parents were always on her side, ludicrously proud of her even when she failed to achieve much. Her father, now her lone parent, cannot make sense of the fact that her marriage, one of her only true achievements, has failed too. "To leave you, Josie? You? Hot damn. The man's antenna might be up, but he's surely not gettin' all the channels."

When she landed on his doorstep three days earlier, suitcase in hand, her dad turned and went searching for his ever-misplaced phone. Josie had to physically take it from him to stop him from calling Mark. Now he mutters that Mark has "proven himself to be the wrong end of an ugly horse."

An image of Mark flashes in Josie's mind, and pain pounds alongside her pulse: his half grin, his swift humor, his hands gentle and brown from the sun, his overlarge eyes the exact same blue as their son's. Charlie. For the hundredth time she thinks of him, and how he knows nothing of the last three days. Her darling boy was likely immersed in his biochem lab at the exact moment his parents' lives blew apart. None the wiser. And the worst thought of all: at some point, they will have to tell him.

Her dad tells her to go and have a wonderful time, to have an experience, "leave that bastard in the dust, where he belongs." He is coming into his busy season, hay to cut and cattle to feed, but Josie knows he does not want her to worry, and he knows she does. They both know he is lonely out on the ranch, with only days gone by to treasure.

The airport terminal looms, and a sign for departures appears over the slowing line of cars. Josie's stomach clenches. Anxiety rolls through her like a breaker. She is really doing this. She has not been anywhere, aside from a couple of corporate trips for Mark's work, in all her adult life. She is middle-aged, and she has no idea how to manage in a foreign country where she does not speak the language. She has no idea how to navigate public transport or foreign grocery stores or airports or anything at all, alone. For a second she thinks she will throw up right there on the floormat. She bends over her purse and breathes deeply.

She is embarrassed to admit, even to herself, that she spent the morning watching YouTube videos on what to expect at an airport. It feels shameful for a grown woman to be so inept in the world. But she was so busy raising Charlie, navigating the terrifying challenges of his childhood, supporting Mark, stretching dollars, minding middle schoolers, and watching her mother die, she had no time to learn everything a normal grown woman should know.

"Josephine." Her father's quiet voice cuts through her panic. His calloused, arthritic hand lands on her knee. "Jojo. Listen. You'll be just fine, kid. You get out there and live. Take this chance. God knows you've earned it." He wipes a tear from under his own eye, then adds with a glint: "And if I kill him, I'll letcha know."

Josie laughs through her tears. They unbuckle and hoist themselves out, meeting at the dusty tailgate. Her dad heaves her gigantic suitcase down, waving away her offers of help, and wheels it into her hands, decorated with a few stray stems of hay. "Go get 'em, Jojo." Travelers stream toward the terminal, moving purposefully through the doors, and yet time seems to pause. Without planning it, Josie falls into her dad's stiff embrace. He pats her back and kisses her cheek, his mustache rough on her skin. "You can do anything anyone else can," he whispers. "And more." He salutes her as if she is going to war. She chuckles, finds the handle of her suitcase, and wheels it toward a pair of glass doors.

The doors open, beckoning her onward. She turns once to see her dad alone beside the truck, hands propped in his pockets. He nods.

She thinks of her mother, who was endlessly brave, refusing to complain even once through months of radiation and chemotherapy. When she lost her battle, she left Josie a notebook filled with gardening advice, just in case Josie ever opened the flower shop she dreamed of since she was little,

Chapter Four: Cicero

On an evening in early June, Cicero sits with Giorgio on the terrazza of their grand house on a hill above Pompeii, watching the sunset turn the sky to rivers of orange and blue. Giorgio reclines in his creaking wooden chair, a glass of red wine in one hand, and shares a line of Rumi: “The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night.” He asks Cicero if he agrees, and Cicero cocks his head, the way he always does, because Giorgio has never underestimated him. Giorgio has read poetry and novels aloud to him for eight years, treating him not as a pet but as a friend who can listen. The two are a gentlemanly pair, checking their reflections before walking down to the village for a cappuccino and a bowl of latte. Their habits are as reliable as the sunset.

But Cicero misses what he should have sensed. Dogs can feel heartbeats and goodness and illness, but Cicero is lulled by the peace of the moment, and he fails to notice the seizing in Giorgio's heart. The glass shatters before his paws, wine spreading like blood, and Giorgio jerks three times in his chair and goes completely still.

For nearly two days, Cicero does not leave him. He moves around the broken glass, licks Giorgio's slack hands, noses his elbow, climbs onto his lap and bathes his face in frantic kisses. He knows Giorgio has died, but he cannot accept it. The owner of the village café eventually finds them, shouting in horror, and later many people come and take Giorgio away. Cicero becomes half of nothing, a cast-off mutt in the wilderness of Pompeii.

On the evening of his tenth day in exile, lying on an ancient stone stoop among ruined buildings and wild dogs, Cicero hears a faint voice calling his name. “Cicero, come! Come, ragazzo mio!” He springs up, heart pounding. It is Giorgio, ambling toward him with the familiar hitch in his step, silver hair catching the sunset. But something is wrong. Giorgio is silver and shimmery, like light passing through water. He has no odor. Still, Cicero runs to him, leaps into his outstretched arms, and sails straight through him, tumbling hard onto the ancient paving stones.

Giorgio crouches over him, casting no shadow, his voice sounding far away. He reaches out to pet Cicero, but Cicero cannot feel his hand. Giorgio murmurs “Merda,” and his familiar, lined face crumples. Cicero senses no heartbeat in him at all. He understands then: Giorgio is a ghost. He tries to jump into his arms anyway, a reflex he cannot suppress, and meets only a cold draft of wind.

Giorgio explains that he woke a few days ago, as if from a coma, alone on the terrazza in his chair. After making peace with his situation, he set off to find Cicero. He went first to his son's house, because he had spelled out in his will that his son should have his car, but not Cicero, and he cannot understand why Cicero is not there. He cannot bring himself to say the words “you might die,” but Cicero thinks them. Giorgio is dead, and now he will haunt him.

Cicero is beyond delighted. Things will be different, since Giorgio can no longer pet him or carry him, but that was never their way. Ghosts, Cicero explains, are simply people whose hearts were not quite finished with this world. Giorgio missed whatever signal he was meant to take because he was worried about Cicero, and perhaps also about his son, a man for whom Cicero has nothing but disdain. Giorgio cannot abandon either of them. Because Giorgio, like any good dog and the best of humans, is nothing if not loyal.