Behind these walls, beneath layers of blankets, the house is mostly asleep, and I hold in my hand a slippery white, hard-boiled egg—with a purple- black vein in it. I say “mostly asleep” because three sets of eyes are still sealed in slumber and three sets of attentive eyes stand sentry around the perimeter of the kitchen, penning me in. Two dogs watching and waiting; one cat on the counter watches without watching, licking his paws. The fate of the veined egg is, as yet, undetermined. I hold the egg up for all to see.
Most mornings during my lunch-packing routine, I sip coffee, take bites of breakfast, and they are here, watching and waiting, occasionally whining. And, every now and then I toss them a bit of ham, a crumble of cheese, or a crust of bread. Laser-focused on my every move, ever-vigilant for each crumb and every drip to hit the floor, they would be appalled to know what we all know about food waste. Ignorance is bliss. Peeling open a fresh bag of lunch meat, sizzling bacon, and cutting the cheese—all of these are like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens for these dogs—the kitchen is alive with the sounds and smells of mealtime.
This morning, we contemplate a flawed egg. I boil eggs once, maybe twice, a week. Rarely is it an event such as today. Boiled eggs, for the most part, are all the same, at least the ones from the supermarket. Quality control (QC) under the auspices of the “Big Ag” egg industry is beyond natural. I’d ask the dogs how many eggs they think are thrown away simply for not being oval enough, but I don’t want to worry them. You gotta go local, farm fresh—clean the chicken shit off the shell—if you want some variables involved in your eggs. Brown specks and double yolks are rare these days, but I can’t recall ever finding a vein: so pronounced, tiny, yet so spindly and black, so inky and linear within the perfect white oval. I’m enthralled, and a little more than mildly repulsed.
The unforgiving morning silence reminds me of how loud my thoughts are inside my head. Whether from a sense of guilt or shame, I listen carefully to hear if anyone else is up out of bed. I’m quite sure I want no one to know about what I’m going to do. I am a meat-eater, but there are moments, like this one, when the implications of what it means to be a carnivore resonate rather loudly. So loud, I think my dogs can hear it too. I ask them, “Should I toss it, or eat it?”
Big Dog licks his lips. Drool drips from both sides of his flappy pink jowls, adding to my growing sense of repulsion. Dog drool doesn’t wipe up like a melted ice cube on the laminated flooring, the paper towel slides over instead of soaking up the viscous liquid. Big Dog would gobble the veined egg in two to three seconds, his slobber saturating even the driest overcooked yolk powder into swallowable sludge instantaneously. Besides, he’d be fine; it’s definitely not the most disgusting thing he’s ever eaten. And what’s the worst that could happen? Diarrhea? That’s never stopped him before. Hell, even I’ll go to Taco Bell knowing there is a greater than one-in-five chance I’ll be stricken by fecal incontinence for at least half a day if not longer. It’s not like the egg’s rotten—fully cooked vein isn’t bad for you, is it?
Just to be safe, I could combine all the eggs I boiled this morning into an egg salad. The vein would be totally diluted into an unrecognizable yellow mash, and no one would have to know. It’s been a while since I made egg salad. The kids don’t like it, so it’s more than likely that I would end up eating all of it, and I’m not a huge fan of egg salad. As a child, on a trip to the zoo, my mom had packed egg-salad sandwiches and I was too excited to eat mine until we were in the car on our way home. Exhausted, and on the verge of heatstroke, I got sick all over the seat, the floor, and sprayed a little onto my sister as well. My mom wouldn’t pull over, and barely said a word, probably holding her breath. Even with all the windows down that stinky egg-bile mess continued to cause me to wretch every ten-fifteen minutes. I didn’t eat eggs again for quite some time and egg salad was like kryptonite, but my mom continued making it even though the smell made me gag for at least a decade afterward. Nowadays I make egg salad with a good amount of Dijon mustard and green onions, it barely tastes like eggs when I’m through with it.
Big Dog cocks his head to the side and slightly raises an ear. What is it? Is somebody up? Clunk! A noise upstairs grabs our attention and everyone’s head turns to the stairs for a moment, then the dogs focus back on me. I’m listening— could be the boy, could be Kaye? It’s the middle of summer so the youngest, aged sixteen, won’t be up for another couple of hours at least. I listen for signs of life, footsteps? Then I’m startled by the clapping of the pet door flap as the cat, easily bored, takes his leave, deciding it’s already time for a nap in the rising sun. Lucky cat.
Slam! I jump. The toilet seat bangs down hard directly above the kitchen. I never get used to that sound; it sets my teeth on edge. I follow the sound of Kaye’s footsteps across the ceiling— leaving the bathroom, and returning to bed. It’s too early. She’ll sleep some more. I remain mostly alone. I could take her coffee up to her now, but she’ll probably sleep longer and the dogs need to get outside. I leave the egg on the counter for now, vein side down. Big Dog looks at me grabbing the leash, waiting by the front door, then he looks back at the egg on the counter, then trots over to me, tail wagging. Millie, the little dog, is already leashed up and sniffing the door crack. When the dogs gotta go, the dogs gotta go.
Millie, the older one, the little one, wears diapers, which I remembered to remove before leaving the house this time. After the seizure, in January, she lost control of her bladder. It’s absolutely a scientific mystery how so much pee dribbles out of that little dog when she barely drinks any water. Their water bowl doesn’t even hold as much water as leaks out of that little dog’s dysfunctional urethra. The Big Dog has a limp. He was a rescue from Hurricane Andrew. His broken tibia on the right front paw never had a chance to heal right, and the sight of the bending bone is discomforting. I’ve always thought “pitbull with a limp” could be a stellar song title. Our little family is falling apart, expertly. Leashes on, poop bags in pocket, off we go.
*
Silence—minutes pass. Ché, the cat, squinches back inside through the flap, stretches out long and lean in the sun on the Persian rug; then he pricks the softest bits of upholstery on my favorite old green chair. He climbs the backside summiting to the peak, sniffing the air. The light shimmers off his midnight blue-black fur, the morning sun warming the top edge of the chair to perfection. A lick, a scratch, a yawn. Jump down to the floor then hop up onto the counter to double-triple check the food dish is licked clean. What’s that shiny, white oval on the counter? Smells interesting. Pat-pat, roll, sniff-sniff. Front door! Someone’s coming! Get lost fast!
*
Once through the door, the Big Dog trots straight to the couch and lies down, the veined egg now long gone to the annals of dog-year history. The little dog scrunches herself up into a comma in order to clean the dribbly bits of her underside, thoroughly. Slurp! Slurp! Slurp! We almost had to give her up after listening to the nauseating gushy, sloppy sounds of her incessant butt-licking day after day, night after night. Combined with the little puddles of pee, Kaye had just about had it and suggested it might be time to find Millie a new home. Not sure how to respond, I countered, “We just spent a thousand bucks getting half her teeth pulled and you want to get rid of her?” We looked down at the dog and because she had so many teeth missing her little pink tongue hung out the left side of her mouth. It’s cute as hell and it probably saved her from the shelter. Kaye apologized later, saying she had a weak moment. She would never give little Millie away, but we knew the day was coming when we’d have to make the call. Too sad to think about it now, seems too far away.
The egg is on the counter. Did it move? Didn’t I set it vein side down? Hmm. I grab Kaye’s coffee and head upstairs; Big Dog not two steps behind, overtakes me on the landing. He can’t be in a room without humans for very long. I slowly, quietly open the door. Big Dog barges in and flops up onto the bed settling right up against Kaye. She doesn’t stir, sleeping deeply. Half covered in blankets, the fan is on and I can see the sweat on her pillow and bedsheets. My eyes linger on the spindly, two-inch ridge of pink scar tissue just under her armpit along the side of her left breast. Two surgeries to make sure all the margins were clear, twelve rounds of chemo, and currently deep into daily radiation. Her eyebrows and eyelashes haven’t started growing back just yet. Just two more weeks of radiation and then what? Home free? Cancer free? God, I hope so, her second battle in five years. I leave the coffee on the nightstand. Big Dog is snoring.
Downstairs Millie goes out on the patio to lick herself in the sun. Ché lies on the high counter, front leg dangling above the kitchen sink. Clunk! I hear the boy; he’s up and getting dressed. No longer a boy, but a fine young man. We’ve got plenty of work today so I finish packing the lunches; it feels like ten pounds of food we haul off with us every morning. Maybe I got a minute to sit and doomscroll FB before we leave. There’s the egg. I pick it up. I can still surgically remove that vein, or I can just toss the egg. I really don’t have to eat it, but then again I really don’t care about a vein in an egg anyway. I raise the egg to Ché, Cheers, I say, and pop the whole thing in my mouth. He blinks, I chew.
APGaines grew up in Northern California and lives on a hill in the North Bay. He graduated UC Berkeley in 1996 with a BA in literature then proceeded to wash windows for two and half decades. He recently added writer to his credits, which includes parent, spouse, servant, and friend.
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