The dog blames me, refuses to poop for five days. The sixth day, he betrays himself and does his business on Joan Sellers’s lawn.

Joan stands on my front porch. She’s holding a bag of dog excrement. “Is this yours?” 

“Sorry, Joan. I’m out of bags.” 

“The HOA has rules. My granddaughter almost stepped in this.” Joan waves the bag. The smell hits us both. I don’t wince, but she grimaces.

“Almost?” 

“Pick up after your dog.” She drops the bag at my feet.

+

Boomer goes on strike again. He can only hold it for four days this time. I yank him from Joan’s petunias, but this is his spot. 

Tony stops by after school to grab some books. Boomer bombards him with kisses, spins around him seven times like a Jewish bride.

I’m sitting on the couch. “Could you warm me up a taquito?” 

Tony turns from Boomer. “You don’t look good.”

Without flinching, “I look great.” 

“Are you getting out of the house?” 

“Boomer and I go for walks.” 

Hard to believe he’s only fifteen but already six feet tall. I wonder what he’s going to do with all that height. He doesn’t seem to have a clue. The weight in the room hangs on his lean frame. He collapses under it, shrugs. “Dad’s waiting.” 

I stand. “Don’t worry. I can get my own taquito. Tell your dad—” I pause, catch myself.

Tony scratches Boomer’s snout, eliciting tail wags.

Outside, Tony slinks into his dad’s car. Boomer barks, but once the car is gone, he whimpers and lies down. 

I whisper to Boomer, “It’s okay, Boomie.” Boomie is the nickname Tony gave him when they stood eye level.

+

Boomer and I walk past Joan’s house. She’s by the petunias, pointing emphatically to a dark pile. “I know this is your dog. I know it is. I see you,” she says.

I shout from across the street. “Boomer is constipated. I’ve tried everything. Pumpkin puree. Apple cider vinegar. The vet suggested an enema if this keeps up, but I can’t imagine such cruelty. Can you?” 

“No one finds you charming. No one. The next board meeting is Thursday. I’m going to bring this up. I could call the police.”

“Get a life, Joan.” I don’t say this out loud. 

+

I think it’s a real shame how few people clean up after their dogs. I pick up someone else’s dog waste and put it on Joan’s lawn. When I was a young mother, she’d stop the three of us. I’d have the stroller canopy up and a blanket nestled under Tony’s chin. “It’s a bit cold out for the baby,” she’d say. Or “That boy’s going to catch a cold.” She did nothing all those times she saw me crying. She never pet Boomer. And boy, did he try.

+

On the vet’s recommendation, I add fiber to Boomer’s diet. Apples; peas; broccoli; celery; beets. I’m shocked he’ll eat any of it, but then again, he’s never tried a taquito.

+

I attend the Thursday night meeting. When it’s her turn at the podium, Joan glares at me. She uses her full five minutes to plead passionately for more rules requiring pet owners to dispose of their dogs’ waste.

I raise my hand and stand. “Thank you, Joan, for bringing awareness to such a serious problem. I’d like to suggest we set up waste stations with a bag dispenser. I’d be happy to form a committee.” Joan refuses to make eye contact with me, but a few of the other neighbors nod in support. 

I mingle afterward, and Joan avoids me. But on the way out, she stops me. She touches my shoulder. I turn to her, and for a moment, despite looking nothing like my mother, Joan looks exactly like my mother with that disapproving stare. Those pressed lips. I feel hot shame and anger.

“I bought a Ring camera,” she says, and then waves to Lori Popper, a neighbor she speeds walks with, and Joan is gone from me and onto Lori.

+

Boomer wakes me. He used to sleep with Tony, Tony’s long limbs wrapped around him. Now, Boomer sleeps on his dog bed, lying by the window. I know he’s waiting for things to return to normal—the normal he remembered—not cognitive memories like people have, but the feeling he had when he licked his paws. Such simple pleasures, licking your paws. I feel for him. I really do.

He whimpers and nudges me, and I’m half asleep when we walk outside. He pulls me to Joan’s house, and I notice the moon. It’s brilliant. I’ve never seen it like this, or have I? It’s not the brilliance that breaks me, but the memory of it. The memory of the moon, and Tony as a baby in my arms, and my cold and unloving mother.

+

Boomer shits his brains out. Not just by the petunias, but everywhere. Peas and carrots spray from his rear. Boomer crab walks, and I look at Joan’s front door. It opens.

Joan steps out in her night robe. Boomer is still scooting and expelling behind me, and I’m sobbing right there in her yard in the middle of all my mess. 

I don’t know how long Joan watches me before she steps off the porch and positions herself in front of me. I wait for her tongue to strike, for her steeliness to sober me, but she buries me in a hug. My insides unwind, and I heave sorrow onto her shoulder.  She whispers words I can’t make out because I’m crying too hard.

When she lets go, she bends down and bends down and bends down, cleaning up after my dog.

+++

Rachel Weinhaus is a screenwriter and memoirist. She earned an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television and a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her personal essays have been published in The Huffington Post, The Today Show, Newsweek, Insider, Kveller, and Brevity blog. Rachel is the author of The Claimant: A Memoir of an Historic Sexual Abuse Lawsuit and a Woman’s Life Made Whole. Visit her at www.rachelweinhaus.com.