Memories Can Hurt

Kyle spent most of the afternoon setting fence posts around what Laurie called the “Back 40”, the wild field behind their farmhouse. It was the last part of their farm that wasn’t either planted or used for horse trails and the stable. The field wasn’t 40 acres, or even 10 acres, but Laurie liked the name. Kyle had used a long iron pole to loosen the dirt for each hole, then a post hole digger to create a good cavity two feet deep. He didn’t have the fencing yet; in fact, he didn’t even know why he was fencing the area. But rather than wait until he figured it out, or had the fencing, he had decided to sink the holes. Possibly he just wanted to be outside in the unexpectedly warm April afternoon. He’d gotten half of the holes sunk, eight feet apart, before dusk brought on Maine’s evening chill.

He washed up inside the house, poured a large glass of hard, cold, well water, cut and squeezed an entire half lemon into the glass, and sat at the wooden counter. He’d built the counter himself the year before, reclaiming some large planks from the barn and then planing and oiling it until he was sure it would hold up to whatever liquid or food they spilled on it. Laurie hadn’t wanted him to cut anything on it, even though it was solid wood, but he realized quickly that if he “accidentally” cut enough scratches in it, she would stop caring. That mission accomplished, he could now slice lemons (and tomatoes, onions, carrots, potatoes, celery, basil, and oregano) wherever he wanted on the eight foot counter.

His phone beeped. With no cable or landlines on the farm, they depended on satellite wifi for email, voice calls, and for streaming the few shows and live sports they watched. The service only worked in the house itself, so his phone basically lived on the countertop. He’d gotten out of the habit of even checking it regularly, so the alerts were a useful reminder that there was a world beyond their hilltop.

“When is camp?” read the subject line from Dylan, with no text in the message itself.

‘That’s a good question,’ Kyle thought, and grinned happily. He suddenly realized that sinking the fence holes had been, in some unconscious way, connected to summer dog camp. Not that the dog camp would be in Kyle’s yard—it was Doctor Dan’s camp, held on his property—but Kyle was building the farm out as if it could someday be used to host the twenty or thirty dogs who had been attending doggie camp for years. Even if it was never used for that purpose, Kyle felt a greater kinship with his land as it became more and more like Doctor Dan’s animal hospital, the place where Kyle had first worked as a vet, in that first decade or so when he worked full-time.

He dropped an email to Dan asking what the schedule was for camp this year. Then, after thinking some more, and nodding, and grinning, and realizing he was bouncing his head up and down happily, Kyle picked up the phone again and called Dan.

“Kyle,” said Dan Conley. “Long time.”

“Hey, Dan,” said Kyle. “Yeah, sorry I haven’t checked in with you. We’ve been busy building out the ranch.”

“Is it a ranch now?” asked Dan. “Not just a farm?”

“No, actually, it’s just a farm. Laurie calls it a ranch. Just the one horse, the one dog, the one cat, a lot of mice. No pigs or chickens. A lot of herbs and vegetables. It’s a farm. But she calls it the ranch.”

“Nice,” said Dan. “What can I do for you?”

“I was just thinking about summer camp, wondering what the schedule is. Dylan is ready, so is Sam. Laurie knows I’ll be gone off and on for those three weeks, as usual. We just don’t know exactly when.”

There was silence for a bit, long enough for Kyle to wonder if the network had dropped.

“Dan? You still there?”

“Yes, Kyle. Sorry. I was just thinking about how to put this. We’re not doing dog camp this year.”

“Whoa!” exclaimed Kyle. “How can you skip camp? I know some of the dogs have gotten old, but don’t many of your people count on it?”

Another long pause. “Yeah, Kyle, they do, I guess, but it’s a longer story. I’m actually closing the business.”

This time it was Kyle who had nothing to say. Doctor Dan was the only vet for miles, covering two different towns. He was the only boss Kyle had ever had. When the business had been booming, Kyle had worked there full-time; as old-timers moved away, and houses replaced farms, the client base had shrunk. Kyle had bought the farm with Laurie, 40 minutes away, where they mostly lived a subsistence life on the land. He took over the animal hospital whenever Dan was sick or on vacation. And along with his friends, he ran the doggie camp for three weeks every year. It was more than a tradition. Dan had started it years before as a way to let poorer clients have vacations without having to pay to board their pets. Dan went away for those weeks and turned his house over to Kyle and his friends, and the pool and yard over to the dogs. People who wanted to board their dogs at any other time of the year paid for it. But for those three weeks, it was free, tips only, just a joyous madhouse of fun for the human caretakers and the dogs alike.

“No camp anymore?” repeated Kyle, having heard the larger point, but unable to process it.

“No hospital, Kyle. I’m getting out of the whole business.”

“I’m, I’m just, I don’t, I mean—” stammered Kyle,  before he finally recovered. “What happened? Are you okay? I know I’ve been out of touch, but if you need me to take over for a while, or help, or whatever, you know I’m here.”

“There’s nothing wrong, Kyle. It’s just time. Deb and I want to stop thinking about the animals and the hospital, be free to travel whenever we want, plant more of the property, give it more of a leisure touch rather than a working feel. Have some privacy. More private time together.”

Deb was Dan’s new wife. He’d met her once. He and Laurie hadn’t been invited to the wedding, if there was one. He figured there probably hadn’t been one, because of their age, and because if there had been one, no matter how small, he and Laurie would have been invited.

Kyle wanted to argue. He’d always pitched in; he didn’t have other obligations and didn’t need advance notice and could be counted on anytime Dan needed him. He wanted to tell Dan that they could still travel as much as they wanted, that he’d be there anytime. But the animal hospital was where Doctor Dan lived. There was nothing Kyle could do about the privacy, the planting, the leisure touch.

He should really talk to Laurie before he said anything else. He knew that. But he couldn’t wait. “What about selling it to me, Dan? I always kind of thought I would take it over when you retired. I could set up an office, a small animal hospital, in town, leave you and Deb alone.”

Laurie would kill him. Or maybe not; regular income would make some things easier for them. But working in town, every day? Even if he cut the office days down to three? There would still be emergencies, and occasional boarders. Supplies to stock, animals to check, surfaces to clean. No, even if just three days a week, Laurie would kill him. They’d chosen the ranch life, the farm life, together.

Still. Doctor Dan’s had been his life before Laurie, and he’d always assumed it would be his life after Dan.

“I could make it work for you, Dan. Move some of it up here, take the whole business from you. I can buy your practice.” With what, he thought. Can you get a mortgage to buy a small veterinarian practice?

“I can’t, Kyle. I’m sorry. I just can’t. I need to be out of the business. I don’t want old clients calling me, worrying, asking me for things.”

“They wouldn’t. They’d be calling me.”

“No.” Kyle could picture Dan shaking his head, the way he’d done so many times when he had to tell an owner that their animal couldn’t be saved. “Sometimes they would call you, perhaps most of the time they’d call you, but I’d still be around; they’d still know me. If they really wanted my input on something, they’d call me. They’d drop by, with or without their pets. I want to be done with this part of my life. This way, there’s nothing connecting me to the hospital, and people will just let go of me. I need to be done with it. Deb and I both do.”

“Can I come down to talk to you about it?”

“You’re always welcome here, Kyle. Of course you can come visit. But there’s nothing to talk about. It’s done.”

“It’s already done? You can’t at least wait until after camp this year?”

“It’s not that I can’t wait, Kyle; it’s that I’m not going to. Deb and I have talked about this for a while. I’ve started telling people as they come in, and I’ll be sending out an email soon. I might give them a couple months’ notice, let some come in for final appointments or to get their records, but no one new. It’s all winding down.”

“You’re not even selling it?”

“Mostly, no. I’m reclaiming the house. I’m referring people to the Baldwin animal hospital; it’s much larger, has modern conveniences, anesthesia, two surgeries, X-rays. They offered me a little money for my customer list, but since I’m not keeping anything on the property, and none of my facilities or equipment are up to their standards, there’s not really any practice for them to buy. I’ll be taking most of the stuff to the dump.”

“Your standards are fine. Your place is good enough for people around here. Most of them won’t want to drive to Baldwin.”

“That’s up to them. Maybe someone else will step up and start a practice, if there’s enough demand.”

“What about me, Dan? Why can’t it be me?”

“That’s up to you, Kyle. It’s not for me to tell you whether you should. You have a life of your own up on the hill, with Laurie. If creating a new business of your own is something you both want to do, nothing stops you. I’ll write you good references, you know that. I’ll give you all the same names I’m giving to Baldwin, if you want them. But I can’t sell my practice, my name. I need it to be closed so nothing connects me to it anymore. I need the memories to start fading into the past. Mine and theirs. And yours.”

Kyle was thinking hard. It didn’t sound like there was much he could do to stop it. But when you don’t know the future, he thought, all you can do is take the next right step. That was actually something he’d learned from Dan, when talking to owners about injured animals with uncertain futures. Take the next step or don’t take the next step. We can’t know what will happen after that.

“I think I understand, Dan,” said Kyle, though he very much did not. “Can I come on down to see you tomorrow?”

“Sure, Kyle. We don’t work Thursdays, as you probably remember.”

Kyle grinned briefly. Yes, he knew that Dan didn’t work Thursdays. He just hadn’t known that tomorrow was Thursday. The hand-painted wooden sign on the kitchen wall said, ‘On the mountain, we forget to count the days.’ He pointed his finger at it.

“Come on down around lunch. We’ll feed you.”

“See you then, Doc. Thanks.”

Kyle sent emails to Sam and Dylan. Dylan was married; that was perhaps why he was the one most anxious to schedule dog camp, both because he had to tell his wife when it would happen, and perhaps because he looked forward to getting away. Though come to think of it, Dylan’s wife had joined them for much of camp last year. No one answered his mail right away, but later that evening, and again the next morning, he got frantic emails from both of them, trying to figure out how to make sure camp wasn’t canceled. Once he explained that Doctor Dan was closing his entire practice, the emails turned into half-baked ideas for how to stop Dan and save the business. Kyle avoided answering their actual phone calls. He was mad himself and didn’t need more people stirring him up. He certainly didn’t want to explain to them why it was happening, why it had to happen, why Dan had the right to do what he wanted with his business, why they should back off and stop trying to fix things that weren’t broken.

Laurie came with Kyle to Dan’s home for lunch on Thursday. That was unexpected; Kyle hadn’t expected Laurie to show an interest, or to help him convince Dan not to sell.

As it turned out, he learned on the ride there, she didn’t want to change Dan’s mind, and she didn’t want them to buy the business. She just knew how upset Kyle was and wanted to be with him.

They reached the property: Doctor Dan’s Animal Welfare. The gravel driveway opened into four or five unpaved parking spaces, with a small brook at the end. A series of wooden planks crossed over the brook, wide enough for a car or tractor to get across to the barn. Kyle himself had helped rebuild the crossing many years before. Across from the parking area, the front porch was screened, with a wooden Office sign hanging over the door. That’s where dogs and cats could wait until called, if they were too nervous about the smells and memories inside the office, which was actually the whole front of the house. The office was closed, so Kyle and Laurie walked around back, to the private entrance. Kyle saw the pool. It had always been Dan’s personal exercise pool, heated, opened early in the spring and kept open late in the fall, but for three weeks each summer, the dogs took it over. One of the last things Kyle did when camp was over was clean out the filters, several times, to get rid of all the dog hair. But now, for the first time, Kyle saw two lounge chairs by the pool, and a redwood table, and two large redwood planters, and something that might have been a small fridge. Deb’s touch, Kyle thought; Deb’s changes.

Dan and Laurie greeted each other with a hug. Sandwiches had been prepared and cut into quarters: tuna salad with pickles and tomato on wheat, BLTs on rye, all the quarters mixed together on a tray, with two pitchers, one lemonade, the other iced tea. The food didn’t seem like Dan’s style. Kyle looked around but did not see Deb.

They ate outside. It was cooler than it had been the day before, but still enough sun to warm their hands and faces.

“Let me start by saying that I am sorry I didn’t tell you before, Kyle. I know this must have disappointed you. I wish I’d had, I don’t know, maybe the guts to tell you. I avoided you to make it easy on me. I’m sorry about that.”

Kyle nodded. Laurie took Kyle’s hand.

“He has so many memories tied up in this place,” she said to Doctor Dan, not even looking at Kyle. “The summer camp. The births. The deaths. The goat.”

Dan smiled and looked at Kyle. “The goat?”

“You remember the goat,” Kyle said.

Dan nodded. “Yes, I think I know the one you mean. I’m just surprised it made it into your stories with Laurie. I don’t remember it being particularly memorable.”

Laurie answered first. “The way he tells it, the memorable part was that no one told you it was a goat coming in. You had the name, you knew it was a baby, it was coming in for its first checkup. Then it turned out to be a goat.”

Kyle nodded. “I grinned when I saw it, and I still smile when I think about it. It didn’t seem to faze you at all.”

“It definitely threw me,” Dan said. “But many things did, over the years. You learn not to show it. People don’t want their vet to look surprised or overwhelmed, so you act confident no matter what. I did that with the goat.” He smiled and continued.

“But I’m glad we didn’t make much of a practice out of goats. The occasional horse, which I really was not qualified to do, and a few rabbits, the Ledbetter’s ferret, but mostly dogs and cats. And that owl.”

“Yeah. The owl. Who brings an owl to a vet?”

“The Hansons do, apparently. Couldn’t say no to their little girl.”

“That one scared me, to be honest, Dan. It’s a predator. It’s not a pet. There were so many ways that people, or other animals here, could be hurt. Including their daughter. But I guess it worked out okay.”

Kyle and Dan paused, thinking. Laurie looked attentive.

“So I guess one thing we’re wondering, Doctor Dan,” said Laurie, “is if you thought about selling the practice to Kyle, and if not, why not?”

He nodded. “That’s a fair question. I don’t think I knew that you were interested; in fact, I assumed you weren’t, because you two have created that whole life up on your hill.”

He paused, then smiled directly at Laurie. “Kyle tells me you call it the ranch.”

Laurie nodded.

Dan continued. “So I didn’t think you had any thoughts about a future veterinary practice of your own.”

“I always take over for you when you’re traveling or sick,” Kyle said.

“Yes, you do. And I appreciate that. But subbing in and running a full practice are two totally different things.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want a full practice. There wasn’t room for both of us here, as your business declined, but there’s so much about this place that means so much to me.” Kyle looked specifically at the large limestone kiln beside the barn. That’s where he had carried so many animals to be cremated, after putting them down with a hypodermic shot—sometimes while the dog or cat was in its owner’s lap, and sometimes out of sight. He noticed that the kiln had been cleaned and painted and fitted with a grill.

“I used to cremate animals in there, then clean it out spotlessly, so each client knew they were getting only their own pet’s ashes.”

“And Abby would paint the urn,” said Dan. “With the animal’s name, and sometimes images.”

Kyle nodded. His old girlfriend had been an artist. She would paint the animal’s name, in flowery script or bold Romanic lettering, depending on the animal’s size and gender, and often a flower or tree. For more money, she painted an entire scene, including an image of the deceased pet.

“You’re really going to shut this whole place down?” Kyle asked.

Dan nodded. “I have to. It’s like I told you, I don’t want to be connected to it anymore. I don’t want people thinking I’m still here, dropping by, contacting me. They need to move on. I need to move on. If I keep the practice, if I sell you the practice, I’ll still be behind it in some way. They’ll know that. I’m sort of cutting the ties. I’ve been here so long, seen so much. Done so much. It will stay with me my whole life, unless I end it completely now, while I have time to do something new.”

“I wish I’d known,” said Kyle.

“Like I said, I wish I’d told you earlier. But I didn’t want to change my mind or argue with you about it. It wasn’t your choice to make.”

There was a pause. Dan looked straight at Kyle, waiting for something. Laurie turned and looked at Kyle, too.

Finally he said, “Maybe you’re right, maybe I’d have said no. It’s not really the path that Laurie and I are on. But I’d feel better if I’d had the choice.”

Dan nodded. “Yes, you would. But you might have said yes. I couldn’t take that risk. Your choice is what you do. My choice was what I did.”

Kyle stood up suddenly. “I think we need to go.”

Laurie looked surprised and didn’t get up right away.

“Kyle,” said Dan. “I hope you’re able to find some peace and freedom in all this, eventually. To move forward and make decisions that work for you, without feeling tied in to what we’ve done together. I didn’t do it to hurt you. I didn’t want to argue with you about it, and I didn’t want you to think about an option that I couldn’t really let you have.”

“Am I supposed to thank you for sparing me?” asked Kyle.

“No, not at all. I didn’t give you anything. There’s nothing to thank me for. I just want you to find peace and freedom anyway. It’s hard to have good memories that don’t hurt. Memories are always in the context of today, of what’s not present today, of what you can never have again. There’s good in them, but there’s also hurt and disappointment. Memories hurt. But memories can be good, if treasured for what they are. I hope you can hang onto the good and let go of the hurt.”

Laurie nodded, standing up. “Thanks, Doctor Dan,” she said softly, then turned to Kyle.

He looked at Dan. He wanted to nod. He even wanted to say thank you, for the good wishes if nothing else. He couldn’t do it. He finally turned away.

“Don’t be strangers,” whispered Dan Conley. Without turning back, Laurie nodded and gave a little wave of her left hand.

When they reached their truck, Laurie asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m not,” he said. He looked sad. He squeezed her hand tight before letting go and opening the passenger door for her. He walked around the truck and got in. He paused, with his hands on the steering wheel, then looked at his wife. “But I think I will be.”