In Every Way by Nic Brown

forever.
    It does not.
    Two weeks and four days later, Maria stands inside the Orange County Animal Shelter. Behind a massive computer monitor a young woman clatters around a keyboard.
    â€œPinky, Pinky, Pinky,” the woman says. “Border collie?”
    â€œYes,” Maria says.
    â€œI love that scarf.”
    It is Maria’s mother’s orange Hermès. She also wears her mother’s wedding ring on her middle finger and a touch of Chanel No. 5 from a dusty bottle in the medicine cabinet. “I don’t need that stuff,” her mother has been saying. “Take it.” Maria is willing herself to be good enough for these items, as if they might wear her in and not the other way around. She is not yet there. She feels them on her flesh like new bandages.
    â€œOK,” the woman finally says. “Pinky Pinkerton. Border collie.” She twists her mouth as if tasting something bitter, then bares her teeth and inhales a hiss. “Processed. A few months back.” At a glance she understands Maria’s optimistic confusion. “Put to sleep,” she says. “After two weeks, that’s procedure. I’m so sorry. Was he yours?”
    â€œYes,” Maria says. “Sort of.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œAre there any other dogs I can see?”
    â€œYeah, of course. Second door on the left,” the woman says, “and I really do love that scarf.”
    Maria opens the door to a mass of yelping life. A dozen dogs rise up on their hind legs and bounce, trying to reach her face with their tongues. Maria kneels, trying to locate just one head to pat, and they all pile atop her, licking any exposed flesh as if it has all been coated in gravy. Maria allows the weight of these beasts to roll her back onto the floor. They pant warm breath into her ears while nipping at each other in a battle over this human real estate. She purses her mouth shut against their lapping urgent tongues, but that is the only constraint. She lays her arms flat against the ground and, as they destroy the lauded scarf, she allows them as much access to her flesh as they want.
    Later, inside the Volvo in the parking lot, Maria lights a cigarette. Pinky was just a dog, she tells herself. She removes the cigarette from her mouth and holds it above her forearm. She has memorized the pamphlet about grief. According to its progression, Maria is now due for anger. And she is indeed angry. She has been overwhelmed by a surprise onslaught of sorrow, confusion, and fury. She recalls stories from the news about recent mothers who have become suicidal after giving birth, of infanticide, of postpartum psychosis. And thoughMaria is sure that she has not gone crazy, these accounts of new mothers becoming mentally unhinged now make a type of sense to her. At dusk every day, Maria cannot help but cry. She knows it is coming, like the eventual setting of the sun. There is no trigger needed, nothing but the hour. It brings with it a sadness mixed with anger, both at circumstance and at nothing. Her sharpest rage is often nebulous and confusing. She is ashamed and scared of these cyclical breaks, but knows they have happened before and will happen again—to her and countless others. The obviousness of it all infuriates her even further. Though the cigarette still glows just inches from her arm, she does not allow it to touch her flesh, although she is compelled to. She cannot imagine a way to explain the wound to Jack and her mother.
    Maria knows they speak about her when she’s out of sight. Jack and her mother grow closer by the day. They’ve been smoking more weed, a ritual surprisingly less shocking to Maria than she might have ever guessed. In a house like hers, the big news is not that her mother is smoking weed with her boyfriend. It’s that her mother is dying. It’s that Maria has just given birth.
    Before she starts the engine, Maria acknowledges what this desire for Pinky really