Downton Abbey On Repeat

No one is allowed inside the veterinarian office due to state regulations during the pandemic. The parking lot is full. Car hatchbacks swung up to the sky, doors left open, a stray foot extended into a spot of late-afternoon sun. Because it’s hot many keep their doors closed, the cars running. We are waiting for our dogs or cats to be escorted by a masked technician back to our cars. A man heaves a German Shepherd out of the car, staggering under the animal’s weight. 

A mother and her son venture out of their car. The boy looks to be around five or six. I can tell by the way the mother tucks her phone in her back pocket and follows him at a distance that she means to let him explore. The boy makes a beeline for the veterinarian’s sign in a little flower bed, pansies in an alternating pinwheel pattern. Yellow to purple to yellow. He drops to his knees and sticks his nose in the pansies.

The mother’s mask is tucked under her chin and I see her mouth something to him. He is animated, pointing and then ducking his head into the flowers again, this time moving into the purple pansies. Now the mother bows to smell first the yellow pansies, then the purple. 

Even if I open my window, I won’t be able to hear their conversation. I’m listening to Downton Abbey. Again. Streaming it everywhere I go, on dog walks, on errands, while putting away groceries, working out. At first, early on in quarantine, it was a distraction from the emerging news about the virus. And then, it became a distraction from rage. Walking through the grocery store and seeing people without masks, or those wearing their masks around their chins as they exhaled into the faces of elderly cashiers. 

I don’t even need to look at my phone to know what’s happening at the Abbey. I know what different theme music accompanies characters or precedes a huge plot development. I know when Carson is comforting Lady Mary in her paralyzing grief after Matthew’s death. Sometimes, walking the dog, I have to pull out an ear bud because I’m not sure if the birds I’m hearing are in the Yorkshire countryside or here, in the Central Oregon forest. An hour can pass this way. Two. Three. And it is possible to not think. To not picture my husband in his N-95 mask seeing patient after patient who may or may not be infected. To stop wondering if I will ever be able to embrace my elderly parents on the other side of the country. Or worry about my niece with asthma. Friends battling cancer who are particularly vulnerable to the virus. To worry about my dearest friend who is struggling and quietly retreating. 

I’m at the vet because our six-year old lab has been hacking and gagging like something’s stuck in his throat. My husband assures me it’s probably nothing, but I cannot risk ignoring the possibility that something may be really wrong. As the vet tech leads my dog Cash away, I cringe at how blithely he trots alongside her, ever the sweet, obliging dog. The Countess of Grantham is inching closer to infidelity with the art historian who has come to the Abbey to view the family’s prized Della Francesca painting, when the vet calls me. She says how handsome and well-behaved my boy is. I thank her and start to say how wholly I depend on this dog, but my throat closes up. She lists everything that “could” be wrong and explains she will do x-rays. It is suddenly unbearable to think of my needy, affectionate pup in there alone, waiting for x-rays. My dog who can’t get close enough to us, who insists on sitting on our laps. Is he in a kennel now? I ask. No, she says. He’s in an exam room. We gave him a blanket and he’s all curled up.

I can’t avoid thinking of Charlotte, my sister’s cat of fifteen years, who has been seeking out new places to sleep in the house. Hiding behind the television, squeezing behind the toilet. Disappearing for long hours. Retreating from the family. Delicate Charlotte with her milky-colored nose and pale grey coloring. I picture her in the gap of curtains in their living room, the sun striping the hardwood floors in golden beams. Charlotte watching her brother Lucca, a Chihuahua mix, whiz around the living room in delirious circles. She could be the cat of Downton Abbey, noble and elegant. If she were human, she would be a great dame of few words.

I dial my husband. I tell him what the vet has told me. I need him to hear that I’m scared. But he has patients waiting, and Lord Grantham and the historian are in a fist fight, tumbling on the floor, knocking over furniture when Lady Edith knocks on the door. Lady Grantham pretends everything is fine. Your father and I were just playing a silly game… go back to bed, poppet, she says. If you’re sure? Lady Edith says. 

The vet calls. The x-rays are inconclusive. There appears to be some irritation in Cash’s esophagus, which she would like to treat conservatively with antibiotics. Most likely, he will be okay. In this rush of relief, of settling Cash in the car, kissing his face, reassuring him that he is fine, that we are going home, I resolve to stay focused on the here and now: my beloved dog is safe. And then I hear the screaming. 

A man walking past the vet office is yelling. Hollering curses, a long string of curses, over and over. He passes the vet’s parking lot and then turns around and comes back, screaming and jabbing a fist in my direction. I turn around to see who he’s raging at or what set him off. It’s the same crowd waiting for our pets. I put in my ear pods and turn up the volume but not before catching his repeated harangue. You think I can’t see you, mother fucker? I fucking see you, you motherfucker!

And then, in my ears, there is cheery music and party preparations are underway in the Abbey with cocktails and a jazz band, and everyone is in high spirits. 

Later, I am walking Cash, and the Granthams are entertaining house guests, when the foxes start crying. I take my phone out from my waistband to remember where I am in the show. It is a wide shot of the Abbey at dusk, Anna and Bates walking home to their cottage, the mournful wail of foxes in the distance. And then, in my forest, not Anna’s and Bates’, a flash of yellow. Dusty grey feathers. It is a Cedar Waxwing, one of my favorite birds. Grey and white and regal with his black eye band which gives it a singular focus. Its flat head reminds me of the bird in Egyptian hieroglyphs and on sarcophaguses. 

I hit pause on my phone and tuck my ear pods into my pocket. It feels like an offering in return for the sighting of this majestic bird. My willingness to unplug, to listen even though I can still hear the rant of the mentally ill man in the parking lot. Even though I am worried about my dog. Worried about my husband. My parents. My friends. About myself and this deadening ennui that, like the virus, isn’t going away. About Charlotte’s imminent death and my sister’s grief which will also not go away, which she will not shirk because she will honor her beloved companion of fifteen years, marching on as I know we must with pain and fatigue and rage and uncertainty and fear, because we don’t have a choice. 

Before us there is a long hill to the top. Behind, the shorter, downhill path home. Cash chooses the biggest stick he can find and charges up the hill, his tail doing its happy swoop. I elect to follow. To listen for a bit longer. Until it becomes too much.

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Category: On Writing