When I unlocked her front door, I was prepared to be the hero of logic. I expected to find her confused, perhaps having left a window cracked. Instead, I was hit by a wall of stifling, seventy-four-degree heat. It felt like a sauna. I stripped off my heavy coat, ready to deliver a lecture on how to read a digital display.
“Mom, it’s a furnace in here!” I shouted as I marched into the living room.
Then I stopped.
My mother was huddled in her old beige recliner, the one that still bore the silhouette of my late father. She looked small, fragile, and utterly defeated. But she wasn’t alone. Dante, the dog who usually growled at strangers and hid under the bed, had done something unprecedented. He had wiggled out of his expensive fleece vest and climbed into the chair with her.
He had curled his hairless, naked body into a tight “C” against her side. His skin—which radiates heat with a biological intensity fur-covered dogs don’t possess—was pressed directly against her cardigan. My mother’s gnarled, arthritic hand was stroking his back, and for the first time in years, she looked still.
“He’s so hot,” she whispered. “He’s like a little furnace.”
I felt my logical defenses start to crumble. “He’s a Xolo, Mom. Ancient cultures used them as healers and bed-warmers. They radiate heat differently.”
I walked to the wall and tapped the thermostat. “But Mom, the machine is working. It’s seventy-four degrees. Why did you tell me it was broken?”
She didn’t look up from the dog. “I lied,” she said softly. The silence that followed was heavier than the snow outside. “The furnace isn’t broken, Michael. The walls are warm. But I’m cold in here.” She tapped her chest, over her heart. “Since your father died, the silence has a temperature. It settles in your bones at four in the afternoon. I just… I needed to see something living. I needed to feel something that wasn’t a screen or a sensor.”
She let out a shaky, self-deprecating laugh. “I was going to ask you to fix the furnace. But your dog… he knew I didn’t need a repairman. He knew I needed the warmth.”
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