Reagan and the Vacuum

I bought a vacuum cleaner. This is the whole story, more or less, but the whole story turns out to be bigger than the vacuum, the way these things do.

The old one died. It didn't die dramatically—it just gave up one Tuesday with a smell of hot dust and a descending whine, like a small aircraft losing altitude, and then it was gone, and I said a few words over it and put it out by the transfer-station pile. So I ordered a new one, and it came Thursday in a box the size of a small refrigerator, ninety percent of which was air and styrofoam and a manual in four languages I will never open.

Reagan hated the old vacuum. This was a known quantity. She hated it the way you hate a coworker—with familiarity, without heat, a hatred that had settled into routine. When the old vacuum came out she'd retreat to her bed by the register and glare, and when it went away she'd sigh with the satisfaction of a man watching a rival leave the building. Ancient enemies. There was almost affection in it, by the end.

The new vacuum was a stranger, and strangers are worse than enemies.

I plugged it in. Reagan was across the store, in poetry, doing whatever it is she does over there. And I flipped the switch, and the new vacuum came on, not with the wheezing complaint of the old one, but with a clean, confident, powerful roar, a machine that knew its own worth, and Reagan came out of the poetry section like the building was on fire.

I have never seen him move like that. My dog is not a fast dog. She is a settled, dignified, biscuit-oriented dog whose top speed is usually reserved for the word "walk." But the new vacuum unlocked something ancestral in him, some deep-buried Labrador subroutine, and he crossed R&C at a dead gallop and put the entire counter between himself and the machine and stood there, wild-eyed, watching me operate what he clearly believed was a monster I had foolishly invited into our home.

I turned it off. She did not relax. She'd seen it now. It could come back.

Sarah found this hilarious, which it was, and unhelpful, which she also was. "He's protecting you," she said, from a safe distance, laughing.

"She's protecting herself. She's using me as bait."

But here's the thing about Reagan, and about dogs generally, and maybe about all of us. She didn't like it, but she wanted to understand it. That's a braver instinct than it looks. Over the next hour, while I did the shelves, she crept closer to the silent vacuum by degrees, low, ears back, one paw at a time, and she smelled it. The whole thing. The wheels, the hose, the terrible loud head of it. She conducted a full investigation of the sleeping monster, deputizing her nose, gathering evidence.

And then, having decided it was, if not a friend, at least a known object, a thing with edges and a smell and no teeth, she lifted her leg.

She did not actually go. Let me be clear. She mimed it, made the gesture, filed the paperwork, claimed the vacuum for the Reagan Empire, and then walked away with her tail up, business concluded. The monster was her now. She'd conquered it by the only diplomacy a dog respects.

I let him have the win. You have to. He'd been brave, in her ridiculous way, she'd galloped from a noise and then walked back toward it, which is more than most of us manage, most days. We hear the roar and we stay in poetry where it's safe.

The new vacuum works beautifully. Reagan tolerates it now with the wary truce of two nations sharing a border. When it comes on she leaves the room, but she leaves at a walk, with dignity, a general withdrawing to more favorable ground.

And the store has never been cleaner. Small mercies. A good vacuum, a brave dog, and a floor you could, Harold would be pleased, very nearly eat off of.