The Dogs of Littlefield (29 page)

He found himself listening to Margaret's voice as he hadn't since their early days together, when she used to talk to him about poetry and her English class.

“Is George in love with you?” he asked one evening at the Tavern.

“I think he's still in love with his ex-wife,” she said. “She might move back in.”

“I thought you said she hated him.”

“Apparently living with her mother has given her a new appreciation for marriage.”

He shifted the metal-capped salt and pepper shakers on the table, sliding them next to each other and then drawing them apart. He did this several times.

“So is it over, between you?”

She sighed. “It wasn't ever a real affair. More like an outside interest.”

He glanced up from the salt and pepper shakers, prepared to laugh at this small gift, this mordant joke. But from the stiff way she held herself, one hand at her brow half shielding her eyes, he saw the joke was too bitter to be meant for him. Her husband did not want her, her child did not like her. Even her lover preferred his ex-wife.

So he said nothing, only watched her across the table as she tried to hide her face. She seemed impossibly lovely to him again. The graceful turn of her slender wrist, the way her hair brushed her cheekbone, skin warmed by the ruddy light of the candle.

“Anyway.” She dropped her hand and sank back in her chair. “I don't know what it was. Anyway, basically, if you want to know,” she said, “I was dumped.”

They were quiet and drank their wine.

“What should we do?” he asked at last.

“I don't know.”

“What do you want?”

“What do
you
want?”

“I think,” he said carefully, “I might be starting to feel something again. So maybe we could see what happens. I think that's what I want.”

“You think that's what you want.” She put a hand to her brow again. “Well, that's something.”

She wouldn't say anything else, so he paid for their drinks and they drove home to make dinner for Julia.

— —

A mayfly had somehow gotten
into the kitchen and died by the blender. After looking at it closely, Bill picked it up by a hairlike leg and was about to drop it in the trash can when its delicate, semitransparent wings caught the pale light from the window above the sink. For a moment, the whole kitchen seemed semitransparent.

“They only live for one day,” said Julia. “We learned that in science.”

He was aware of her watching him.

“Isn't that sad?”

“Better than nothing,” he said, depositing the mayfly in the trash.

“They hatch and they mate. I don't think they even get to eat anything.”

“At least they get to mate.”

“Dad.”
Julia made a revolted face and drank some of her milk.

He began to saw through the loaf of French bread, staler than he'd thought, glad to see Julia making faces. She seemed unnaturally responsible these days, doing her homework, once again practicing the oboe, all without being asked. Her attempt to impose order on the troubled atmosphere at home—that was Dr. Vogel's theory. He was almost relieved when she went back to her old little-kid questions, a steady battery of best and worst.
Who's your favorite Red Sox player? What's the meanest thing anyone ever said to you? If you had to spend the rest of your life eating only liver or broccoli, which would you choose?
He always tried to answer honestly,
feeling he owed her that. It was clear she was monitoring them, like a nurse watching patients' heart rates on screens at the nurses' station. Every hour or so in the evenings she hunted them down, wherever they were in the house. Sensing some fibrillation, signs of a skipped heartbeat. Prepared to resuscitate any silence.

What was the best day in your life? What's your worst memory?

— —

At last week's session with
Dr. Vogel the word “cohabitation” had been introduced, tentatively, by Bill, with suggestions for how they might occupy separate floors of the house, as well as a financial argument for such an arrangement, one that was logical and fair. Afterward they went across the street to the Tavern, ordering beer because the evening was so warm. They were about to continue their discussion when George Wechsler walked in. With George was a short woman in a red sundress, dark blond hair pulled back, oversize sunglasses pushed on top of her head. From the brisk way she pointed to a table by the front windows and the docile way George followed her, Bill figured she must be the ex-wife. Square, compact, large-busted body. Athletic calves she clearly liked to show off; on one small, shapely hand an array of stacked gold rings.

“We'd like a menu,” Bill heard her say to the bartender, in a not-unpleasant bray.

Margaret had seen them, too.

To give her a moment to collect herself, Bill gazed up at the old print of fox hunters and their leaping dogs hanging above their table. He thought of the fox, not pictured, perhaps huddled in a culvert just below the frame. Long nose quivering, eyes unblinking, listening to the baying overhead, the shouts and horses shifting their hooves. The timbered, low ceilings of the Tavern began to shake. It was the trolley passing outside, rumbling along the tracks.

“We can go,” he said quietly.

Her face had gone sharp and white. Once more her hand shielded her eyes, a gesture that now seemed theatrical.

“Well, it's up to you,” he said coldly. “But I don't want to sit here like this all night.”

“Then don't.” Her lips barely moved.

More reasonably, he said, “But I also don't want to leave you.”

She said nothing. He stared for a while at the table. In the unsteady candlelight flickering through the tall beer glasses, he had the brief impression of being on a raft afloat.

At last Margaret said, “I can't bear it.”

She stood up and walked past the bar to the front of the Tavern, where George and his wife sat by a leaded-glass window, each square full of evening brilliance, looking at laminated menus. Bill stared into his beer. What was expected when confronting your wife's lover? His father once told him a story about a guy who'd found out his wife was sleeping with his boss. The guy drove to the boss's house, crawled in through a basement window, went up to the bedroom, and worked his way through the boss's closet, cutting off the right sleeve of every shirt and jacket.

“How Freudian,” Margaret had said, when Bill told the story to her.

He pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

“Hello,” she was saying to the wife, whom George had just introduced.

“What a nice evening,” said the wife politely, squinting in the bright haze of the window beside her. Bill couldn't tell by her expression if she knew who Margaret was; he could not bring himself to look at George.

“Isn't it? Just beautiful.” Margaret's cheeks were red. “By the way, this is my husband, Bill.”

“Hello,” Bill heard himself say.

More weather-related comments were exchanged. Then Margaret was saying something about the Tavern, making a menu suggestion: the onion rings were good but the Caesar salad was limp. It was hard to find a good Caesar salad that wasn't limp, still the Tavern could try harder, buy fresher lettuce, because who wants a limp salad. Her back was very straight and she had rested her fingertips on the top of a third chair at their table, as if she were prepared to pull it out and sit down.

What agonies people put themselves through, thought Bill, feeling himself nod and squint at George's wife, who was nodding and squinting back at him. It was almost criminal. George sat with his forearms resting on the table, hands clasped, staring down at his wrists as if they were shackled together. Bill felt a spurt of fury.
Look
at this guy, with his stubble and his squat, bossy wife. Who the hell did he think he was? He'd like to cut off both of George's sleeves and stuff them down his throat. The next instant he felt only pity. How foolish it all was, how unnecessary and unwise, to go on nodding and squinting, three of them with ice in their guts—and the fourth, he could see by her glance at George's bowed head and the way her smile froze, just now getting the drift.

“Well, have a nice dinner,” said Margaret.

The next moment she was opening the Tavern's thick oak door, both hands on the heavy iron latch. A margin of golden light, a lively breath of spring air, and she was gone.

— —

“The point of mayflies,” he
said to Julia in the kitchen, “is to be part of the food chain.”

“Gross.”

“Well, mayflies don't see it that way.”

“How do you know? I think it's sad when something dies, no matter what it is.”

“I don't agree. Mayflies are different. Think about it. For them every minute is as long as a year. In mayfly years, the guy I just threw away was probably three centuries old. Empires had crumbled. He'd survived death two dozen times, fathered a thousand children. Seen mind-blowing sights. Flowers, birdbaths, lawn mowers.”

She looked at him soberly. “I still think it's sad.”

“Sad doesn't really apply to bugs.” He finished slicing the bread and put the knife down. “And he died a natural death. By a blender. What else could a guy want?”

He was aware of trying to entertain, to be diverting. Aware, also, that the effort most likely showed.

“Who's Dr. Vogel?” she'd asked a couple of nights ago, materializing in the kitchen doorway after they thought she'd gone to bed.

Margaret had explained that Dr. Vogel was a therapist, someone “we're seeing to help us figure some things out.”

“Okay,” Julia had said. “Whatever.” They'd waited for her to ask more questions. But she'd faded away from the doorway, her expression bland, tolerant.

She had been through so much this year. Bullying at school. Not enough friends. The awful accident on the ice. Babysitting that boy and losing him in the woods. Losing Binx. And now, soon to be her worst memory of all: Julia, honey, come sit down, Mom and Dad have something to tell you . . .

Okay. Whatever.

Across the counter she sat watching him, drinking her milk. Calmly she set the glass down. Picked up her paper napkin, wiped her mouth.

“What's for dinner again?”

Whatever it was, she'd eat it. She wouldn't complain. For a moment he braced himself against the counter with both hands, unable to breathe. Because there it was, his terrible fear, that Julia had lost every illusion, all her questions had been answered, and that somehow he and Margaret had done this to her. Taught her far too early the saddest adult lesson of all: that so much of life was just something to get through.

I
n the green and beige auditorium of
Duncklee Middle School, boys and girls rushed up and down the aisles as if something were chasing them. Boys in white shirts, black bow ties, and black pants; girls in black dresses, their hair neatly braided or held back with a black headband. No one sitting down, everyone talking, while from the stage Mrs. Dibler, the chorus director, clapped her long, narrow hands and looked down her big nose. “Chil-dren! Qui-et!” No one listened. She stood tugging at the bodice of her sleeveless green dress, arm flesh jiggling, bra straps showing, while Julia Downing's mother, at the piano (with sleeves), played a few chords from “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” which they were supposed to be rehearsing one last time.

Some children ran through the swinging doors and down the long corridors, footsteps echoing, to peer giddily into empty classrooms. “Boo!” someone squealed, leaping out from behind a door, and then they were all squealing, rampaging back into the corridor.

Soon the seats of the auditorium would fill with parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, even some teachers (Ms. Manookian had been spotted in the lobby, with Mr. Anderman!), while they, the chorus, waited backstage. There would be a final, furious shushing from Mrs. Dibler, and this time they would all obey—grave with importance now—and even listen as she reminded them to keep their place in line, to walk quietly, with
dignity,
onto the stage. This is a
per-for-
mance
! Smiles! No fidgeting! And they would look at her solemnly, also with contempt, because of course it was a performance. What else had they been practicing for all these weeks and months?

And then it really was time.

One by one they filed onto the stage. The lights dimmed overhead. Onstage the lights came
up,
right into their eyes. Dazzled, they managed to stay in line, to make their way to their appointed spots, row after row, on four levels of metal risers, listening to their shoes clang hollowly, their stomachs hollow, too, and the stage suddenly like the interior of a great seashell, while beyond its shining wooden lip waited a dark sea of hushed faces.