The Dogs of Littlefield (32 page)

That afternoon she'd switched on the waterfall for the first time all year. The pump had broken last fall; the hose had needed to be replaced; the filter was clogged. The pool specialist had finally arrived after lunch, a tall, fat man with tattooed arms and a crease at the back of his shaved head, who spent several hours fixing the pump, the hose, and the filter. “Like open-heart surgery,” she'd said when he was done, but he hadn't laughed. Probably he thought she was remarking on the bill, when she'd only meant to be complimentary. (Why was the simplest gesture so complicated?) For weeks, she'd been waiting for the waterfall to get going again, looking forward to the soothing sound of water coursing down the rocks, and yet now as she sat with her unread book in her lap, she found the burble of water irritating.

She was waiting for Bill to come home.

From an open window of the Fischmans' house came the noise of a baseball game on the radio. Since Marv died, Hedy kept the radio on all day. Over the roaring crowd, an announcer said, “He was batting a buck fifty in May but June's a whole different story!”

Margaret thought back to her first meeting with George, their walk in the woods, how she had wanted to tell him about her marriage and Bill. She thought of the night she had kissed him in his car when the creature had reared up at her, which she understood now to have been only a projection of her own fears and unmet needs.
What do I want?
she'd asked herself so many times since.
What do I need?
Whatever it was, she'd never really thought it could be supplied by George. And yet from the beginning there had been something between them, a sympathy that was almost fraternal, a recognition of wanting what the other was missing.

Do you understand?
he had asked, when he told her about Tina.

A companionable sound, Bill's father used to say of the waterfall when he visited in the summer. Margaret's Niagara.

She had selected each stone from an old quarry in Gloucester she and Bill had visited one weekend, after her last time in the hospital. Filled the backseat and the trunk of the car with stones, some showing veins of iron ore, some plain granite, a few pinkish quartz.

Bill had helped, but she'd wanted to choose the stones herself and even quietly put back a few he had selected; in her mind hung a picture of how the waterfall would look. At home she'd read a book about the way people used to build stone walls, without mortar, each stone placed with an eye to symmetry and balance, no single stone holding too much weight or too little. She'd bought an electric pump, and one blazing afternoon Bill's father, who had been a contractor, had cemented it in at the far end of the pool, and done the wiring and hooked up the hose. While he worked she brought him glasses of lemonade, noticing how the sun reflected off his bald head. She kept offering to get him a hat.

“Don't bother,” he said. “I'll wear one later.”

The waterfall took a long time to build because she kept taking it apart. She couldn't get the stones to fit exactly as she wanted them; she made mistakes, left gaps and jagged places. Sometimes it looked just like a pile of rocks, like the collapse of something. For two days while Bill was at work, his father ferried stones with her, back and forth, from a tumble on a tarp by the pool. But finally she was impatient to have it done and so she decided the waterfall was finished. It had turned out well enough, especially now that moss had grown onto some of the stones, and a little green creeping vine that wasn't ivy. When you turned on the switch, water ran down the stones and made a babbling noise that wasn't so different, if you shut your eyes, from the real thing. Right at the center was an oblong stone, heavier at one end, quartz with a dark artery.

Bill was late.

He was supposed to be home by seven. All day she had thought about what she would say when he came home. All day, since this morning, even while sitting with Hedy and Naomi by the pool talking about the dogs and then pondering the surprising news about Clarice Watkins (which wasn't so surprising, looking back). All day, while taking her walk with Julia and meeting that boy, all day, behind the dauntless peonies and horse chestnuts and the rain and the sun coming out, behind everything she had seen and done and thought about, she had been waiting. Sometimes it seemed as if her whole life had been waiting, that she had been operating from within a dream of her life, waiting to wake up, and now the moment had finally arrived to do something before it was all gone.

She had made a simple cold dinner, just to get it out of the way. A salad, with a plate of sliced tomatoes and some cheese and bread. A bowl of strawberries. Half a bottle of pinot grigio in the fridge.

It was both reassuring and depressing that there had been no final blowup. No scene. No grand denunciations, hysterics, drama. Only calm discussions in Dr. Vogel's office, a reasoned inventory of their separate failings. Followed by their declaration to Julia. Followed by a hesitation. A decision to decide nothing.
It's up to you,
Bill had said. He said it again last night, as they sat together, at the end of the bed, making the mattress sag as they pulled off their shoes.
We don't have to do this.
You decide
.

She leaned back in her Adirondack chair, waving away the gnats, listening to the birds and watching light glisten in the trees.

“Children adjust,” Dr. Vogel had said at their last session.

A mourning dove was calling out from somewhere in the trees. Where was Bill? What was keeping him? Why tonight, of all nights, did he have to be late? She sighed, shifting her legs. Had he thought of her today, of what she might be thinking? Probably not. She wondered if this was one of the main differences between men and women: that men rarely wondered what women were thinking, unless they were with them, while women always wondered what men were thinking, and never seemed to know.

A slip of paper in her pocket rustled; she put her hand to her pocket, drew out the paper, and looked at it.

milk

eggs

orange juice

Cheerios

She refolded it and slid it back inside her pocket.

“Bill,” she would say.

But she would wait until he got himself a drink. Maybe point out the sun setting behind the trees, the beauty of the evening, the dove. A list of small marvels, although she was finished with trying to make herself interesting to him. Such a lovely time of day; they'd called it the witching hour when Julia was younger. That was what she would do, and tell him about walking to the Dairy Barn with Julia and meeting that boy.

Not a very nice boy, but it was good to see Julia with someone her own age. She hadn't been spending much time with her friends, not even Hannah; yet she didn't seem unhappy exactly. Mostly sullen, although today had been better. When they got home they had talked about Julia packing for Canada—Margaret thought she should start getting organized—and then laughed together over the list on the camp's website: “What You Need and What You Don't” (a good book, a flashlight, a warm sweatshirt, “absolutely NO iPods, iPads, cell phones, MP3 players, electronic devices of ANY kind! Where you're going, you won't need them!”).

“Where am I going,” Julia had said, “a crypt?”

A white space was forming in Margaret's mind; slowly it took on dimension and color, like an instant photograph that develops as you watch. Three people walking on a beach, shadows trailing them, and beside them a flat gray sea. Was this a sign? If so, a sign of what?

Again she shifted in the wooden chair, straightening her back, crossing her legs; she thought about going in to pour herself a glass of wine. But she wanted to be sitting outside when Bill came home. Out in the cool air, listening to the waterfall, watching the sunset. The days seemed so beautiful lately she was almost afraid of being inside, of missing any of it. Her roses by the back steps. The pink geraniums. Was that a bat over the pool?

On the cover of her library book was a painting of a woman bent over piano keys. Shades of blue, with brown for the piano, gray for the woman's long dress; on the windowsill, a small red vase in a low stroke of light. A suggestion of evening, the woman playing for herself. Raptness indicated in the tension of her body, fingers suspended above the keys. Not rapture, something more labored, a deep attentiveness.

The paper in her pocket rustled like a dry leaf.

“Julia?” Margaret called. “How are you coming along?”

From Julia's window came a heavy sound, like furniture being moved. Someone's dog began barking from the end of the street.

“Julia? Can you hear me?”

It was almost dark.

Where was Bill? He hadn't even phoned to say he'd be late. After all that had happened, all their talking. He was working again. She had made dinner. Nothing was very different. But she could hear a difference, all the same, a complex movement in the leaves overhead, in the water on the rocks, and in her own breathing.

The sky was pink and orange. The breeze smelled of honeysuckle. That mourning dove was calling. She would never be loved passionately. Her life was not what she had hoped. She was going to worry about her child to the end of her days, her child who might grow up to be disappointed or afraid, or alone, or not, who might instead get almost everything. Her child, whose neck was as slender as a stalk, whose life was opening like a flower. What I want to tell you, she would say (someday), is that sometimes things don't work out very well, no matter how much you worry about them beforehand. But (my darling, my darling) that is the least of it.

Light was sifting through the darkening trees like a great golden net.

Was that Bill's car in the driveway? Her heart was beating so violently she couldn't hear.

“Bill?”

She knew what she wanted to say, first the dove and the net and—what was the rest? It was so hard to keep hold of it all. I have been waiting, she would say. Waiting and waiting. I have thought it all over. And I have to tell you—

Already it was almost gone.

Trees, leaves, light, bird. And the breeze and the bat over the pool.

“Bill?” she called out again, almost in terror, thinking she heard a car door creak open. “Bill, is that you?”

Something was moving in the deep blue twilight, under the oak trees, moving toward her or moving away, it was too dark to tell. What else could a person do, she thought, staring hard at the darkness, but try to be happy? However confused and wrong-looking the attempt might be. And then whatever happened afterward all you could do was bear it, because whatever you could not bear you had to carry.

“Hello?” she called, to whatever it was.

Trees, leaves, light, bird.

I am grateful to the MacDowell Colony for granting me a residency during the summer of 2012 and to Ann Stokes for two weeks at her Welcome Hill Studios. Heartfelt thanks to Elizabeth Graver, Suzanne Matson, Eileen Pollack, Phil Press, and Joan Wickersham, all of whom read drafts of this novel and offered insightful and useful suggestions. Maxine Rodburg's help was, as always, invaluable. I'd like to thank Marjorie Sandor for her marvelous and uncanny friendship; my wonderful and patient agent, Colleen Mohyde, who accompanied this book from its first pages; and Juliet Annan, for her steady encouragement and wise guidance, which have mattered more to me than I can ever say. Thanks also to my husband, Ken; my daughters, Avery and Louisa; my sister Evie; and to all my family and friends, without whom I would have long ago gone to the dogs.

© AVERY KIMMELL

Suzanne Berne
is the author of the novels
A Crime in the Neighborhood, A Perfect Arrangement
, and
The Ghost at the Table
, as well as
Missing Lucile: Memories of the Grandmother I Never Knew
, part biography and part memoir. She teaches creative writing at Boston College and lives outside of Boston with her husband and their two daughters.

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

SimonandSchuster.com

authors.simonandschuster.com/Suzanne-Berne

Also by Suzanne Berne

A Crime in the Neighborhood

A Perfect Arrangement

The Ghost at the Table

Missing Lucile