The Dogs of Littlefield Read online

  In the same moment it also occurred to her that someone who had tried something terrible once would probably try it again. No monster in the world was more frightening than a person with a taste for misery.

  The scent of roses grew stronger. Above arched the endless blue sky. Kismet was panting.

  Naomi was frowning at the pool. ‘Well, clearly we’ve got to do something.’

  But Margaret was thinking of Julia, of all the people Julia would meet in her life who could turn unpredictably cruel or crazy, and all the countless people who were just careless, people who would not find Julia miraculous in any way, who would not consider the world changed without her in it. Julia with her small, pale, sober face, her downturned mouth and lank brown hair hanging about her thin shoulders – who but Margaret understood the absolute astonishment of her?

  ‘I wonder what Clarice thinks about all this,’ Naomi was saying. ‘Does she know? Is she home? Shall we invite her to join us?’

  Hedy coughed. ‘Clarice,’ she said, ‘is no longer with us. Went back to Chicago two days ago.’

  ‘Without saying goodbye?’

  Hedy coughed again. In a dry voice, she recounted the news that Dr Clarice Watkins, assistant professor of the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociocultural Anthropology, had been doing research on them. Studying them. The residents of Littlefield.

  ‘It is her theory – I am just repeating – that we suffer from delusions of being in touch with the rest of the world. But since we are too comfortable to share the world’s worries, we are paranoid because we also can’t do anything to make sure we are safe, since the world is such a mess, so that is why we are afraid of everything.’ Hedy poked the rubber tip of her walking stick at a loose patio slate. Out scuttled a beetle.

  ‘What else did she say?’ Margaret touched the base of her throat.

  ‘That we think our little problems are big problems, and every time we try to pay attention to the truly bad things in the world we are really just congratulating ourselves that they aren’t happening to us.’

  For several moments they were quiet.

  ‘Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Anything else under her turban?’ asked Naomi.

  Hedy pursed up her mouth as if tasting a newly decanted wine. ‘Too many therapists and yoga studios and people online. Meanwhile our children are poorly educated and many of our attitudes are unconsciously racist.’

  ‘We do have a lot of therapists,’ allowed Naomi.

  ‘That doughnut-baker gave her an earful. She went on and on about him. Stranger in a strange land. Do you know what is strange is Mr Skinny making doughnuts!’

  In her lap, little Kismet whined.

  ‘I can’t remember everything she told me,’ Hedy went on. ‘She says we have proved that life in the Global Village is provincial. But she has decided not to write a book about us, even though she took a lot of notes. She says her findings are too problematic.’

  ‘Well, thank God for that.’ Naomi slapped at a fly that had landed on her arm. ‘So how come she finally told you what she was doing here?’

  Hedy gave a small smile. ‘I asked.’

  The morning came and went, and so did lunchtime and then more hours went by; it was one of those long, hot, breathless afternoons when the air was full of the meditative roar of air conditioners and no one could think of anything to do and even dogs didn’t want to go outside. But by five o’clock it had cooled off a little and Julia and her mother set out for a walk around the village.

  The walk was her mother’s idea, Julia hadn’t wanted to go. First of all it was weird to be walking without Binx. She kept seeing dogs like him everywhere; she hadn’t realized how many black dogs there were in the world until she’d had one herself. Second, she did not like to be seen in public with her mother, who at any moment might call her ‘sweetheart’ or try to hold her hand. Two weeks ago, at dinner, her parents had told her they were going to try living apart for a while, ‘to see what that’s like, to see if it might make us all happier’, both of them goggling at her like a pair of owls.

  The dread she had felt that day in the woods and then for days afterward now seemed like a kind of trick, an extra betrayal. Her mother wasn’t dying. She wasn’t even sick. Julia’s relief at this discovery had been so great that it turned almost instantly to fury. ‘What’s it like,’ Mr Gluskin had asked during their final lunchtime meeting, ‘knowing that your parents are getting separated?’ She told him she didn’t care.

  ‘They’re so annoying,’ she said. ‘Especially my mother.’

  But in a week Julia would go to an all-girls canoe camp in Canada (Mr Gluskin’s daughter was a counselor there and said it was empowering). Until then her mother insisted it was ‘mother–daughter time’. They’d already gone shopping at the mall twice and visited the dentist. Hannah had gone home after a sleepover and Julia was bored of reading about people’s favorite cereals on Facebook, so when her mother suggested going for ice cream, even though it was before dinner, she had agreed, reluctantly, to come along.

  In many yards the grass was already looking singed and the flowers parched and drooping. On the radio it said the temperature today could reach ninety-nine degrees, a record for the third week of June. A peppery scent wafted up from the hot sidewalk mixed with the smell of cement, but in yards where a sprinkler had been set going there was the cool refreshing scent of wet grass. Here and there on the sidewalk was etched a brown leaf-shape where a dead leaf had lain under the snow all winter, leaving behind a perfect skeleton.

  Her mother paused to admire droplets of water that had caught on a spider’s web strung between two tree branches in a yard with a sprinkler. ‘Look at that. Isn’t that lovely?’ She said that if you walked through a spider’s web on a garden path in the morning, it meant you were the first person to have walked on the path that day. Julia refused to admire the spider’s web and kept walking; her mother had switched into isn’t-the-world-fascinating mode, which lately she turned on whenever she was particularly worried about something.

  They passed a house with a shaggy vine climbing on a lattice above the front door. Her mother described a wisteria vine that grew over the back porch of her mother’s house when she was a girl and how she would stand under it pretending to be Juliet waiting for Romeo. After that she told a story about visiting her grandparents’ farm in Indiana and lying in bed at night listening to trains whistle past the cornfields.

  ‘Such a lonely sound,’ she sighed. ‘But so beautiful. The world is full of beautiful things. Sometimes you can hardly stand it.’

  I can stand it, thought Julia, keeping her head down and praying they would not meet anyone they knew.

  Just before they reached the park they passed the house of an old lady on Endicott Street who grew pink peonies in a bed of mulch at the end of her driveway. Her mother first pointed out that the peonies were lovely and looked like old-fashioned bathing caps covered with white rubber petals, and then that someone had backed into the peonies with a car and flattened half of them.

  ‘What a shame. Mrs Beale must be so upset. Peonies only bloom for a week. But while they last they’re the most gorgeous, dauntless things in the world.’

  As they stood contemplating the flattened peonies, Julia spotted Anthony Rabb on his front lawn a couple of houses down. He was cross-legged in the grass, whittling something with a knife. The blade flashed. His blond hair looked almost white under the hot sun.

  ‘Let’s turn around,’ she hissed.

  ‘What? Why? We’re almost at the park. I saw a fox on the soccer field once, did I tell you? With a long red tail, it was so –’

  ‘No,’ said Julia. But it was too late. Anthony had seen them and put up his hand to shade his eyes in their direction. After a moment he gave a small wave.

  ‘Who is that boy? Do you know him? He looks cute.’

  Her mother kept walking; it was too awkward to be left standing alone on the sidewalk, so at last Julia followed her.

  A
nthony squinted up at them from the grass. He was shirtless and barefoot, his legs covered with mosquito bites, some of which were bleeding. Something greenish was smeared on his chin. He got up, still gripping his knife and the piece of wood he had been carving.

  ‘Hi, Julia.’

  Her mother smiled. ‘So how do you two know each other?’

  ‘He’s in my class.’ Julia felt she was speaking another language, probably Latin.

  ‘How nice.’

  The three of them stood facing each other on the flaring sidewalk, as if rendered insensible by the heat of the day. Julia thought she might actually black out.

  ‘So what are you carving?’ she heard her mother ask.

  Anthony held out the piece of wood. Julia couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked like it might be obscene. ‘It’s a totem.’

  ‘A totem,’ repeated her mother. ‘To protect you from bad spirits? How interesting. Is it a bear? A jack rabbit?’

  Anthony said he did not know yet.

  ‘Julia hasn’t told me your name, by the way.’

  Anthony didn’t say anything, so Julia made a muttered introduction.

  ‘Well, we were just on our way to get ice cream, Anthony.’ Her mother was using the chummy voice she usually reserved for greeting repairmen at the door. ‘Would you like to join us?’ Julia really did black out. But she came to in time to hear Anthony say, ‘Sure,’ and see him fold his penknife and stick it in the pocket of his dirty khaki shorts along with his totem. He was so beautiful it seemed wrong to look at him.

  ‘I’ll walk on ahead and see if there’s a line at the Dairy Barn.’ Her mother smiled.

  Unbearable! Horrible! Why did parents even exist? Once they had procreated they should be exiled forever to someplace far away, like Texas, to live among themselves, and rattlesnakes, where they could do no harm.

  Julia had dropped her head, limiting her peripheral vision to her own hair. As she walked along she counted sidewalk cracks, stepping on each one.

  They were in front of Walgreens when Anthony said, ‘So was it like totally weird?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Going under the ice that time. Was it weird?’

  Julia walked along looking at the sidewalk cracks. ‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘I thought I was going to die.’

  But this was said for effect and because people seemed to expect it. She had not actually thought she was going to die. She had not thought of anything for the minute or two after the ice broke beneath her, being entirely preoccupied with not dying.

  ‘Worse things have happened,’ she said as they passed the Forge Café. Which was what her mother said these days whenever she broke a plate or forgot to pick up milk; she’d said the same thing at dinner during the ‘living apart for a while’ speech.

  ‘But it was really scary,’ she added.

  ‘Cool,’ said Anthony. Then he said, ‘Did you know Ms Manookian is leaving to go teach in Lebanon?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe for a change.’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘Really weird.’

  At the Dairy Barn Julia’s mother treated them to double scoops, Rocky Road for Julia and plain vanilla for Anthony.

  ‘I don’t like flavors,’ he said. ‘I’ve got food issues.’

  Julia wondered if anyone from school would drive by and see her standing in front of the Dairy Barn having ice cream with Anthony Rabb. A cocker spaniel was tied by its leash to a parking meter. Julia stooped to pet it. Her mother said that people shouldn’t leave their dogs tied to parking meters, didn’t anyone ever learn anything? She looked up and down the street for its owner. Anthony licked his ice cream like a cat, neatly and with complete attention, making sure no ice cream got on his fingers, and then he threw the cone away with ice cream still inside. The cocker spaniel watched him with a shocked expression.

  ‘Well, bye,’ said Anthony, walking away.

  ‘He didn’t say thank you,’ observed her mother.

  ‘He’s kind of annoying,’ said Julia.

  But on the way home she told her mother about Mr Anderman coming into the cafeteria on the last day of school wearing a gorilla mask and the school nurse calling the police, afraid he was a psycho killer.

  ‘That sounds upsetting,’ said her mother, missing the point as usual. ‘And very irresponsible of Mr Anderman. Oh, Julia. Look at that big horse chestnut tree. Did you know that its flowers change color once they’re pollinated? To let the bees know. Isn’t that interesting?’

  ‘No,’ said Julia, though she thought it was, actually.

  24.

  A storm blew in just before five o’clock. It rained hard for fifteen minutes, enough to wash away the humidity; afterward the air cooled suddenly and the corners and edges of things stood out sharply. By seven the sun was shining again. Margaret had dried off two of the Adirondack chairs with a dishtowel and was once more sitting by the pool, watching light dripping off the oak trees. In her lap was a book. A biography of Clara Schumann, which had looked interesting in the library.

  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 fixed 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!’

  She 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, if not kindly, exactly, then 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 herself from an old quarry in Gloucester she and Bill had visited one weekend, after her last time in the hospital. Filled the back seat and the trunk of the car with stones, some showing veins of iron ore, some plain granite, a few pinkish quartz.

  Bill 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 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 bought an electric pump and one blazing afternoon Bill’s father, who had been a contractor, cemented it in at the far end of the pool, and did 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.’

  It 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 had 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; she kept forgetting the name. 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; sometimes in the evenings it looked ghostly and alive.

  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 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 dauntlessness of 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.