The Dogs of Littlefield Page 24

  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 blow-up. 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 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, finally, 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 and 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.

  Acknowledgments

  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 Suzanne Matson, Eileen Pollack, Phil Press and Joan Wickersham, all of whom read drafts of this novel and offered tremendously insightful and useful suggestions. Maxine Rodburg’s help was, as always, simply 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.

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  First published 2013

  Copyright © Suzanne Berne, 2013

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Poems: ‘Parliament Hill Fields’, from Collected Poems, by John Betjeman © 1955, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1979, 1981, 1982, 2001. Reproduced by permission of John Murray (Publishers)

  Cover photography: woman and dog © Heather Evans Smith / Trevillion images; fence plainpicture/Elektrons 08

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  Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes

  ISBN: 978-0-241-96267-1