An American Tune

by Barbara Shoup

  Meanwhile, Baghdad continued to burn, pummeled by U.S. bombers. Nora switched off The Today Show and set out walking earlier than usual to avoid the disturbing images of people’s lives in ruin. She walked quickly, fueled by anger, past the tree trunk where she usually sat, past the stone sculptures, until she calmed down and the world around her became more real and compelling than the world on the screen. Later, she wondered if she had known where she was going all along – though, at the time, she rounded the point and reached what used to be the end point of her morning walks thinking only of how lovely and improbable the dunes were: sand mountains, rising to the sky.

  She kept on until she came to the break in the trees high above her, the entrance to the forest path that led home – and, suddenly, there was Astro bounding down the dune. She fell to her knees, opened her arms to him, and he danced around her, whimpering, licking her face. He rolled over, panting, and when Nora scratched his stomach she could have sworn that he was smiling. She bent and nuzzled him. He smelled of dog and dirt and water.

  “Astro!”

  Nora looked up and saw Claire at the top of the dune.

  “Astro!” she shouted again. “You come back here. Right now!”

  Astro looked at her, his tail wagging. He looked at Nora with an inquisitive expression.

  “Go,” she said. But, of course, he wouldn’t.

  He looked back and forth between Nora and Claire, who called for him again. Barked, as if to protest the position they’d put him in.

  Nora stood, took hold of his collar. “Come on, buddy,” she said, and started up the dune with him. Her legs burned, having grown unaccustomed to the pull of the sand in the months she’d been away, and she was winded by the time she reached the top.

  “He does this every morning,” Claire said, accusingly. “Looking for you.”

  “Oh –” Nora’s heart plunged at the thought of it and at the sight of her daughter, so unexpectedly there before her, flushed with anger and from running through the woods after Astro. So beautiful. She could not take her eyes from her.

  “What are you doing here?” Claire asked. “If you were planning to come visit us –”

  “No,” Nora said. “I mean, I –”

  “Because Dad doesn’t want to see you and, really, neither do I.” She bent to clip on the leash, brushing Nora’s hand where it still held Astro’s collar.

  “I know,” Nora said. “But, honey, can’t we –”

  “No,” Claire said. “I’ve got stuff to do. Mo’s gone this week; plus, I’m doing all the work you used to do. Come on,” she said to Astro, who ducked his head at the tone of her voice and went with her. But he stopped when they reached the place where the path turned, looked back to where Nora stood and barked once, as if he thought that might make her follow.

  He was waiting on Mo and Diane’s porch when she got home from the shop that evening. When he saw her get out of the car, he put his head between his paws and gazed up at her with an apologetic expression. His tail thumped hopefully, and when she knelt to stroke his fur, he turned his head so that her hand was exactly in the spot behind his ears, where he loved to be scratched.

  He must be hungry, she thought. It was exactly the time she had always fed him. Could he know that? Was that why he’d come?

  He was a dog. He couldn’t really be trying to bring the family back together.

  She sat down on the porch step, petted him, trying to decide what to do. She could call and tell Claire and Charlie that she was bringing him home, or she could just go. If she simply appeared, they’d have to talk to her; they’d be too surprised not to. Nora took a deep breath, grabbed Astro’s collar as she had earlier that morning, and walked to the car with him.

  She opened the door and he hopped in, his tail wagging at the prospect of a ride. She smiled, thinking of the Gary Larson cartoon Claire loved: a highway full of dogs, driving, their heads stuck out of the car windows, their ears flying back in the wind. The caption: “If dogs could drive.” It had been on their refrigerator so long it was yellow with age; it was probably still there, she thought – and rolled the window down for Astro, despite the fact that the temperature had dropped and it was quite a wintry evening.

  She drove up Main Street to Highway 22, then south through the pine forests to the turn-off toward home. It was dusk, the landscape every shade of gray, except for the slender, arched trunks of the white birches at the forest’s edge, gleaming in the last light.

  “Beautiful country,” Tom had said, driving the same road a few months before.

  Oh, it was. She looked out at the tall pines, never-changing, their tips a long, serrated line against the pewter sky. At that moment, she loved this place that had sheltered her for so many years more than she had ever loved it and, at the same time, understood – this was the trade-off, this was what she would lose. It was Charlie’s place, his home. His town, his woods, his meadow, his lake. None of it had ever belonged to her, really. She’d give it all up, everything – but not until he spoke to her, not until he agreed to do whatever he could do to keep her from losing Claire.

  She was shaking when she pulled into the driveway. Charlie was just closing the clinic, and Astro barked once when he saw him start across the yard. Nora opened the car door and he leapt out, raced toward him. Charlie reached into his pocket for a dog treat and, as he bent to offer it, caught sight of Nora approaching in the fading light. He stood straight up.

  “He was at Mo and Diane’s house when I got back from the shop,” she said. “I guess he followed my scent there. I saw him when I was walking this morning.”

  “Claire told me,” Charlie said. “She –”

  He looked weary, Nora thought. Thinner, old.

  “I don’t know what to do with her,” he said. “I was wrong to let her come back. I –”

  Anger rippled across his face, but only briefly.

  “I’m resigned to this,” he said. “You and – Tom. Whatever –”

  She took a step toward him, but he stepped back – as if afraid of her, she thought.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Claire. That’s all. I just want you to help me talk to her.”

  He brushed the heel of his hand across his eyes, glanced up to her lit bedroom window. “Go to her, then,” he said. “I think she’s been waiting for you since this morning.”

  Nora looked at him and, for a moment, thought maybe she could love him again. She could try. Shouldn’t she try? But when he turned abruptly and retreated from her, back into the clinic, she knew it was impossible. There were things he kept hidden in his heart – and to make a real marriage he would have to reveal them. Something he could not or would not do.

  Night had settled in by now, and the house was completely dark, except for Claire’s lit window. Nora did not turn on any lights as she made her way through the kitchen, down the hall. It was easier that way, the vestiges of her old life ghostly around her. The stairs creaked just past the landing. She reached the top, where she had turned so many times toward the comfort of the cozy room she and Charlie shared. The door was open, the bed made. There was her reading chair, shadowy in the moonlight, the clutter of books she’d left behind still on the table beside it. Charlie had moved into Jo’s room, she saw, as she turned the other way and walked past it.

  Claire’s door was closed. Nora knocked lightly, pushed it open a crack and peered inside. She was fast asleep, her face blotchy from crying, a yellow Lab puppy curled at her feet. It raised its head, looked drowsily at Nora, then sighed and tucked back into itself. Claire was covered with the red and white afghan Diane had made for her to take to college, one corner of it clutched in her hand and pulled up against her cheek. It was exactly the same way she used to sleep with the flannel blanket she’d carried everywhere until she went to kindergarten, Nora remembered. She did not think. Just went in and laid down beside her daughter, put her arms around her and waited until she stirred.

  “Clair
e,” she whispered, and held her, still, though Claire grew rigid against her.

  “Where’s Dad?” she asked.

  “In the clinic. I talked to him. He sent me up to you. Honey –”

  “No,” Claire said, weeping now. “I can’t talk. What could I say?”

  Nora held fast to her, drew her even closer, which Claire allowed. “You don’t have to talk,” she said. “We don’t. Not now, not till you’re ready. But, Honey –” Now her own voice was thick with tears. “I find I simply can’t go on not being your mother any longer. I just can’t. So could we just stay here a little while? Just you and me – and see how that makes us feel?”

  She felt Claire hiccough and nod against her chest. Nora reached over and turned out the lamp, then stroked her daughter’s wet cheeks, combed her fingers through her long, tangled hair until Claire sighed a long, deep sigh and slept again, exhausted, in her arms.

  32

  “Let it Be”

  Charlie was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee when she came downstairs, his posture erect, both hands gripping the mug as if to ground him there.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry,” he said. “Just don’t say that.”

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to talk to him now, but she poured a cup of coffee for herself and sat down in her place across from him.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  “Sad. Sleeping. We didn’t talk. I just –” She shook her head, pressed her knuckles against her eyes for moment. “Charlie, please. What are we going to do about –”

  “I accept that you felt you had to tell me . . . what you did,” he said. “But I’ll never be able to accept your telling Claire. You did, though, and it’s going to take both of us to figure out what to do about it. I don’t want to talk it to death,” he said. “I just want us to make a plan.”

  “My plan is to be near her,” Nora said. “Not talk. Not yet. Just be. If the apartment over the Hummingbird is still empty, I’ll stay there – assuming that’s okay with you.”

  He nodded.

  Astro got up from his sheepskin pillow, padded over to sit next to Nora, his tail thumping slowly. Hopefully, she thought.

  “He’s a mess, too,” Charlie said, but not unkindly. “He’s your dog, it turns out. You should take with him with you.”

  She felt weak with gratitude, she wanted to put her arms around him and tell him that she loved him, loved the part of Claire that was him, and the family they had been. But it would have been worse than trying to tell him she was sorry.

  “The puppy –” she began.

  He shrugged, smiled a little. “Yo-Yo Ma – which seems to have morphed to Monty somehow. She’s training him. She means to take him back to school with her in the fall. He’s going to be a great dog,” he said – and became himself again, telling her why.

  Back at Diane’s, Astro sniffed all of Nora’s belongings thoroughly, probably scenting Maxine. When she woke the next morning, he jumped down from the bed where he’d been sleeping beside her and positioned himself just inside the door, facing in, his head on his paws, as if he could keep her there.

  “Walk?” she asked, after she’d drunk a cup of coffee, showered and dressed.

  He leapt up, tail wagging, and followed her joyously out into the cold, running circles around her until they got to the beach, at which point he ran ahead of her, for home.

  Nora walked slowly, breathing in the wet lake air, memorizing the upward scoop of dunes to the overhanging cliffs above, the brittle grasses, the graceful pattern of white birches against the lightening sky. There was still ice as far out as she could see, drifts frozen into what looked like icebergs near the horizon, ruffles of frozen waves near the shore.

  She passed the stone sculptures where she had met Tom, stopped, and looked back, remembering the sight of him jogging toward her. She’d talked to him the night before, told him about Claire, about Charlie giving her Astro.

  “It was good of him,” Tom said. “Things are going to be okay.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “If I can follow the never-talk-about-anything-that-matters rule.”

  “You can talk to me about stuff that matters. You need to do that. Deal?”

  “Deal,” she said.

  She walked on until she reached the familiar break in the trees, where she followed Astro up the dune, through the woods to the meadow. The farmhouse might have been on a Christmas card, she thought, surrounded by snow-iced pine trees, smoke curling up from the chimney. Astro bounded toward the sound of dogs barking in the run. Charlie looked up and raised his hand when he saw her coming behind him.

  “There’s coffee inside,” he said, when she reached him.

  Claire sat at the kitchen table in her pajamas, eating toast and jam, her hair still tangled from sleeping, her eyes puffy from yesterday’s tears. Monty greeted them, rolling over at the sight of Astro, who nudged him playfully. Nora scooped up the puppy, nuzzled him, and sat down in her usual place.

  “He’s lovely,” she said to her daughter.

  Claire nodded.

  Nora knew she didn’t dare say that she was sorry, or try to explain – anything. She kept the puppy in her lap to keep from going to Claire and holding her as she’d done the night before.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Claire asked. “I could fix you some toast.”

  “I’d love that,” Nora said, though she wasn’t hungry.

  Claire got up, poured the coffee into the yellow mug Nora always used; then fixed the toast, buttered it, and slathered it with black raspberry jam.

  “I miss Grandma’s jam,” she said, setting the plate in front of Nora. “I always think of it. Every morning. It’s stupid, you know? I mean, toast making me sad?”

  It’s always the little things, Nora wanted to say. The yellow mug, the row of cookbooks on the shelf, the summer geraniums leggy but still surviving on the sun porch. Instead, she offered up the puppy, and Claire took him and buried her face in his fur, weeping.

  “Honey –” Nora said. “Claire.”

  But Claire shook her head, took a deep breath, and collected herself. “I’ve been taking Monty over to the nursing home to see her,” she said. “She doesn’t pet him or anything, but she likes it if I put him near her. I can tell. It’s sad, Mom. How she is. Dad won’t even go there.”

  “I’ll go,” Nora said. “Can we go together?”

  “Okay,” Claire said.

  Nora had avoided the nursing home since she’d come back, worried that she might get a cool reception, but Jo’s caregivers were visibly glad to see her, and if they had an opinion about her separation from Charlie it wasn’t evident.

  Claire headed toward Jo’s room, carrying Monty in her arms, stopping so folks in wheelchairs and on walkers could pet and marvel over him. Nora followed slowly, her anxiety about seeing Jo compounded by the stale scent of the place, the low murmur of suffering and complaint. She had prepared herself for the worst, but the sight of Jo shocked her nonetheless: skin and bones, chalk-white, her mouth frozen into a perfect “O.” Jo’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of her voice, but her expression remained blank. Monty curled cooperatively into himself when Claire placed him on the bed near Jo’s chest. Jo watched as Claire bent closer to her, her fingers twitched when Claire lifted her hand and put it on the puppy. Muscle memory, Claire thought, from petting all the dogs she’d loved in her life.

  As they were leaving, the head nurse signaled Nora into her office. Jo had been fighting colds and infections since she’d been sick at Christmas-time, she said. She didn’t have a living will. The doctor had tried to talk to Charlie about what he wanted them to do if she became ill enough to need resuscitation. But Charlie continued to avoid such a conversation.

  “Would you talk to him?” she asked.

  Nora lied and said she would, knowing that, right now, she couldn’t even risk trying.

  Later that day, Claire helped her load some things into Diane’s car to take to the apartment ov
er the Hummingbird Café. Clothes, mostly. Books, sheets, towels. Astro’s bed. Claire didn’t offer to go with her, and Nora didn’t ask. Climbing the stairs to the apartment, she had remembered following Jo up all those years ago, the relief of setting her duffel bag down in a clean space. She remembered the patch of late-summer sunlight on the bed, the starched eyelet curtains at the window. Had she really believed she could simply shed the person she’d been?

  Diane had invited her to stay on in the guest room, but Nora declined. She was glad to have a place to be alone, where she could think things through, where she could feel comfortable calling Tom whenever she felt like it, where she could set the old photograph of the two of them at Bean Blossom on her bedside table and look at it when she needed courage, needed to remember who she was.

  She made herself be patient. Mornings, she walked Astro to their – Charlie’s – house. After a quietly companionable breakfast with Claire, she helped Claire train Monty and they talked about how adorable he was, how smart. Sometimes the two of them drove into Traverse City together to see a movie or shop and then talked about the movie or their purchases, Claire now and then forgetting herself and saying something about Dylan – what movies he loved, something funny he’d said. She and Charlie and Claire shared meals and talked about all of the above, plus music, plus the weather.

  Ice-out on Lake Michigan came in April, with its creaking and thumping and moaning, the sharp cracks as chunks of ice broke into glittering islands, the suck and gurgle of water reasserting itself, rippling into ponds that grew larger each day. Claire had been frightened of it as a little girl, the low whistling and banging and hissing were like a scary movie, she said. But Charlie taught her to listen to it, to hear it as a kind of symphony and, in time, ice-out had become something she loved. Something the three of them had always walked down to witness together, standing at the shore amidst the Brobdingnagian chunks of ice that washed up on the beach, as clear and bright as diamonds.