The Dogs of Littlefield

by Suzanne Berne

  At dinner she liked to talk about her students and whether she should go for a master’s degree in English or music. Sometimes she talked about Schumann, whose music she loved because, she said, it was full of heightened awareness of the world’s beauty and pain. Wine made her categorical and vague. ‘Musicians are the true poets,’ she might declare. Or ‘Human loneliness is literature’s only subject.’ Becoming more ardent as she drank glasses of wine, making pronouncements, pausing to qualify them, describing emphatic arcs with her hands, cheekbones finely outlined beneath her fair skin, the pulsing hollow at the base of her throat the exact width of his thumb. As he watched her talk he would find himself holding his breath. Once he even passed out in an Italian restaurant. Woke up with his forehead pressed against brown wallpaper garlanded with gondolas and Venetian palazzos, and to Margaret’s hand on his shoulder, a hurt look on her face.

  Now and then, in bed in her apartment, as he drowsed against the pillows, she would read aloud poems she’d assigned to her class or poems she liked. There was one poem he used to ask for, though it put him to sleep; he could still recall a snatch of it:

  Oh the after-tram-ride quiet, when we heard a mile beyond, Silver music from the bandstand, barking dogs by Highgate

  Pond …

  He remembered the bright spacious feeling those lines had opened within his chest, a feeling that he was heading toward exactly the life he wanted to have. He was going to find a good job that paid good money and come home to a nice old town in the evenings; someday he was going to say ‘my wife’, and have those words mean Margaret.

  All of which happened. He got his job with Roche Capital. Margaret quit teaching when they moved out to Littlefield, planning for the child on the way.

  But that part had not happened.

  The losses, Margaret used to call them, which to him sounded like ‘the lasses’, little girls in white nightgowns, although it had been too early, in all but one case, to know. ‘Don’t talk about it to anyone,’ she’d said fiercely, after the first. ‘I don’t want people feeling sorry for me.’ Tests, procedures, on and on. Until the summer night when she turned to him, face gleaming like wet stone, and said she could not take anymore. Not knowing there was going to be Julia. And then there was Julia, and he thought it was all going to be all right.

  But they had done something to her. Not aged her, exactly, although of course she had aged, but turned her apprehensive, fretful. Overly sensitive. For years now at dinner she mostly talked about worries. Julia was eating too much candy. Wasn’t wearing her bike helmet. What if she got a concussion while playing soccer? He found it hard to listen, which she took as lack of interest. But it was something else, some imbalance in her that had become permanent, something unreasonable, morbid, a persistent boring dread. When Julia started middle school, he’d suggested that Margaret find an outside interest, get a job, do volunteer work; she’d seemed almost frightened at the idea of leaving the house.

  ‘Well, wish me luck,’ she often said, even when heading to the store for milk. Thank God for that dog. At least it got her out of the door.

  She was still Margaret. She loved him. He still loved her.

  But he couldn’t bear it.

  Mostly he tried not to think about it. Or when he did, like this afternoon when he’d stared out of his office window at the glittering Charles, shot with racing sculls and white sails, he thought only: I can’t bear it.

  He shook the ice in his glass again. What was that damned smell?

  Margaret was talking again about the dead dog, worried that it might have been diseased. From down the street a lawnmower started up, drowning out the cricket. He thought of his father mowing the grass on warm evenings in an old pair of dungarees and a white undershirt that turned blue as the evening deepened, later coming into the kitchen to drink a beer by the sink, tipping his head back to drain the bottle. Again he pictured the river from that afternoon, winding along its banks, while Roche scuttled around the office in his shamrock tie, using Post-its to leave messages on people’s computer monitors. When Passano started joking about the Post-its, saying, ‘What is this, the Dark Ages?’ Roche had stared up at him like a newt under a rock.

  ‘Something’s going down,’ said Passano in the elevator.

  ‘I should probably tell Julia,’ Margaret was saying. ‘She might hear about it at school. But I hate to say anything. She’s already so nervous about Binx.’

  Under the hydrangeas bristled a row of popsicle-stick grave markers: one for the parakeet scared to death when Freckles the cat climbed onto its cage, another for Elvis the guinea pig, which keeled over after surviving for several years with a disfiguring eye condition that had to be treated with ointments (not by Bill). The two goldfish in a bowl above the kitchen sink died biannually; Freckles disappeared last fall, most likely eaten by a coyote. He had a memorial marker. Every time a pet died, Julia conducted rituals and burial ceremonies with somber devotion, the animal conveyed to its grave on a little red plush pillow Julia reserved for this purpose, covered by a handkerchief. Happy memories were recounted, followed by the Lord’s Prayer and a poem, then the interment. Later, a moment of silence at dinner, a candle lit in honor of the dead. She even buried mice and toads that drowned in the pool. Now there was that lunatic Binx: chewing up shoes and chair legs, barking at every squirrel that ran across the lawn, sending rugs flying as he skittered from room to room. Heart failure, probably, in store for him.

  He was starting to worry about Julia himself: how she went around with hair hanging in her face, plugged into her iPod, shutting herself for hours in her room to read books about girls falling in love with vampires. (What? she said, whenever he knocked on the door.) Once when he was in her room, he’d found a little china box full of fingernail parings. Hardly seemed to laugh anymore, except when she had a friend over. That little Hannah Melman, for instance. Always a lot of laughing and joking when Hannah was around. ‘Hi, Mr Downing! Hey, I like your pink shirt! Is it Valentine’s Day?’ That kind of kid. Fresh, but fun. Decked out in some cute outfit, little shorts and T-shirts. Margaret kept deploring how short the girls’ shorts were, how their T-shirts showed off their stomachs, but he found them charming. Trying out their powers. Skin so pure, eyes so clear. The clean sweet scent of them – kiwi, mango, some fruity shampoo. Maybe he could suggest to Julia that she invite Hannah over more often.

  ‘Absolutely criminal.’ Margaret was lying back in her Adirondack chair, waving a hand at a cloud of gnats. It took him a moment to realize she was talking again about the poisoned dog.

  ‘What kind of person even thinks like that? I’d honestly like to know. Whoever it is needs help. That dog is going to give me nightmares for months.’

  A gust of wind blew into the tree; acorns strafed the roof of their house and then rattled into the gutters. Binx stood up and started barking until Margaret called to him to stop. The smell was getting stronger.

  He missed whatever she said next. ‘I should go back to school,’ she was saying now, as Binx settled once more by her chair, panting. ‘Become a therapist. Everyone else around here is a therapist. You know, I bet if you ran out of the house yelling “Help!” doors would fly open and people would rush out with handfuls of Prozac.’

  ‘Jesus.’ His forehead was starting to perspire. ‘When is dinner?’

  Once again he forgot to listen, belatedly realizing her comment about therapists had been a joke. Ever since they’d started seeing Dr Vogel, Margaret had been making jokes about therapists.

  ‘Anyway –’ she sat back in her Adirondack chair, stroking Binx’s broad head with one hand – ‘it really was terrible telling that guy his dog was dead. He couldn’t get over it. That’s what he kept saying. George Wechsler. Know who he is?

  ‘The novelist,’ she said, when he didn’t reply. ‘He won a prize. He comes to the park sometimes. I’ve seen him there once or twice.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He had no idea who she was talking about.

  ‘The Fischmans
rented out their carriage house. Someone from Chicago, Hedy said.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ He watched a bat swoop over the pool.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ she sighed. ‘That’s my news. Julia,’ she called out, raising her chin toward the house, ‘dinner’s almost ready. Are you doing your homework?’

  Julia did not answer.

  He knew he was not making enough of an effort. Margaret, with her news, her reports and small jokes, her flying starts at conversation, was trying so much harder. Every evening she had some disastrous item to offer up. Tonight the dog, but often it was a story from the news online: ‘Did you hear about –?’ a tornado carrying away a trailer park in Nebraska, pirates kidnapping a family off their sailboat, the stoning of schoolgirls in Kabul, as if to say, ‘See? What’s happening to us is not so bad.’ Then again she might offer something she’d heard on the radio while making dinner, a little mystery explained, how habits are formed or why people applaud after theater performances.

  She was trying, he realized with a stab of grief, to be interesting.

  Candles on the table, a vase of flowers, something baked for dessert. It was graceful of her, it was valiant. And all he wanted was for her to stop.

  How could these feelings be explained, even admitted? And yet they were his feelings. He so wished they were not.

  The lawnmower from down the street quit and he could hear the cricket again. Margaret was gazing up at the oak trees, leaves dark now but trunks banded with gold.

  ‘You know –’ he stood up to collect their glasses – ‘I was thinking I might mow the grass tonight. I might really enjoy something like that.’

  ‘Oh, I wish I’d known, Bill. It’s already done. The landscape guys were here yesterday. I got them to put more mulch around the hydrangeas.’

  Mulch. That explained the smell.

  Another fusillade of acorns, hitting car roofs along the street with a sound like gunfire. This time Margaret had her hand on Binx’s collar, holding him back as he lunged forward, toenails scratching the patio slates.

  ‘Did we need more mulch?’ he asked despairingly.

  Margaret gave another sigh that for a moment he thought had come from him.

  ‘Hear that cricket,’ she said.

  3.

  Over the park floated white skyscrapers, now and then blocking out the sun which shone superbly as soon as it came out again, gilding rocks, blades of grass, plastic water bottles, scraps of foil, every head of clover. On the green hillside a bush had turned magenta: burning bush it was called, a vivid burst against the cloud-thronged sky.

  From eight to ten on most weekday mornings the meadow between the soccer field and the collective gardens fizzed and boiled with dogs – dogs chasing other dogs; dogs running in circles; dogs digging, barking, eating grass, sitting and staring, apparently at nothing. Today there were only the basset hound Lucky, Skittles the Labradoodle and Boris the Old English sheepdog, all on their leashes, hanging their heads under the wide maple tree in the middle of the meadow. Their owners spoke in subdued voices, gazing at their sneakers. These were a few of the regulars, a small battalion who brought their dogs to the park in every kind of weather.

  Already rumors of a poisoning had got out, and Naomi Melman was telling the story of how Margaret Downing had discovered George Wechsler’s dog beneath the sumac by the woods. Margaret had recounted the story on the phone after dinner last night when Naomi called to talk about the soccer carpool.

  ‘Poor George.’

  ‘I can’t even imagine it.’

  They all knew George Wechsler from mornings when he brought his white bullmastiff, Feldman, to run with the other dogs. Not that Feldman did much running. He was too big and too afraid of the other dogs – Ferdinand the Bullmastiff, George had sometimes called him. He spent most of his time trundling gently around the edge of the woods like a small white rhinoceros emerging from the jungle. But since last spring, George had begun hiring Wayne the Happy Paws dog walker to bring Feldman to the park. Wayne drove a rusty black van without a back bumper, but it was equipped with dog seatbelts and was capable of seating eight. Occasionally he lost track of one of his dogs; apparently he’d lost track of George’s dog yesterday. No one blamed Wayne for trying to make money – he was a graduate student at BU who lived in his parents’ basement; he was overweight and had psoriasis and kept scratching his beard; Naomi thought he might be clinically depressed – but he took on too many dogs. They were always running away, jumping the chicken-wire fence and getting into the collective gardens, digging in the soccer field or wading in the creek and afterward shaking mud onto people. Several times his dogs had jumped on elderly residents from Avalon Towers, out walking, and nearly knocked them down. He wasn’t always careful about cleaning up after them, either. It seemed pretty clear that Wayne and Happy Paws were a big reason why all those signs had been posted, why there was so much resistance to an official dog park.

  Resistance, repeated Emily Orlov, and now maybe worse.

  ‘That’s a little paranoid,’ said Naomi.

  The sun vanished behind another metropolis of clouds. The burning bush faded. Everyone under the old tree shivered. It was that unpredictable time of year when the sun was warm, but the air was cool.

  ‘I’m just glad I have a fenced-in yard.’ Sharon Saltonstall creased her wide, chapped-looking face. ‘That’s what I’m glad of.’

  All this time the dogs had been whimpering and groaning, straining at their leashes. Naomi’s Skittles was growling at Sharon’s Lucky. Now there was an explosion of snarling.

  ‘Skittles!’ cried Naomi. ‘No!’ She pulled Skittles against her legs and made him sit while Lucky hung his head, long flat brown ears trailing on the ground.

  ‘They’re so jumpy today,’ observed Emily.

  ‘They know something’s up,’ said Sharon.

  The conversation returned to George. George had taught Freshman English to Naomi’s son Matthew at the high school before he quit teaching. Impatient, sardonic, unexpectedly emotional: that was George’s classroom reputation. Lobbed chalk at his students when they fell asleep but also wept while reading aloud from Of Mice and Men. Naomi herself found George complicated, ‘a good-enough guy’ but also ‘arrogant’. She had read parts of his novel on the Amazon website: a mystical Jewish baseball novel. Talmudic references mixed with meditations on the aerodynamics of the knuckleball.

  ‘Wow,’ said Sharon. ‘Sounds intense.’

  George and his wife had recently separated. Last week Naomi had spotted him in Starbucks with his arm around a blonde in biking shorts and a white Spandex top with no bra. But she suggested now that they propose George’s novel to their book club. In light of what had just happened, it would be a nice thing to do. She’d mentioned this idea last night on the phone to Margaret, who agreed.

  A small round figure had appeared near the collective gardens while they were talking, a black woman accompanied by an old yellow Lab on a leash. Instead of the shorts, T-shirts and sneakers favored by most dog walkers in the park, the woman wore a striped caftan, white and green and shot through with a metallic thread that glittered in the sunlight. A dress that seemed out of season despite the warm sun. Even more noticeably, she wore a red turban.

  ‘Who is that?’ Emily planed a hand over her eyes.

  ‘She looks like a fortune-teller,’ said Naomi.

  ‘I think she’s wearing heels.’

  The woman in the turban moved closer to the collective gardens, unattended this morning.

  She appeared to be examining a patch of staked cherry tomatoes bordered by orange marigolds. They watched as she bent down and murmured something to her dog, her hand a dark starfish on its yellow head. The dog wagged its tail.

  ‘Anyway –’ Emily lowered her voice – ‘what else did George say?’

  ‘That was it. He was shocked.’

  ‘What a shock for Margaret, too.’ Sharon extracted three liver treats from a pocket of her cargo shorts. ‘Sit,’ she told
the dogs, then fed each one a treat. ‘Where is Margaret, anyway? I haven’t seen her here much lately.’

  Naomi slowly shook her head.

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Husband –?’

  ‘Not an –?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Naomi. ‘Maybe. Midlife crisis.’

  ‘God, the world’s a hard place. Does she work?’

  Naomi shook her head again.

  ‘Poor Margaret.’

  ‘They’re seeing someone, so here’s hoping.’ Now Naomi lowered her voice. ‘But she says she can’t eat, can’t sleep. I saw her last week at a soccer game and she looked like a ghost.’

  Emily said a ghost was exactly what she’d call a middle-aged divorced woman with no job. ‘Especially,’ she added, ‘in this economy.’ Emily’s husband was an economist. She herself was a professor of Russian Studies. The other women sometimes called her The Pessimist.

  ‘Well, she’s not divorced,’ said Sharon, who was a social worker.

  Out in the meadow the grass shuddered in a sudden breeze.

  Now the woman in the turban was walking slowly around the perimeter of the collective gardens’ chicken-wire fence, stopping to examine a row of club-sized zucchinis, then moving on to a pumpkin patch, the yellow dog lumbering along beside her.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t hold it against George,’ Sharon said, returning to their earlier subject, ‘but I really think he should have walked that dog himself, instead of hiring Wayne.’