The Dogs of Littlefield

by Suzanne Berne

  14.

  During her evening walks with Aggie through the snowy village, Clarice Watkins continued her practice of gazing into lit windows of kitchens and living rooms. Often she saw people sitting around a table under a hanging lamp, plates and glasses spread out before them like a deck of cards; or she saw the silhouettes of people watching wide-screen television sets on which one bright silent image swiftly replaced another, even battles or conflagrations cheerful-looking in their brevity. She could not, of course, see into upstairs windows, but she imagined children in their baths, mothers taking a washcloth to the seashell curve of an ear; parents later washing their own faces at matching pedestal sinks in bathrooms, discussing plans for the weekend: a movie, or dinner out, something simple, that new Italian place by the river?

  A peculiar wretchedness had begun to hound her on these evenings. She missed her mother. She missed Dr Awolowo. No one knocked on the door of her borrowed office at Warren College, where she sat surrounded by another professor’s books, his prayer rug on the wall and his framed photographs of Kathmandu. A silvery bloom had attacked the leaves of her rubber plant. Aggie was limping – Lyme disease, said the vet – and slept most of the day in her plaid dog bed, twitching and moaning.

  Often lately she found herself staring out of her window at a twiggy bush in the Downings’ backyard, strung with berries, crimson against the snow, or forgetting to drink her coffee while watching a red cardinal perch on a green pine branch. Every evening she passed the Downings’ house when she headed out on her walk with Aggie; through the windows she frequently saw Julia Downing lying on one of the living-room sofas, mouth ajar, reading a paperback book with a lurid purple cover that featured a pair of fangs. Opposite Julia sat her mother in an armchair, by a lamp, looking at an iPad. Behind her hung the gilt-framed corner of a seascape.

  Glimpsed night after night, this pleasant scene had worsened the jittery, abraded feeling in her chest, as if a small sharp-clawed animal were scratching at her breastbone. Her uneasiness was more endemic, more oppressive than anything she felt during her fieldwork in Detroit, even in Azcapotzalco. Every evening she looked in at dining-room tables and television sets, at kitchens with shelves of imitation Fiestaware plates and coffee mugs, and whimsical wall clocks shaped like teapots and cats, and her throat tightened.

  None of it was what she had expected. The tables, clocks, televisions. None of it was what, without realizing, she had hoped for. Why weren’t these people happier? She had counted on them to be happier. To be insular, complacent, self-absorbed. And they were – yet also restless, anguished. And strangely infatuated with the idea of menace.

  It was that girl, Julia, who disturbed her most. The house was locked against the dark, the room was warm; a beautiful painting hung on the wall. Still the girl read her purple book, desiring to be elsewhere, kidnapped by warlocks, trussed and gagged, headed for a stone tablet, a virgin sacrifice. She would trade it all – lamp, painting, her own mother – for a bleak adventure, never doubting that everything would be there when she returned, would always be there, that she did not have to do more than lift her eyes from the page and it would all still be there.

  Had that child not noticed the way her father looked at her friend? Did she not see her mother collapse drunkenly at dinner, then disappear upstairs in the arms of another man? Did she really believe disorder and tragedy happened in books?

  Out on the icy sidewalk, Clarice Watkins pressed a gloved hand to her forehead. Aggie grumbled, tugging at her leash, wanting to return to her plaid dog bed. They walked away quickly, Clarice no longer stopping to peer into the lit windows she passed, except to note how many lights had been left on in rooms that were empty.

  Back in her own small, spare living room, brightened by her throw pillows and a rag rug she bought at the Harvest Fair craft show, she sipped a cup of chamomile tea with honey and considered writing an email to Dr Awolowo, just for the comfort of typing his name.

  Her head hurt. The Downings’ dog had got sprayed by a skunk in the yard two nights ago and a dark greasy miasma still hovered outside, clinging to Aggie’s coat whenever they came back in from a walk. A noxious film had settled on the furniture, her plates, even infiltrating whatever she made for dinner. No amount of air freshener seemed to get rid of it.

  I want to go home, she thought.

  Yet, paradoxically, her fieldwork was going well. In the past few months, she had received many invitations from local residents. In addition to Christmas dinner at the Downings’ house, she had been invited to the Fischmans’ New Year’s party, a small gathering of psychoanalysts, where she met the Epsteins, who sent her an invitation to their daughter Amelia’s bat mitzvah in February, and she’d been invited by Naomi Melman to a book club meeting in March, at which they would be discussing George Wechsler’s novel. Yesterday Sharon Saltonstall telephoned to ask her to attend a coffee meeting with members of the Off-Leash Advisory Group and the chief of police.

  ‘We can’t just sit around and do nothing,’ Sharon said hoarsely on the phone.

  Two weeks ago, Sharon’s old basset hound, Lucky, was standing near the driveway in a shoveled patch of Sharon’s front yard when he began to stagger on his short, thickset legs; by the time Sharon got to him, it was too late. People no longer let their dogs out in their yards alone. Some dog owners drove to other towns to walk their dogs. More than a few were considering moving altogether. Task forces had been organized. A Take Back the Park march was planned for when the weather warmed. ‘Our Dogs and What Next?’ read an editorial headline in last week’s Gazette. What have been unleashed in this town are the forces of hatred and intolerance. A place bitten by fear is never the same place again …

  And yet Clarice Watkins thought she detected a waning of interest: since the dog problem had left the bounds of anything anyone could have expected, it had become fantastical, and as a result people in Littlefield were beginning to stop thinking about it. During her morning coffees at the Forge, she continued to hear customers express disbelief that ‘this sort of thing’ could happen in Littlefield, but more idly now, more out of habit. One morning she eavesdropped on an elderly couple who had arrived at the café wearing matching tartan wool hats. They shared a plate of scrambled eggs and an English muffin, briefly discussed ‘all those dogs’, then the old lady went on to talk about her canaries; that morning she’d found one lying on the floor of its cage. The old man asked for the salt. He said the eggs were hard. They left two dimes for a tip.

  The young Pakistani, Ahmed Bhopali, was wiping down their table.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ Clarice asked him, but he only frowned, like someone picking up a dead bird, and shook his head.

  Tonight she was attending a dinner in honor of a Warren College alumnus, an economist whose recent book, a reinterpretation of Keynesian equilibrium models, had been getting a lot of press. The dinner was held in the college art museum, tables set up in the marble-floored rotunda amid contemporary sculpture, all alumni gifts: a two-story tower of plastic detergent bottles, a 1968 VW Bug covered with black rubber beetles, three life-size human figures constructed out of paperclips.

  In a black dinner jacket and chartreuse bow tie, the economist stood beside the tower of detergent bottles, shaking hands with guests. He was a youngish man with a small chin and glossy brown hair that curled behind his ears and fell over the back of his white collar. ‘Thank you for coming. So pleased to meet you,’ he said, gazing over her head as Clarice Watkins introduced herself.

  Halfway through the dinner, a pinched, tired-looking woman sat down in an empty chair next to Clarice. After gazing restlessly around the cavernous room through her gold-rimmed spectacles, the woman introduced herself as Emily Orlov and said she taught Russian studies; then she remarked that Samsa’s Wheels, the VW Bug sculpture, had cost almost a million dollars. ‘Meanwhile the endowment is in the toilet and tuition is going through the roof.’ She took off her spectacles and peered at them for a moment before putting them back
on.

  It was her husband who was being honored tonight. People began to clap as he walked past the human paperclips to stand behind a wooden lectern. Clarice clapped, too, and leaned over to tell his wife she looked forward to reading his book.

  ‘Here.’ Emily Orlov reached wearily into her large leather purse and pulled out a book. ‘I have an extra copy.’ On the cover, red, white and blue dollar signs bounced on a green dollar-bill trampoline. Up and Down: The Rise and Fall of American Prosperity and Why It Pays NOT to Learn from Our Mistakes.

  The answer, as best Clarice could glean from the economist’s speech, was that market-driven stupidity was good for the economy. Cycles of imprudent investment periodically ruined swathes of small investors, creating room for cannier, more vigorous and adaptive investors.

  ‘Rather like a controlled burn,’ he explained, to laughter and applause.

  She noted this observation down on her steno pad.

  After his speech was over, dinner guests lined up to meet the economist, who sat at a table furnished with two stacks of his books. Clarice was glad to have a copy to add to her archive of primary documents, which included Naomi Melman’s book, weekly issues of the Gazette, the engraved invitation for Amelia Epstein’s bat mitzvah, several homework assignments from Ms Manookian’s social studies class and online minutes from all the town hall meetings she had attended. Also a flyer that she’d found rolled up and fixed to her doorknob with a rubber band: Wayne’s Happy Paws Snow-Shoveling Service: Call Wayne! First shoveling free! Also minor household repairs! Gutter cleaning! No job too small!

  Document everything, Dr Awolowo repeatedly reminded her. No embellishments.

  Beside the economist hovered a skinny black-haired girl wearing ballet slippers, a tight black sequined jacket and a short gauzy black dress. Whenever he signaled for another copy of his book, the girl took one from the stacks, opened it and bent gracefully forward from the waist, as if preparing to curtsy.

  After quietly watching the girl for a few minutes, Emily Orlov said, ‘Doesn’t do to pass judgment on people, does it?’ Then she added, ‘But that outfit took looking for. A lot of consideration of effect.’ Emily was wearing a long-sleeved cotton dress covered with the sort of sprig found on dust ruffles. ‘It’s very hard not to be judgmental.’

  Clarice agreed this was true.

  Emily repeated that it was hard not to be judgmental. Almost impossible these days when the world was such a mess, and she began talking about the village, the aldermen and their poor decisions when it came to school budget cuts, the graffiti, what had happened to the dogs. ‘Obviously, the dogs are a symptom of a more systemic problem, but we all take it personally.’

  Her little round glasses flashed. At the table beside the lectern, her husband caught hold of the girl’s wrist for an instant as she handed him another copy of his book.

  A page from Clarice Watkins’s steno pad that evening:

  One can view the village of Littlefield as a carefully constructed refuge, an achievement that, these days, seems as admirable as it is fragile, and perhaps deserving of whatever protections, social and otherwise, that can be afforded. What is surprising to the outsider is that Littlefield does not consider itself to be a refuge. The citizens here believe they are no different from citizens anywhere. Although they stay apprised of current events it appears they believe that what happens in their village is equally serious, that their personal burdens are equivalent to any suffered elsewhere … Or perhaps their recognition of the world’s great problems, which they feel powerless to remedy, amid their own relative comfort, is driving their preoccupation with problems of their own, which they (protectively) view as enormous, baffling, inimical … ?

  These notes did not strike her as especially useful.

  15.

  Hedy Fischman was reading the regional news to Marv, in bed for the third day with flu-like symptoms. According to iTriage, a new app on Hedy’s iPad, the flu should be treated with fluids and rest, unless a high fever and a cough develop and progress to shallow breathing, delirium and pneumonia-like symptoms, in which case a medical professional should be consulted. Currently Marv was in a stable condition in his blue striped pajamas, eyes closed, two pillows behind his head, petting Kismet curled on the bed beside him with his good hand. By the window, Hedy reclined in the chaise longue in her black velour tracksuit and sheepskin slippers; she had already read aloud much of the Globe’s online national news and was now only summarizing articles she found noteworthy, peering through the bottoms of her bifocals, the jet-beaded chain swinging gently whenever she turned her head.

  ‘Municipalities have run out of money for snow removal. Snowplow operators across Middlesex County are on strike.’ She scrolled down further. ‘Let’s see what else we have to worry about.’

  A school bus driver in Haverhill was arrested for drunk driving. Three hikers had been stranded on Mount Greylock, believing their cell phones would rescue them. In Pepperell, hundreds of blackbirds had fallen from the sky for no apparent reason and lay dead on the sidewalks. A young man in Leominster had just been arraigned on charges of kidnapping his estranged girlfriend, stripping her naked, tying her to a park bench early in the morning and smearing her with peanut butter, leaving her to be attacked by squirrels. The girlfriend had survived and was being treated for hypothermia and was expected to make a full recovery.

  ‘Now that’s a story.’ Hedy looked over the tops of her glasses at Marv.

  She tapped open the business section and noted that FBI agents had appeared at the office of Roche Capital Management with a search warrant. The FBI’s Boston office had issued the following statement:

  Per FBI guidelines, we cannot confirm what investigation this is for or why it is being conducted. We cannot confirm what evidence was collected or if further evidence will be needed and as this matter is sealed we have no additional comment.

  A spokesman for the US Attorney’s office in Boston also declined to comment. Officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission also declined to comment. It was left to Hedy to comment.

  ‘Poor Margaret!’ she said. ‘Poor Bill! The world is going crazy. What’s next?’

  Marv said that was the million-dollar question.

  ‘What do you think, sweetie?’ Hedy leaned forward to ask Kismet. The little dog had rolled onto her back so that Marv could scratch her belly. ‘Hey, you.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Give us an opinion.’

  Kismet stood up and pranced about on the bed, lifting up her dainty black paws. Then she fell over and played dead.

  ‘What a comedienne.’ Hedy hoisted herself slowly from the chaise longue. ‘Oof, oof.’ She arrived at the bed and bent over to pat Marv’s hand, then straightened his blanket and tucked it more securely around his middle. ‘Enough news. Should I fix us some soup or a pastrami sandwich for lunch?’

  It was decided they would have both. Why not?

  ‘Live a little,’ said Hedy, and snapped her fingers again at Kismet.

  After a mild spell and a bit of snowmelt, arctic weather returned; once more rhododendron leaves furled tight, icicles hung from every roof, and as February dragged on drifts of snow hardened along the streets of Littlefield and turned a cinereous gray, encrusted with dirt and black flecks of leaf mold, looking less and less like snow and more and more like rubble.

  On the first of March Julia Downing awoke before dawn, as she had almost every morning since Christmas, and ran through the multiplication tables in her head, waiting for the enormous fish that lay on her chest to slide off and flop onto the floor. Often lately she’d had to name all the US capitals to persuade the fish to budge – once she even had to list the original signers of the Declaration of Independence – but this morning the fish was more yielding than usual and by the time she reached the seven times table she was out of bed and hunting for the clothes she’d laid out the night before. After dressing in the dark, she slipped into the hall and went downstairs to toast a bagel.

  Enough light
reflected into the kitchen from the snow outside that she could make out the muffled shapes of the stove and the refrigerator as she felt her way to the light switch. Binx was asleep in his crate in the mudroom; he woke up long enough to thump his tail. He was too destructive, her mother said, to leave unattended in the house, but Julia hated to see him cooped up, like an animal in a zoo. While she waited for her bagel to toast, she stood at the kitchen sink, watching the new goldfish, Mike II, glide back and forth above the ceramic castle in the bowl on the windowsill. Mike I had died the day before Christmas and been flushed down the toilet, a replacement companion for Ike bought from Pet Mart the same afternoon. She hadn’t noticed until her mother mentioned it almost a week later.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’ Her mother pressed her wrist against her temple. She was having one of her headaches. Lately she was having headaches two or three times a week. ‘I didn’t want to spoil the holidays.’

  It was then Julia understood that Mike I had been lying on her chest in the mornings.

  After Freckles disappeared, she’d buried his favorite catnip mouse and read aloud a poem by Carl Sandburg; when Elvis the guinea pig, Kiki the parakeet and all the other goldfish died, plus whatever drowned in the pool filters, she’d held funerals by the stone waterfall and then buried them under the hydrangeas. For Mike I, the toilet. The consequences were clear: denied a proper burial, Mike I had grown monstrous with outrage. Into her dreams swam his swollen scaly abdomen, his immense yellow eye, his horseshoe-shaped mouth from which sprouted tentacle-like feelers. Her room had taken on the algaenous reek of a neglected fishbowl.