The Dogs of Littlefield

by Suzanne Berne

  Yet Julia had not acted right away, distracted by not being invited to Amelia Epstein’s bat mitzvah – Hannah was going – and haunted by memories of Christmas dinner, when her mother had fallen off her chair and had to be carried upstairs by Aaron and Bradley Wechsler’s father, her slip showing, a run at the heel of her nylon stockings. An event so humiliating that Julia had at first mistaken the fish on her chest for the weight of shame. Her mother spent the rest of Christmas vacation playing gloomy rhapsodies on the piano, while her father staggered about the house grimacing like someone trying to swallow a spider. Then Lily and Maya Saltonstall’s dog was poisoned. It was drawing closer, some sort of disaster. Despite these signs, Julia still had done nothing and then it happened: right after Valentine’s Day, old Dr Fischman died.

  Fish-man.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ her mother asked when Julia clapped her hands over her mouth at this news during dinner. ‘Honey, you hardly knew Dr Fischman. What is it, Julia. Are you sick?’

  That evening Julia lit a votive candle beside the goldfish bowl and sprinkled in flakes of fish food while reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Three days later she tried eating a few flakes of fish food herself, then saying the Lord’s Prayer. After googling ‘Mourning’ on her mother’s iPad, she found websites for How to Deal with Loss, Stages of Mourning, Rites and Rituals, as well as directories of local funeral homes offering discounts and promotions.

  Grief is a guest, read the opening statement of one website. It deserves accommodation.

  For the past three days Julia had covered her bedroom mirror with a towel and started wearing an old blue soccer T-shirt torn at the shoulder, though her mother made her change into a different shirt before going to school.

  Acknowledge guilt, advised the same website. It needs a room, too. Usually the best one in the house.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Julia whispered every evening, standing for a few minutes by the kitchen sink watching the goldfish swim around their ceramic castle.

  Then a few days ago Binx started sneezing. Probably a dust allergy, said the vet, when Julia’s mother called for a phone consultation, but he suggested running some tests just in case.

  Yesterday at school, Julia realized that she had never asked about the results of Binx’s tests. At home, she found her mother asleep on one of the living-room sofas, a gray wool shawl flung over her legs; her mother looked old, waxy, cheeks fallen in, hair stringy, the corners of her mouth turned down. Julia put a hand on her shoulder to wake her up.

  ‘What about Binx’s tests?’ she asked.

  ‘What tests?’ her mother said groggily.

  As Julia buttered her bagel now in the dark kitchen, her fingertips went cold.

  Something more active must be required to appease Mike I, some sort of penance. A test. Because things were getting worse, she realized, leaving the knife by the sink and forgetting to put the butter back in the refrigerator. She had been careless, she had not been respectful of the dead, and now things were getting worse.

  Maybe she could start by taking Binx for a walk in the mornings, which her mother was always asking her to do. Usually whenever her mother asked her to walk Binx a powerful lassitude seized Julia, turning her legs to tree trunks. Her reluctance had nothing to do with her love for Binx, but with the conviction that anything her mother requested somehow violated her most vital liberties. These, then, were the tasks she must perform. Without being asked.

  Instead of eating her bagel, she wrapped it in a paper towel and carried it with her into the mudroom, where she took her puffy pink down coat and pink fleece hat from the peg by the back door and pulled them on, followed by her snow boots. She stuck the wrapped bagel in a pocket, found the leash and then opened the door to Binx’s crate. ‘Shh, shh,’ she said as he scrambled to his feet and shook himself, dog tags tinkling like bells.

  Outside it was still dark, but from the trees came the sweet uncanny sound of a few birds calling singly to each other above the deep blue snow of the neighbors’ yards. Next door lights were on in the Fischmans’ carriage house. Binx stopped to sniff the sidewalk, then lifted his leg on a snowdrift.

  As Julia stood shivering and hugging herself, listening to the birds, something ran under the streetlight and across the Fischmans’ driveway, something dark, the size of a big dog. At the end of the Fischmans’ driveway it stopped and looked back at her, black eyes shiny and uninvolved; the next instant it was gone.

  A coyote. Her mother saw them all the time, but Julia had never seen one before. Her heart began to pound. Why had she seen it now? Could it be a message of some kind, a warning? Perhaps from one of her dead grandparents, or from Dr Fischman himself? Julia had been visiting websites on reincarnation over Christmas break; she had also, one afternoon, looked up Norman D. Mayer on Wikipedia. He’d worn a blue snowsuit and a black motorcycle helmet that December day on the National Mall; his van was white. Last spring she had visited the National Mall with her parents, stood looking at the Washington Monument, perhaps on the very spot where Norman D. Mayer had once parked his van.

  She kept a lookout for the coyote as she walked down the driveway to the sidewalk, Binx capering at the end of his leash. Coyotes were fearful creatures, she’d read in the Gazette. Nocturnal. More afraid of people than people were afraid of them. Maybe that was the coyote’s message: something brave had to be done, a brave act like Norman D. Mayer’s, to keep anything else bad from happening. She would take Binx all the way to the end of the block instead of just to the end of the driveway, even though it was dark and a coyote was out there. Her cheeks tingled in the clear frosty air.

  She began walking to the end of the block and then, when nothing happened, she walked to the end of the next block; she crossed Ballard Street, where Hannah lived. Two more blocks and she and Binx were at the village. All the shop windows along Brooks Street were dark; only a mail truck and a few cars rolled by, the salted road crackling under their tires. Walking faster, she passed the post office, the Bake Shoppe, then the Dairy Barn and Walgreens. In another block she was passing the snow-covered elementary school, three buses like enormous gray loaves in the parking lot, and then the entrance to the park. Beyond stretched the meadow, pale blue and luminous.

  She stayed on the sidewalk. In another minute she was passing Avalon Towers, which overlooked the park on one side and Silsbee Pond on the other.

  She stopped on the sidewalk and looked down at the pond, a hundred feet beyond the parking lot for Avalon Towers and a chain-link fence with a gate. A perfect frozen oval, like a hole punched out of the sky, halfway rimmed by trees. At the far end of the pond squatted a dark crenellated building, the bathhouse, where she had often changed into and out of her bathing suit when her mother took her to the pond for swimming lessons. Inside, the bathhouse smelled like wet diapers; the walls were streaked with mildew and plaster was falling off the ceiling. But in the milky blue light of dawn thin vapors rose from the ice and in the distance the bathhouse looked like a fairy-tale castle, swathed in mist.

  How lovely, Julia thought, surprising herself by using one of her mother’s words. She usually felt peevish when she heard her mother describe something as lovely: a flowering tree, an autumn leaf, a sunset. ‘Oh, look,’ her mother would say. ‘Quick, look at how lovely this is.’ Her urgency at these moments always seemed overdone. But now Julia understood that the vision before her was indeed lovely: shimmery and vanishing and slightly unbelievable.

  She had been looking down at the pond for several moments when the breeze shifted; it lifted her bangs and with it came a yelping sound that arose from out on the ice. A goose was flying overhead, honking. The sky was turning lavender, brightest across the pond where it met the trees, almost red through the bare branches. And then she saw something she had not noticed at first: a shadow that materialized into a small white shape, yards off shore.

  Binx began barking, standing on his hind legs at the end of his leash. Julia squinted. Then she pulled Binx into the parking lot, all t
he way to the fence, to get a better look. It seemed to be moving on the ice, wobbling a little back and forth. A puppy, she thought. A puppy that was lost. A fat white bulldog puppy.

  The coyote she’d seen earlier crept into her mind; how easy it would be for the coyote to run across the ice and snap the puppy’s neck with its jaws. She put a hand on the gate and rattled it. Padlocked and looped with a chain.

  Out on the ice the puppy sat down and began to whimper.

  As he cycled down Brooks Street, preoccupied by the narrowness of the bike lane and by the frigid air needling through his black watch cap and the red knitted scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face, Ahmed tried to concentrate on constitutional law. He had been too tired last night to finish studying for this morning’s exam. He was always tired. Yesterday the professor had called on him: ‘Mr Bhopali, explain to the class, please, the “Dormant” Commerce Clause.’ He could not answer. He did not know. It was too hard, getting up at four o’clock in the morning six days a week to be at the café by five to put the first trays of doughnuts in the oven, bussing tables until nine. Except today, when he asked to leave before seven to study for his constitutional law exam, which was to be administered at ten. Ugh, another pothole. He had not been raised for such a hard life. It was bad for his constitution. Ha! That was a good one. Ugh, ugh. Instead of riding on this treacherous roadway he should be at home sitting on a yellow cushion wearing a clean linen kurta, having breakfast brought to him on a tray. Sunlight filtered through the tall louvered shutters, glowing in the red glass vase on the high wooden shelf by the door. ‘Yes, Mother. I will have more tea.’

  The taste of bad coffee lingered in his mouth; the smell of fried dough clung to the scarf wrapped over his nose. As he jolted along, too hot and too cold in his woolen pea jacket, he passed large brick houses where he would not be welcome; large cars drove too close to him, spraying his loafers and pant legs with slush; and into his mind stepped a small round black woman in a turban, who visited the café several times a week for an early breakfast and spoke to him pleasantly, asking attentive questions. She was not young but she had an attractive smile. Last week she had inquired about his father’s computer repair service in Karachi and whether the Forge Café gave him paid sick leave. But when he asked if she would like to go out to a movie, maybe to his room afterward for a glass of wine, she shook her head. Why did she regard him with such interest if she did not want to sleep with him?

  Women were foreign and incomprehensible, Massachusetts was foreign and incomprehensible, and now, after hitting that pothole, his bicycle was making a metallic clicking sound, followed by the hard bumpity, bumpity, bumpity of a flat tire.

  Carla Manookian was driving too fast on Brooks Street, late for an early meeting at school with Mr Anderman, checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror. She’d slept through her alarm, set to wake her at five thirty so she could grade last Thursday’s pop quizzes (Who were the Minutemen? Were there more British casualties at Lexington or at Concord?), and also have time to put on her make-up. Three parents had sent complaining emails to Mr Anderman in the last month, accusing her of not returning schoolwork ‘in a timely fashion’, wrote Mr Anderman in an email of his own, attaching the parents’ emails and requesting ‘a consultation’. He’d had it in for her since he’d visited her B Block class in December.

  Her lipstick looked orange. The idea with make-up was to wear it so that it didn’t look as if you were wearing it. She always looked like she was wearing it. Why wasn’t she returning schoolwork in a timely fashion? Because every time she looked at a pop quiz she wanted to garrote herself, that’s why.

  It hadn’t been very hard to climb over the gate, especially because of all the snow that had been plowed up against it. She left Binx on the other side, though, tied to the fence. Her plan was to stand at the edge of the pond and call to the puppy. Speak to it in a soothing tone and see if she could coax it to crawl to her.

  The day was brightening, everything becoming distinct.

  Binx was barking from the parking lot, but at the sight of Julia coming down the bank the white puppy had stopped whimpering. No collar. Maybe it was a stray. Maybe she could keep it. It looked like it was shivering. Remembering the bagel in her pocket, Julia crouched down in the snow by the pond’s edge to take a closer look at the ice. Maybe she could hold out the bagel and get the puppy to come to her that way.

  ‘Julia?’ her mother would be calling up the stairs by now. ‘Julia? Are you awake?’

  The ice was the whitish-gray of old cotton underwear, pitted and rucked, interrupted in places by a mottled bruised color. Where the ice met the bank she could make out ghosts of leaves and sticks below. If she walked out just a little way onto the ice she could toss the bagel to the puppy. So it would know that she was friendly. Just a few yards. Four or five yards. Maybe seven. Not far at all. Still she hesitated, kicking the ice with the heel of her snow boot.

  Light shone glassily around the pond. High above the turreted bathhouse floated a cloud. It had, she saw, a fin and a tail.

  Dragging his bicycle onto the snowy verge of the road, he tried to figure out what to do about his flat tire. He was not far from the entrance to that old people’s home; he could leave his bicycle chained up there and walk the rest of the way to the college. Already the gods had sent him a bad day and it had barely started. As if they had decided he was complaining, a terrible barking started up as he wheeled his bicycle into the parking lot. A big black dog was leaping back and forth, tied by its leash to a chain-link fence. ‘Shut up,’ he yelled to the dog, thinking it was barking at him. But then he saw what was making the dog bark. On the other side of the fence, below a snowy bank, stretched the pond and standing on the ice five or six yards from the bank was what looked to be a young girl in a pink coat and hat.

  He cried out, dropping his bicycle with a clang, and ran across the parking lot.

  The black dog barked and barked, jumping about on the end of its leash. He glared at the dog, keeping a careful distance from it as he ran at the chain-link fence; he was up and over it in a moment, and the next descending the steep frozen bank toward the pond, crab-like, slipping and sliding in his loafers.

  ‘Stop!’ he called, holding out his arms. ‘Miss! Please! Stay where you are!’

  Her face was white and small under her pink tasseled hat; he could see that she was frightened, though it could be that she was frightened of him, a man shouting at her in heavily accented English. What was she doing out there? Merciful gods.

  ‘Stop, please!’ he cried.

  She had got lipstick on her teeth – how did that happen? She peered at her mouth in the rearview mirror, trying to dab at her teeth with a Kleenex. Oh, God. Now she had lipstick on her chin. And her hair was a mess. She would have to pull over. Right ahead of her was the entrance to Avalon Towers. Pull in there and get out her purse. No way was she getting out of her car at the middle school and having Mr Anderman see her looking like a ghoul –

  Followed the next instant by a percussive jolt and a heavy clang.

  ‘Come back!’ shouted the man on the bank. ‘Miss! You will fall through the ice!’

  ‘I can’t come back,’ said Julia. She wished he would stop shouting.

  ‘Please! Come back! What are you doing?’

  I’m rescuing a puppy, she thought. What does it look like I’m doing?

  A deep crack had appeared in the ice between her and the shore.

  The man was wearing loafers in the snow and a dark blue jacket over gray pants. He had unwound his long red scarf from around his neck and was now trying to throw the end of it to her, but he was standing too far away and the scarf was too short. He looked cold and unhappy. On the snowy bank above him, Binx was leaping about like a dervish behind the chain-link fence, barking and whining. Thin cracks webbed the cloudy ice at her feet. She took another step backward.

  Five steps on to the ice and it broke under him; now he was standing in water to his knees. He kept calling to
the girl to stop but she was retreating across the ice. Did she want to die? Anger flashed through him and momentarily he stopped shaking.

  ‘Come back!’ he shouted. ‘Have you no sense?’

  From far behind him came the rubbery shriek of skidding tires followed by a tinny crash.

  Without looking, he knew his bicycle had just been run over. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Used. His Droid razor phone had been in his satchel. Two hundred and ninety-nine dollars on eBay. And his lunch: chicken salad on rye, free because he made it for himself in the kitchen at the Forge Café – but not totally free because labor had been involved – plus an apple and an orange.

  Now he could explain the ‘Dormant’ Commerce Clause: what you lose, you don’t have.

  ‘Come back!’ he shouted as his legs went numb.

  High, thin voices, the chorus singing something sad, a song from Rent, teachers weeping audibly and students holding battery-powered votive candles as Mr Anderman welcomed Hannah on to the auditorium stage. Hannah, wearing a new black dress from Urban Outfitters, holding a single white rose. Julia was my best friend. I knew her better than anyone …

  Another figure had appeared on the banks, a tall woman in a brown hooded parka, stumbling along behind the fence in short, high-heeled black boots.

  ‘One of my students!’ Ms Manookian was shouting into a cell phone, her voice clear and certain like someone answering a simple multiple-choice question. ‘It’s one of my students!’

  Julia was so grateful to be claimed unequivocally that she forgot to be surprised at the sight of Ms Manookian on the banks above the pond; she was also relieved to be no longer alone with the strange bearded man. He had stepped onto the ice, which broke beneath him; now he was standing in water up to his knees, cursing in a language she did not understand, still trying to throw her his red scarf. Ms Manookian continued to shout into her cell phone, giving what sounded like directions. It was fully light now. Cars had pulled into the Avalon Towers parking lot; people were getting out of them to stand by the chain-link fence. In the distance Julia heard the wailing of coyotes.