The Feast of Love

by Charles Baxter

  So I put my right arm around Kathryn’s shoulders, and we went in through that door and down the hallway. It wasn’t very well lit. Bare bulbs screwed into the ceiling showered raw light downward so that the place looked like an aging army barracks. I don’t know what I was expecting. The floors were cement, so they could clean them easily of waste matter, and our shoes, our running shoes, were squeaking over that surface.

  You can’t imagine the noise. They were all barking and howling and yapping, these dogs of every size, pure dog-desperation, mutt-mania, an army of refugee dogs, and we marched down that hallway between the cages, being roared at, like these dogs were screaming Save us save us, and I held on to Kathryn, and then we walked back, with me still holding on, and then we walked down the hallway a third time, and Kathryn said, “You can let go of me now,” so I did. I let go of her.

  We kept walking back and forth. We weren’t about to get a dog. No. That wasn’t ever the idea, despite what I had said. We were just there, walking up and down that aisle at the Humane Society, for Kathryn’s benefit, and after about the fifth time it felt as if we were on inspection, in the dog barracks. Not all the dogs quieted down, but some of them did, and when they did, we began to peer at them, which we really hadn’t done before when they were making a racket and they were just generic dogs.

  It’s when you start looking at dogs that you begin to notice their faces. Is that the word? Faces? Muzzles? And after all in a Humane Society they’re mostly mutts, so you don’t have anything like a breed to distract you, except for Dalmatians, because people are always buying Dalmatians, thinking that they’re cute, and then they get rid of them because they can’t stand how difficult and dumb they are. You do notice all the Dalmatians in the Humane Society.

  Kathryn was still a bit scared, but by this time she was noticing their expressions. I didn’t prompt her. I didn’t say anything. And soon she said, I’ll bet that one likes a party. And I’d bet that one’s a bully. That one’s kind of stupid but has a good sense of humor. And that one, he’s a recluse. That one’s a pack animal. That one there, she’s stubborn and independent. That one likes to ride in cars. That one thinks all day about food.

  She had her index finger pointed at them. And then she started to name them.

  You’re Otis.

  You’re Sophie.

  You’re Lester.

  You’re Duffy.

  You’re Gordon.

  You’re Daisy.

  You’re Waverly.

  And you, you handsome fellow, she said, pointing down at a dog on the other side of the bars, you, you’re Bradley.

  There was a dog there, I admit it, that looked a lot like me, like my brother or cousin, these sort of eyes I have, and its voice was just like mine, a rumble, phlegmy, you know, but strong and commanding like my voice is. Brownish fur like mine, and friendly, like me, but prone to harmless manias, also like me, you could just tell.

  And the thing was, as Kathryn was doing this, as she was naming the dogs, going up and down the aisles, something quite amazing happened. One by one, the dogs stopped barking. They just quit. At first I didn’t think it was happening, I thought it had to do with my hearing, you know, what do they call it, tinnitus, but it wasn’t that. The dogs were really going quiet. Kathryn would point at them, one at a time, at one dog, and give it a name — you’re Inez — and the dog would look at her, and after a moment or two it — Inez the dog — would clam up. And before very long, it grew really quiet in there, maybe a yip or two now and then, but otherwise no sound. As if, all that time, all they had wanted was a name. It was spooky.

  “I think we had better leave now,” Kathryn said. I took her hand and we went back out to the car.

  But before we got to the car the red-haired receptionist in the jumpsuit said, “What happened? What the hell did you do in there?” and she went rushing back toward the kennels, and the dogs started howling again, crying out to heaven as we unlocked the car and backed out of the parking lot and pulled out onto the road. We were gone, we were erased from the Humane Society. Meanwhile, the sky had mottled over with clouds.

  We lived in a cheap place in one of those student neighborhoods, an old building, really antiquated, one cigarette would have set it afire instantly. I was driving, rushing back to our old building and that apartment, feeling gleeful, and at first Kathryn was annoyed that I had taken her there to see the dogs, you know, paternalistic or patriarchal or something equally criminal, but then she changed her mind, and in her excitement was actually bouncing on the seat, her legs tucked under her, and she said, “I’m still scared of them, but, Jesus, Brad, I was inspired. Those were really their names! I gave them the right names. I knew exactly what to call them.”

  “There’s no such thing as the right name for a dog,” I said. “It’s all arbitrary. A name is arbitrary.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she insisted. “There are okay names, approximate names, but there’s one correct one, and I hit it every time.”

  And I thought: Well, I dunno, who cares, maybe she’s right, why argue. We got home, and we sat down on the sofa together, and she looked so beautiful in the blue sweatshirt and the blue jeans she was wearing, no socks, just her sneakers, these rags, these gorgeous rags that she had made beautiful by wearing them, and the cap she had on, her gray eyes, the delicate way she moved, and in a sudden heedless rush I said, “Kathryn, I love you,” and she nodded, she acknowledged it, she didn’t say she loved me but I didn’t care and didn’t even notice that she hadn’t said anything in return until about four weeks later when she moved out. But on that day, she leaned into me. We held on to each other. Clutching. We must have stayed together in one posture just holding each other, there on the sofa, for maybe an hour. When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

  Then eventually she said, “Look. It’s snowing.”

  We disentangled ourselves and got up together and walked over to the window. The air had been abruptly filled, every square inch, with snowflakes, and I thought of how peaceful it was, even though the snow was just this humble artifact. “This is our first snow,” I said aloud, thinking that we would have many more years of seeing it together, that we would stand in front of windows year after year, watching the first snow, the two of us, watching the wind swirl it, then watching the spring storms, watching the snow melting and the water rushing down into the storm drains. From now and then onward into forever, this would happen. We would watch our children playing in the melting snow, splashing in the puddles. After we died, we would still be seeing everything together, Kathryn and me. Into eternity, I thought. Death would be a trivial event as long as I loved her.

  She must have thought she loved me, too, because she wanted to cook a dinner for me, which she did, a quick Stroganoff, and then afterward, while I was doing the dishes, she was still sitting at the table, and she started to sing.

  I had never heard her sing before. I didn’t know she could sing. I don’t think she knew that she could sing. She had a small, a very small, but a sweet voice, and in this small sweet voice she sang two songs, I guess the only ones she could think of at that moment, very slow and sultry, “You Are My Sunshine” and “Stairway to Heaven.”

  Then in bed, later, she sang the Michigan fight song, “Hail to the Victors.” Softly and slowed down, in my ear. As a love song. You know: the way you’d sing to a winner. Because after all, I had won her, somehow.

  Outside, the snow went on falling.

  For days afterward I went back secretly to the Humane Society. I went back there and gazed at the dogs in their pens. I would look at all the dogs that Kathryn had named. Also I was looking for the Labrador-retriever-collie mix she had named Bradley. After me. Finally I went in and said I wanted him, and they turned him over to me, but only after they neutered him and gave him his shots. I persuaded my sister, Agatha, and her husband, Harold, to keep him for a while until I had convinced Ka
thryn about the wisdom of having a dog. I just knew I could talk her into it. I took Bradley up north, wagging and slobbering in the backseat, and left him with Agatha.

  Back at the Humane Society week by week the other dogs were gone, one by one they disappeared, replaced by new dogs. The old dogs — the dogs that Kathryn had named — had found homes, I liked to think, where they were fed and housed and taken care of, but where they were occasionally unhappy about one thing, which was that they had the wrong name. The name they were supposed to have had been lost, and their owners had given them bogus names, childish names, lousy standard-issue dog names like Buster and Rover and Rex. The only dog who had the right name was Bradley, a name that he and I had to share.

  Once in a while I would see a dog out on the street, and I would recognize it from the Humane Society, and I knew that it had seen us, Kathryn and me, two people in love, walking up and down between the cages, holding each other. It had seen that but didn’t or couldn’t remember. I was the person who remembered.

  Now there’s Bradley the person, me, and Bradley the dog, him.

  You know, that day was perfect. A breath of sweetness. That’s a phrase I would never use in real life, but I just used it. You can laugh at my wording if you want to, you can laugh at the names I have for things, I know you do that, but I’ll think of that day from now on as a perfect day. A breath of sweetness.

  What I’m saying is: that day was here and then it was gone, but I remember it, so it exists here somewhere, and somewhere all those events are still happening and still going on forever. I believe that.

  THREE

  “DID HE TELL YOU about the dogs?”

  “Well, yes. He did.”

  “And he said that I was afraid of dogs and that he drove me to the Humane Society?”

  “That was the gist of it.”

  “Did he make fun of me?”

  “Oh no, Kathryn, he didn’t. Certainly not. No — he didn’t do anything like that at all.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t tell me if he had. Anything else? Did he tell you anything else about us?”

  “He said you two were broke in those days. You worked in a library part-time. He said that you gave names to the dogs, the ones at the Humane Society. You named the dogs one by one, he said. The way he described it, what you did sounded like a blessing.”

  “He told you that? I don’t remember naming anybody or anything. I believe that he may have imagined the entire episode. We did go to the Humane Society once. I do remember all those animals. The barking. But I think we just walked in and then walked out without anything like an event, any sort of story, happening there. We had both been at the Botanical Gardens and we heard the dogs making a ruckus nearby, and we went over to investigate. The rest is probably imaginary. I’m certain he made it up.”

  “I suppose he might have,” I tell her.

  “This is all so weird,” she says. “Your calling me out of the blue and asking me about some encounter that Bradley and I had years ago. Aren’t those matters personal? I think maybe they should be. I realize that nothing stays hidden anymore but I’d still like to keep a few domestic particulars private. Especially when it comes to my love life. Such as it is. I can’t imagine why anybody else would be interested in who I love or how I loved them.”

  “Oh, everyone’s interested in that. Besides, I’d change your name. You could retain your privacy.”

  “That’s not quite what I’m getting at,” she says. “My marriage with him failed. So it’s not a matter of pride exactly. I switched partners, but doing that is very difficult and taxing in ways you don’t anticipate. Especially when you do it the way I did. It changes your views of yourself and who you are. You said you’re a writer. Have you ever read Schnitzler’s La Ronde?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  “Then you remember what it’s about. Changing partners. You should reread it. I acted in it once when I was a sophomore.” She waits for a moment, as if imagining it. “I played a housemaid. There was a pantomime lovemaking scene on stage between me and ‘the young gentleman.’ That was fun.”

  “Well, maybe you have a story of your own,” I suggest. “About what happened to you.”

  “I have lots of stories,” she says. “But they’re not the sort you give away, you know . . . and I don’t tell them to just anybody. What did you say your name was again?”

  I tell her.

  “I honestly don’t remember ever meeting you. I’ve never heard of you. Did we ever meet? And this is for a book you’re writing, Charlie?”

  “Sort of.”

  “You aren’t going to post this whole deal on the Internet, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God. Who are you anyway? Could you please explain that again, that who-you-are thing?”

  I try to spell out to her who I am. It’s not easy, summarizing yourself on the telephone to a stranger. Before I’m finished, she breaks in. “All right. I think I get the idea,” she says. “Okay. That’s enough. You want a story? I’ll give you one. But then you have to promise me not to bother me anymore. Are you writing this down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. The thing is, you’re appealing to my vanity. I suppose I always wanted to appear in someone’s book, and I guess this is my chance. I can be a literary entity. Up there with Mrs. Danvers and Huck Finn and imaginary people like that. But you’ll just have to understand that I’ll only do this once. Then you can’t call me again. I’m going to check on you before I talk to you again to make sure that you really are who you say you are. A woman in my position has to be careful. To start with, I don’t remember you from my Bradley days. You could be anybody.”

  “Of course. That’s right. I could be anybody.”

  “But if you check out, this is where I’ll meet you.” And she gives me the name of the coffee shop where Bradley is the manager, Jitters, and she also gives me a time.

  When I get there, I am served by a woman whose name tag identifies her as Chloé. Kathryn orders a café latte, sizes me up, then begins to speak.

  CHARLIE, I’LL START with a generalization here that maybe only applies to me. Maybe. Please don’t be too offended. I always found it a challenge to love men. At first I just thought I had to, that I had no choice. I thought that men in general — I’d really rather not say this — were unlovable. But I mean, look at them. If you’re a man you probably may not realize how they are. Amazing when any woman can stay married to one of them. Most of the ones I’ve known are bossy, or passive and obsessive, the men I mean, and after the age of twenty-five or so they are by most standards not beautiful. If one of them happens to be easy on the eyes, he gets hired by the photogenic industry. Beauty is not part of the show they do, most of the ones I’ve known. So you have to cross that off the list of accountables right away. And you’re left with their behavior.

  They sulk, men, so many of them. They bear grudges and they get violent almost as a hobby, the ones I’ve known. Didn’t you realize this? Ask around. As a gender they’re — you’re — always scheming or at least they seem to be scheming because they never ever tell you what’s on their minds. The sample I’ve had. They just sit there day after day and they brood. After the brooding, then the firepower. Well, I know these are generalizations, but I don’t care, because they’re my generalizations, so I don’t have to prove them, which is exciting.

  I will say that the one feature I like about men is that they can usually figure out how small appliances work. They’re good at fixing this and that. But that competence doesn’t lead to passion, just to gainful employment. Of course I’m only using the case studies here of the men I have happened to know in my brief lifetime. But a sample is a sample and what I’m describing to you is what I have observed.

  They get to you in the small ways. They have their little bag of tricks. You take Bradley. In high school he sat behind me or next to me in English and biology. He was above average whenever he studied, which wasn’t that often because Bradley wasn’t and
isn’t particularly studious. While everybody else was taking notes or being rowdy, Bradley was drawing sketches in his notebooks. Of me. Day in and day out he did pencil drawings of me in detail on paper. Even if his eyes were too large or too direct, he was a good-looking boy in those days when he remembered to comb his hair and to shave, and you should have seen the sketches he did of me. A few of them were confiscated by the teachers. Whenever they managed to steal a peek at what he was doing, the other girls were agog that he loved me so much. Everyone thought we were terrible sweethearts. Jesus. I never knew what I had done to attract his attention. In his hands a picture of a woman could often be more beautiful or arresting than the woman herself. It was hurtful, how beautiful he made me. I thought: that’s me? I was just Kathryn before but in his sketches of me I was a miracle. I was extraordinary. I just couldn’t get over what he did to me.

  Do you understand what I’m saying? He confused me in the way that a lot of women get confused. He had a system going with these sketches so that if he happened to be distorting my beauty by making me more attractive than I actually was, I never had the brains or the wit to notice it. These pictures pretended to be mere records of my looks, standing or sitting or gazing downward in thought, but they undermined me. If somebody makes you beautiful or says you’re pretty and then repeats it insistently, you become his victim. He wasn’t always detailed about my eyes but I didn’t notice that at the time. That was my mistake. I should have noticed. Remember Picasso’s trouble with Gertrude Stein’s eyes in that portrait he did of her? Rembrandt’s portrait of himself in old age — I saw it in London — is as terrific as it is because of what he knew about his own eyes. Go look. Bradley didn’t know anything about my eyes and therefore avoided them. They’re not really in the pictures.