The Visiting Privilege

by Joy Williams

  Louise had never been interested in the reasons people bought flowers. “I don’t like dogs,” Louise said.

  “Really?” the woman said. “I don’t know where I’d be without my Buckie.”

  “You wouldn’t be in here buying these roses,” Louise said.

  Another season insinuated itself. It was Tim’s turn to give a party but things were not going well for him. The lilacs had not survived transplanting. They would never come back. Tim had done his best, but that wasn’t good enough. He had also had an unhappy experience with a pair of swans. He had been following their fortunes ever since he had witnessed them mating in a marsh beside the highway. “They twined their necks like heraldry afterwards,” he said. “Heraldry.” But after weeks of guarding the nest the male disappeared, and a week later the female vanished. Tim had watched them so arduously, and suddenly they were gone. He was sure someone had murdered them. “Remember the lied about the swan?” he asked.

  “Leda and the swan?” Angus volunteered.

  “The German song,” Tim said impatiently. “The lied,” he said, upset.

  It was about a swan who so loved a hunter by the marsh that she became a woman and married him and had three children. Then one night the king of the swans called to her to come back or else he would die, so slowly she turned into a swan again, slowly opened her wide white wings and left her husband and her children…

  “Her wide white wings,” Tim said, weeping.

  Lucretia gave a party out of turn. Everyone came except Dianne and Tim. Walter asked Louise about the dog.

  “Old Broom,” Louise answered. “Poor Broom.” The dog was not demanding. It was modest in its requirements. It could square itself off like a package in a chair, it could actually resemble a package, but that was about it. Everyone half expected that Broom would have disappeared by now, run away.

  “Listen,” Lucretia said. “I’ll tell you. One of those glasses I was given got a little chip on the rim and I found myself going to a jeweler’s and getting an estimate for filing it down. It cost seventy-five dollars and I paid for it, but I’m not picking it up. I didn’t even give them the right telephone number. I decided, enough’s enough.”

  Walter confessed that he had thrown away the silk pajamas immediately, without a modicum of ceremony.

  “None of it makes a bit of sense,” Betsy said. “What would I want with barbells? I took those barbells down to the park and left them by the softball field. You’re a saint, Louise. I could see you maybe not wanting to take it to the pound, but I always thought, She’s going to take it to a no-kill facility.”

  “What do you mean,” Louise asked.

  “A no-kill facility. Isn’t that self-explanatory?”

  “Well, no,” Louise said, “not really. I mean it doesn’t sound all that great somehow.”

  “Most places keep unwanted pets for two weeks and then, if they’re not adopted, they put them to sleep.”

  “Put them to sleep,” Louise said. She didn’t know anybody said that anymore and here was her friend Betsy saying it. It sounded like something you’d do with a small child in a pretty room while it was still light out.

  “And these people never do. I’ve just heard about these places, I’ve never seen one. I don’t think there are many of them, but they are around.”

  “I don’t like the sound of it either,” Andrew said, “oddly enough.”

  “You know that woman came into the florist’s the other day to buy roses and I said to her, ‘Oh no! Has Buckie bitten someone again?’ ” Louise said.

  Her friends looked at her.

  “And she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ” Louise laughed. “She was pretending she wasn’t the same person.”

  Louise always wanted to talk about Broom with the others until they actually wanted to discuss him, then she didn’t want to anymore.

  Early one evening after work, Louise was sitting on the front steps of her house when a van pulled up across the street and a man got out. Louise was startled to see him walk over to her. He was deeply tanned with a ragged haircut. The collar of his shirt was too big for him.

  “How do you do, Louise?” he said. “I’m Elliot’s brother.”

  Louise cast herself back, remembering Elliot. She found him with more difficulty than usual, but then she had him, Elliot, she could see him. It was still him, exactly. Powerful Elliot. She said to the man, “You don’t look at all like Elliot.”

  He seemed to be waiting for her to say more. When she didn’t, he said, “I’ve been ill and out of the country. I couldn’t travel, but I got here as soon as I was able. Elliot and I had quarreled. You can’t imagine the pettiness of our quarrel, it was over nothing. We hadn’t spoken for two years. I will never forgive myself.” He paused. “I heard that he had a dog and that you have it now and it might be something of a burden to you. I’d like to have the dog. I’d like to buy it.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” Louise said simply.

  “I insist on paying you something.”

  “No, it’s impossible. I won’t give the dog up,” Louise said. He could be a vivisector for all she knew.

  “It would mean a great deal to me,” he said, his mouth trembling. “My brother’s dog.”

  Louise shook her head.

  “I can’t believe this,” he muttered.

  “Believe what?” Louise said, looking at Elliot’s brother, if that’s who he was, although there was no reason to doubt him, not really.

  He spoke again, patiently, as if she had utterly misunderstood his situation and the seriousness of his request. His guilt was almost holy, he was on a holy quest. He had determined that this was what must be done, the only thing that remained possible now to do.

  “We were so close,” he said. “He was my little brother. I taught him how to ski, how to drive. We went to the same college. I’d always protected him, he looked up to me, then there was this stupid, senseless quarrel. Now he’s gone forever and I’m all ruined inside, it’s destroyed me.” He rubbed his chest as if something within him really was harrowed. “If I could care now for something he had cared for, then I would have something of my brother, of my brother’s love.”

  “I don’t mean to sound rude,” Louise said, “but we’ve all been dealing with this for some time now and you suddenly appear, having been ill and out of the country both at the same time. Both at the same time,” she repeated. “It’s just so unnecessary now, your appearance. It’s possible to come around too late.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. He was sallow beneath his tan. “Your friends, Elliot’s friends, said they were sure you’d appreciate the opportunity, that they were sure you wouldn’t mind, that in fact you’d be relieved and delighted.”

  “That just shows how little we comprehend one another,” Louise said. “Even when we try,” she added. “Have you ever had a dog before?” Louise was just curious. She didn’t mean to lead him on, but as soon as she said this, she feared she’d given him hope.

  “Oh yes,” he said eagerly. “As boys we always had dogs.”

  “They’d die and you’d get another?”

  “That’s a queer way of putting it.”

  “Look,” Louise said, “your brother had this dog for about three minutes.” She felt she was exonerating Elliot.

  “Three minutes,” he said, bewildered.

  “I said about three minutes. You should get a dog and pretend it was your brother’s and care for it tenderly and that will be that.” Louise was not going to get up and go inside the house and lock the door against him. She would wait him out. “There’s nothing more to discuss,” she said.

  He turned from her sadly. There were several youths peering into his van. “Get away from there!” he cried, and hurried toward them.

  It was Walter’s turn to give a party. He had a fire in the fireplace although it wasn’t at all cold. Still, it was very pleasant, everyone said so.

  “I ordered half a cord of wood but it wasn
’t split, it was just logs,” Walter said, “and one of the logs had a chain partly embedded in it, like a dog chain. The tree had started to grow right over the chain.”

  “Wow,” Daisy said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Sometimes,” Wilbur said, “certain concepts, it’s better not to air them.”

  The twins held each other’s hands and looked into the fire.

  “Who would have thought that Elliot would have such a dreary brother,” Angus said. “I wouldn’t have given him the dog either.”

  “Still, I’m amazed you didn’t, Louise,” Jack said.

  “I guess he got all the things we actually remembered Elliot having,” Andrew said. “I remember a rather nice ship’s clock, for instance. That wristwatch I was given, who’d ever seen that before?”

  “Elliot wasn’t in his right mind,” Betsy said. “We keep forgetting that. He wasn’t thinking clearly. If you’re thinking clearly, you don’t take your own life.”

  Again, Louise marveled at her friend’s way of phrasing things. To take your own life was to take control of it, to take possession of it, to give it a shape by occupying it. But Elliot’s life still had no shape, even though it had been completed.

  “I want to confess something,” Andrew said. “I tossed that watch.” He had crammed it into an overflowing Goodwill bin in the parking lot of a shopping mall. He described the experience of pushing the watch into an open-throated, softly bulging sack as an extremely unpleasant one. Everyone knew the Goodwill bin and its mute congregation of displaced things, some too large to have been slipped inside, all those things waiting to be revisited in this life, waiting to be used again.

  That evening everyone drank too much and later dreamed vivid dreams. The twins dreamed they were in the middle of a highway, trying to cross, trying to cross. Angus dreamed he was in a coffee shop where a kindly but inefficient waitress who looked like his mother was directing him to a table that wasn’t there. Lucretia dreamed she was carving Kindertotenlieder as sung by Kathleen Ferrier out of a block of wood with a chain saw. That’s quite good, someone was saying. It’s only a copy, Lucretia demurred. Walter dreamed he was kneeling at the communion rail in the silk pajamas. The cup was coming toward him but had become a thermometer to be placed beneath the tongues of the devout, and by the time it reached him it was a dipstick from a car’s engine that a mechanic was wiping with a filthy cloth.

  Louise had had the dog for five months now. When she realized how much time had passed, she thought: Seven more months to go. In seven months we’ll know more.

  Someone was putting a house up behind Louise’s house. The yard had been bladed and most of the trees taken down. The banal framework of a house stood there. When Louise gave a party, everyone was shocked at the change.

  “I thought that yard went with this house,” Jack said.

  “Well, I guess not,” Louise said.

  “All those little birdhouses are gone,” Lucretia said. “People put them inside now, you know, as a decorative accent. They paint them in these already fading, flaking colors and put them around.”

  “They’re safer inside,” Angus said.

  “That thing is going to be huge, Louise,” Betsy said. “It’s going to loom over you.”

  They talked for a while about what she could plant to block it out.

  “Nothing will grow in time,” Betsy said.

  “In time for what?” Walter said.

  “Everything takes so long to grow. My god, Louise,” Betsy said, “you’d better just move.”

  “Louise,” the twins said, “if you die are you going to leave us anything?” They were sitting on the sofa eating pretzels. Outside, the wind was blowing hard but there were no trees anymore to indicate this with their tossing branches. A door blew open, though, banging.

  Louise was going to move. She didn’t want that house going up behind her. Within a week, she had found another place. Walter and Lucretia helped her move. He had a truck and they transferred all the furniture in one trip. They transferred Broom too, with his dog bed and his dish for water and his dish for food. Then Louise packed her car with what remained, right up to the roof. Even so, she had thrown away a lot of things. She was simplifying and purifying her life, keeping only her nicest, most singular things. Louise swept the old house clean, glad to be leaving. She looked with satisfaction at the empty rooms, the stark windows and their newly ugly vistas. She slammed the door and headed for her car but it wasn’t where she’d left it. She stared at the place where the car had been. But it had vanished, been stolen, and everything was gone. The sun was bright, still shining on the place where it had been.

  It was Betsy’s turn to have a party. They told theft stories—they all had them—and tried to cheer Louise up. She had already bought another car with the insurance money. It wasn’t as appealing but she liked it in a different way. She liked it because she didn’t like it that much, wasn’t as girlishly pleased with it as she had been with the other one.

  “You can get all new clothes,” Lucretia said. “You can go on a spree. That favorite dress of yours had a spot on it anyway, kind of on the back.”

  “It did not,” Louise said. “I got that spot out. I loved that dress.”

  “I bet you can’t even remember everything you packed in the car,” Jack said.

  “My pearls,” Louise said sadly.

  “Christmas is coming,” Angus said. But he always said that, as if he were going to buy everyone wonderful gifts, only ones of their most perfect desiring. But all he bought was champagne and cookies that they would drink and eat.

  “My grandmother’s silver tea service.”

  “Louise, you know you never used that and never would even once in your life,” Lucretia said. “It didn’t have a place.”

  “But it’s gone,” Louise said. It was gone, of course, but there was something else, something worse. She had made all these choices. She had discarded this and retained that and it hadn’t mattered.

  “Things are ephemeral,” Daisy said.

  “And an illusion,” Wilbur said.

  “Well, which is it?” Jack demanded, annoyed.

  Everyone was a little embarrassed. Seldom did anyone respond to the twins.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Jack said. “I sold that crazy bowl of Elliot’s to an antique store.”

  None of them could think about Elliot without being thwarted by the mystery of the things he’d given them. His behavior had been inexplicable. It was all inexplicable.

  “Oh, I can’t think about it anymore!” Louise cried. They were all drinking margaritas out of silly glasses.

  “How is Broom,” Andrew asked delicately.

  “Oh, I’ve rather gotten used to Broom,” Louise said.

  Lucretia looked at her unhappily. Louise had lost her sparkle, Lucretia thought.

  Louise settled quickly into her new house. It was bigger than the other one, and more ordinary. Broom didn’t know which room to disappear into. He had tried them all and couldn’t decide. He would try the most unlikely places. Sometimes she would come across him on the fifth step of a narrow back staircase. What an odd place to be! Wherever he was he looked uncomfortable. Still, she was sure Elliot would not have wanted her to surrender the animal so easily. Of course she would never know Elliot’s thoughts. She herself could only think—and she was sure she was like many others in this regard, it was her connection with others, really—that life would have been far different under other circumstances, and yet here it wasn’t, after all.

  Charity

  They had been told about it by a police officer eating a tamale at a cafe near the Arizona–New Mexico border.

  “I just went out there in all that white sand and got me a dune and went up on it and looked and looked and just let it sink in, and I never saw anything like it, never felt anything like it. I think I could stay out there in that white sand for a real long time and I don’t know exactly why.”

  “It doesn’t sound like something you
’d want to do too often,” Richard said. The policeman frowned. Then he ignored them.

  Back in the car, Janice wanted to go there immediately. They were having a look at the Southwest on their way to Santa Fe. They were both wearing khaki suits, and Richard had a hand-painted tie he had paid a great deal of money for around his neck.

  They drove to the White Sands National Monument, paid the admission and went in. The park ranger said, “We invite you to get out of your car and explore a bit, climb a dune for a better view of the endless sea of sand all around you.”

  They drove slowly along a loop road. Everything was white and orderly. It was as if the dunes had a sense of mission.

  “Do you want to get out?” Richard said. “I’ll wait in the car.”

  Janice felt that she was still capable of awe and transfiguration and was uncomfortable when, together with Richard, she felt not much of anything. She was distracted by the knowledge that they were on a loop road. She studied the dunes without hope. As they were leaving, they saw something small and translucent, like a lizard, stagger beneath their wheels, and they both remarked on that.

  “I don’t know what that policeman was talking about,” Richard said.

  “He was trying to express something spiritual.”

  “Don’t you get tired of that out here? Everything’s sacred and mysterious and for the initiated only. Even the cops are after illumination. It wears me out, to be quite honest.”

  She wished she had gotten out of the car. She hadn’t even gotten out of the car. She was wearing high heels. “Let’s go back,” she said. “Let’s try it again.”

  “Janice,” Richard said.

  After some miles he said, “I forgot to take a leak back there.”

  “Really!” she exclaimed.

  “I’m going to pull into this rest stop.”

  “To take a leak! How good!” she said. She fixed an enthralled expression upon him.

  Outside, the heat was breathtaking and the desert had a slightly lavender cast. People were standing under a ramada, speaking loudly about family members who smoked like chimneys and lived into their nineties. Farther away, someone was calling to a small dog. “Peaches,” the woman called, “you come here now.” The dog seemed sincere in its unfamiliarity with the name Peaches. This was clearly a name the dog felt did not indicate its true nature, and it was not going to respond to it.