Maybe not, he mutters, but I loved her. Especially after we were divorced. A fate-prank. She loved someone else before I married her and she loved him while I was married to her, and she loves him now. The dog and I sit out here and we think about her, and about the business that I own, the coffee business. I dont actually know what the dog thinks about. A little air pocket of silence opens up between us. I hear him breathing, and I look down at his clasped hands. One of the hands reaches into his pants pocket for a dog treat, which he hands to Junior, who gobbles it down.
You shouldnt do that. Get lost in nostalgia, I mean. But Diana was beautiful, I say.
She still is. And Im not nostalgic.
But she was unfaithful to you, I tell him. You cant love someone who does that.
I almost could. She was powerful. She had me in a kind of spell, Im not kidding. He looks straight at me. Nearly a goddess, Diana. I could let her destroy me. In flames. Id go down in flames watching her.
Just as he finishes this sentence, some noise it sounds like a crow cawing filters down to us from very high in the nearby trees. Odd: I cannot remember ever hearing a crow at night. At the same time that I have this thought, I hear a man laugh twice, distantly, from the houses behind us. A horribly mean laugh, this is. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Oh, by the way, I say, I just came from the football stadium. Guess what I saw.
Theyre going to put a big fence around that place. He laughs. Didnt you know that? A big fence. With a gigantic new Vegas-style scoreboard. People like you keep trying to get in.
Theres no fence around it now, I tell him.
I can see where this is going, Bradley snorts. Walking around at night, youre soaking up material for your book, The Feast of Love, and what to your wandering eyes should appear? I know exactly what appeared. You saw some kids whod snuck into the stadium and were actively naked on the fifty-yard line.
Well, yes. I wait, disappointed. How did you know? I mean, I thought it was rather sweet. And you know, I was touched.
Touched.
Its hard to describe. Their
His curiosity gleams at me from his permanently love-struck face.
Oh, you know, I say. The waning moon was shining down on them. Like A Midsummer Nights Dream, or something of the sort.
All right, sure. I know. Love on the field of play. Happens all the time, though, he says in a calmer and possibly sedated voice. For a moment I wonder if hes on Prozac. Didnt you know that? I grew up around here, so I should know. Kids sneaking in, its a big deal for them, they can point to the fifty-yard line and say, Hey, man, guess what I did down there with my girlfriend? Thats where I got laid, Bub, right down there where that big guy is being taken off on a stretcher.
Well, I say, I gotta go.
He grabs my arm in a strong grip. No you dont. Thats the most ridiculous claim I ever heard. Its two in the morning. You dont have to go anywhere.
My wifes expecting me back.
He sits up suddenly. Listen, Charlie, he says. Ive got an idea. Itll solve all your problems and itll solve mine. Why dont you let me talk? Let everybody talk. Ill send you people, you know, actual people, for a change, like for instance human beings who genuinely exist, and you listen to them for a while. Everybodys got a story, and well just start telling you the stories we have.
What do you think I am, an anthropologist? I mull it over. No, sorry, Bradley, it wont work. Id have to fictionalize you. Id have to fictionalize this dog here. I pat Junior on the head. Junior smiles again: a very stupid and very friendly dog, but not a character in a novel.
Well, change your habits. And, believe me, it will work. Listen to this. He clears his throat. Okay. Chapter One. Every relationship has at least one really good day
TWO
EVERY RELATIONSHIP HAS at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, theres always that day. That day is always in your possession. Thats the day you remember. You get old and you think: well, at least I had that day. It happened once. You think all the variables might just line up again. But they dont. Not always. I once talked to a woman who said, Yeah, thats the day we had an angel around.
I DONT THINK that Kathryn and I had been married more than about two months when this event Im about to describe occurred. About five years ago, we were living in a little basement apartment, and we both were working two jobs. She had a part-time job at the library during the day and she was waiting tables at night. I was the day manager at a coffee shop not the place where I am now and getting headaches from the overhead lighting, and I was also doing some house painting, but it was late autumn and the work came in fits and starts.
Kathryn was strong and spirited, she once even threw a chair at me, but she had one fear. She was profoundly afraid of dogs. And not because she had ever been bitten. She claimed she hadnt been bitten. No: it was just that when she saw one of these animals, on or off a leash, walking toward her, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. What you might call primal terror. She had no idea of the source of this fear. She just wanted to run away. I once saw her gallop down a steep hill in the Arboretum to escape a dog, a German shepherd puppy that had trotted up to her, its tail wagging, for a head pat. When I caught up to her, she was crying. I dont ever want to come back here again, she said. I cant bear it.
It was a puppy, Kathryn, I told her.
I dont care what it was. None of that matters, she said. I had my arms around her, but then she turned so that she broke free of my embrace. She ran back to our car and locked herself inside, and I had to beg her to let me in. Man, I had to beg. And I aint too proud to beg. She had had her hair pinned up, but in her panic it had fallen down around her face, little tendrils, and her face was blotched with her crying. God, you know I hate to say it, but she was gorgeous like that, and I would have liked to help her. You need to do something for people when they get terrified, but terror is usually so vague, you cant talk it out of anyone. What are you going to do when it doesnt matter what you say?
But its a funny thing about other peoples phobias, when you dont share them: you pick at them, like a scab. You want to remove them.
So on this day Im telling you about, we were both free of our jobs, Kathryn and I, one of those late autumn midwestern Sundays, with a few golden leaves still attached to the trees, you know, last remnants, leaves soaked with cold rain and sticking to the car windshield or clinging to the branches they came from. She woke up and we made love and I said, Ill make you breakfast, and I did, my specialty, scrambled eggs with onions and hot sauce, and then I made coffee, while she sat at the table, smiling, with her legs tucked under her. That was something she did. She sat in chairs with her legs tucked under her like that.
We lazed around and read the Sunday paper and I massaged her neck and then we made love again, and then she said, I want to go somewhere. Toadie, take me somewhere today, please? So I said, Okay, sure. We got dressed for the second or third time that day, and we cleared off the pizza boxes from the front seat of my car, do you remember it? that old Ford Escort with the bad clutch? and we drove off. By this time it was about noon, maybe a bit after that.
We lazed around and read the Sunday paper and I massaged her neck and then we made love again, and then she said, I want to go somewhere. Toadie, take me somewhere today, please? So I said, Okay, sure. We got dressed for the second or third time that day, and we cleared off the pizza boxes from the front seat of my car, do you remember it? that old Ford Escort with the bad clutch? and we drove off. By this time it was about noon, maybe a bit after that.
Without considering what I was doing, I found myself driving up toward the Humane Society, and I thought, the Humane Society? No, I really shouldnt be doing this, but I kept driving because I was distracted by the leaves and by a knocking noise from the engine, which turned out to be the lifters, though I only discovered that later.
Uh, excuse me, but wherere we going? Kathryn asked.
Up there, I said in my cryptic secretive way. I did have those kennels and cages in mind but thought I should keep quiet about it. You cant tell some women everything. You just cant. Once we arrived, we parked in the lot, close to this animal bunker that the Humane Society is housed in, and you could hear the barking echoing off the walls and the trees. My God, could you hear it. A deaf person could hear it. Its constant and unrelenting. When theyre in that condition, dogs have a kind of howl thats close to human, and it makes your body grip up; your nerves get restless and uneasy, listening to dogs crying out, carrying on. The old alarms seep down into your bones, right into the marrow where fear is lodged. And what I did in the car was, I sneezed, and Kathryn watched me sneeze without saying anything. No gesundheit, no God bless you, no nothing. She let me sneeze. Then she waited some more. I waited, too.
Is this what I think it is? she asked. Is this your great idea of where to take me on Sunday, our day off? Because, the thing is, Im not going in there.
Kathryn, I said, its the Humane Society. Theyre in cages.
No, Bradley, she said. I wont. You probably mean well, probably, Ill give you credit, but, no, I wont go in there.
Ill hold you, I said.
Hold me?
Honey, Ill hold you around the shoulders. And I have an idea. Kathryn, I have an idea about what you should do when you get inside.
I dont care what your idea is.
I know it. I know you dont care. But lets try. Come on, honey, I said, and I took her hand for a moment. After we got out of the car, I could tell she was terrified because her knees were shaking. Have you ever seen a womans knees in a spasm? From fear? It is not a sight that lifts you up.
In the anteroom, which I remember because the floor was covered with green-mottled linoleum and also because the air was fragrant with a mixture of Lysol and Mr. Clean, the receptionist asked us what we were there for, and I said, well, we, that is, Kathryn and I, thought it was a little early to start a child, but maybe we could manage a dog. We were contemplating adopting a dog, I said, and Kathryn made a little sound, a sort of glottal grunt of apprehension, or a groan, but quietly, so that only I heard it. Guttural. And the receptionist, this young red-haired woman in a yellow jumpsuit, said, Well, its fortunate for you that these are visiting hours, so you can just go through that door there, and then turn to the left, and proceed down the hallway, and youll see them, the dogs I mean, because theyll be on both sides. And if you want anything, you just come back and let me know.