Furnace (21 page)

She doesn’t move the car for the bus. I can see the driver leaning to stare down, mouthing at her, but she’s miles away; light years. I walk round the front of the car to get on. I
nod and hold a hand up to where she is, but the sun’s dazzling on her windscreen so I can’t see if she waves back, or if she even notices I’ve gone. I step onto the bus and
it’s shuddering, ready to go.

I

She was offered the summerhouse on her first visit to the faculty. Father O’Brien, her graduate advisor for the four years to come, had arranged the lease with the Dean
of Divinity, Doctor Simon Hearn, who owned the looming Gothic Revival house and riverside grounds in which the old glass and clapboard structure stood. The white window frames and wrought-iron
porch were peeling so badly she felt pained and dimly oppressed by her first impression of neglect; but she liked the way it nestled privately behind a screen of Sassafras trees at the end of its
own narrow, dusty dirt path. In front of it lay nothing but open meadow and the river shining glassy and broad some half a mile distant. The Hearns wanted just four hundred dollars a month, and no
money down.

Father O’Brien had taken it upon himself to show her the property and clearly hoped that she would take it. They’d corresponded for months and she realised he had taken a particular,
pastoral interest in her. Look here, he said, leading her up from the path to the summerhouse porch and pointing out the vines twined up and over the ironwork. Small, pale clusters of fruit bulged
amongst the dark leaves and stems and on the undersides of the leaves there were beetles clinging, their shells a startling metallic green that shimmered as if liquid. Father O’Brien plucked
one of the grapes and rolled it between finger and thumb. Tough as a nut, he announced. He flicked it playfully into the air and it bounced once on the path before disappearing in the long grass of
the water meadow. Let’s take a look inside, he suggested, and unlocked the slim French doors with an ornately old fashioned, long-stemmed key.

She knew the offer of the lease was more an act of charity than business and guessed that her circumstances must have been a topic of discussion among the staff, but she hid her embarrassment
and tried to seem as professional as possible throughout the viewing. And I can keep my dog? she asked, once they’d looked the whole place over.

Oh yes, said Father O’Brien. I made sure to clear that for you. They keep dogs themselves you know, and he twitched his head in the direction of the big, vulgar house beyond the trees.
Irish Wolfhounds. Fine looking beasts. He winked and smiled.

II

On the following Sunday she moved in with Charlie, her black Labrador, again with the help of Father O’Brien. While the dog sniffed from room to room they carried in her
boxes of books and bedding, panting and sweating in the afternoon sun. When Father O’Brien left to prepare for Mass at the campus chapel she inspected again each of the small, musty rooms,
Charlie at her heels. The place had been vacant since the winter and when she first tried the water it ran reddish brown for almost a minute. The lavatory bowl was stained the same colour but the
water itself eventually flushed clear. In the old enamel bathtub a neat line of corpses – the same small iridescent beetles she’d noticed on the vines, but dulled down by death –
stretched from one end to the other like soldiers frozen in the middle of a long march. To her surprise, there were no signs of mice.

On the kitchen table was a bottle of sparkling wine and a small card propped against it.

It was signed Jennifer B Hearn and family. A miniature dog’s paw-print had been inked in underneath the word ‘family’.

She put the bottle in the fridge and clamped the note to the fridge door with one of the many magnets decorating it. Most of the magnets were plain letters of the alphabet and someone had
spelled out her name with them. Two flower magnets – marigolds, she thought – punctuated either end of the name and she stared at the arrangement for a while, wondering if one of the
Hearn kids had come down to the summerhouse with their mother when she’d brought the note and the wine. She scrambled the letters one by one with a fingertip, then went outside to sit on the
porch.

Though the big August sun was dropping low and hazy over the river the air was still laden, as it had been all day, with a disabling, sultry heat. At her back she heard the rapid tick of the
dog’s claws on the kitchen tiles and with a yawn he settled himself close, first sitting, then keeling onto his side and sprawling his full, glossy black length across the threshold. For a
while she took hold of one of his limp front paws and ran her thumb absently over the contour lines of its hot, vinyl-like pads; then, glancing down, she saw he was wakeful, watching her with one
open eye, and she let him be.

Looking more closely at the vines around her, she noticed with surprise that many of the dusty-skinned grapes were larger and riper than the one Father O’Brien had selected. She plucked a
few of the largest that hung within reach then stood and clucked the dog indoors after her. After re-filling Charlie’s water bowl she rinsed the grapes and set them on a shallow white dish
she found in one of the cupboards.

III

That first night was too hot and unfamiliar for sleep and she lay for a long while on top of her crumpled sheets listening to her own breathing. Anticipating a stifling,
restless night she had taken the grapes upstairs with her and finally she sat up, turned on the bedside lamp and chewed through them one at a time, slowly and thoughtfully.

The warning on the note was true – when she bit down the skins split a little and sloughed off the flesh without breaking up, forming leathery, tasteless packets under her teeth. Something
in her revolted against swallowing them and soon she found herself working them in her mouth, furling and mashing them to pellets of slippery pulp, then teasing them open again, limp but
undiminished on the tip of her tongue. In the end she picked them from between her lips and draped them over the rim of the dish.

On the wall facing the bed hung a faded print of two serious young men sitting upright but at rest in a nineteenth century scull, their oars held easy and flat over the water. They wore varsity
colours and caps and she wondered if the stretch of water they were pictured on was part of the long calm flats visible from the house. A tap at the window startled her – a big river moth or
beetle wanting the light. Then another, and another, like the first heavy drops before a storm. She switched the lamp off and lay back in the dark listening to occasional bird cries from the water
meadows, eerie and distant. Around dawn a breeze picked up, stirring the vines into dry whispers outside the bedroom window. With the breeze seemed to come cooler air and her next memory was of
being woken confusedly at noon by a sharp rapping on the glass of the French doors downstairs.

By the time she had struggled into her clothes the caller had gone, though the dog stood patiently at the door. Sorry, Charlie, she said and let him out onto the verge of the path where he
squatted immediately. Following him out, she looked up the path for any sign of the caller. It was deserted, but turning back to the house she saw a smooth river rock on the porch beside the rubber
doormat, and under it a letter. For a moment it confused her, then she realised the French doors had no letter slot and there was no mailbox on the path outside.

The letter was from her father and she sat herself on the porch to read it. He was worried about her and wanted to speak to her. Would she phone or find time to visit again soon or even just
write? Why had she left early on the weekend? She had been welcome to stay until the semester began. Surely she knew that? Anyway, that was what he’d expected her to do. There were still
important things he wanted to know. There were things he wanted to ask her.

She folded it before reaching the end and called the dog back indoors. She poured herself a bowl of cereal.

The visit to her father’s the weekend before had exhausted her and she had no intention of repeating it. Marian, his second wife, was just a few years older than herself and had only been
with him for six years but already they had three raucous kids and another on the way. She’d been one of his last patients before he gave up his practice. Now, like some throwback pioneer he
spent most of his free time building timber forts, jungle gyms, tree-houses, even an open-air bathhouse in their sprawling back garden, though the kids were too young for any of it. Marian just
seemed to wander dazedly from kitchen to outdoor Jacuzzi and back again in various states of undress. The kids ran wild at all hours of the day, she hadn’t been allowed to take Charlie, and
the bathrooms had no locks.

On the afternoon she’d left, Marian had wanted her to try the outdoor bathhouse. Just peel right off and get on in, she’d said. This sun’s so hot and the garden’s
private, there’s no one can see.

Don’t you get drowned bugs washing around in there? she’d wanted to know, and Marian laughed.

It took some time and a growing unpleasantness in the atmosphere between them but finally Marian gave up with a shrug and stripped completely there and then on the lawn. She picked her way
barefoot over to the sunken tub, trailed by Nathan, the middle kid, a demanding boy of three. She bent from the waist and twisted some kind of lever to set the water churning.

Don’t know what you’re missing, missy, she called, and lowered her short, plump nakedness until only her grinning head was visible.

The boy Nathan left his mother and came running to where she sat on the lawn. He took hold of her right hand as if to pull her upright and she smiled and stood for him. Where do you want to go?
she said, but he dropped her hand and instead took hold of her light print skirt. What is it? she said, but he had no interest in her now other than to tug at the skirt. She stared down at his
scowling, determined face, feeling the elastic waistband slip to the broadest span of her hips, dragging her underpants with it. Stooping, she prised away the soft, sticky buds of his fists and
strode quickly back to the house.

In the cool privacy of her room she readjusted herself and then moved to the window. In the garden Marian was out of the tub, still naked, chasing both Nathan and the oldest child, an
intelligent, wilful little madam of five, around the bathhouse. All three of them were shrieking.

Beyond them, in the shadow of his timber fort, her father was sawing lengths of plank for some new project. His long, curly grey hair and the grey wooliness of his torso were ringletted with
sweat. His chest was like the underside of an animal, of a sheep or a goat, she had often thought when a child. Below it his paunch bulged over the waistband of his jeans shorts, a sudden, comical
swelling, abrupt as a blister above his skinny loins.

She had packed hurriedly, called a cab and left a note on the kitchen table with her apologies and thanks.

IV

After a salad lunch she took the dog for a long walk beside the river. When she returned, Father O’Brien was waiting on the porch, his long legs stretched out and crossed
comfortably at the ankles. He waved as they approached, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

Inside, he asked how she was settling in and made a fuss of Charlie.

She took the cold bottle of wine from the fridge and set it on the kitchen table. While she searched for two glasses he said, I can open it with this, and with a comic flourish unfolded a
corkscrew from his penknife. She set out the glasses and sat opposite him and he poured the wine. They drank and spoke of the hot weather for a while.

You know, he said, reaching down to the dog at his feet and dragging his nails against the grain of the fur along its stomach, I once had a Labrador much like Charlie.

Oh, she said, pleased.

Not everyone appreciated him, though. I was a full time parochial priest in those days and one of my flock, a very troubled young man, came to me for advice of an evening. Without a thought, you
understand, I sat him on the couch with the dog at his feet. Well now, he said, and took another long swallow of wine, warming to his story. Well now, this boy, he patted and stroked that dog as if
his very soul depended on it. He nearly smoothed that dog to a pattern in the carpet, by God. O’Brien paused and smiled a little shyly at her.

She smiled back.

Well now, it was only some time later when this boy rose up to go and I shook his hand that I realised his palm was completely fouled with sweat and black fur. Feugh! It was matted, literally
matted
with that poor dogs hair.

He paused again for effect and she widened her eyes.

That boy had been so fearful of dogs he’d been close on crushing it to protect himself! O’Brien shook his head and drained his glass before refilling it. I know the fear of God is
the beginning of wisdom, he said, but I don’t know what the fear of dogs might signify. He let out a short laugh. Now how about that, he concluded, and gave a couple of hearty slaps to
Charlie’s broad, upturned ribcage.

She could find nothing to say but held her smile until he’d finished shaking his head and grinning at the memory. There was silence for a while and she wondered if she should rise and
switch on the light.

I enjoyed reading your research proposal, he said at last. I think it’s full of promise.

Thank you, she said.

He nodded drowsily. You’ve read Coleridge? The philosophy, I mean.

She shook her head.

Ah, he said.

V

On the Wednesday she took a bus into town. Outside the drug store an alarmingly thin, middle-aged man with a gentle but distracted manner was handing out flyers to anyone who
would take them. He wore sandals, baggy linen shorts and a spotless sky-blue T-shirt. On the bus ride back to the campus she read through the leaflet.