Patricia Gaffney (13 page)

He drifted back to the living room to hold his hands over the clanking, slowly warming stove. “Yes, very cute,” he told the dog, who had pulled a piece of kindling from the wood hoop and was trying to lure him into a game by repeatedly dropping it at his feet. Wasn’t it cats who were supposed to zero in on people who didn’t like them? His nose was itching already; he got his handkerchief out just in time to sneeze into it twice.

The cabin’s decorating theme was still Shrine to My Mother, he saw. Arlene’s old armchair sat in the corner; her dusty oil paintings from a long-ago hobby had replaced Dash’s photos on the walls; her fake Oriental runner bordered the brick hearth in front of the woodstove. Her knickknacks lined the small bookcase alongside her book club copies of
The Thorn Birds, Hawaii, Ship of Fools, The Forsyte Saga.
He didn’t really mind the gradual eradication in the room of almost everything connected with himself—there hadn’t been that much to begin with, although he did miss his foot-high stack of unread
New Yorkers
—and if it gave Dash comfort to be surrounded by her mother’s things, how could he resent it? Everything looked so settled, though, so cozy and self-contained, and that he resented. It looked as if one woman lived here by herself. Contentedly.

He turned over the library book on the hearth to see the cover.
Religions of the World.
Dash? Impossible. On second thought, maybe: The subtitle was
An Illustrated Overview.

He started guiltily when she came in with a tray, catching him stirring through the mail on the coffee table. She set the tray down with a small, admonishing clatter. “I sent away for that.”

“What? This?” He held it up innocently: a course catalog from the University of Pennsylvania.

“I know you think I’m not serious about vet school, but I am.”

He looked again at the catalog. “This is in Philadelphia.”

“It’s the closest one there is. Except for Virginia Tech.”

“But…”

“What?” She set her hands on her hips.

“Nothing.” He put the catalog back and sat down. The idea of Dash giving up her career, her successful business, the work she was born to do in order to take up the study of
veterinary medicine
was so ludicrous to him, so unbelievably wrongheaded—if he said one word, it would start a fight.

He didn’t want to fight, he wanted to take her to bed. He’d figured that out halfway down Route 29, and spent the other half imagining it.

She sat at the opposite end of the sofa from him, drawing up her feet in their woolly socks. She worried too much about getting old. She stared in the bathroom mirror at night and complained about her crow’s feet, her jawline, the barely perceptible wrinkle between her eyebrows. Everything was the beginning of the end. She never took his consoling remarks to heart, but he meant it when he told her she still looked beautiful to him. She was just right. She had been twenty years ago, and nothing had changed. She was simply his type, medium-tall, fair-skinned, fine-featured. Softhearted. His own Dash, who had turned on him for reasons she didn’t understand herself. Part of her quarrel with him was that he didn’t take her leaving him seriously, but how could he? It made no sense.

“I spoke to Chloe this morning,” he mentioned as they sipped tea. Chloe was always a safe topic. “We’ve started playing chess, sending each other moves in e-mails.”

“She told me.” They smiled at each other across the expanse of couch. “I wish I had something like that with her,” Dash said, worrying a torn thread in the knee of her jeans. “Something to keep us close.”

He put his hand on her foot, the only part of her he could reach. “You? You two will always be close.”

She sighed. “She’s more like you than me.”

That was true, so he said nothing. He thought of sliding his hand up the leg of her jeans and holding her bare calf. In the past, if Chloe hadn’t come down with them, they used to make love on this couch, Saturday or Sunday mornings after breakfast, usually, the newspapers strewn everywhere, crackling underneath them. He hated sleeping alone. Did she? Her hair was coming down in sexy tangles from a barrette on top of her head. She was talking about the two geese she’d seen on the pond yesterday, and he loved her expansive gestures, the way she looked behind him and to the left when she concentrated on what she was saying, then back into his eyes. He loved her intensity and her vitality. She woke him up. She was right, she wasn’t depressed. If this was premenopause, it had just made her more…it had just made her
more.
On the other hand, Dash times two was a mixed blessing. One of her had always been as much as he could handle.

He missed what she said next, but came to when he heard, “Did you know you can
eat
muskrats? Yeah, they’re very clean animals. I asked him what they taste like and he said chicken—he didn’t even laugh! He gave me a suet feeder he built himself—I’ll show you, it’s outside. He says we get woodpeckers all winter, and they really need suet for energy. And cardinals, chickadees…”

Suet. Wedge. Crossword puzzle words he’d heard all his life, and yet he had to admit he didn’t know precisely what they meant. It wasn’t like him to resent the acquisition of knowledge.

“You’re seeing a lot of Roby, are you?” he said, leaning over to brush a spot of mud off his pants cuff. Was he jealous of Roby? Yes, but not for any good reason. Of that he was sure.

“Well, I guess. He’s doing everything Shevlin used to do.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Bender. That’s his name, Shevlin—I know, all these years and we never knew. Cottie and I are starting to be friends. I’m not sure why she likes me, but I like her, too, right from the beginning we just hit it off. I’ve been going over there in the afternoons sometimes for coffee. We talk about gardening, things like that.” She shrugged, smiling at the unlikeliness of a friendship that didn’t surprise him at all. Mrs. Bender, who sounded like a nice woman, must be about Arlene’s age.

“I’m glad you have someone to talk to,” he said, stroking his finger over the toes of her foot.

“I’m trying to get Greta up to speed to take over the office for a whole week, so I can stay down here. Things are still slow, I could move some appointments around and get an
entire week
with no shoots.” She closed her eyes. “Think of it. I could really get somewhere if I had one long, uninterrupted week.”

“Get somewhere?”

“With myself.” She opened her eyes. “I know it’s a drag, but you have to be patient with me. It’s an important time. I’ve been meditating. I go for long walks in the woods with Sock, and just think. I’m learning lore.”

“Lore?”

“Don’t you dare laugh. I’ve been reading nature books and learning to identify birds and trees and things.” She pointed to a jumble of dried leaves and poddish-looking objects on the table; he had thought it was one of her winter flower arrangements. He couldn’t help it—it made him smile. “Andrew, I’m warning you.”

“No, I think it’s great. Really. But…aren’t you ever lonely?”

“Nope. Not lonely.” She ran her thumbnail over the place on the cup where her lips had been. “Or if I am, it’s a good kind. Scary, but educational. I’m having a genuine learning experience.”

“You could take an adult education course at Mason-Dixon. I think they’ve got one on wildflowers.”

She narrowed her eyes, not sure if he was making fun or not. He didn’t know himself. If she wasn’t lonely, then she didn’t miss him. But he was expected to be completely supportive while she played at Thoreau or Thomas Merton or whatever the hell this was.

The dog, who had been dozing in front of the stove, roused itself to jump up on his knees and deposit a moist stub of rawhide in his lap.

“Pet her,” Dash said, her face breaking into a smile. “Oh, look, she likes you.”

“How big is it going to get?” He patted the dog’s head with three fingers.

“She. Medium, the vet thinks. Knee-high, the perfect size for a dog.” The puppy nosed its chew toy into his crotch. His eyes began to water. “She’s very smart. She knows ‘sit,’ and she comes when I call her. We’re working on ‘stay.’ Show Andrew how you can shake hands. Watch this—Sock, shake hands. She has to be sitting, put her feet on the floor. Sock,
sit.
Good girl! Now, shake hands. Put your hand out, Andrew. Sock, shake. Shake hands. Usually she can do this. Get closer.
Sock.
Shake hands, honey.
Shake.
”

When Andrew had time to control them, his sneezes were discreet, choked-off affairs in his hand or his handkerchief. When they came without warning, like this one, they were startling, ear-piercing explosions that made people jump, then made them angry.

“Achh!”

The dog leaped high in the air, squealed, and flew out of the room.

“Oh,
honestly.
” Dash got up and went after it. Andrew tried a laugh, but she called back, “It’s not funny!” and kept going.

Usually it would be funny. Nothing was working today, though. Look where impulsiveness had got him. If he’d stayed home, he’d still have some dignity left. Nothing gained, but nothing risked.

Then he remembered—he had something of a trump card. A dubious ace in the hole.

“Guess what.”

In the kitchen, Dash was holding the perfectly fine puppy in her arms. She kissed the top of its head and set it on the floor. “It’s getting late. You know how you hate to drive after dark.” She turned her back on him, opened the refrigerator, and took out a plastic container.

“Guess what.”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “What.”

“Richard Weldon offered me his job.”

She turned around in slow motion, huge-eyed. “As chairman? Of the department?” He nodded. “Oh,
Andrew.
” She put the container down and clapped her hands. “Oh, I’m not surprised at all!”

He laughed—clearly that wasn’t true.

She laughed with him. “Oh, this is outstanding.
Good
for you.”

Too late, he began to see that his trump card was a two of diamonds. “Hang on,” he said lightly, “there’s a catch. Nobody’s comfortable with me taking the job as an associate professor—not that it
couldn’t
happen, but now, you see, the push is on to get me a full.”

“But that’s
good.
And about damn time.”

“Richard says the quickest way is if I’d agree to write a chapter in a book Peter Flynn’s editing.”

“But you hate Peter Flynn, you—” She stopped. Her head came forward on the long stem of her neck; her voice rose higher on every word. “So you’re not going to do it?”

“You don’t understand. It’s called
The Great Cover-up
—Flynn’s book—
The Great Cover-up: A Reexamination of Race and Gender Issues in the Framing of the Constitution.
” His lips curled. “I’m amazed he didn’t get ‘deconstruction’ in there somewhere.”

“Oh no. Andrew, for God’s sake.” She wilted against the counter. “I can’t believe this.”

“Don’t you see, it’s going to be a hatchet job. Flynn’s not a historian, he’s a number cruncher. Regression, quantitative analysis—that’s his field, it’s not history, it’s
math
, and all in the service of
proving
”—he made derisive quotation marks in the air—“that Thomas Jefferson had little black children, Washington was a slaveholding hypocrite—”

“Oh, save it. Why didn’t you say so? No wonder—this is about Jefferson, your
hero.
Which means the end, case closed.”

“There’s no point in trying to explain this to you,” he said coldly.

“You don’t have to explain it.”

“I don’t want the job anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d rather teach. That’s what I do; I’m a teacher.”

“You can do both!” She came after him when he went back into the living room. “Damn it, you deserve this job, and you’d be great at it. It’s more money, isn’t it?”

“That’s the whole point for you, isn’t it?”

She gasped. “How can you say that? About
me
?”

“Why not about you?”

“I care about getting Chloe through college, if that’s what you mean!”

“Right. So I should take the job so you can give up yours and go to
vet school.
” He grabbed his coat.

“You are so unreasonable! This is why we need counseling,” she threw at him, following him out on the porch. “I made the appointment, by the way—it’s this Thursday night at seven. Put it on your
list.
”

“I will.”

They stood under the porch light without looking at each other. Dash wrapped her arms around herself, frowning, dissatisfied. “Well, go on, then. Be careful driving.”

It was hard to see how he could’ve made a bigger hash of this visit, especially in light of his hopes at the outset. “Go inside,” he said, “you’re freezing.”

“Okay. Be careful driving,” she repeated, not moving.

He took a chance and put his arms around her. Strangeness and familiarity warred, but only for a second; then everything was fine. “Sweetheart,” he murmured. Holding her was like slipping into a favorite shirt still warm from the dryer. “You’re too skinny.” He didn’t even realize until afterward what a perfect line that was.