Everything (21 page)

Then he turned, and walked off.

This was Dorris MacKintyre’s house, was it not? June was almost sure of it. She had been here several times but never from the alley, never from this angle. The curtain closed in the window. A little shiver down her neck: this was perhaps not good news. She stood up next to the house and looked up, the way she would if she were looking out the window, and there were Dorris’s squirrels chattering and racing along the wires. Oh, hello, she thought, hello, good-bye.

That little dog again, from the next block. It looked like he was laughing at her. Dirty fur, small feet, nimble, gone.

Oh, Dorris, she thought. A good death. June prayed he wasn’t lingering behind closed curtains, the way they held on sometimes. June wanted the best for the people she loved, and she loved them all. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe her heart was just taken, maybe Taylor had stolen it away with him, and all that was left was this general love, this nice feeling. She thought of Layla, then, of Layla’s idiocies and passions, her confusions and trouble, and for that moment June was passionately jealous. She wanted only what Layla had, the ability to give herself, forget herself, to die, to burn. To die for love.

It was a nice thought.

It wasn’t her.

* * *

That little dog was up beside her then, and looking at her. He didn’t have a collar, June supposed it was a he, something about a general look. He was three colors: black, white and a really lovely honey-brown mixed in. He had white delicate feet, soiled with spring mud, and a nice little white blaze on the back of his neck. He watched her expectantly from three feet away.

Well, hello, she said.

The dog didn’t move, just grinned and watched.

Whose little dog are you? June asked.

The dog looked into her eyes insistently but without aggression or need. June felt that he was trying to tell her something. She started to walk again but he just walked with her. When she stopped, he stopped. When she started again, he walked with her.

Who are you? she asked again, but the dog just looked at her.

She walked to the end of the alley and turned onto the sidewalk, and the little dog followed easily at her heel. Apparently she had a dog now. Apparently she was a dog owner. Last fall’s leaves were plastered in decaying relief on the wet sidewalk and a girl was crying, halfway up the block. Not a little girl, either, but a high school girl or so with tattoos and black hair. June knew this girl. Who was she?

Greta, she said.

The girl looked up at her, surprised. Raccoon rings of eye shadow dripped down her cheeks in the tears and rain. June raced toward her, handkerchief at the ready, her little dog by her side.

* * *

You’re a mess, she said, swiping vigorously at the girl’s face. What’s the matter?

W—w—w—w, said the girl.

Don’t talk, June said. She gathered the girl into her arms, there on the sidewalk, felt her try to wrestle away—like a wild thing, the natural resistance—then relax into her embrace. Through the vertebrae of the girl’s back, June felt the convulsions inside, quiet involuntary sobbing that didn’t quite make it out into the air. June held on for dear life. Who was getting what out of this? Who was this
for
, exactly? But it didn’t matter: it was a good thing, touch, and a good thing was good, whatever the reason. Round and round. She looked at the little dog over the girl’s shoulder and his brown eyes seemed deep and sympathetic.

What is it? June whispered. What’s the matter?

B—b—b—b, said the girl.

What?

Bitch, the girl said. Leave me alone, bitch.

She tore her body from June’s and balled up into herself again, but June would not leave her alone. June put her hand around the girl’s shoulders.

Leave me alone, the girl said.

Is it your grandfather?

* * *

Greta looked up at her, slapped.

How do you know about my grandfather?

I take care of him sometimes, June said. I’m with the hospice.

Oh, that’s you.

Yeah.

No, it’s not him. It’s not that.

What?

We’re getting kicked out, Greta said. A kind of pride in the way she said it, a kind of deliberate offense. She said, They closed the 4B’s and my mom lost her job.

What are you going to do?

I don’t know.

Where are you going to go?

Greta just looked at her like the question itself was an insult, which maybe it was. June saw herself through the girl’s eyes, rich bitch looking down at her. People worked in this life. People didn’t just get lucky. Though June had an argument with her luck. A bone to pick.

It’s just money? June asked.

* * *

Greta shrugged.

Well, that’s easy, June said. I’ve got money.

Greta looked at her like she was being tricked and June felt all naked all of a sudden. It was the right thing to do—God knows she had money—but the wrong thing just the way she had the power now, and all this little girl had was trouble. Looking down at her. June needed comfort, assurance, and she reached down to pet the little dog on its belly, the little dog that followed her.

Look out
, Greta said.

But it was too late. The dog had already bitten her hand, a sudden unexpected snarling frenzy, and then retreated to the parking strip, where it stood looking at her, hackles up, expecting to be beaten.

They had a kid, a boy, Greta said. There was something wrong with him. He used to go after that dog with a broom handle.

June looked down to see if her hand was bleeding and it was but only a little bit.

Who did?

What?

Who had the boy, the dog, the broom handle?

The Freys, Greta said. They used to live down on the corner. They were bastard people.

* * *

They just moved away, June said.

And left the dog, Greta said. We feed him. So does everybody else.

What’s her name?

His.

What’s his name, then?

Spode, Greta said.

Spode, June said. She looked over to the dog where he was waiting to be beaten. He was not a perfect dog. He was somebody else’s problem. She looked down at her hand where he had bitten her and knew that Spode would bite other people. There would be arguments, threats, ugly surprises about the nature of the people she knew. She might lose an acquaintance or two over this dog, she thought.

Come here, boy, she said.

Well
, RL said.

Don’t say it. Don’t say a word.

OK.

Just for a moment.

In the mud and snow at the foot of her road, the skeleton trees and alders. In a little clearing. Trucks racing by invisible on Highway 35, a few feet away, a road-killed deer frozen in the borrow pit. RL got out to turn the hubs, to make the mudslide road up to her place. When he was done with the passenger side, he stood up and there she was. Then they were kissing.

* * *

Seems like a dream, she said, and RL said, Mexico.

So far away.

You’re sure you want to …

Betsy laughed. Poor Robert, she said. Whatever you wanted, I’m sure it wasn’t this.

I’m all right, he said.

I know.

This was just what I had in mind, he said. All along.

It found me, Betsy said. I couldn’t have done it without you. It found me and it will find you.

What did?

Grace, she said. I once was lost but now I’m found.

This sudden fervent frantic need to believe, down deep inside him. She was right, she had to be right, to be healed. RL felt like there was something there, something he couldn’t name, standing beside him. RL felt
light
.

It will find you, Betsy said.

Having tried, having failed
, having loved, having fucked it up, RL turns toward home. Toward
house
, he corrects himself; then relents. As long as Layla’s there, it’s home. After that, February.

We’ll be drinking early today.

He’s made a fool of himself. Everybody knows, June and Layla, put it in the paper! They’d all been right and he’d been wrong. A very public fool. His luggage from Mexico sits still behind the seat and for a moment he’ll just go back to the airport, catch the next flight for anywhere. Right back in the fallen world, he thinks. Everything stale and dull and usual is waiting for him. She was his ticket out, his escape. Now she’s made her getaway without him.

* * *

A feeling inside that he just wants to vomit out. No direction, no next step.

RL curses out loud, beats the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

RL thinks about turning back, back up the long road to her house. But you can’t rescue a person from herself. She does not wish to be rescued. She wants to be left alone with her children and the awful Roy. RL doesn’t understand but his lack of understanding will not change a thing. He is alone in the world again.

Alone: and without a plan.

RL doesn’t know what he wants, except that he wants a drink. And here is the Clearwater Bar! What luck!

Outside the sky is pearly gray and darkening toward night, a promise of snow in the fat air. RL is still fifty miles of bad curvy road from home. Just one, he thinks. A thought he has had before, he knows it. Maybe he should get a dog. A reason to live. Layla, he reminds himself: reason enough. Too many cars in the parking lot for this time of a Tuesday afternoon, and tinkly music leaking out of the door frame gives RL a bad premonition.

Chicken and dumplings? says the man on the stool by the door.

I was just going to get a drink, RL says.

Go ahead and suit yourself, says the door man, an elderly gent with bright white false teeth. I’m just saying, it’s chicken and
dumplings night. You get hungry, come on back here and pay up. Five bucks! All you can eat!

Will do, says RL. His bad dream is coming true in waves, a bar full of old men and old women, all of them in the old-style Western polyester, the kind that just doesn’t wear out, pearl snaps on the men and embroidery, even occasional fringe on the ladies. RL is the youngest person here by an easy ten years. Everybody smoking, everybody drinking whiskey ditches, rye and ginger, Merle Haggard and the Strangers on the jukebox singing, swinging doors, a jukebox and a barstool … and all of them with plates on the table of steaming chicken, golden gravy, fat white dumplings and green peas. RL waited his turn at the bar—busy night, the bartender running her shoes off—and remembered the cafeteria in his junior high school, that same food smell, though here mixed with the spilled beer, Lysol and cigarette reek of a working bar.

He feels the night enfolding him like some fever dream, unreal and evil, the laughing faces and the blur of bar noise. In silence, but with a knowing look, the bartender brings him a Daniel’s on the rocks and takes his money and brings him change but when she hands him the silver, she looks at him significantly, as if some other currency was being exchanged …. Her hands, anyway, are long and slender with pointed delicate nails, beautiful except for the red welted scar that runs across the back of her left hand. The wood of the bar is grooved deeply where old men have rubbed their quarters into it, year after year, making deep ruts and scars in the old wood, polished smooth by the loving fingers of the old men, daytime drinkers, time-wasters. RL knows it’s only the damage, only the hours and miles since Mexico—was that only this morning? it was, it was—but something is settling into him, seeping in, some kind of subtle poison.

* * *

Then two couples start to dance, except it’s not exactly dancing, what they’re doing, all the moves of a dance but no grace, no smoothness, no fluidity of movement, like a series of freeze-frames all spliced together and an expression of great seriousness, almost of suffering, on the faces of the men. Chicken and dumplings, RL thinks, chicken and dumplings. The women with their plump cheeks like dumplings, white. They smile up at their stone-faced partners but the smile is just on the surface of their faces, just a mask for something deeper, something inside RL, too, the certainty of loss. Like a bell ringing a bell, this suffering sent from one mind to the answering silence. She’s gone. She’s not coming back. He is alone.
Alone
, echoes the face of the ranch wife in her Western dress, circling the dance floor like a tired boxer.
Alone
, say the hands of the bartender, the smell of chicken and dumplings, the smoke that sits in settled layers in the hot air of the bar.

RL drains his drink, and heads for the exit.

You’ll be back! says the door man. Nobody comes to chicken and dumplings just once. Everybody comes back.

The feeling of dream does not leave him even out in the parking lot, even on the highway again. Lights on, the darkening afternoon, he feels like he could just reach out and put his hand through it, insubstantial as wet paper. In a minute it starts to snow, and the individual white flakes stream and swim through his headlights. Here he is, again inside the whirlwind. Here he is again, and gone.

I couldn’t have him
at the motel, June said.

No, Layla said. Come on in.

I missed you anyway.

Oh, crap.

What?

Me, too.

The snow sifting down onto the wet street behind her, a few flakes melting into her hair.

Pissing on a round flat rock
as the snow falls all around him through the black trees and the Blackfoot tumbles over a shallow riffle twenty feet away. Where did Christmas go? Alone in the forest.

Alone in his studio
, a little room carved out of one end of the garage—but his own, all his—Edgar sees that the real winter has begun, gray pearly skies and white snow. Bring it on, he thinks. Let it snow up to the eaves, let the river freeze solid. Wipe the whole town out in a smear of pure white. Let it
erase
.

He thinks about turning the radio on, decides not to. Thinks about going up to the house to make himself a cup of tea, which would be nice. But Amy and the girl are napping, at least they were a few minutes ago, and he doesn’t want to wake them. Four o’clock. There’s a little dorm fridge in the corner with a couple of bottles of beer in it, good beer. Four o’clock is a little early. But not
really
early. And besides, it’s snowing, a holiday feel, a time out of regular life. A swirly, damp snow, fat flakes drifting down, a snow-globe snow …