The Dogs of Littlefield (14 page)

“I'm just saying,” said Bill, “accusations can get out of hand.”

Perched on the two sofas like a flock of owls were the four Melmans, Hedy Fischman, and their new neighbor, Dr. Clarice Watkins. He'd gotten a nice fire going in the fireplace. The Christmas tree was twinkling cheerfully. He checked again to make sure. Yes, there it was, a very nice Fraser fir, decorated with ornaments and glass icicles and frosted white orb-shaped lights that blinked on and off, reflected in the dark glass of the French doors. Below spread a skirt of fake snow, insisted upon every year by Julia. Very nice. But when he'd glanced at the Christmas tree a few minutes ago it had looked as if it were covered with eyeballs and finger bones.

“Well, the gardeners
do
have a motive,” Naomi Melman was saying. “My theory is they feel possessive about the park and resentful because they can't own it. Like neurotic tenant farmers.”

“Enough motive to poison dogs?” said Bill. “Who has that kind of motive?”

“A sociopath,” croaked old Hedy Fischman.

“A sociopath?” echoed Stan Melman.

“Yes, someone reliving a frightening childhood experience of being attacked by a dog. Now, in the grip of a narcissistic ideation, he is trying to control all his fears by killing what he believes to be the source of them.”

“Looks like the fire could use a little attention.” Bill put his hands on his knees to stand up.

He smiled apologetically at the Melmans: Naomi and Stan; Julia's friend, Hannah; and the son, Matthew, a thin, dark boy with protuberant brown eyes and scraggly facial hair, sitting beside his mother. Naomi was a good friend of Margaret's, but Bill knew the Melmans mostly from the girls' soccer games. Stan and Naomi were both psychologists. Stan was as usual wearing a black yarmulke; he had a thick graying mustache and beard and a benign-looking pink wart beside his nose. Mother and daughter had both dressed up in skirts and velvet tops—Hannah's skirt was very short; she was also in fishnet stockings—but Matthew was wearing a striped rugby shirt and torn blue jeans. For the past twenty minutes, while everyone else was chatting, Matthew had sat silent on the sofa contorting his face, apparently in the grip of private torments that Bill imagined must be hormonal. Several times this fall he'd seen the boy flash through town on his bicycle, squinting against the wind, pumping wrathfully.
Hell on wheels
was the thought that had come to him. Along with an unexpected sting of envy.

Both Fischmans had been invited, but Marv wasn't feeling well, so only Dr. Doom had come, in a black pantsuit, a long black scarf wrapped around her neck, accompanied by Clarice Watkins in a golden turban and a leopard-print outfit that reminded Bill of bedspreads from the seventies. They'd all arrived in a rush of cold, fresh air, awkwardly bunched together. He'd taken their coats and poured each of the adults a glass of wine, urged them to sit by the fire, grateful when the living room began to seem convivial.

As he was stirring up the fire with the poker, the doorbell rang again and Binx started barking. “I'll get it,” he said.

Margaret threw him an unfocused look. “Who could that be?”

A week before, Bill had gone to Walgreens to buy lightbulbs for the front hall chandelier, though really just to get out of the house; as he was walking up and down the aisles, he'd passed a man in jeans and a windbreaker reading a magazine next to the family planning section—a man who looked familiar, but he couldn't place him. Until he realized it was the guy from the dust jacket photo of a book on Margaret's nightstand. That novelist she kept mentioning.

The next thing he knew, Bill was introducing himself and saying, “My wife, Margaret, is a big fan of yours. You've met her, I think.” He held out his hand and, after a moment's hesitation, the other guy took it.

“George Wechsler.”

George was holding
Iron Man
magazine, Bill noticed, so he asked if he lifted weights. George said he belonged to a gym and worked out twice a week.

“You know, I should be doing that.”

“Too busy?”

“Bad back,” Bill said mildly, noting the edge in George's voice. Probably figured out that Bill hadn't read his novel. Shouldn't have said, “My
wife's
a big fan.” Implying that he himself was not. Recalling that George's novel had something to do with baseball, Bill said it was too bad the Red Sox hadn't traded for an ace, and together they bemoaned the farcical performance of the Red Sox last season, agreeing that the bull pen should be beefed up and that the outfield still needed a slugger and predicting they'd be in the basement all spring. George kept looking up at him oddly, with a kind of truculent apology, the unconscious posture a short man takes with a tall man, Bill recognized, though George was built like a bag full of soccer balls. It struck Bill that this was cosmically unfair, that he should have been born to be tall, to enjoy the benefits of stature whether or not he earned them, while George had to work out to make up for being so short, and was forced to assert himself in a way that must feel exhausting and sometimes humiliating.

He asked George what he was doing for the holidays. When George admitted that he had recently separated from his wife and hadn't planned much besides watching football, Bill felt a flush of comradeship and heard himself say, “Well, we're having kind of a catch-as-catch-can thing at our house on Christmas night. You're welcome to join us.”

As he said it, he wanted it to be true; he wanted to be the kind of spontaneous guy who hosted catch-as-catch-can dinners. A pot of chili on Sundays. Neighbors over for cookouts. Tag football in the yard. It had been years since he'd played football. He really should work out. Exercise improves your mood, everybody said, makes you feel more alive, and it would be another excuse to get out of the house.

“A bunch of people will be there.” He smiled down at George. “We'd love to have you.”

Predictably George protested: no, no. Thanks, but couldn't possibly. Not the Christmas type.

“Well, we're only inviting people who don't celebrate Christmas.”

“Members of the tribe?”

“Sikhs. Buddhists. We're still looking for a couple of Druids. Maybe a Wiccan.”

George smiled and thanked him again, then repeated that he couldn't possibly; yet the more he protested the more Bill felt determined to get him to say yes. Dr. Vogel had suggested that he try seeking out the company of other men. Not colleagues, not the guys he worked with, but friends. Margaret had friends. She went out to dinner with them, celebrated their birthdays, asked after their ailing parents. Became friends with the mothers of Julia's friends, with people she'd met walking the dog. But not him. Not for years. He'd had friends in college, frat brothers. What had become of his friends?

He thought of his father's occasional phone calls, just to shoot the breeze, talk about the box scores and how he'd fixed the lawn mower motor with a flywheel he found at the dump. Bill always had to cut the calls short and his father would say, “Okay, pal. Catch you next time.”

Several times he'd thought about talking to Stan Melman. They often stood together at soccer games, arms crossed high on their chests, chatting about the weather, the stock market, the craziness worldwide and when it was all going to blow. On a really bad night a few weeks ago he'd walked over to Stan's house when he was out with Binx; but it was late, and he didn't know what to say if Stan came to the door. Instead he'd stood in the street for a long time, looking at the windows of the Melmans' house.

“Really, no.” George was replacing his magazine in the rack, edging toward the feminine hygiene section. “But thank you.”

George had almost reached the end of the aisle when Bill had an inspiration. “About my wife,” he said, following George.

“Look, I'm sorry, man,” said George, holding up both palms.

Bill held up a hand, too. “I just wanted to say, she really did love your book.”

George seemed as taken aback as if Bill had just said Margaret was an astrophysicist and had won a Nobel Prize. Why should it be surprising that Margaret had liked George's book? Did he think she wasn't intelligent enough to appreciate it?

“She's reading it again, in fact. I keep finding it all over the house.”

“I think I'm visiting her book club,” muttered George.

“Well, she said yours is the best book they've read all year and she was just saying the other day how much she wants to talk to you about it.”

Untrue, but suddenly Bill felt he would do almost anything to try to persuade George to come to dinner. It would show Margaret that he cared about what she cared about. Or at least that he could act like it.

He took a step forward, not meaning to block the aisle but noticing that he had done so, also noticing that George's fists were bunched in his windbreaker pockets, the ridges of his knuckles outlined through the fabric.

Bill moved back a pace. “Listen, it really would be great if you could join us. Margaret would be too shy to invite you herself, but she'd be so glad, having you come to dinner. I know it's a big favor to ask, but really it would be great.”

George said he'd think about it. Bill gave him the address and said they'd be starting with drinks around six. He asked George again for the name of his gym, having already forgotten. He might want to join himself. Might be good for his back.

“Catch you later,” he said as George lifted two fingers in salute.

He figured there was a fifty-fifty chance George would show up. Margaret kept telling him to read George's novel, saying it might give them something to talk about—well, he'd gone one better: here was George himself, coming to Christmas dinner.

That would give them something to talk about.

— —

“Goodness,” Margaret was saying coldly,
hands clasped against her chest. “Look who's here.”

George Wechsler was still standing in the foyer in his parka, holding a bottle of cabernet, snow capping the toes of his cowboy boots. He'd just introduced the two identical angular, curly-haired teenage boys looming behind him as his sons, Aaron and Bradley.

She hadn't offered to take his coat, just stood in the hall looking at him under the too-bright chandelier. Bill couldn't understand it. Margaret was always so gracious to visitors, especially when she felt put out by them.

“Bill will take your coat,” she said. And then she disappeared.

“Hope this is really okay.” George handed him the wine with a contrite grimace. “Bringing the boys last minute.”

“Absolutely.” Bill clapped him on the shoulder. “The more the merrier.”

He took their coats and led George and the two boys into the living room, where everyone blinked up at them from the sofas near the fireplace, as if until that moment they'd been sitting in the dark. George seemed to know some of the adults and Matthew Melman. There were cries of
Please don't get up
and
No, no, you sit here.
Hedy Fischman moved to an armchair, as did Clarice Watkins; George and his boys commandeered one of the sofas, while Hannah and Julia fluttered onto the carpet to sit at their feet. Outside it was snowing again, snow tapping against the windowpanes.

Snowiest December on record, Bill heard someone say. Someone else began talking about five skiers in the Alps who had just been buried in an avalanche. Even specially trained dogs couldn't find them. They all looked appreciatively at the fireplace, where the crackling and hissing of burning logs provided a cheerful counterpoint to the storm outside, though every so often a gust of wind blew down the chimney with a hollow shriek.

“More wine?” Bill was walking around with George's bottle of cabernet.

George's twins, Aaron and Bradley, were wearing matching khaki pants and blue oxford shirts, as if to make what was already difficult even harder. Julia and Hannah huddled together on the floor, clutching their cell phones, pretending not to look at the boys, while George explained the whereabouts of the twins' mother, Tina, who usually spent Christmas Day with her mother; her brother, Fred; and his husband. But the man Tina was dating had invited her to spend Christmas with him at an inn in Dorset, Vermont, while for the first time the grandmother had elected to go to Fred's house, in the South End. Wanted something smaller this year, she said. The boys had chosen to stay with George.

“In Animal House,” he said, smiling, and the boys guffawed obligingly.

He was sitting back on the sofa as he explained all this, in his brown corduroy jacket and navy turtleneck, one arm stretched along the top of the cushions, a cowboy boot propped on one knee. Leaning over to pour wine into George's glass, Bill felt fussy and butlerish in his striped Christmas tie. I look like a stiff, he thought.

“Uncle Fred is macrobiotic.” Bradley Wechsler was scooping a handful of Goldfish from a bowl on the coffee table. He stretched out his legs, disturbing Binx, who had finally settled under the coffee table after running around the room, barking maniacally every time the doorbell rang. Bill had offered to put Binx in his crate, but everyone said to let him stay.

“And his husband is allergic to wheat,” added Aaron. “They're making quinoa for Christmas dinner. And stewed pumpkin.”

Matthew Melman rolled his popped eyes and pretended to be choking to death.

“Excuse me,” said Bill, reminded that he should be assisting Margaret in the kitchen. “No, no, we're fine,” he added, as several people asked if they could help.

Margaret was a good but anxious cook, never able to hide the labor involved when she made dinner for company. She was determined to do it “right,” spending hours in the kitchen stirring gravy and pinching pie crusts made from scratch, tensely consulting her recipe books. He'd been surprised when she bought most of tonight's dinner from Whole Foods, already prepared, down to the precut slices of roast turkey; except for the mashed potatoes, which she was making from a box of organic potato flakes. “I don't have the energy,” she'd said. But then yesterday she'd gone back and bought a fresh organic ham, saying that if they were going to do Christmas they might as well really
do
Christmas, and that meant ham. It put her in an even worse mood when he reminded her that almost everyone they were inviting to dinner was Jewish.