The Dogs of Littlefield (18 page)

It was her husband who was being honored tonight. People began to clap as he walked past the human paperclips to stand behind a wooden lectern. Clarice clapped, too, and leaned over to tell his wife she looked forward to reading his book.

“Here.” Emily Orlov reached wearily into her large leather purse and pulled out a book. “I have an extra copy.” On the cover, red, white, and blue dollar signs bounced on a green dollar-bill trampoline.
Up and Down: The Rise and Fall of American Prosperity and Why It Pays NOT to Learn from Our Mistakes
.

The answer, as best Clarice could glean from the economist's speech, was that market-driven stupidity was good for the economy. Cycles of imprudent investment periodically ruined swathes of small investors, creating room for cannier, more vigorous and adaptive investors.

“Rather like a controlled burn,” he explained, to laughter and applause.

She noted this observation down on her steno pad.

After his speech was over, dinner guests lined up to meet the economist, who sat at a table furnished with two stacks of his books. Clarice was glad to have a copy to add to her archive of primary documents, which included Naomi Melman's book, weekly issues of the
Gazette,
the engraved invitation for Amelia Epstein's bat mitzvah, several homework assignments from a seventh-grade social studies class, and online minutes from all the town hall meetings she had attended. Also a flyer that she'd found rolled up and fixed to her doorknob with a rubber band:
Wayne's Happy Paws Snow-Shoveling Service: Call Wayne! First shoveling free! Also minor household repairs! Gutter cleaning! No job too small!

Document everything, Dr. Awolowo repeatedly reminded her. No embellishments.

Beside the economist hovered a skinny black-haired girl wearing ballet slippers, a tight black sequined jacket, and a short gauzy black dress. Whenever he signaled for another copy of his book, the girl took one from the stacks, opened it, and bent gracefully forward from the waist, as if preparing to curtsy.

After quietly watching the girl for a few minutes, Emily Orlov said, “Doesn't do to pass judgment on people, does it?” Then she added, “But that outfit took looking for. A lot of consideration of effect.” Emily was wearing a long-sleeved cotton dress covered with the sort of sprig found on dust ruffles. “It's very hard not to be judgmental.”

Clarice agreed this was true.

Emily repeated that it was hard not to be judgmental. Almost impossible these days when the world was such a mess, and she began talking about the village, the aldermen and their poor decisions when it came to school budget cuts, the graffiti, what had happened to the dogs. “Obviously, the dogs are a symptom of a more systemic problem, but we all take it personally.”

Her little round glasses flashed. At the table beside the lectern, her husband caught hold of the girl's wrist for an instant as she handed him another copy of his book.

A page from Clarice Watkins's steno pad that evening:

One can view the village of Littlefield as a carefully constructed refuge, an achievement that, these days, seems as admirable as it is fragile, and perhaps deserving of whatever protections, social and otherwise, can be afforded. What is surprising to the outsider is that Littlefield does not consider itself to be a refuge. The citizens here believe they are no different from citizens anywhere. Although they stay apprised of current events it appears they believe that what happens in their village is equally serious, that their personal burdens are equivalent to any suffered elsewhere . . . Or perhaps their recognition of the world's great problems, which they feel powerless to remedy, amid their own relative comfort, is driving their preoccupation with problems of their own, which they (protectively) view as enormous, baffling, inimical . . . ?

These notes did not strike her as especially useful.

H
edy Fischman was reading the regional news
to Marv, in bed for the third day with flu-like symptoms. According to iTriage, a new app on Hedy's iPad, the flu should be treated with fluids and rest. Unless a high fever and a cough develop and progress to shallow breathing, delirium, and pneumonia-like symptoms, in which case a medical professional should be consulted. Currently Marv was in stable condition in his blue striped pajamas, eyes closed, two pillows behind his head, petting Kismet curled on the bed beside him with his good hand. By the window, Hedy reclined in the chaise longue in her black velour tracksuit and sheepskin slippers. She had already read aloud much of the
Globe
's online national news and was now only summarizing articles she found noteworthy, peering through the bottoms of her bifocals, the jet-beaded chain swinging gently whenever she turned her head.

“Municipalities have run out of money for snow removal. Snowplow operators across Middlesex County are on strike.” She scrolled down farther. “Let's see what else we have to worry about.”

A school bus driver in Haverhill was arrested for drunk driving. Three hikers had been stranded on Mount Greylock, believing their cell phones would rescue them. In Pepperell, hundreds of blackbirds had fallen from the sky for no apparent reason and lay dead on the sidewalks. A young man in Leominster had just been arraigned on charges of kidnapping his estranged girlfriend, stripping her naked, tying her to a park bench early in the morning, smearing her with peanut butter, and leaving her to be attacked by squirrels. The girlfriend had survived, was being treated for hypothermia, and was expected to make a full recovery.

“Now
that's
a story.” Hedy looked over the tops of her glasses at Marv.

She tapped open the business section and noted that FBI agents had appeared at the office of Roche Capital Management with a search warrant. The FBI's Boston office had issued the following statement:

Per FBI guidelines, we cannot confirm what investigation this is for or why it is being conducted. We cannot confirm what evidence was collected or if further evidence will be needed and as this matter is sealed we have no additional comment.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Boston also declined to comment. Officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission also declined to comment. It was left to Hedy to comment.

“Poor Margaret!” she said. “Poor Bill! The world is going crazy. What's next?”

Marv said that was the million-dollar question.

“What do you think, sweetie?” Hedy leaned forward to ask Kismet. The little dog had rolled onto her back so that Marv could scratch her belly. “Hey, you.” She snapped her fingers. “Give us an opinion.”

Kismet stood up and pranced about on the bed, lifting up her dainty black paws. Then she fell over and played dead.

“What a comedienne.” Hedy hoisted herself slowly from the chaise longue. At the bed, she bent over to pat Marv's hand, then straightened his blanket and tucked it more securely around his middle. “Enough news. Should I fix us some soup or a pastrami sandwich for lunch?”

It was decided they would have both. Why not?

“Live a little,” said Hedy, and snapped her fingers again at Kismet.

— —

After a mild spell and
a bit of snowmelt, arctic weather returned. Once more rhododendron leaves furled tight, icicles hung from every roof, and as February dragged on drifts of snow hardened along the streets of Littlefield and turned a cinereous gray, encrusted with dirt and black flecks of leaf mold, looking less and less like snow and more and more like rubble.

On the first of March, Julia Downing awoke before dawn. As she had almost every morning since Christmas, she ran through the multiplication tables in her head, waiting for the enormous fish that lay on her chest to slide off and flop onto the floor. Often lately she'd had to name all the U.S. capitals to persuade the fish to budge—once she even had to list the original signers of the Declaration of Independence—but this morning the fish was more yielding than usual, and by the time she reached the seven times table she was out of bed and hunting for the clothes she'd laid out the night before. After dressing in the dark, she slipped into the hall and went downstairs to toast a bagel.

Enough light reflected into the kitchen from the snow outside that she could make out the muffled shapes of the stove and the refrigerator as she felt her way to the light switch. Binx was asleep in his crate in the mudroom; he woke up long enough to thump his tail. He was too destructive, her mother said, to leave unattended in the house, but Julia hated to see him cooped up, like an animal in a zoo. While she waited for her bagel to toast, she stood at the kitchen sink, watching the new goldfish, Mike II, glide back and forth above the ceramic castle in the bowl on the windowsill. Mike I had died the day before Christmas and been flushed down the toilet, a replacement companion for Ike bought from Petco the same afternoon. She hadn't noticed until her mother mentioned it almost a week later.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you.” Her mother pressed her wrist against her temple. She was having one of her headaches. Lately she was having headaches two or three times a week. “I didn't want to spoil the holidays.”

It was then Julia understood that Mike I had been lying on her chest in the mornings.

After Freckles disappeared, she'd buried his favorite catnip mouse and read aloud a poem by Carl Sandburg. When Elvis the guinea pig, Kiki the parakeet, and all the other goldfish died, plus whatever drowned in the pool filters, she'd held funerals by the stone waterfall and then buried them under the hydrangeas. For Mike I, the toilet. The consequences were clear: denied a proper burial, Mike I had grown monstrous with outrage. Into her dreams swam his swollen, scaly abdomen, his immense yellow eye, his horseshoe-shaped mouth, from which sprouted tentaclelike feelers. Her room had taken on the algaenous reek of a neglected fishbowl.

Yet Julia had not acted right away, distracted by not being invited to Amelia Epstein's bat mitzvah—Hannah was going—and haunted by memories of Christmas dinner, when her mother had fallen off her chair and had to be carried upstairs by Aaron and Bradley Wechsler's father, her slip showing, a run at the heel of her nylon stockings. An event so humiliating that Julia had at first mistaken the fish on her chest for the weight of shame.

Her mother had spent the rest of Christmas vacation playing gloomy rhapsodies on the piano, while her father staggered about the house grimacing like someone trying to swallow a spider. Then Lily and Maya Saltonstall's dog was poisoned.

It was drawing closer, some sort of disaster.

Despite these signs, Julia still had done nothing, and then it happened: right after Valentine's Day, old Dr. Fischman died.

Fish-man
.

“What's wrong?” her mother asked when Julia clapped her hands over her mouth at this news during dinner. “Honey, you hardly knew Dr. Fischman. What is it, Julia? Are you sick?”

That evening Julia lit a votive candle beside the goldfish bowl and sprinkled in flakes of fish food while reciting the Lord's Prayer. Three days later she tried eating a few flakes of fish food herself, and then saying the Lord's Prayer. After Googling “mourning” on her mother's iPad, she found websites for how to deal with loss, stages of mourning, rites and rituals, as well as directories of local funeral homes offering discounts and promotions.

Grief is a guest,
read the opening statement of one website.
It deserves accommodation
.

For the past three days Julia had covered her bedroom mirror with a towel and started wearing an old blue soccer T-shirt torn at the shoulder, though her mother made her change into a different shirt before going to school.

Acknowledge guilt,
advised the same website.
It needs a room, too. Usually the best one in the house
.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Julia whispered every evening, standing for a few minutes by the kitchen sink watching the goldfish swim around their ceramic castle.

Then a few days ago Binx had started sneezing. Probably a dust allergy, said the vet, when Julia's mother called for a phone consultation, but he suggested running some tests just in case.

Yesterday at school, Julia realized that she had never asked about the results of Binx's tests. At home, she found her mother asleep on one of the living room sofas, a gray wool shawl flung over her legs. Her mother looked old, waxy, cheeks fallen in, hair stringy, the corners of her mouth turned down. Julia put a hand on her shoulder to wake her up.

“What about Binx's tests?” she asked.

“What tests?” her mother said groggily.

As Julia buttered her bagel now in the dark kitchen, her fingertips went cold.

Something more active must be required to appease Mike I, some sort of penance. A test. Because things were getting worse, she realized, leaving the knife by the sink and forgetting to put the butter back in the refrigerator. She had been careless, she had not been respectful of the dead, and now things were getting worse.