Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [75]
Bee smiled, and he saw that they weren’t real tears after all. “I suppose,” he went on more lightly, “there was some stage when we were equals. I mean while she was on the rise and we were on the downslide. A stage when we were level with each other.”
“Well, I must have been on the phone at the time,” Bee said, and then she laughed.
Her hand in the glove felt dead to him, like his own hand after he’d slept on it wrong and cut off the circulation.
The foreigners set their car on fire, trying to install a radio. “I didn’t know radios were flammable,” Mrs. Jordan said, watching from the Bedloes’ front porch. Doug was a bit surprised himself, but then electronics had never been his strong point. He went over to see if he could help. The car was a Dodge from the late fifties or maybe early sixties, whenever it was that giant fins were all the rage. Once the body had been powder blue but now it was mostly a deep, matte red from rust, and one door was white and one fender turquoise. Whom it belonged to was unclear, since the foreigner who had bought it, second- or third-hand, had long since gone back to his homeland.
John Two and Fred and Ollie were standing around the car in graceful poses, languidly fanning their faces. The smoke appeared to be coming from the dashboard. Doug said, “Fellows? Think we should call the fire department?” but Fred said, “Oh, we dislike to keep disturbing them.”
Hoping nothing would explode, Doug reached through the open window on the driver’s side and pulled the first wire his fingers touched. Almost immediately the smoke thinned. There was a strong smell of burning rubber, but no real damage—at least none that he could see. It was hard to tell; the front seat was worn to bare springs and the backseat had been removed altogether.
“Maybe we just won’t have radio,” John Two told Ollie.
“We never had radio before,” Fred said.
“We were very contented,” John Two said, “and while we traveled we could hear the birds sing.”
Doug pictured them traveling through a flat green countryside like the landscape in a child’s primer. They would be the kind who set off without filling the gas tank first or checking the tire pressure, he was certain. Chances were they wouldn’t even have a road map.
One morning when he came downstairs he found Beastie dead on the kitchen floor, her body not yet stiff. It was a shock, although he should have been prepared for it. She was sixteen years old. He could still remember what she’d looked like when they brought her home—small enough to fit in her own feed dish. That first winter it had snowed and snowed, and she had humped her fat little body ecstatically through the drifts like a Slinky toy, with a dollop of snow icing her nose and snowflakes on her lashes.
He went upstairs to wake Ian. He wanted to get her buried before the children saw her. “Ian,” he said. “Son.”
Ian’s room still looked so boyish. Model airplanes sat on the shelves among autographed baseballs and high-school yearbooks. The bedspread was printed with antique cars. It could have been one of those rooms that’s maintained as a shrine after a young person dies.
Danny’s room, on the other hand, had been redecorated for Thomas. Not a trace of Danny remained.
“Son?”
“Hmm.”
“I need you to help me bury Beastie.”
Ian opened his eyes. “Beastie?”
“I found her this morning in the kitchen.”
Ian considered a moment and then sat up. When Doug was sure he was awake, he left the room and went downstairs for his jacket.
Beastie had not been a large dog, but she weighed a lot. Doug heaved her onto the doormat and then dragged the mat outside and down the back steps. Thump, thump, thump—it made him wince. The mat left a trail in the sparkling grass. He backed up to the azalea and dropped the corners of the mat and straightened. It was six-thirty or so—too early for the neighbors to be about yet. The light was nearly colorless, the traffic noises sparse and distant.
Ian came out with his windbreaker