Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [89]
“Insulation is his hobby,” Nancy told an old friend from graduate school, Tom Green, who telephoned unexpectedly one day recently. “He insulates on weekends.”
“Maybe he’ll turn into a butterfly—he could insulate himself into a cocoon,” said Tom, who Nancy always thought was funny. She had not seen him in ten years. He called to say he was sending a novel he had written—“about all the crazy stuff we did back then.”
The dog is forcing Nancy to think of how Jack has changed in the years since then. He is losing his hair, but he doesn’t seem concerned. Jack was always fanatical about being honest. He used to be insensitive about his directness. “I’m just being honest,” he would say pleasantly, boyishly, when he hurt people’s feelings. He told Nancy she was uptight, that no one ever knew what she thought, that she should be more expressive. He said she “played games” with people, hiding her feelings behind her coy Southern smile. He is more tolerant now, less judgmental. He used to criticize her for drinking Cokes and eating pastries. He didn’t like her lipstick, and she stopped wearing it. But Nancy has changed too. She is too sophisticated now to eat fried foods and rich pies and cakes, indulging in them only when she goes to Kentucky. She uses makeup now—so sparingly that Jack does not notice. Her cool reserve, her shyness, has changed to cool assurance, with only the slightest shift. Inwardly, she has reorganized. “It’s like retrofitting,” she said to Jack once, but he didn’t notice any irony.
It wasn’t until two years ago that Nancy learned that he had lied to her when he told her he had been at the Beatles’ Shea Stadium concert in 1966, just as she had, only two months before they met. When he confessed his lie, he claimed he had wanted to identify with her and impress her because he thought of her as someone so mysterious and aloof that he could not hold her attention. Nancy, who had in fact been intimidated by Jack’s directness, was troubled to learn about his peculiar deception. It was out of character. She felt a part of her past had been ripped away. More recently, when John Lennon died, Nancy and Jack watched the silent vigil in Central Park on TV and cried in each other’s arms. Everybody that week was saying that they had lost their youth.
Jack was right. That was the only sort of death they had known.
—
Grover lies on his side, stretched out near the fire, his head flat on one ear. His eyes are open, expressionless, and when Nancy speaks to him he doesn’t respond.
“Come on, Grover!” cries Robert, tugging the dog’s leg. “Are you dead?”
“Don’t pull at him,” Nancy says.
“He’s lying doggo,” says Jack.
“That’s funny,” says Robert. “What does that mean?”
“Dogs do that in the heat,” Jack explains. “They save energy that way.”
“But it’s winter,” says Robert. “I’m freezing.” He is wearing a wool pullover and a goose-down vest. Jack has the thermostat set on fifty-five, relying mainly on the woodstove to warm the house.
“I’m cold too,” says Nancy. “I’ve been freezing since 1965, when I came North.”
Jack crouches down beside the dog. “Grover, old boy. Please. Just give a little sign.”
“If you don’t get up, I won’t give you your treat tonight,” says Robert, wagging his finger at Grover.
“Let him rest,” says Jack, who is twiddling some of Grover’s fur between