Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [90]
“Are you sure he’s not dead?” Robert asks. He runs the zipper of his vest up and down.
“He’s just pretending,” says Nancy.
The tip of Grover’s tail twitches, and Jack catches it, the way he might grab at a fluff of milkweed in the air.
Later, in the kitchen, Jack and Nancy are preparing for a dinner party. Jack is sipping whiskey. The woodstove has been burning all day, and the house is comfortably warm now. In the next room, Robert is lying on the rug in front of the stove with Grover. He is playing with a computer football game and watching Mork and Mindy at the same time. Robert likes to do several things at once, and lately he has included Grover in his multiple activities.
Jack says, “I think the only thing to do is just feed Grover pork chops and steaks and pet him a lot, and then when we can stand it, take him to the vet and get it over with.”
“When can we stand it?”
“If I were in Grover’s shape, I’d just want to be put out of my misery.”
“Even if you were still conscious and could use your mind?”
“I guess so.”
“I couldn’t pull the plug on you,” says Nancy, pointing a carrot at Jack. “You’d have to be screaming in agony.”
“Would you want me to do it to you?”
“No. I can see right now that I’d be the type to hang on. I’d be just like my Granny. I think she just clung to life, long after her body was ready to die.”
“Would you really be like that?”
“You said once I was just like her—repressed, uptight.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“You’ve been right about me before,” Nancy says, reaching across Jack for a paring knife. “Look, all I mean is that it shouldn’t be a matter of our convenience. If Grover needs assistance, then it’s our problem. We’re responsible.”
“I’d want to be put out of my misery,” Jack says.
During that evening, Nancy has the impression that Jack is talking more than usual. He does not notice the food. She has made chicken Marengo and is startled to realize how much it resembles chicken cacciatore, which she served the last time she had the same people over. The recipes are side by side in the cookbook, gradations on a theme. The dinner is for Stewart and Jan, who are going to Italy on a teaching exchange.
“Maybe I shouldn’t even have made Italian,” Nancy tells them apologetically. “You’ll get enough of that in Italy. And it will be real.”
Both Stewart and Jan say the chicken Marengo is wonderful. The olives are the right touch, Jan says. Ted and Laurie nod agreement. Jack pours more wine. The sound of a log falling in the woodstove reminds Nancy of the dog in the other room by the stove, and in her mind she stages a scene: finding the dog dead in the middle of the dinner party.
Afterward, they sit in the living room, with Grover lying there like a log too large for the stove. The guests talk idly. Ted has been sandblasting old paint off a brick fireplace, and Laurie complains about the gritty dust. Jack stokes the fire. The stove, hooked up through the fireplace, looks like a robot from an old science fiction movie. Nancy and Jack used to sit by the fireplace in Massachusetts, stoned, watching the blue frills of the flames, imagining that they were musical notes, visual textures of sounds on the stereo. Nobody they know smokes grass anymore. Now people sit around and talk about investments and proper flue linings. When Jack passes around the Grand Marnier, Nancy says, “In my grandparents’ house years ago, we used to sit by their fireplace. They burned coal. They didn’t call it a fireplace, though. They called it a grate.”
“Coal burns more efficiently than wood,” Jack says.
“Coal’s a lot cheaper in this area,” says Ted. “I wish I could switch.”
“My grandparents had big stone fireplaces in their country house,” says Jan, who comes from Connecticut. “They were so pleasant. I always looked forward to going there. Sometimes in the summer the evenings were cool and we’d have a fire. It was lovely.”
“I remember being cold,” says Nancy. “It was always very cold, even in the South.”
“The heat just goes up the chimney in a fireplace,” says Jack.
Nancy stares at Jack. She says,