The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [284]
This many years after her death, he was still using his wife’s Dove soap. Yellowed packages of it were stacked here and there, even in canisters in the pantry. You discovered people’s secret stashes when they died. The little, unknown things filled them in, as if they hadn’t had quite enough dimension in life. Or perhaps those discoveries took them farther away, dried-out cigarettes and hidden half-pints reminding you that everyone was little known.
He turned on the fan and curled onto the bed, and when he awoke it was evening, and he was in a cold sweat. Sounds he’d been making had awoken him, and he struggled up so suddenly from a dream that he knocked his arm against the light. It was a dream, it had been a dream, but it had been so shockingly real. He went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face, but the water only intensified his already palpable dread. He all but ran down the stairs and across the lawn to the graveyard. He had dreamed that Audrey was buried there. Just hours earlier he’d seen that the ground was undisturbed, yet he had gone to sleep and smelled the newly dug soil, felt its graininess beneath his fingernails, stared wide-eyed at the fallen gravestones.
His horrific vision—the only one he’d ever had—turned out to have some validity, though it was wrong in the specifics. There was no sign of digging, but there were scratch marks in the soil, and the smallest of the gravestones was leaning toward the ground. But no: the ground had not been dug in. In the center of the plot—he could not stop a wry smile: dead center—was a pile of dog shit, immense in size. A mound of it. Napoleon! Some of Cahill’s earlier handiwork had been toppled yet again, and he realized with embarrassment that his efforts had been slapdash.
He went back to the house and found Roadie standing in the hallway inside the screen door, holding his cap in one hand and a clipboard in the other. “Roadie,” Cahill said.
“Yes, sir,” Roadie said, replacing his cap on his head. It said “SHERYL CROW.”
Cahill blurted, “Neighbor’s dog just took a huge crap in my backyard. Really annoying.”
“Dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do,” Roadie said.
“Right,” he said.
Roadie cleared his voice. “Doc, I’ve talked to two people I respect, who’ve advised two different approaches to your porch situation. One thinks sliding thermal doors, and, for my personal opinion, it’s more money but that’s what I’d be inclined to go with.”
“Then that sounds fine with me, Roadie,” Cahill said.
“Approach No. 2, Doc, for full disclosure, this comes from Hank, down at Elbriddle’s. He thinks . . .”
He let Roadie drone on. As a younger man, he might have studied the figures longer, asked more questions, but if it was Roadie’s opinion that the first option was the best, he was inclined to go along.
“Awful about your friend,” Roadie said suddenly, with no segue. “My wife said, ‘Don’t you be bringing that up, it’s none of your business, and how do you think the doctor feels? Don’t tell me that no-good didn’t hoodwink him, because the doctor wouldn’t have a tenant but what he thought he was an honorable man—’ ”
Roadie stopped, seeing that Cahill was numbed by this sudden outpouring. Roadie cleared his throat again—a nervous habit. He said, “Men like that ain’t much liked by other men. Way I’ve always heard it, you’d get more sympathy from the jailbirds if you killed your