The Dogs of Littlefield by Berne Suzanne

Author:Berne, Suzanne [Berne, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2016-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

14.

During her evening walks with Aggie through the snowy village, Clarice Watkins continued her practice of gazing into lit windows of kitchens and living rooms. Often she saw people sitting around a table under a hanging lamp, plates and glasses spread out before them like a deck of cards; or she saw the silhouettes of people watching wide-screen television sets on which one bright, silent image swiftly replaced another, even battles or conflagrations cheerful-looking in their brevity. She could not, of course, see into upstairs windows, but she imagined children in their baths, mothers taking a washcloth to the seashell curve of an ear; parents later washing their own faces at matching pedestal sinks in bathrooms, discussing plans for the weekend: a movie, or dinner out, something simple, that new Italian place by the river?

A peculiar wretchedness had begun to hound her on these evenings. She missed her mother. She missed Dr. Awolowo. No one knocked on the door of her borrowed office at Warren College, where she sat surrounded by another professor’s books, his prayer rug on the wall and his framed photographs of Kathmandu. A silvery bloom had attacked the leaves of her rubber plant. Aggie was limping—Lyme disease, said the vet—and slept most of the day in her plaid dog bed, twitching and moaning.

Every evening she passed the Downings’ house when she headed out on her walk with Aggie. Through the windows she frequently saw Julia Downing lying on one of the living room sofas, mouth ajar, reading a paperback book with a lurid purple cover that featured a pair of fangs. Opposite Julia sat her mother in an armchair, by a lamp, looking at an iPad. Behind her hung the gilt-framed corner of a seascape.

Glimpsed night after night, this pleasant scene had worsened the jittery, abraded feeling in Clarice’s chest, as if a small, sharp-clawed animal were scratching at her breastbone. Her uneasiness was more endemic, more oppressive than anything she’d felt during her fieldwork in Detroit, even in Azcapotzalco. Every evening she looked in at dining room tables and television sets, at kitchens with shelves of imitation Fiesta ware plates and coffee mugs, and whimsical wall clocks shaped like teapots and cats, and her throat tightened.

None of it was what she had expected. The tables, clocks, televisions. None of it was what, without realizing, she had hoped for. Why weren’t these people happier? She had counted on them to be happier. To be insular, complacent, self-absorbed. And they were—yet also restless, anguished. And strangely infatuated with the idea of menace.

It was that girl, Julia, who disturbed her most. The house was locked against the dark, the room was warm; a beautiful painting hung on the wall. Still the girl read her purple book, desiring to be elsewhere, kidnapped by warlocks, trussed and gagged, headed for a stone tablet, a virgin sacrifice. She would trade it all—lamp, painting, her own mother—for a bleak adventure, never doubting that everything would be there when she returned, would always

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