One Saturday in April, Hooper Green woke up at dawn with thoughts about a garden. He slipped on some shorts and went outside, closing the front door quietly. The morning was mild and clear, scented by the white jasmine blossoms in the barrel by the step. As he surveyed the yard, Hooper tried to work some magic in his head—which was to imagine a lush, green oasis instead of this dirt desert scene. A patch of prickly pear unhurriedly shouldered its way across the middle of the yard, and next to the side fence grew sunflowers and a lemon tree, which sucked up huge amounts of water but at least repaid him with real fruit. He knew that container gardening was the best method for growing things in the desert, but it was hard to let go of his desire to work with the earth. He had tried his best for two summers now, but in spite of his efforts—adding sacks of steer manure and sulfur to amend the dirt, watering diligently and copiously, hand-picking for cut-worm in the corn, and setting up shade cloth for the tomatoes—he was master of nothing but a sorry patch of spindly green stems, bug-chewed and sun-weary. It was the caliche, people said, the layer of cement-hard rock a few feet under the surface, which prevented proper drainage. It was aggravating, Hooper said, humbled by the fact that he, a man who earned a living as a gardener and landscaper, had cultivated only a yard full of dust.
He walked gingerly in his bare feet over the gravel driveway to pick up the newspaper and sat down on the front step. As he unfolded the paper and glanced at the headlines, he heard a distinct, expectant sort of cough.
He looked up, looked around. There was no one but a yellow dog, sitting on the sidewalk and looking at him. He went back to the paper.
A different noise, between a squeak and a yawn, distracted him again, and he caught the dog staring at him still. It shifted its weight, blinked twice, then opened its mouth in a tongue-spilling grin, panting a ka-ka-ka that implied the joke was on Hooper.
“Hey,” Hooper said. The dog trotted over and sat at his feet.
No collar. It was kind of skinny and dirty, but its brown eyes were clear, its chest muscles strong. This dog had been traveling. It was a good-looking dog: medium size, an acorn-blond shaggy coat with white on its chest and belly, a long furry tail, and a flourish of fur at its back legs. If he cleaned it up, brushed out some of the mats, it could be a fine animal. Hooper turned on the hose and let the water course out, kicking up dust as the stream hit the ground. The dog slurped and slurped, chomping on the water as though it were a milk bone. Finally sated, it flopped down in the bit of shade under the mesquite tree, sighed and rubbed its face on a patch of Bermuda grass.
Hooper crouched down to pet it. “Well, now. Where do you belong, huh?” The dog rolled on its back and splayed her legs, luxuriating in the attention. She looked down her nose as though incredulous: Figure it out! Hooper laughed, knowing he was outmatched. He let her in the house. Sniffing hastily in the living room and kitchen, her nails clicking on the hardwood and linoleum floors, she quickly found the bedroom. Tillie started awake when the dog nuzzled her ear.
“I don't know. She doesn't look like she belongs to anyone.”
Tillie scratched the dog's ears and got out of bed. As she and Hooper took turns showering and getting dressed, the dog followed them from bedroom to bathroom, sniffing and wagging her tail. When they sat down for some cereal, she lay under the kitchen table.
“I guess we should take her to the pound,” Hooper said tentatively.
“Mm,” said Tillie, noncommittal. “What if no one claims her?”
“Do you want to keep her?”
“I don't know. I never thought about having a dog.”
“Let's wait and see, then. Maybe we can put up some flyers, in case the owner is looking for her.” Now that he had a plan, he was eager to enact it. Jumping up from his chair, he retrieved some printer paper and a thick marking pen, and wrote, “Dog Found,” with her description and their phone number. In the broom closet he found a thin rope to put around the dog's neck, and the three of them walked to the photocopy store a few blocks away. He made a dozen copies and they spent the morning putting the notices up around the neighborhood: at laundromats, the university student center, utility poles, the ice cream shop. After lunch they left the dog in the kitchen with the swamp cooler blasting and drove to the pet store. They debated about the color of the collar and leash. Why should it matter? was the unspoken question, but they agreed on purple. Two kinds of brushes, one with wire teeth for the matts and a softer one. When Hooper picked out an expensive cedar shampoo, Tillie didn't counter with something cheaper. That evening, clean and smelling like a forest, she curled up nose to tail on her bed—an old sleeping bag—and slept.
They got up early Sunday morning. They always got up early in the summer to catch the lingering coolness (or rather, not-hotness) of the night, but today they had both awakened with a sense of something remarkable about to happen. At the park Hooper let her off the new purple leash and she trotted intently with her nose in the grass, wandering away and returning at a trot, smiling, brushing against Hooper's leg and bumping Tillie's hand. They walked over to the coffee shop and sat outside, the dog settling easily under the table.
She spent the rest of the morning lying in the shade of the oleander in the backyard, and later she stood by the front door as Tillie wheeled her bike out of the spare room and strapped on her helmet.
“Sorry, pal,” she said. “Just me and the bike.”
“C'mere, Dog,” Hooper coaxed her away from the door. “We'll watch the ball game together.”
“No dog on the couch, though,” she said, picturing the two of them eating chips and drinking soda together.
“I'm the only dog on the couch,” he agreed, waving cheerily good-bye.
***
Hooper and a friend ran a part-time, low-budget acting company, called the Stone Soup Theater. It began as a lark, something fun to do in their spare time, and during the first two years he and Nancy begged and bartered for performance space wherever they could find it. Their actors had been school-teachers, a bank clerk, students, a gift-shop owner, even a councilwoman; basically, just about anyone tried out. About the time they started to make a little money, they stumbled on a space to rent, an old movie theater downtown. It was owned by a retired and rich real estate agent, who showed an eclectic selection of repertory films on the weekends, mostly for his own pleasure. He offered it to the Soup to use Sunday night through Thursday, and Saturday mornings for rehearsals. The space was cheap. Who else would be interested in it? Downtown after five o'clock was quiet—spooky, even, with only a few wandering homeless people or an errant patron of Wally's bar.
There were signs, however, of a potential renaissance in the neighborhood. In the last year a coffee house, an art gallery, and a vintage clothing store had recently moved into the block, and even though Hooper was glad to see more life downtown, he feared that the owner might decide to sell the theater, or raise the rent when the lease came up in August. Stone Soup was barely holding together after an uneven year. They had tried some risky performance pieces that didn't do so well, and some of the better actors had defected to more prosperous companies. The bank account was gasping. And the new play, called Plaid Suit, was looking like a stinker.
The frustrating thing was that Hooper himself was responsible. He had written it; he was directing it. Drastic measures were needed, but he was unsure about taking chances, given his recent track record. Had he lost his touch, his nerve? There was a time when he would have known how to shake things up: bring in the Michelin Man as a deus-ex-machina, have the cast members dye their hair blue, engage the audience in a sing-along or something. He felt like he was getting to be an old fart, and only thirty-three years old. He had wrenched his back the other day and it surprised him; he'd always been in such good shape. He thought he needed a new prescription for his glasses, and his hairline was gradually receding. And while friends were talking about what preschool to send their kids to, he was scrambling around town posting flyers for upcoming performances, keeping an eye on other people's trash for props, and combing thrift stores for costumes. What the hell was he trying to do with this Soup? It had started out fun but now it was a headache. The actors showed up, but they didn't throw themselves into their roles, they didn't click as a team. Even though they were amateurs, he had hoped for vitality, some passion. He would be happy with moments of embarrassing failure if he could also spark some flashes of brilliance, but what he seemed to inspire was mere competence. What was the point?
These were his thoughts as he drove to rehearsal Tuesday night, the dog on the truck seat beside him. He had invited her along without thinking, but even in this cranky mood he realized her presence was reassuring. He parked in front of the theater and let her out, not bothering with a leash. His spirits improved even as he unlocked the door and stepped into the building. The lobby, dimly lit, smelled of stale movie popcorn. The dog went right in, sniffing her way across the flowered carpet, which was worn and stained by untold spilled cokes and coffee. She sat by the doors to the house and Hooper let her in. Opening a door marked “Employees Only,” he switched on a light and mounted the squeaky staircase. At the top was a small room, the catbird seat, where the lights and equipment were controlled. He wheeled one old office chair in front of the panel, drew back a small dark curtain, and looked out on the house, which was partially lit by sconces along the walls.
It was really not much of a theater. Years ago, in a fit of ambition, someone planned to renovate the place and removed the seating and the carpet, exposing a gray cement floor. The present owner had simply bought a slew of folding chairs at various estate sales, and he allowed the Soup crew to paint the floor in a patchwork of rusty orange, yellow, black and whatever anyone had to donate. So it was colorful, anyway; and what mattered most was that there was a stage and a curtain, and enough variety of lighting for them to create a few different moods.
When Hooper first started here, the labels on the control panel had been so ancient and greasy as to be illegible, and he spent hours trying to sort them out and relabel. He still did not know what some of the switches did, but now he flipped on his favorite, marked “Heaven.” With that, the ceiling began to twinkle. He had once borrowed an enormous ladder, strung white Christmas lights from whatever points he could reach, and plugged them into a socket he discovered near the ceiling. The effect was definitely low-tech, but still rather charming. Down below, he could see the yellow dog sniffing among the aisles and chairs. What a rich layer of smells, he thought. Countless numbers of people had sat their butts down on those seats, applauded, snoozed, laughed, become uncomfortable, cried, for so many movies and performances. He felt a little better about what he had accomplished there, for adding something to the mix.
He turned on some stage lights, went downstairs, and sat a few rows from the stage. As the actors arrived, one by one, tired after a long day of working elsewhere for money, they perked up visibly when the dog trotted over, tail wagging, to greet them. Hooper had brought cookies and oranges, which they gladly devoured. When all five of them had gathered, they launched into the rehearsal. A little creaky to start, they soon warmed to their roles and gave their lines smoothly, even convincingly. Hooper was cheered.
When they reached a scene that had always lumbered along, however, he stopped them.
“Hey, what's wrong with this? Can anyone tell me? It's duller than dirt.”
The scene involved all the actors. They looked at each other.
“Well, Hooper, to be honest,” said Jon, a skinny man with a beard.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“It's not natural,” said Jon. “These characters don't talk like people talk. I mean, here's the scene, right? They're waiting in a doctor's office, they start asking each other questions about their personal lives, they end up spilling their guts one by one. I don't know, it just seems contrived. Self-conscious.”
The others nodded.
“At least, when I go to a doctor's office,” Bea said, “people go out of their way to ignore each other.”
Hooper rubbed the bridge of his nose where his glasses sat. He could feel another headache coming on.
“Okay,” he said, sorry he had even asked. “Suggestions? I can't see it anymore.”
“How about this?” said Nancy.
“Please,” Hooper said. He trusted Nancy, who was his partner in running the Soup and an impressive actress. He reached for an orange and started peeling it.
“Well, you know how we used to do some improv just to warm up? We haven't done it for a while, but was kind of fun, and I think it was good for us. Made us looser.” She raised her arms and wiggled her large body. The others laughed.
“Good idea,” someone said.
“Okay.” Hooper tried to sound casual but he felt tense. Everything suddenly seemed out of his control. He had worked so hard to get them to this point, and they wanted to scrap it all, with the play due to open in a week. The dog chose that moment to nudge his hand to get him to scratch her ears.
“Let's try it.” He gave the dog a slice of orange, remembering too late that he and Tillie had agreed not to let the dog mooch.
Tillie, meanwhile, was at home, listening to opera. Her spirits were expansive. What she most liked about opera was that it was so big. Big voices, big people, big events. At five feet five and one hundred seventeen pounds, she sometimes felt slight as a grasshopper, overlooked and underestimated; but as an ersatz diva she was an oak, a thunderstorm, a mountain, an ocean. Immersed in La Traviata, she felt her body swell: she imagined her lungs filling, her breasts straining the bodice of a low-cut dress made of satin and chiffon; her voice filled the entire space of La Scala like a genie in a bottle, squeezing even into its boxes and orchestra pit. As Violetta she waltzed around the living room, entertaining her guests and delighting her admirers. Violetta's end would be a tragic one, but for this moment she was the party's belle, witty and graceful, in her element.
As the waltz ended, she made some popcorn and sat down on the couch. Stuffing big handfuls into her mouth, she thought about Hooper. She'd been worried about him lately. He was so absent-minded she had to wait whole minutes before he responded to her simple questions. He was forgetting to return phone calls, leaving gardening tools at job sites, and banging his shins, thumbs, and head more often than usual. He swore frequently and profusely. Something was up, and she wasn't sure what.
When he came in that night, nearly eleven o'clock, Tillie was already in bed with the light out. He tried to be quiet but the dog ran in and licked her face.
“Somebody had a good time,” she said.
“Yes, she did.” He tapped the floor so the dog would lie down.
“What's up, Hoop? You're not usually so late.”
“I'm sorry.” He sat on the bed and took his shoes off. “But the play is a mess. We started to improvise on this one scene that used to take place in a doctor's office, and then it turned into a bus stop. Then an elevator.”
“Really. Why?”
“I don't know.” He had a terrible headache, which spiked as he thought once again of the evening's confusion. “The scene wasn't working as I wrote it, so everybody wanted to try something different. We've had weeks of rehearsal, and now this. I can't believe we open next Wednesday. Our last play of the season, and we're as ready as a dead battery.”
“You'll get it together.”
“It was this weird free-for-all,” he said, undressing. He felt slightly calmer, hearing Tillie's voice; the room was dark, the floorboards cool on his feet. “They started out trying to express the characters' inner lives, and then they're cranking about all the little things that bug them, and before I know it they're all shouting.”
“What about?”
“God, you name it.” He climbed into bed and lay on his back. “Fear of the dark, fear of cancer, fear of being alone. Things their mothers said to hurt their feelings; things their fathers never did.” He had nearly shouted at them to just shut up, he was so frustrated. Only the sight of the dog scratching her ear (Did she have fleas? Surely fleas didn't live in the desert) had distracted him enough to regain his composure.
“Yikes.”
“Phone solicitors, disappearing rain forests, bad drivers, El Nino.”
“I think I get it.”
“Theater people,” he said disparagingly. “They're so damn dramatic.” When the actors had finished their experiment, everyone except Hooper was ecstatic. They called the experience cathartic, energizing. “A rush.”
Tillie waited. “What else?”
“I was just thinking.”
“About?”
“Remember when I used to leap-frog over parking meters, just for fun?”
“I do,” she said. “You nearly killed yourself.”
“Remember when I used to compose songs on the ukulele?”
“That wasn't so long ago. You will again. You've been busy.”
“I used to be fun.”
“You're still fun.”
“You're the Queen.” He turned to kiss her good-night, rolled back over, and was asleep in a minute.
***
Setting aside the book on Kiki Smith, Tillie massaged her eyes and temples. She'd been staring at pages of full-color pictures of human figures, life-sized, many of them cast in raw-looking material like plaster or cheesecloth dipped in resin. Some showed body fluids flowing variously as a dark rope, strings of red or yellow beads, or stars shooting from a woman's breast. The artist had blown clear and opaque glass into the shapes of organs, hearts and stomachs mostly; in one piece she had strewn glass stars and scat across a deep blue cloth on the floor. How should Tillie classify this book? She was still learning how to catalog, how to properly analyze a book in terms of the discrete categories in the record before her on the computer screen. For instance, was the artist also the author? Should the subject heading be installation art or sculpture? Was it important that the body was a prominent theme? She felt that she should really spend a good hour reading the accompanying text and studying the artwork. But she had a quota to fill, a tall stack of other books to get through.
She'd been working at the library for nearly a year, dividing her time between the bindery and acquisitions, repairing books and filing papers, when her supervisor discovered she had a background in art history. One day Charlene approached her and asked if she was interested in cataloguing a few hours a week. They could use someone to help with the backlog, and any expertise was welcome.
Are you kidding? was Tillie's response. She was immediately excited. Look at art books and get paid for it? Be the first to touch them before they went on the shelf? It was like inviting a starving woman into Julia Child's kitchen for samples.
There was more to it, of course. Even though it seemed a simple matter—you found a copy of the record online and added the library's holdings; how hard could that be?—you had to verify the names on the record, their nationalities, the time period, and the medium. You had to decide whether the subject headings and authors were appropriate. She came across many exhibition catalogs from all over the world, maybe with a German artist showing in Korea, or a group of plein-airistes in Canada; which was most important? Then you assigned call numbers: with so many Smiths, for instance, were you sure you had enough numbers after the decimal? You type what you think are the right call letters—but maybe you scrambled them. It required an attention to detail, an exactitude that she found tedious. And perhaps beyond her, for her new supervisor was finding too many mistakes. If she didn't improve, she'd have to give up her precious hours with these books.
She sighed.
She was late. That is, maybe not late, because she wasn't ever regular, but it was about time for her period and the expectation made her thoughtful, more so than usual. What if she were pregnant? What would that be like? She imagined a microscopic flutter of life in her womb, like a translucent mandala turning imperceptibly, drawing her energy into itself. She was surprised to find she liked it. Tillie a mother. She'd never really imagined herself as a mother. She loved big empty blocks of time and space to herself, and mothers rarely had that. Besides, her body—small breasts and slim hips—didn't seem comfortably motherish. She hadn't played with baby dolls as a kid, she'd had no younger siblings to take care of. She hadn't even done any babysitting. Her own mother was a businesswoman, not given to displays of affection or cookie baking, and Tillie had no other role models. And yet it was possible; it could happen. Her body would change, once it nurtured a baby; the way she thought of herself, her every action would be colored by the presence of a child. The idea, both exhilarating and terrifying, made her draw a deep breath.
Still not completely satisfied with the Smith record, she nonetheless finished it up and chose another book, about Michel Verjux, from her stack. She said his name under her breath a few times, for the music of it. Michel Verjux. It sounded like jewelry or perfume, like a whisper and a hum. He worked in light. Installations of light projected onto buildings, displayed at night; discs of light that seemed as open and knowing as eyes on a face. A shaft of light gleaming on a gallery wall, art there but not there: nothing to touch, no color, no texture. But beautiful. A familiar medium made extraordinary by being concentrated and made the center of attention. Like a new life taking hold.
What would Hooper say? She guessed he would be thrilled. The night before he had spent over an hour lavishing attention on the dog, brushing her teeth and fur, massaging her ears, all with a tenderness that made her think he would also be good at diapers, playgrounds, and homework, all those mundane parental duties. They had talked about kids a few times, but always with the understanding that the two of them were too unsettled, too poor to really consider a family. That sort of future had seemed vague and safely distant, as though it belonged to couples more focused and accomplished than they would ever be. But now they had a house: it was modest, dusty and in need of a new roof, but it was a house. They both had jobs. They owned a truck and a car; they could go out to dinner once a week and movies whenever they wanted. They had a nice life together. What changes would a child bring?
Suddenly there was music in her ear. She looked up: Frank, from Serials, was holding up a headphone for her and singing reggae off-key.
“Hey, Frank,” she said. “Hey, Sunshine. Ready for lunch?”
She checked her watch. Yeah, she could do lunch. She was glad he asked, for Frank was one bright spot in the downstairs doldrums. He was a handsome man, with a thick dark ponytail, given to wearing tie-dyed tee shirts, leather necklaces and silver bracelets—so different from the other clean-cut, designer-wearing men on campus. His desk was interesting, too: he had a collection of wind-up toys, an Elvis painting on velvet, a Slinky, and several geodes. He sometimes brought her zucchini bread he baked himself and showed her his sketches of buildings—he was studying architecture—with King Kong on the roof or Betty Boop at a window.
“Susan,” he called to a woman at a nearby desk. “You up for lunch?”
They gathered lunch sacks and cold drinks and went outside to a table around the back of the building. Tillie watched Susan empty her bag: a white-bread sandwich with no lettuce, cookies, chips, diet soda. A chubby person's lunch, thought Tillie; but she had to admit, it looked good. Susan was one of several chubby women working downstairs who settled comfortably on their office chairs in the morning and scarcely budged the rest of the day. They decorated their cubicles with family photographs and crayon drawings, all of which had seemed interchangeable to Tillie—until recently. But asking Susan about her children, she noticed that her face lit up as she talked about them. She has a rich life, Tillie thought. Her job might be boring, but she sure likes being a mom.
“And how's your dog?” Susan asked.
“You have a dog?” said Frank.
Tillie explained the situation.
“I don't think I could live with a dog,” said Frank.
“Really? I'm surprised,” Susan said. “I would have thought you'd be a dog person.”
“What's a dog person?” Frank waved a carrot stick. “Someone who likes to be followed around and slavishly adored? Who wants his every command to be obeyed?” He clicked his tongue. “No, I don't want that kind of loyalty.”
“Don't you think animals are good companions, though?” Tillie had never been interested in dogs before, and so she was still trying to understand why she liked having one in her house. “There's something very comforting about coming home and being greeted by this creature who is wildly happy to see you, who can give such you unconditional love.”
“I suppose,” he conceded. “But I prefer a love that knows me for the jerk I am and still is happy to see me.”
Tillie smiled, thinking that must describe Hooper's love for her.
“What do you think about cats, then?” asked Susan.
“Cats at least have some sense of self,” he said. “They don't live for your attention like dogs do. Feed them and they stick around: it's an unambiguous arrangement. But actually, for pets I prefer fish.”
“Fish!” Tillie laughed. “All they do is swim around a little tank.”
“Exactly. They're quite Zen. They're in their element. They don't struggle with the state of their existence.”
Tillie was watching Frank eat. Having polished off four ropes of string cheese, he pulled a green pepper out of his bag and took a big noisy bite.
“Frank.” She had never seen anyone eat a pepper like that. “How is it that such a colorful person as yourself is working in the obscure bowels of the library?”
“That is what I ask myself, dear heart. And the answer is, it pays for tuition. But that reminds me.” He pulled three plastic cups out of his bag, opened his thermos, and poured out a thick orange liquid. “Carrot-apple juice. You're helping me celebrate.”
“What's the occasion?” asked Tillie.
“A promotion of sorts. I'm moving upstairs. I'll be supervising the shelvers.”
Tillie's heart sank as they toasted to his good fortune. The downstairs would be a duller place without him.
Two days later she had her period. Although her first reaction was relief to know she wasn't pregnant, this time she felt a small sense of loss as well. She remembered an installation piece she'd once seen, set up in the bathroom of a house about to be destroyed. Both the toilet and the bath were full of red liquid; a mannequin in one corner was holding an egg, and more eggs and broken shells littered the floor. It had offended a lot of people, but Tillie, who knew the artist, was moved by her deep desire to have a child and her inability to do so, by the installation's representation of both abundance and waste, of potential and disappointment.
She was newly amazed that the blood flowing blue in her veins could also be such a rich red issue from her body. It was a sign of chemicals communicating with each other in an intricate process over which she had no control. Green leaves sprouting in spring, blue tides responding to the moon, brown snakes shedding their skin.
It was no wonder, she thought, that we used to celebrate the Great Mother and her creative genius.
***
The morning of the opening performance, Hooper woke up and started to laugh.
“What's so funny?” Tillie asked, her voice muffled by the pillow.
“I had this great dream. I was at this very formal dinner, tuxes and evening gowns, very posh. So we're all sitting down, the host rings his little bell for the servant, and here comes this dog—”
“Like this one?” she asked. The dog was on the floor and resting her snout forlornly on the bed, like some discarded flower.
“Yes, just like this one. She trotted out in a little maid's outfit, with ruffled apron and little hat and all.” He coaxed her onto the bed and flipped her ears up to form a cap. “She was there to clear the table, so she licked off one plate, went around to the next person's left side—because that's the side you clear from, you know—cleaned that off, and so on all around the table. Everyone was so impressed. We all said, 'What a refined, sophisticated dog.'”
“That's pretty funny, all right. What do you think it means?”
“Well, two things. For one, it means this dog has a sense of humor. And for another, I think she needs to come to the play tonight.”
“Really? Won't she just get in the way?”
“I don't think so. I've been taking her to rehearsal all week, and she finds a spot in the wings to lie down. She'll lend a presence.” Tillie knew better than to argue with him once he'd set his mind to something. In any case, she trusted his judgment. When he used to perform on the college stage and then in summer stock, he had transfixed audiences: in the seats around her, people would murmur their admiration and flip through their program to find his name. As a performance artist, he chose the most unlikely combinations—nursery rhymes and choreography from a Noh play was one—and made them succeed. He still tried to inject these sorts of surprises in the plays he directed, but, in her opinion, the actors were so painfully amateurish they couldn't deliver with any conviction. For the first year or so of Stone Soup's existence she had attended faithfully, but now that it had wider support she went only occasionally.
When he came home that night, Tillie woke up to look at the clock; he was much later than usual, and smelled of beer.
“It went great,” he said in answer to her unspoken question, and told her to go back to sleep. “I'll tell you in the morning.”
At breakfast, he asked for the arts section of the paper.
“What do you think, did we get reviewed?”
She paused with coffee cup en route to her lips. “Gee, I don't know.” It was unlikely. The theater critic, Charles Bledsoe, generally only reviewed the more important theater companies on opening night. If he did write about the Soup, it was usually a short piece in the Sunday paper, often when the run was over. What surprised her about Hooper's interest, however, was that he never read reviews of his own plays until weeks after the final performance. It was her job to clip and save the articles in a folder in the file cabinet, where he could see them when he was good and ready.
“Here,” he said. “There's a review?”
“'...engaging and quirky performance of Plaid Suit,'” he read, “'a new play written and directed by, blah blah blah, competent ensemble work...' Listen. 'The most provocative scene comes at the end of Act II, when the characters, stuck in an elevator, give voice to their hopes and disappointments in short soliloquies or blurted sentences. In an absurd but gracefully timed gesture, a dog comes onto the stage and sits staring at the audience, like some wayward bodhisattva whose humble bearing brings order to a cacophonous universe. In the midst of the space junk of human experience, the dog's very presence suggests that love and loyalty act like gravity, ultimately creating a harmonious system.'”
Hooper paused. “Wow.”
“That guy is over the top,” she said. “Was that really what the scene was about?”
“Beats the hell out of me. But our dog's a star.”
“A star! From Bledsoe's description, she's an entire cosmos.”
He laughed. “She needs a name.”
“She does. How about Mabel?” Her grandmother's name.
“Mabel's good. Or... Buster.”
“Buster! Maybe Sophie.”
“Zuzu.”
“Della?”
“Stella?”
“Let's write these down and think about it,” she said. “I know,” he said. “How about Cosmo?”
“Isn't that a man's name?”
“More like the cosmos, I mean. You said it yourself.”
“Hmm.”
“'Brings order to the universe,'” he read again. “Cosmo.” She tested the sound of it. “She'll be our cosmopolitan dog. Citizen of the universe. At home anywhere.”
“That's a lot to put on a dog.”
“She can handle it, don't you think? She's already well traveled. Cosmo. Do you like it?” Tillie had to admit that she did. So Cosmo she became.
***
The day after Cosmo's debut performance, Hooper revisited all the places they had tacked up their “Dog Found” notices, and tore the sheets down, feeling only slightly guilty. She had a name, after all, he reasoned with himself, and seemed happy with him and Tillie. Then he went to the bookstore, bought three books on dog training, and spent any free time he had that week building a doghouse. He sketched plans, went to the hardware store, sawed, nailed, cursed, and returned to the hardware store a few more times. When he was ready to paint, he realized he'd forgotten fresh sandpaper—the stuff in the garage was worn thin—and was just about to kick something when someone behind him said, “What's up?”
Hooper jumped. It was Barry, a graduate student in environmental studies, who rented the small guesthouse at the back of the property. A nice guy, Hooper and Tillie agreed, except that he had the disconcerting habit of appearing suddenly, then hanging around with not much to say.
“Hey, Barry,” he said. Cosmo greeted him by wagging her tail and directing him to scratch her rump. “Got any sandpaper I could borrow?”
“Sure. Building a dog house, I see.”
“Yeah, more of a manor. See, it's got this nice sloped roof, which opens up so we can get in there if we need to clean it out. And this lovely feature: a shaded veranda where she can watch the world go by.”
“Very nice. Lucky dog.”
“Thanks. I just hope she likes it here.” He grinned, knowing he sounded like a solicitous hotel clerk. He tried to coax her in the house, but she balked and he finally gave up.
“Maybe a dog bone inside,” Barry suggested.
“Good idea.” Hooper rapped on the roof and Cosmo jumped up. Now they were nearly nose to nose.
“A free spirit,” Barry observed. “She likes to be up in the air.”
“Evidently.”
“She seems well trained.”
“Yeah, she's a smart dog.” He felt a pang of compunction about keeping this dog. If someone had trained her, wouldn't they miss her?
Barry scratched Cosmo's ears. “Say, if you need me to walk her or, you know, look after her, I'd be happy to. I mean if you go out of town or anything.”
“You bet,” he said, although he could not imagine leaving his dog with anyone. Even though he doubted the doghouse would get much use, he finished it up that day. As he was painting it—a bordeaux red—Tillie let Cosmo out of the kitchen by mistake, and the dog trotted up to Hooper with a lick and a huge grin, as if to thank him for his efforts. Of course she got paint on her wagging tail, but it bothered her not in the least.
***
Hooper encouraged Tillie to take Cosmo to obedience classes. She might learn a few new commands, he said, but mostly he thought it would be good for Tillie to take charge. One night a week, for six weeks, the class met in the feed store parking lot, across the street from Juanito's, with its giant neon sombrero. There were seven other dogs: among them, an English sheepdog who refused to budge, a keeshund pup that nibbled at its leash, and a springer spaniel that was constantly distracted by the other pupils. With her golden coat and intelligent face, Cosmo had a noble air, but she dissolved into silliness whenever the instructor came near. She'd madly wag her tail, panting with pleasure, so that the instructor dubbed her “the party girl.” Tillie felt an immoderate pride to be at the other end of the leash. Since much of the first few classes covered commands Cosmo already knew, Tillie scarcely needed to use the choker chain for correction. She was glad for that; she hated to yank on the poor dog's neck.
When Hooper ran errands, she sat in the front seat of the truck, facing front as though a passenger, unlike other dogs who rode with their heads out the window. Sometimes he even took her to work sites. He started talking to her as he drove, telling her about the theater, his business, the city. He once pointed out the restaurant that hired Tillie as a waitress, had her work one night, then let her go.
“We don't patronize that place,” he said. “I'd explain why, but you wouldn't understand about holding a grudge, would you? We leave you in the back yard all day and you're still happy to see us.”
He explained to her that developers were digging up the desert at a phenomenal rate, building houses in a place that clearly shouldn't support so many showers, toilets, and washing machines. “These are the same people who hire me to put plants in their yards, though, so I suppose I'm being a hypocrite. Which you wouldn't understand, either.” He pulled up to a park and let her out to wander and pee, her tail wagging and nose to the ground.
People would often stop to admire her and ask what kind of dog she was. Hooper thought she might have some collie as well as golden retriever in her, and so he'd answer, “She's a coalition dog.” Tillie would sometimes tell people, “This is my familiar,” and they'd look at her blankly. A friend told them about Yellow Dog Democrats, old-style Texans who were so fiercely democratic that they'd vote for a yellow dog before any Republican. They envisioned a career for her in politics, shaking hands and sniffing shoes.
She was the Uberhund, thought Hooper, the Queen of Canines, the Darling of Dogdom. If dogs had a country, her plumed tail would be the flag. The perfect dog: he knew she would come when he called, sit when he asked, and back her rear up against him, waiting for a scratch. She was already ready for a walk. She never let him down. Could he say the same for anyone else? He was devoted to Tillie, but even she—he had to admit it—could disappoint him.
He wanted her to be happy, and she wasn't, not entirely. Since they had moved to Tucson from New Hampshire three years before, she seemed to get sad more often than she used to. Or rather, she got quiet, and that to him meant sad, even if she said she wasn't. He couldn't get her to talk about what was wrong. They'd had a rough time in Tucson those first couple years. Before she got the job at the university library, they didn't have much money. They were paying off student loans and eating rice and beans three nights a week; their treat was to go out for a cup of coffee. They were lonely but clueless about how to make friends, and overwhelmingly nostalgic for the ocean, snow and leafy trees.
Hooper felt guilty: it had been his bright idea to move. He had enjoyed his summer jobs as a gardener and occasional house-builder in Portsmouth, but found it hard to get much going in the winter. Some plowing, some bone-chilling roof and gutter repair; for a while he even drove the truck that delivered oil to people's furnaces. Then he inherited this house in Tucson, which used to be his grandmother's, and was seduced by a sense of adventure. The Southwest, how exotic! Warm weather, spicy food, golden landscapes. Coyotes and cacti. He even thought there might be inspiration here for Tillie to start painting again, but whenever he tried to persuade her to do so, she changed the subject. Even after three years in this house, he wasn't sure she thought of it as home.
She seemed in better spirits since Cosmo's arrival; at least Hooper could make her laugh by pulling antics with the dog. He taught Cosmo to jump over his outstretched leg as he hummed circus music. He taught her to perform imitations: a dead cockroach (on her back, legs up), Audie Murphy (her metal water dish an army helmet), an alarmed cobra (her loose neck fur pulled to the sides). He asked Tillie to find the zipper that would let Cosmo out of her dog suit. He made up nicknames like Cosmonaut and, in an Italian mood, Petmabelli.
One night he looked over Tillie's shoulder as she read the arts section of the Sunday New York Times.
“You could do that,” he said, pointing to a painting of a couple sitting on a flowered couch.
“Right.”
“Why not?” He sat down on the couch with her. “You're at least that good.”
“Hardly. This woman has her own show at a New York gallery.”
“So what?”
“So what have I been doing the last four or five years?” she said, annoyed. “I don't have any work to show.”
“But you could.”
“I don't think so.”
“Why not?”
“It takes so long.” It seemed obvious: did she have to explain? “I mean, it takes a dedication, a commitment I don't have. I come home from work and I'm tired, and on weekends we're busy doing things. I can't just squeeze it in. I can't just pick it up now and then.” She folded up the paper noisily. “Besides, there's nowhere to paint. The back room gets too damn hot and outside is too damn dusty.”
He was pained. It was a small house, even for just two people, and little by little he had added more of his junk, like his weights and extra props, to the back room.
“We'll buy a bigger house. In the meantime, we'll set you up in the living room. What do you think?”
“It's not just the space.” The idea of another house was too drastic to take seriously. And even though the living room was large enough for an easel in the corner, it was too public a place. She started to stack up the papers on the floor. “I'm not ready to give it a try, okay? It's sweet of you to think so, but I'm not that good. Just because I doodle something doesn't mean I should laminate it.”
“So what if it's good or not?” In spite of his best intentions, he could feel his temper rising. He felt like she wasn't listening to him; he wanted to mess up the pile of papers again. “Why does it have to be good?”
“Because I want it to be!” Her response was childish, she knew, but she couldn't hide her exasperation.
“Because I went to school for four years to try to get better at it, and now I just want...” She couldn't express the thought.
“Listen, Tillie, you used to do wonderful work.” Aware that he should back off, he plunged ahead nevertheless. It was clearly still so important to her. “Why not try?”
“I can't. I'm sorry. I don't want to.”
She was maddening. If she wasn't so close to tears this would be funny.
“You want it both ways!” he said. “You don't want to try because you're afraid you won't be good enough, whatever that means, and then you think you're a failure for not even trying.”
She sniffed.
“Damn it, Tillie, you're a wonderful person. You have no idea, and it makes me really mad.”
She didn't answer.
“Won't you look at me?” he asked. She reluctantly raised her eyes.
“I just want you to be happy,” he said. “It's selfish, I know, but I'd love to come home from a Saturday job and see what you've been working on. I want our being together to inspire you, not stifle you. I feel like I get in your way.”
“It's not you. I don't know what it is. All I know is that the times I've tried to work, I just produce crap and it makes me crazy. So it's safer to not even try, and I know that's a cop-out but I don't know what else to do.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Tillie grabbed some tissues a side table and blew her nose.
“It's like origami,” he finally ventured.
“What.”
He was making this up as he went along, as much to calm himself as to cheer her up. “I've told you about Yoshi, right? That exchange student from Japan? He stayed with us when I was in high school.” Tillie nodded. “Once he asked my mom for some wrapping paper, so she gave him a whole roll. Then he wanted more.”
“I remember,” she said. “I've told you this story before.”
“You can tell it again.”
“Mom had a big box of used wrapping paper. She'd unwrap presents very carefully so she could use the paper again. Dad would get out his pocket knife to cut the scotch tape so it wouldn't tear.”
“You do that now.”
“I know. I thought it was so cheap at the time; I just wanted to rip the damn things open. Anyway, Mom gave Yoshi the box of used wrapping paper. A few days later he asked Dad to take him to the drug store, and he bought more wrapping paper. We all thought Yoshi was a little bit odd, but hey, whatever. Meanwhile he was spending more time than usual in his bedroom with the door closed.
“Then came my birthday. Yoshi gave me a big box—nicely wrapped, of course. And inside was this... fountain, this huge cascading bunch of little origami birds strung in three-foot strands. They were cranes, which are good luck. One thousand of them, he said. One thousand of these little paper birds. He had folded every one. It was so kind of him. It's really a special gift to give someone, because it means a thousand wishes.”
He paused.
“You're that box of wrapping paper, Tillie. You have so much potential, but you just want to crumple it up and throw it away, when you could be stringing magic cranes.” It wasn't exactly what he meant to say, but he had talked himself into a corner.
She knew he meant well. It sounded simplistic to her, but maybe he was right. She could be kinder to herself. Or maybe she just needed a project. Her mother, who used to buy her craft kits when she was young—paint by numbers, yarn art, or beadwork—used to say the same thing in a voice half-proud, half-lamenting: Tillie needs a project. But she wasn't interested in kits anymore, and she couldn't make things happen because he wanted her to.
He kissed her hand. “I have great faith in you. I only wish you wouldn't be so hard on yourself. Maybe it would help to say, This is just wrapping paper, no big deal.”
She nodded as though willing to try, but he could see she didn't believe him. He fought again to check his anger. Did she think he was just blowing smoke? He meant it when he said she did wonderful work. As a student in college, she used to have at least five projects going at once. She'd paint big, splashy, colorful canvases of fauvist trees and portraits of friends with orange, pink and teal faces. She'd make small figures in clay, women with heads of birds or bodies that metamorphosed into seashells. She would collect metal that she found in the street or in the trash—parts of cars, bathroom fixtures, twisted wire—and make sculpture. He had been continually surprised by her creations, fantastic animals that moved in the wind or an Eiffel Tower made of bric-a-brac, and was always eager to see what she was working on.
In fact, she had surprised him the first time they met. That evening Hooper and a friend had gone to a movie, where he drank a huge cup of soda; he didn't think to stop at the bathroom on the way out, so by the time Dan led him to a party at someone else's apartment, he practically raced in to find the bathroom. As he flipped the switch, closed the door and turned around, he nearly yelped in surprise. A woman was just stepping out of the shower, a blue towel draped around her and a pink shower cap on her head.
He realized after the first shock that she was actually emerging from the wall above the toilet. And she only looked as though she were human: she was actually only a head and torso made of plaster, bright white, with an arm outstretched. A plaster Tillie, as he was to find out; she had wrapped her own head, shoulders, and arm for a class project. She was just about eye-to-eye with him as he peed.
When he went into the kitchen for a beer he met another Tillie—part of her, anyway, her arm poking through the wall with a ghostly wave and holding up the dishtowel. In the living room, when he made his way back through, he saw one he'd missed before: a bust of Tillie on a pedestal made of a crumpled bicycle wheel, rebar, and flyswatters painted in bronze. She had a wry grin on her face and he smiled right back at her. When she showed up in the flesh, he knew he was smitten.
And he still was smitten. They had been together five years; it was a long time to live with someone, and yet he still didn't understand why her one-woman circus had folded up her tents. Was it him? Did he distract her from her work, or crush her spirit? She denied it, but he couldn't be sure. She picked up a sketchbook once in while, to humor him, he felt, but more often than not set it aside with a drawing only attempted. She seemed to him a woman in love with the ocean, who dared not wade in.