Stepping out of the house, Tillie headed north, as usual, toward the Catalinas. Except for an occasional glance at the sidewalk, she kept her eyes on the mountains, which seemed even more elemental with a recent dusting of snow on their rough shoulders. Without a hat or sunglasses, her view on the world was unobstructed, and she walked quickly, buttoning her coat against a chilly wind. The weather had turned markedly colder the day Hooper got back from the east, two weeks ago. At night when she snuggled against him, he exclaimed about her cold skin but nevertheless held her tightly until she warmed up, and then they luxuriated in caresses and kisses so immediate and engulfing that she abandoned all desire for lucid thought. Only her body was intelligent enough to respond, to be a hawk or hummingbird or indolent snake, and at times their lovemaking ended with her in uncontrolled laughter that was born from some unknown well-spring in her belly. She settled into a pattern of sleep so deep and restful that the mornings came as a gentle surprise, like first light stealing over the desert.
When he asked her about her week alone, she took him by the hand and bid him close his eyes. She'd been excited about showing him her paintings but now, pushing the office door open, she felt a sudden alarm, as though she were revealing a sacred shrine. She hesitated a bit before allowing him to see. He blinked and stepped back; then he reached out and held her. His silence moved her more than she would have imagined.
He had a surprise for her, too, which he revealed over pasta and a bottle of Rioja that evening. He was going to take a break from directing at the Stone Soup, he said, so that he could try out for parts with other companies.
She thought it was a joke, to make her think he'd gone through a sea change in Buffalo.
“Do you have so many friends,” she asked, “that you don't mind pissing off Nancy?”
He'd already talked to her about it, he said, even before he left. Nancy had given him her blessing; in fact, she was thrilled to be running the shows on her own for a while.
So he was serious. “For how long?” she asked, perplexed.
He shrugged. “Until I learn a few things,” he said cryptically.
Hands in her pockets, she played with her key ring. House key, car key, office key, and a new one: the key to her studio. Not exactly a studio, but perhaps even better: a partitioned space in a warehouse near downtown. Roscoe had told her about this place, which a group of artists had bought and renovated with the help of grant money. They formed a co-op, and for a small fee each month, she was allowed access to the building all day, any day, until eleven at night, when a security guard came to close it down. The lighting and ventilation were decent, the industrial sinks more than adequate, and as long as she followed the co-op's rules for safety and courtesy, she was free to throw pots, throw paint, even weld. And although she dared not hope too much, she might be able meet other artists, share in their work. All she had to do was show up. She had already spent three evenings and a Saturday there, but she knew it would have to be a continual, conscious commitment. Just to show up. That was all she required of herself right now, and if she managed to scribble pencil on paper, or put paint on canvas, all the better. Hooper helped her move her drafting table and some of her supplies there after work one evening, but thankfully he hadn't bought her anything more. He found a nail in the wall and hung up his dog tag (“To remind you to follow your nose,” he said) then took her out for tamales and beer to celebrate.
And that night as they lay in bed, he started talking. He spoke calmly, and without pause for a long time, so that he nearly lulled her to sleep, but she heard every word as though it were in her own thoughts, about how he loved her, how he wanted her to feel loved enough to take risks. He talked about his brother's desperate sorrow over his failed marriage, and his own regrets for being so self-centered as a kid and teenager; he thought he had outgrown that, but Tom reminded him he still had a long way to go. He wanted to be a better person; he wanted to listen to her more carefully; he wanted to encourage her without stepping on her spirit.
“You can help keep me honest,” he said. “How do I do that?”
“Be honest yourself.” She felt so strange, so drowsy that she could feel every part of her body drift heavily downward, as though she were lying on the hard ground instead of a soft bed; and yet her mind was buoyed and refreshed. She felt as though she were in a different kind of space, as in a church or a meadow, and so she told him what she thought she couldn't tell him: that she still hurt from the day he accused her of needing all the emotional attention in their relationship. She had accepted his apology and a bouquet of sunflowers, but—if she could be honest—they seemed a superficial response. And she wondered whether he still felt that way; and if so, how could she feel free to show any sadness or frustration?
She knew the answer, but was glad to hear it anyway. Of course he didn't feel she monopolized their relationship; if anything, it was her more subtle sensibility that kept its spirit alive. She had asked him about therapy that day, he remembered, and it hurt, because he'd given it up and felt like a failure.
They were quiet a few moments. “Is there anything else?” he asked.
She told him more: she was lonely. Not during the week he was gone, although she missed him; but every day, with each task she undertook at the library, with each lunch she ate with colleagues who talked about TV shows and office politics. She was lonely for friends who would inspire and challenge her, so lonely that she felt her soul growing stale and dry. She'd told him this before, although perhaps not so emphatically, for it seemed to find new resonance in him.
“I don't want to try and fix things for you,” he said the next day, “and this is just a small step, but why don't we have some people over?”
So she asked Barry and Donna, who, as she knew from an encounter at the mailbox with an exultant Barry, were now seeing each other. They would be over that evening, and Hooper was home preparing dinner—hummus and vegetables, a big loaf of crusty bread, and a spicy Thai soup. For Joey she had a can of chicken noodle soup, a box of crayons, and a big pad of newsprint.
She turned a corner and walked past a row of her favorite houses. One was painted a conservative beige, while the underside of the porch and the trim were a brazen display of burnt orange, fiery pink, and hot purple, with canary yellow planters on the porch. Another house, terra cotta and sage green, had a healthy array of plants out front, a couple of fat barrel cacti, an ocotillo, and a saguaro that today had a garland of small colored lights.
A movement at the side of this house caught her eye and made her heart skip. She'd scarcely seen anything, but it registered as something familiar, like the white flag of a dog's tail. As she passed, she looked carefully but saw nothing. She glanced around and moved on, telling herself that her good mood had tricked her eyes. A plastic bag blowing in the wind, probably.
Some houses had chili lights in the windows and some walkways were lined with luminaria. She and Hooper had already bought a tree, and although the scent of pine evoked pleasant memories of holidays in Connecticut, of snow, candlelight, and fireplaces, a pine tree was too anomalous here in the desert, too wasteful of life to be enjoyed. Next year, she was thinking, she would design a tree made of tin. She had in mind a graceful, minimalist tree with tubing for arms, and hammered sconces to reflect the lights. With some good tip snips, a drill, a soldering iron, and some ingenuity, she and Hooper would devise one that could also be taken apart to store for future use.
They'd brought the tree home Sunday, and as they were about to pull it out of the truck Joey came bursting out of Ellen's house. “Christmas is coming!” he shouted, and threw his arms around Tillie's legs. She was so touched by his joy that she bent down to hug him and kiss his cheek, which tasted of peanut butter and inexplicably made her want to cry. With Ellen's okay, she invited him into their house for cookies and hot chocolate. Hooper put on a moth-eaten red vest and a CD of hokey Christmas carols, with which he sang along noisily. Tillie decided that they needed to decorate, so she emptied some eggs out of their cardboard carton and cut it up into pieces. “Let's make bells,” she suggested, and set Joey up at the table with paint, glue, glitter, cotton balls, rickrack, and other odds and ends from one of her dusty boxes in the closet. While Hooper set up the tree, Joey described at great length what he wanted from Santa. They hung their paper bells and glass balls, and, as Joey left, Hooper made him promise to come by on Christmas and show them his presents.
After she'd walked about a mile, she rounded the corner and turned toward home. The way was slightly uphill, and the extra exertion made her realize how hungry she was. She looked out to the east and saw a nearly full moon above the horizon, and then further up the street, she saw a dog. This time it was not just the tail of a dog, or a piece of trash blowing, but clearly a golden dog. She felt such a jolt of recognition that she started to jog, and even though she was telling herself all the way up the block that golden retrievers must be common in this neighborhood, she didn't slow down until she reached the place she thought she'd seen it. She walked a few steps up a driveway and scoured the bushes. There was no sign, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was involved in a game of hide and seek. The world was rife with hiding places: now she would be aware of every bush, every car, every fence she passed.
There were things she wanted in this new year. She wanted go to the snow—many times, every Sunday even, since it was only an hour's drive to Mount Lemmon—and be surrounded by white. She wanted to paint a still life of eggs and porcelain teacups on a cream-colored tablecloth. Maybe she would get Donna to bleach her hair. She wanted to spend long Saturdays in the warehouse and emerge blinking at the brilliant sunshine, and sometimes invite Hooper in to see what she was working on. She wanted plans and she wanted to let go, to stay open to the unpredictable, to let what would happen, happen.
When she saw it again, that dog, a few blocks from home, she didn't chase after it. She was thinking about having company for dinner, about the food that her lover was preparing and the wine the four of them would drink. She was thinking about the serendipitous gifts of routine and the element of surprise in a good design. Something she recognized was enticing her along, drawing her in, and spinning her out; there was change and kindness, even fecundity in it. And she was thinking that there was no need to hurry, because if this was indeed her dog, they were both heading for the same place.