Barry rode his bike down the alley to his little home and was happy to hear Cosmo barking at the sound of his tires crunching on the gravel. When he opened the gate she was waiting there for him, wagging her tail. She picked up a piece of wood and circled around him, making excited, odd little chirrups. He chained his bike to the awning post, unlocked the sliding glass door, and let the dog run in ahead. At least someone was glad to see him, he thought, if only for a scratch on the butt and a brief sniff around his small, messy house. He cleared some newspapers and clothes off the futon couch and sat down.
This room served as living room, bedroom, and office, and so there were books, student lab reports, and camping equipment piled up and scattered on the floor. Cinderblock bookshelves held more books, his stereo and TV; laundry baskets in the one closet were his dresser. In the kitchen, which was a separate room, was a fridge and a tiny stove, all he needed for his steady diet of beans, rice and beer. It was a life of graduate-school decor and virtual poverty, but he was quite content. When he moved from his first apartment to this place, he inquired after other guesthouses for rent but had no luck. Maybe landlords didn't like his hair, which he forgot to comb sometimes, or maybe even the looks of his car, an old rusted-out Skylark. After many rejections, he was grateful that Hooper and Tillie made an offer. They even said he could start a square of wildflowers or vegetables in the yard. If he caught Tillie at the mailbox on Saturdays, she would sometimes ask him in for coffee, made strong and with cream, the way he liked it.
Once the dog had made her round of the house, she sat at his feet and he scratched her head.
“How's it going, there, Cosmo? You know, you're making me think I should get a dog.” As long as he no longer had a girlfriend, he could at least do with some companionship, someone to take backpacking, to lounge with on the couch. The last woman he dated didn't like to go hiking; he couldn't believe she didn't even own hiking boots. Anita freaked out when she saw a cockroach in his bathroom. She didn't like his tarantula, the way he danced, or even pizza, and was embarrassed to ride in his car. Even so, he was disappointed when she told him she didn't want to see him anymore. He was tired of being dumped.
He liked the idea of a dog. When he was an undergraduate in Santa Barbara, he and his roommate had a good-sized mutt, some sort of shepherd mix. They lived in Isla Vista, the student enclave adjacent to the university, just a block from the beach. He'd take Beau for a run nearly every morning and they'd both come back with pieces of tar stuck on their feet. It was unpleasant, but unavoidable. Whether the tar was the result of “natural seepage,” as the officials said, or residue from an offshore oil-rig spill in the seventies, it was sprinkled on the beach like black crumbs. He'd have to rub paint thinner on Beau's paws to remove it, and although he would have preferred running barefoot himself, he wore a pair of gunky shoes and left them outside the door.
A couple times Beau found some dead seagull or seal to roll in, and he'd come bounding back to Barry with a huge, proud grin on his face. Christ! Barry laughed now at the memory, but at the time the smell made him gag. He would shampoo Beau two or three times and still the scent of putrefaction clung to him. Dogs reveled in such stink. Animal behaviorists said they did it to make themselves more interesting to other dogs, but Barry was sure it was to piss off their domesticators, or at least to remind them that some of the natural world was beyond their control.
Barry had heard stories about packs of wild dogs that once roamed Isla Vista during the sixties and early seventies. The dogs had been abandoned by students and were left to fend for themselves, dumping trash barrels, stopping traffic, harassing people who picnicked in the park, and generally acting like a bad-ass gang. They also took on otherworldly qualities as creatures of the night, or so the stories went: they emerged from a swim in the lagoon, dripping phosphorescence; they acted as protectors, escorting single women home after parties; they appeared, glinty-eyed, on the bike-trails. Some of the more distinctive dogs were even given names like Cerberus or Anubis, ancient gods who served at the gateway to the afterlife. Barry believed whatever he heard. He was a scientist who respected mystery.
***
Tillie was tired of blue. Bright blue skies, day after day. She missed green, the quick, glowing green of leaves in the spring, the saturated green of late summer, the other-worldly green of the ocean. She missed the crimson and vermilion and harvest gold of the trees, the smudged and deepening grays of winter, and the riot of flowers blooming all summer long. Life in the desert was so brown. Save for the wan khaki of cacti and some olive and citrus trees, the houses all had front yards of brown dirt or brown rocks. The mountains north of the city were brown. The weeds seemed brown and dead even as they grew.
She missed snow, the clean whiteness of it, the sound of it crunching under her feet or falling with a hush. She missed wearing sweaters and jeans for many months of the year, seeing puffs of her chilled breath in the air and ducking into coffee shops to warm up. She had grieved for all that and more the first couple years they were in Tucson and, even though Hooper raved about the majesty of the mountains and sky, she struggled to see beyond the barren soil, the endless strip-malls in a flat, sprawling city, the glaring perpetual sun. People had a different sensibility in the west, one that allowed for howling coyote figurines and pastel Navajo blankets, wearing shorts year-round and bolo ties to dress up. She feared she would never get used to it, much less learn to like it enough to stay.
She had to remind herself that she'd been excited to come. The west was a new adventure, as was love itself, and she and Hooper were both hopeful. When they were getting ready to leave Portsmouth, they got rid of as many of their possessions as possible. Furniture and most of their kitchen stuff were sold at a yard sale; extraneous clothes went to the thrift store; and whatever books they didn't sell they asked a friend to mail, along with a few small boxes of mementos, when they arrived. Tillie's easel and art supplies were shipped. All they had in the car were backpacks, camping gear, and an atlas to make the cross-country trek. To live with only a few worldly belongings, even if only for a few weeks, was liberating. This was a clean start, a new land.
She'd felt at the time that she wasn't leaving much behind. She had a job as a hair-stylist, but she could do that anywhere. Most of her friends from college had moved out of the area, to try their luck in New York or Boston, to take jobs at their fathers' companies, or to become art teachers in secondary schools. She scarcely saw her family any more: her parents were divorced and led busy lives in Connecticut, and her brother, Sam, was newly married and commuted from the country to his job in Boston. They all were glad she'd found a good man, one with a sense of adventure and a plan; they envied her freedom and wished her well. She and Hooper left in spring, when the lilacs were just blooming, and they picked some the morning they left to carry in the car. After a detour by Newcastle Beach, where they to dipped their hands in the ocean, they faced the other direction and drove.
Near the end of their second summer in Tucson, when she felt the heat was desiccating her very bones, she went by herself to visit Sam. Hooper didn't want to spend the money, since his landscaping business was just getting established, but he insisted she go without him. It rained the first three days she was there, a thick, soaking summer rain, and she went for long walks without an umbrella, finally feeling rehydrated.
One day she rented a car and drove north to New Hampshire and the university where she had Hooper had gone. The campus was quiet, in between sessions, and she wandered among the brick buildings, under leafy trees and over long grass as though she were the single, privileged guest of some vast estate. She came to the creek that ran through campus, crossed the bridge, and continued on to the art building. As she stepped inside, the smells alone, of oil paints, turpentine, and clay dust, made her stand stock still for several moments, allowing her nose to reanimate the past. Finally she checked a door to one of the studios and found it open; she peeked in, saw it was empty, and entered.
A big room with a tall ceiling. Wooden chairs in a circle, as though anticipating a model or still life arrangement. One forgotten easel; the others, she knew, were stored in the anteroom. The morning light, breaking through the clouds, shone in narrow rays through the high windows, illuminating particles of dust in the air and warming the wall of wooden cupboards where students stored their supplies.
Along another wall were long, low shelves, and on top of these some drawings and acrylic paintings had been left. There were two nudes, a still life, and an abstract, all on paper. A beginning class, she guessed: they'd tried a bit of everything. The artists were certainly inexperienced—the colors were safe, the forms uncertain, the compositions awkward—but some of them had a certain charm. She remembered how time had flown in these rooms, a three-hour class over before she was ready to clean up. She would leave the room in a daze and have to go drink some coffee before attempting anything else.
***
And then she graduated. No more studio classes, no more live models, no more experimenting or sharing with fellow classmates. She started working fulltime at a local salon to pay off student loans, so it was hard to find time and energy to paint; but some other, more insidious paralysis crept in. When she picked up a pencil or brush she found herself wondering, What's the point of this? What am I trying to do?—as though she had to have some end result in mind. She was dismayed and frustrated by her heightened self-consciousness; it was as though she'd asked herself to analyze walking. But she couldn't shrug it off. She wasn't sure if her art was any good, and started to panic that she couldn't discriminate good from bad, or intuition from ignorance. She found herself reworking a canvas over and over, reluctant to let it go, making it muddy and forced. Her sculptures seemed little more than heaps of junk, her clay pots something any hack could produce. So art wasn't the grand experiment it had once been. Having trained in it, she began consider it less of a lark and more of a calling, like a ministry meant for a chosen few, and she had too many doubts to devote herself to it.
A young man with a paint box entered the room, disrupting her reverie, and she left. Driving back along the familiar highway to Portsmouth, she thought how much Hooper was part of this landscape for her. They used to travel this route together, from home to school and back, for months, usually on the bus. In fact it was on the bus that she first saw him. She might not have noticed him at all except that one day he literally made a spectacle of himself. The bus was riding into Portsmouth, and when the bus driver pulled up at the first stop in town, he stopped the engine.
“I'm running early, folks,” he informed the passengers, who were mostly students. “Just going to wait here a few minutes.”
The bus was quiet. Tillie almost got out to walk the mile home, but instead pulled out a book to read. Sitting near the front, she noticed a twenty-something man talking with the driver. Then he turned to face the passengers, cleared his throat and held his arms in the air to get their attention.
“Dig into your pockets,” he said loudly, “and dig into your soul.” He pulled an orange out of his overcoat, held it up with a flourish, then started peeling it.
Intrigued, she set her book aside. What a hambone! she thought. What extravagant nerve. At first she was rather embarrassed for him, but he seemed so comfortable in front of an audience, so self-assured, that she was won over. He'd made the bus his theater.
“Orange, you globe you sweet C and slice, fragmenting life,” he proclaimed in a beat rhythm. “Hup-hup-hup! You gift of hope and daring; unmasked how juicy and still blaring orange, orange, orange; pleasure of pip and drip on my hands.” He pulled the orange apart and passed sections to people nearby, including Tillie.
He bowed grandly and waved to applause and whistles. Someone gave him a tissue to wipe his hands. Smiling to herself, Tillie went back to her book. She had assumed then that this was a chance encounter, an interesting moment and no more; how was she to know he would become such a part of her life? In a moment the bus driver started up the engine, released the brake, and continued on.
They met later that semester. The morning after a party at her house she found a small cairn of rocks topped with a red maple leaf outside the front door. Her housemates were intrigued by this mystery, but she had a pretty good idea who had left it. He'd come late to the party, but she recognized him from the bus and this time took more notice. He wasn't exactly handsome, but there was something distinctive about him: his European-looking glasses, his rich voice, his thick, unruly hair, the way he made people around him laugh. Moreover, he kept catching her eye and smiling at her, with no hint of self-consciousness. She tried to work her way over to his circle but was distracted by one person after another, and then he was gone. But the rocks, those were surely his; and a few days after that, a seashell and a pine cone appeared. A week later he was waiting at the bus stop when she got off. How long had he been there? His ears were red from the cold.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asked.
They headed to the river and sat in the park for a long while, talking, watching the seagulls wheel and cry above the fishing boats. Water plashed against the stone wall below their bench; cars buzzed across Memorial Bridge. The middle of the bridge rose up once, its midsection rising slowly and gracefully, its counterweights lowering with a faint squeak. Now they could read clearly the red letters spray-painted on the industrial-green paint: EAT THE RICH. A few cars lined up behind the barrier, waiting, as a lonely red tugboat chugged through on its way out to sea.
“It's cold,” she finally said.
He held out his elbow for her to take as they walked back to the Depot Diner. His glasses steamed up from the warmth as soon as they entered.
“Just coffee for me, please,” she said to the waitress as they sat down.
“Yes, coffee, please,” Hooper said. “And cookies. Do you have any cookies?”
Tillie peeled open a plastic cup of cream and dumped it in her coffee.
“Do you take cream?” she asked.
“Never,” he said, reaching for some. “Until now.”
She laughed, although she guessed he meant it.
After that day, they walked all over together. Between classes they walked through the campus woods, or just around the nearby neighborhood. Hooper might come to her house and they'd walk through town, down to the river and through the park. From his overcoat pocket he'd pull out small Maine potatoes, still warm from the oven, for her to eat or just hold against her cold cheek. Some evenings they went dancing at a place near school, a bar converted from an old stone church where local bands played. It had a wood stove in one corner and an old black dog that shuffled back and forth between two dog beds placed in corners. They drove down to Boston and walked for hours in the Common, along the river, or around Cambridge. They wandered museums and the market, drank coffee, went to movies. Their first kiss tasted of the spicy papadam and sweet anise seeds from their dinner at an Indian restaurant.
She found herself wanting to share even the smallest things with him: Look at this! Listen! She showed him an installation she was working on, made of tread marks on burlap, road maps, Chinese lanterns, and old shoes from the thrift store, and he was gratifyingly enthusiastic. She gave him seashells and packets of seeds even before she knew he liked to garden. She made a little sketch—a cup and saucer in space, a cookie moon—turned it into a post card, and mailed it to him. He sent one back, an old post card of the Golden Gate Bridge, the kind where the photograph is touched up in dreamy pastel colors. He wrote, “Here's another bridge we could cross.”
Remembering all this, Tillie drove back to Portsmouth and by their old house. They had moved in by February, to the bottom flat of an old Victorian, which was drafty as life on a tree limb. They cranked up the heat in the kitchen and spent most of their time there, in the morning scampering naked from the very cold bedroom to the very cold bathroom. There were two shelves already built in the kitchen window, where their cyclamen and philodendron thrived, and in one corner hung a mobile Tillie had made of bent spoons and small old gears from the basement, strips of iridescent cellophane, and shards of glass edged in electrical tape. In the summer they sat on the porch and drank their morning coffee or afternoon beer, watched the Fourth of July fireworks from a nearby park, and cheered when the girl across the street learned to ride her bike.
***
The house was a light gray now, an improvement over the dark brown and yellow trim they knew. The old wicker rocker, which they had found in the basement and painted red, was still there on the porch, but the barrel in which they'd planted asters and bachelor buttons was gone. The house itself had nothing to tell her; someone else lived there now. Driving into town, she stopped at the bagel place for lunch. The same two women that used to work there were still behind the counter.
“Where's your sidekick?” one asked.
“He's at home.” Tillie was pleased but not surprised to be recognized, as though nothing had changed. Not much, except that home and Hooper were over two thousand miles away.
As she drove the thruway toward Boston, past green fields and familiar road signs, Tillie was pained to think that Hooper had found a new landscape to love, a place where he flourished. He'd made a lot of business contacts and friends. He rhapsodized about the desert plants and animals he was discovering, the liberating vistas, the big blue sky. He seemed to belong. Where did she belong? This was the question she kept returning to, with no resolution.
That night she explained her dilemma to Sam.
“What do you think I should do? Stay in Tucson, or come back here?”
Sam laughed. “You want me to tell you?”
“Well, what would you do? How would you decide?”
“Do you love him?”
“I do.” Of that she was certain.
“There's your answer. 'Nough said. If it were me, anyway.”
She gave him a hug. He was right. There's nothing to do, then, she thought, but go west.
***
Early one morning Hooper had a dream. His hands were full of the rich dirt of a well-kept garden, and he was kneeling in front of huge, bright yellow sunflowers; but instead of pulling up weeds, he was picking out gold-foiled chocolate coins, the kind he used to get in his Christmas stocking. He sat right there and ate them, and it seemed as though the chocolate and dark earth were of the same substance.
When he awoke, he put on some shorts and went out to the front yard. Cosmo followed and he gave her a drink from the hose. The day before, he had soaked the patch of dirt he had in mind for the sunflowers so that he would be able to dig in it today. He would add some fertilizer before planting the seedlings, which he'd been growing in small pots back of the garage. He put on some old work boots he kept on the back step, grabbed his shovel, and nudged it into the earth. As Cosmo sniffed around, a shiny thing caught Hooper's eye. Bending down, he fished out two quarters and a nickel. Small change, but enough to make him and Tillie laugh later about his new career as a psychic fortune hunter. And enough to make him thoughtfully smooth over the dirt again and again later that evening, feeling that he had been given some kind of sign.
One night Tillie dreamed that she was on the Lawrence Welk show and bubbles enveloped her in a soft cocoon. Later that day at work she found herself doodling, which she hadn't done since school. Circles and spirals, cylinders and seashells flowed from her pen as she sat at committee meetings or talked on the phone. Although neither she nor Hooper said so, they both felt as though the air were charged with some new offering.
Cosmo seemed to sense it, too. When the phone rang one Sunday morning, she trotted over and sat expectantly as Hooper answered it. When he hung up, Cosmo jumped in a circle and ran to the door.
“How does she know?” he said. “That was Maria, asking if we want to get the dogs together.”
They first met Maria a year ago at the historical society museum, where she gave a lecture on Mimbres pottery. She was an imposing figure at the podium, very articulate and tall, with long dark hair and bright smile. At the reception afterward, Hooper pressed his way into the circle around her and asked her some questions, which she clearly appreciated; he had listened well. It was a talent Tillie had always admired in him, the ability to engage strangers in conversation. As they talked, Maria mentioned she was doing research for a paper about female images on salsa labels, and Hooper expressed interest.
“I suppose that means you have to sample all those salsas,” he said.
“That's right,” Maria assured him, and soon the two of them were expounding on an entire menu of chiles rellenos, tamales, and so on. By the end of their conversation, Maria had invited him and Tillie to her house for dinner. They met her partner, Nick, and her two dogs, a lab named Gula—after the Babylonian goddess of healing, she said—and a shelty named Tasha. Since then they'd had dinner together occasionally, at one another's home, but when they adopted Cosmo, Maria insisted they get together more often to exercise the dogs.
As Tillie and Hooper arrived at the campus lawn, Maria and her dogs were already there. She said hello and then casually informed them that Nick was about to move out.
“Oh, no.” Hooper and Tillie were both surprised. “That's too bad.”
Maria shrugged, trying to make light of it. “Well, it's been coming. He has a hard time with the fact that I have a more prestigious job than he does. But I know he could do so much better than being a janitor.” She threw a ball, awkwardly, to Gula. “He says it gives him time to be a musician, but he's just not making it.”
Tillie was astonished that Maria could be so arrogant, so certain what was best for Nick.
“It's hard to find a decent job in this town,” she said in his defense. “I was even bagging groceries for a while.”
“Yes, but you kept at it and found something,” Maria said. “Nick's been disgustingly lazy about it.”
“There are jobs out there,” said Hooper. “You just have to be willing to start at the bottom and work hard.”
Tillie's jaw dropped. Hooper was usually more sympathetic to the worker; he was sounding like a Republican. He knew how frustrating her job search had been—scanning want ads for months, sending out countless applications, going to interviews for jobs she wasn't interested in—and how close she had come to giving up and being a cashier at the grocery store, or going back to being a hairdresser. She couldn't deny that he had worked relentlessly the last three years, but that didn't give him the right to judge.
“Maybe music is really import—” Tillie started to say, but Maria interrupted her.
“Plus, his cat is afraid of my dogs.”
“That's a problem,” Hooper agreed. “Cats invented paranoia.”
Maria laughed, pleased that Hooper understood. “This one lives under the bed. I swear I've never seen it come out. I've only seen its eyes glowing in the dark, but Nick says he used to be a friendly little lap cat.”
Tillie was wholly on the side of the cat. When Tasha dropped a very gooey ball at her feet, she kicked it just two feet away with a grunt of disgust.
Hooper gave her a quizzical look, which she ignored. Why is she so petulant? he wondered. He picked up the ball and zinged it across the field, wiping his hand on his shorts.
“Cosmo's looking good,” Maria said.
“She's great,” Hooper said.
“Are you giving her wheat germ oil for her coat?”
“What's that for?” asked Tillie skeptically.
“Keeps her fur shiny. Are you brushing her teeth?
As a matter of fact, I am.” Hooper winked at Tillie.
“She's your baby, you know,” said Maria. “In fact, I just read about a native Canadian tribe who believe that an unmarried man is father to his dog.”
“No kidding.” He rather liked the sound of that.
“I won't try to pronounce the tribe's name, but they're known as the Dogribs. They believe humans were descended from dogs.”
“That sounds as good as any creation story to me,” said Hooper.
“What happens when the man gets married and has kids?” asked Tillie.
“I don't know. Maybe the dog becomes a nanny. Like in Peter Pan.”
This was enough for Hooper and Maria to start a discussion of Tinkerbell's jealousy and Captain Hook's—well, whatever. Tillie wasn't interested. And suddenly she couldn't stand these dogs, who kept dashing up, panting and slobbery, bumping into her and wanting their tennis balls so single-mindedly.
“I think I'll go for a walk,” she said.
“Oh.” Hooper was concerned. “Are you okay? Do you want to go home?”
“No, I'm fine. I'll be back.” She gave a wave and walked off.
Hooper didn't say anything, but Maria guessed something was up. She took a mischievous delight in thinking there might be friction between them. This could be the stuff of daytime TV, which fascinated her. Betrayals, greed, jealousy, lust—all right there in soap operas and talk shows. What was up between Hooper and Tillie? Money problems? Sex? Housework? Although she raised her eyebrows as an invitation to talk, he didn't bite.
But he was indeed irritated by what he considered Tillie's rudeness. He felt like she was giving him some message—I'm bored, you're a jerk—but hell if he knew what it was. Maria could be a somewhat annoying know-it-all, but surely Tillie could handle that. She got in these moods, sometimes, that he still couldn't fathom: she seemed to shut down, and wouldn't explain why. He couldn't help but feel that she was simply dismissing him as too selfish or obtuse—too male, even—to understand. He watched her wander over to the dance building nearby.
Tillie entered the small grassy courtyard, which was bordered by offices and studios. She sat on the cement, shaded by an overhang, her back against the brick. She suspected she was being petty and hoped she hadn't offended, but she just couldn't take another conversation where she had nothing to say. Or where even if she did, she'd be interrupted. The last time those two got together, they'd talked about baseball and local politics, neither of which she knew anything about, in excruciating detail for nearly an hour. She'd felt both ignorant and utterly exasperated.
Maybe a little jealous, too. She wondered if she could talk about anything with such authority. She had a liberal knowledge of art history and a rudimentary grasp of book binding techniques. She knew how to lay out a palette, how to solder two pieces of metal, cut hair, ride the Boston T. If that was how she measured herself, her character seemed slight and insignificant. She knew that was hardly fair—she wouldn't judge others that way—but she didn't know where else to start. She felt as though she were missing something, as though she were a cipher defined by its emptiness, by not knowing; she felt as though she were continually drafting herself from scratch.
Across the courtyard, the door to a dance studio was ajar and jazz music blared. An instructor was shouting out instructions and clapping her hands for emphasis. The music was turned off and the woman went over the same routine. Tillie heard feet thudding and sliding on wood; she imagined strong bodies kicking and bending, sweating from exertion. The same steps again. Closing her eyes, she was soothed by the repetition, the sound of bones and muscles working, the composition of movement.
She got up shortly and returned to the field. If they asked where she'd gone, she would say to the drinking fountain. She found them with the dogs over by the parkway, where they'd found a water spigot at the base of a palm tree. Each dog had its turn for a drink, and then Gula flopped down in the puddle that had formed. Maria was laughing.
“She's a true-blue water dog,” she said.
“She should be jumping into lakes somewhere,” Hooper agreed.
“Yes, but she's a desert dog now.” Maria rubbed Gula's belly with her foot.
As they said good-bye to Maria and started to walk home, Hooper asked, “Is there some reason you ran off like that?”
“I just wanted a little walk.” She would have left it at that, but she knew he wouldn't be satisfied. “I didn't mean to be rude, but I really wasn't interested in talking about Peter Pan. I didn't think you'd miss me.”
“We could have talked about other things.” He didn't conceal his impatience. “We weren't trying to leave you out.”
“I know.” She considered pointing out that they didn't make much effort to include her, either. “But it's hard for me to keep up with you two. You both have these perfectly formed opinions and you can put together whole theses on the spur of the moment. I admire that, but I can't keep up, that's all.”
“You have plenty of interesting things to say!” He was annoyed that she gave up so easily. Moreover, he was unwilling to be cast as the ogre who wouldn't let her say anything, who didn't notice that she was unhappy. “I get tired of your thinking you're not smart enough.”
She struggled to come up with a response that wouldn't provoke more anger. Why was it such a big deal to him that she didn't want to join the conversation? Hooper was so adept at talking that he could scarcely understand what it meant to be often at a loss for words. And when he said he was tired of her way of thinking, it sounded as though he were growing tired of her, so she would rather just drop it.
“If you don't want to say anything,” he went on, “that's fine, or if you don't want to be here, then next time don't come. I won't feel bad. But don't just hide behind a lie that you are stupid, because you're not, and I don't like to hear it.”
“Okay, all right.” At this point she was feeling bullied, and they were getting nowhere. She should have just said she went to the water fountain.
Hooper fumed silently, wishing for a different response. He wasn't sure what he wanted from her, but she seemed perversely determined to leave things unresolved. Arriving home, they found things to do in different rooms.
***
Even though she was happy to have Cosmo around, Tillie was still a little surprised to be living with this animal, who came when her name was called, cocked her head when questioned, and curled up so readily at her masters' feet. Although her family had had cats and fish when she was a kid, dogs were out of the question for her dad, because they left poop and fur all over and had to be walked. Her brother was upset by this, but as far as she was concerned dogs were not to be trusted; she had scars of two dog bites as proof. The neighbors' dog bit her face when she was three because, at least as she recalled, she simply stooped to pet it. When she was ten her friend's dog, Gigi—a skulking cocker spaniel whose glowering black eyes were barely distinguishable from its black fur—sank its teeth into her ankle as she kicked a tennis ball out from under its nose. Gigi wouldn't let go and hung on like a vicious leech for what seemed like minutes. Tillie thought dogs were just beasts with sharp teeth and inscrutable motives. But this beast was so different. She followed Hooper out to inspect the garden and solemnly attended her masters in the bathroom, as though she didn't want them to be alone for a minute. She trotted after Tillie when she went out to the front yard to check the mail.
In June it was very hot, near or over a hundred degrees every day. They took the dog for a walk at six in the morning, and even then the sky was bright enough to make one squint. By mid-July, the heat was oppressive.
White clouds hunkered over the mountains in the morning and by mid-afternoon they were bunched across the sky like bursting cattail fluff. The possibility of rain was only a tease, for that relief wouldn't come until the monsoon season, still a few weeks away. With this added humidity, the evaporative cooler didn't work as well, and Tillie was thankful that she worked in an air-conditioned building. Hooper was glad not much work was coming in.
Cosmo spent the mornings lying under the pomegranate in the backyard, where they watered the dirt and she dug a depression. Hooper let her in before noon, and she lay in the corner of the kitchen, where the cooler's blast was most direct. After sunset they took her out for another walk, usually over to the university where, if they were lucky, the sprinklers were watering the big lawn by the tennis courts. Hooper liked to sit Cosmo down at one end of the field, and then have Tillie run to the other end before the dog was released. She'd run as fast as she could, ears flapping, her mouth open wide in an air-sucking grin.
One night they sat on a retaining wall while Cosmo wandered and rolled on the wet lawn.
“It's funny to love a dog so much,” said Hooper. “I don't think I cared this much for the dog we had when I was a kid.”
“A few months ago this dog didn't exist for us,” said Tillie, “and now I can't imagine not having her around.”
“I know.” He suddenly felt very happy, complete.
The air smelled like freshly cut grass, and the moon was a crisp thin crescent. “Does this mean a kid is next?”
Tillie looked at him. All these years together, and sometimes she still wasn't sure whether he was joking. Something in his eyes made her guess not. It was like him, she thought, to create a whole scenario in his mind and spring it forth fully grown.
“That's quite a leap.”
“Well, you know. Another creature to care for, to have fun with. Someone to love a whole lot. Who loves you.”
“I see,” she said, considering. “I don't know, Hoop. Creating a life. It's such a huge responsibility. More than that. I mean, you're creating a consciousness where none existed before. Maybe even a soul.”
“I know.” Relief spurred his courage, excitement his imagination. They were talking about having a child. The idea filled him with a sense of awe and power, as though he were part of the first space flights. Would it happen some day? When would they feel ready?
“I just wanted to float the idea. See how it felt.”
“Sure.” She thought back to a couple months ago, when she thought she might be pregnant. She hadn't mentioned it to him, wanting to wait and see. Then the opportunity had passed, although she still harbored that glimmering sensation of possibility.
“I'm not sure how I'd be as a mother.”
“You'd be wonderful. A kid would be lucky to have you for a mom.”
“And you for a dad. Look how you are with the dog.” Hooper scratched her head.
Cosmo wandered over to them and sat at their feet.
“But still,” he said. “A kid's not a dog. The dog we can leave out in the yard when we go to the movies.”
She laughed. “And we only feed her once a day, from a bowl on the floor.”
“You can train a dog to sit and stay.”
“Plus, having a child would mean we'd need a bigger house,” she teased.
“And it would mean we should get married.”
“I suppose so.” Another surprising turn; she had to pause, reminding herself he was serious. “Is that a proposal?”
“I'm asking what you think.”
Caught off-guard, she had no ready answer. She could feel him tense up, perhaps impatient with or distressed by her uncertainty.
“I love you, Hooper,” she hastened to say. “It's not the idea of commitment; it's the institution of marriage that I have a problem with. The idea that people will think of me as Mrs. Hooper Green. You have a lovely name, but I've been a Perkins for so long, it feels like my skin. And Mrs. sounds so strange to me, like an afterthought, or a shadow. Like a... like a wife.”
“I know. Like ownership. But you can keep your name.”
“That's true.”
“I think marriage scares me because it seems so conventional. So ordinary. And that's not how I feel about us.”
“I don't think marriage necessarily means we're done...” she couldn't find the right word. “Becoming. That we can't still change or grow.”
He felt encouraged; marriage could be whatever they wanted. But his anxieties were not entirely eased. “What about a wedding, though? I'm not sure if I would want one because I want one, or because I'm supposed to. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“When you have a wedding you're on display the whole time,” he went on. “It's like some weird initiation rite. I don't know if I'm up to that. You have to register for dishes and all that. I don't want to register for dishes, do you? I like our thrift store dishes.”
“So do I.” She laughed: he got so caught up in details. “You don't have to register for dishes.”
“I just want to do the right thing.” He was beginning to feel disheartened already, wondering where they would go from here. He wasn't sure if they were both too fearful to make the decision, or too smart.
Tillie put her arm around him. “Some women plan their wedding since they were little girls, but truly, it never really interested me. Wearing a ridiculously expensive dress and worrying about bridesmaids and nut cups. Throwing the bouquet to women who are supposed to be in a frenzy about it. Shoving cake in each others' mouths. When my brother got married his wife was a wreck for months. And then at the reception someone spilled coffee on her dress. She nearly lost it.”
“I bet.”
“Besides, I'd want a wedding to be meaningful. Where would we have it? Portsmouth? None of our friends are there anymore. My mother's house? I left when I was nineteen. In our dusty back yard? I don't know what place is significant for us.”
“I'm sorry, Tillie.” It sounded to him like she was talking herself out of the idea. “Should we move back to New Hampshire?”
She sighed. Even a year ago, if he'd said that, she would have jumped at the offer.
“No. I don't know. Things wouldn't be the same anyway.”
“You're probably right. But we can if you want.”
“You're sweet.”
“Maybe.”
“Hey,” she said. “If we got married you could share my benefits from work.”
“You're awfully practical.” He laughed half-heartedly, thinking, Shouldn't they be kissing madly? Giggling? Something? Maybe he should have been a romantic about it, bought a ring, made it an actual offer.
“Sorry. Here.” She leaned over and kissed him deeply, nearly knocking him off balance. “Shall we consider it, then?”
“Let's do that.” He had to wait a moment. “C'mon, Dog. Let's go home.”
***
That summer, Hooper's garden was bountiful. In their whiskey barrel planters, the tomatoes grew fat and red, the peppers crowded together in waxen green profusion, and the basil and rosemary perfumed the air. Poppies bloomed, even though Hooper had not planted any, and the sunflowers shot up, soon lolling their heavy heads. Hummingbirds sipped at the bougainvillea and Inca doves cooed. Lizards ate bugs. Cicadas sang their metallic buzz. Hooper felt like a king.