Charles Baxter: The Feast of Love

“I don’t care what your idea is.”

“I know it. I know you don’t care. But let’s try. Come on, honey,” I said, and I took her hand for a moment. After we got out of the car, I could tell she was terrified because her knees were shaking. Have you ever seen a woman’s knees in a spasm? From fear? It is not a sight that lifts you up.

In the anteroom, which I remember because the floor was covered with green-mottled linoleum and also because the air was fragrant with a mixture of Lysol and Mr. Clean, the receptionist asked us what we were there for, and I said, well, we, that is, Kathryn and I, thought it was a little early to start a child, but maybe we could manage a dog. We were contemplating adopting a dog, I said, and Kathryn made a little sound, a sort of glottal grunt of apprehension, or a groan, but quietly, so that only I heard it. Guttural. And the receptionist, this young red-haired woman in a yellow jumpsuit, said, Well, it’s fortunate for you that these are visiting hours, so you can just go through that door there, and then turn to the left, and proceed down the hallway, and you’ll see them, the dogs I mean, because they’ll be on both sides. And if you want anything, you just come back and let me know.

So I put my right arm around Kathryn’s shoulders, and we went in through that door and down the hallway. It wasn’t very well lit. Bare bulbs screwed into the ceiling showered raw light downward so that the place looked like an aging army barracks. I don’t know what I was expecting. The floors were cement, so they could clean them easily of waste matter, and our shoes, our running shoes, were squeaking over that surface.

You can’t imagine the noise. They were all barking and howling and yapping, these dogs of every size, pure dog-desperation, mutt-mania, an army of refugee dogs, and we marched down that hallway between the cages, being roared at, like these dogs were screaming Save us save us, and I held on to Kathryn, and then we walked back, with me still holding on, and then we walked down the hallway a third time, and Kathryn said, “You can let go of me now,” so I did. I let go of her.

We kept walking back and forth. We weren’t about to get a dog. No. That wasn’t ever the idea, despite what I had said. We were just there, walking up and down that aisle at the Humane Society, for Kathryn’s benefit, and after about the fifth time it felt as if we were on inspection, in the dog barracks. Not all the dogs quieted down, but some of them did, and when they did, we began to peer at them, which we really hadn’t done before when they were making a racket and they were just generic dogs.

It’s when you start looking at dogs that you begin to notice their faces. Is that the word? Faces? Muzzles? And after all in a Humane Society they’re mostly mutts, so you don’t have anything like a breed to distract you, except for Dalmatians, because people are always buying Dalmatians, thinking that they’re cute, and then they get rid of them because they can’t stand how difficult and dumb they are. You do notice all the Dalmatians in the Humane Society.

Kathryn was still a bit scared, but by this time she was noticing their expressions. I didn’t prompt her. I didn’t say anything. And soon she said, I’ll bet that one likes a party. And I’d bet that one’s a bully. That one’s kind of stupid but has a good sense of humor. And that one, he’s a recluse. That one’s a pack animal. That one there, she’s stubborn and independent. That one likes to ride in cars. That one thinks all day about food.

She had her index finger pointed at them. And then she started to name them.

You’re Otis.

You’re Sophie.

You’re Lester.

You’re Duffy.

You’re Gordon.

You’re Daisy.

You’re Waverly.

And you, you handsome fellow, she said, pointing down at a dog on the other side of the bars, you, you’re Bradley.

There was a dog there, I admit it, that looked a lot like me, like my brother or cousin, these sort of eyes I have, and its voice was just like mine, a rumble, phlegmy, you know, but strong and commanding like my voice is. Brownish fur like mine, and friendly, like me, but prone to harmless manias, also like me, you could just tell.

And the thing was, as Kathryn was doing this, as she was naming the dogs, going up and down the aisles, something quite amazing happened. One by one, the dogs stopped barking. They just quit. At first I didn’t think it was happening, I thought it had to do with my hearing, you know, what do they call it, tinnitus, but it wasn’t that. The dogs were really going quiet. Kathryn would point at them, one at a time, at one dog, and give it a name — you’re Inez — and the dog would look at her, and after a moment or two it — Inez the dog — would clam up. And before very long, it grew really quiet in there, maybe a yip or two now and then, but otherwise no sound. As if, all that time, all they had wanted was a name. It was spooky.

“I think we had better leave now,” Kathryn said. I took her hand and we went back out to the car.

But before we got to the car the red-haired receptionist in the jumpsuit said, “What happened? What the hell did you do in there?” and she went rushing back toward the kennels, and the dogs started howling again, crying out to heaven as we unlocked the car and backed out of the parking lot and pulled out onto the road. We were gone, we were erased from the Humane Society. Meanwhile, the sky had mottled over with clouds.

We lived in a cheap place in one of those student neighborhoods, an old building, really antiquated, one cigarette would have set it afire instantly. I was driving, rushing back to our old building and that apartment, feeling gleeful, and at first Kathryn was annoyed that I had taken her there to see the dogs, you know, paternalistic or patriarchal or something equally criminal, but then she changed her mind, and in her excitement was actually bouncing on the seat, her legs tucked under her, and she said, “I’m still scared of them, but, Jesus, Brad, I was inspired. Those were really their names! I gave them the right names. I knew exactly what to call them.”

“There’s no such thing as the right name for a dog,” I said. “It’s all arbitrary. A name is arbitrary.”

“No, it isn’t,” she insisted. “There are okay names, approximate names, but there’s one correct one, and I hit it every time.”

And I thought: Well, I dunno, who cares, maybe she’s right, why argue. We got home, and we sat down on the sofa together, and she looked so beautiful in the blue sweatshirt and the blue jeans she was wearing, no socks, just her sneakers, these rags, these gorgeous rags that she had made beautiful by wearing them, and the cap she had on, her gray eyes, the delicate way she moved, and in a sudden heedless rush I said, “Kathryn, I love you,” and she nodded, she acknowledged it, she didn’t say she loved me but I didn’t care and didn’t even notice that she hadn’t said anything in return until about four weeks later when she moved out. But on that day, she leaned into me. We held on to each other. Clutching. We must have stayed together in one posture just holding each other, there on the sofa, for maybe an hour. When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

Then eventually she said, “Look. It’s snowing.”

We disentangled ourselves and got up together and walked over to the window. The air had been abruptly filled, every square inch, with snowflakes, and I thought of how peaceful it was, even though the snow was just this humble artifact. “This is our first snow,” I said aloud, thinking that we would have many more years of seeing it together, that we would stand in front of windows year after year, watching the first snow, the two of us, watching the wind swirl it, then watching the spring storms, watching the snow melting and the water rushing down into the storm drains. From now and then onward into forever, this would happen. We would watch our children playing in the melting snow, splashing in the puddles. After we died, we would still be seeing everything together, Kathryn and me. Into eternity, I thought. Death would be a trivial event as long as I loved her.