Lorrie Moore - Bark - Stories

At the doctor’s sometimes the nurse, and sometimes the physician’s assistant, would walk him back out to her and give her hurried and worried instructions. “Here is his new medicine,” they would say, “but if he has a bad response we’ll put him back on the other one.” Milt would shrug as if he were surrounded by a gaggle of crazy relatives.

Once, a nurse leaned in and whispered, “There’s a fear it may have spread to the brain. If you have any trouble on the weekend, phone the hospital or even the hospice. Watch his balance particularly.”

KC took another of Ian’s books to Milt’s book nook, and one day, not seeing the old man outside, she worriedly tied Cat to the book nook post, went up to the main door, and knocked. She opened it and stepped in. “Hello? Good morning? Milt?”

Out stepped a middle-aged woman with an authoritative stride. Her heels hit the floorboards and stopped. She wore black slacks and a white shirt tucked into the waistband. Her hair was cut short — thick and gray. It was the sort of hair that years ago, when it was dark, wigmakers would have paid good money for. The woman stood there staring for a long time and then said, “I know what you’re up to.”

“What are you talking about?”

“One of his Concertos in Be Minor. How old are you?”

“I’m thirty-eight.”

“I wonder if he knows that. You look younger.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Hence your needs.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“No? You don’t?”

“No.” Denial, when one was accused, was a life force, and would trump any desire to confess. Perhaps this was the animal strength of the psychopathic brain. Or the psychopathy of the animal brain. An admission of guilt would knock the strength right out of you — making it easier for them to twist your arms behind you and put the handcuffs on. It was from Dench, perhaps, that she had learned this.

“Shall we sit?” The pewter-haired woman motioned toward one of the sofas.

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“You don’t.”

“No, besides, I was just walking my dog, and he’s still tied up outside. I was just checking on Milt.”

“Well, my sister has taken him to his doctor’s appointment, so he won’t be needing you today.”

In bed KC lay next to Dench, staring at the ceiling, and smoking a cigarette, though they were not supposed to smoke inside. Cat lay on the quilt at the foot of the bed, doing his open-eyed fake-sleep. They were all carnies at the close of Labor Day. She stared at her Hammond keyboard, which right now had laundry piled and draped over it in angles. “What illness do you suppose Milt actually has?” Dench asked.

“Something quiet but wretched.”

“Early onset quelque chose?”

“Not that early. I don’t think I can go on visiting him anymore. I just can’t do it.”

Dench squeezed her thigh then caressed it. “Sure you can,” he said.

She stabbed out her cigarette in a coffee cup, then, turning, rubbed her hand down along Dench’s sinewy biceps and across his tightly muscled stomach, feeling hounded back into his arms, which she had never really left, and now his arms’ familiarity was her only joy. You could lose someone a little but they would still roam the earth. The end of love was one big zombie movie.

“Do you realize that if you smoke enough you will end up lowering your risk of uterine cancer?” she said.

“That’s a bad one,” said Dench. “The silent killer. Especially in men.”

“What did you do today?”

“I worked on some songs about my slavery-oppressed ancestors. I’m blaming the white man for my troubles.”

She thought of his father. “Well, in your case it’s definitely a white man.”

“For most people it is. That’s why we need more songs.”

“Life! It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it.”

“I wouldn’t have voted for it. I wouldn’t give it any stars. It’s like getting a book where the sexy passages are already underlined. Who wants that?”

She wasn’t sure what he meant. But she kissed him on his shoulder anyway. “Wouldn’t it be lovely just to fly out of here and live far away on a cloud together?”

“To be birds and see Gawwd!”

She had given up trying to determine his facetiousness level. She suspected it was all just habit and his true intent was unknown even to himself. “Yes! We could be birds in a little bird-house that had books and we could read them!” she exclaimed.

Dench turned his head quickly on the pillow to stare at her. “Perhaps we have that already,” he said. “But darlin, we ain’t seeing God.”

“Because God is off in some cybercafé, so tired from all those biblical escapades that now he just wants to sit back and Google himself all day.” She pulled her hand away from Dench since he had not reciprocated with his own. “If he’s not completely deaf to our cries, he’s certainly deaf in one ear.”

“For sure. Not just the hardware of the inner ear but the hairs and jelly further in: all shot.”

“You’re a strange boy.”

“You see? We’re getting past the glaze and right down to the factory paint here.”

She let a few days go by and then she resumed her stopping by at Milt’s on her coffee runs. Because summer had set in she was now bringing Dench iced coffee, but invariably the ice cubes would melt and she would just drink the whole thing herself. Milt still heated up his muffins but often needed her to drive him to doctors’ appointments as well as to other places, and so she ran his errands with him and watched him greet all the salespeople, the druggist, the dry-cleaning girl, all of whom he seemed to know. “I’m so glad my wife’s daughters are gone,” he said at one point as they were driving home. “I dread the house with them there. I’d rather just return to the cave of my own aloneness!”

“I know how you feel.”

“You have no idea,” he said and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek before he got out of the car. “They are as cold as they come. I mean, even the ice on Mars melts in springtime!”

Once she took the old man swimming. They went to a beach farther north on the lake, at a state park on a weekday, when there was no one there. “Don’t look!” he squealed as he took off his shirt and limp-jogged into the water, where he was safer than he was on land. He was not in bad shape, merely covered with liver spots, and his stomach was only slightly rounded and his breasts about the size of her own.

“How’s the water?” she called to him. A line of silver at the water’s edge sparkled in the sun. The sky was the deep belligerent blue of a hyacinth.

“Expect the unexpected!” he called back. She could see he’d once been a strong swimmer. His arms moved surely, bold, precise. Of course, when you expected the unexpected, it was no longer unexpected, and so you were not really following instructions. She admired his gameness. As she approached the water she saw that the silver line along the sand was the early die-off of the alewives: washed ashore gasping and still flipping on your foot as you walked. The dead lay in a shiny line upbeach, and if one of the smelt-like fish died closer to the waves it caught the light like the foil of a gum wrapper. Another putrid perplexity of the earth. She dove out anyway — to swim among the dying. She would pretend to be an aquarium act, floating among her trained, finned minions; if she imagined it any other way it was all too disgusting. She bobbed around a bit, letting the olive waves of the lake crest up and wash over her.

They picnicked back on shore. She had brought cheese sandwiches and club soda and difficult peaches: one had to bite sharply into the thick fuzzed skin of them to get to the juice. They sat huddled in their separate towels, on a blanket, everything sprinkled with sand, their feet coated in it like brown sugar.