own daughter was not a college girl, apparently would never be. It wasn’t Nancy, because Nancy’s hair was shorter. It had to be the younger girl, the one who had multiple sclerosis.
She was about to say something to her, was wracking her brain for the name, but then she blinked, her eyes nearly aching from the strain. She could make out another figure, on its knees, its head in the young woman’s lap. A man, must be. Because of the footlights she could see lower but not higher up—see the man’s bent legs, the vertical planes of the soles of his shoes, even their patterning, with the orange light from the sodium lamp shining onto the grooved rubber surface. She moved around to try to make him out, so the wheelchair was more in profile. But his head was down and she could not see his face. Indistinct sounds of choking. Was it sex? No: the man was crying, or sniveling at least, and the girl was speaking in low, consoling tones. They were drunk, or at least the man was drunk—the man was well on his way to wasted. The girl might not be drunk at all, as Susan recalled, she probably didn’t drink—her way of speaking had stutters and pauses, had slushy consonants—it was common with her disease, Casey had said. But the man slurred when he spoke, slurred and mumbled, and with him it was all drunkenness.
On a spying impulse she crept closer, screened from them by trees.
“It’ll be OK,” said the girl, and stroked the man’s head, comforting. Who was he? Not enough light. She couldn’t tell.
“One night you pet one,” he slurred, “and the next night you come in and you have to kill it.”
“You could change jobs,” said the girl, in her soft, halting way. “If it’s too hard.”
“There’s no one else to take it,” said the man, and raised his head. He was sobering up now, or had stopped sniveling, anyway. There was a branch in front of him and she couldn’t see his features. “Someone has to do it.”
“I’m sure they do . . .”
“There’s weeks when, though, I feel it’s all on me, like the whole thing is on me. You know?”
Susan hit her anklebone on something hard, winced and looked down. It was a round river rock at the edge of a pool—mounds of rocks, dry reeds white in the nighttime, the black water. The still, black pools: she felt such an affinity for them. Who knew what he was talking about, some kind of mass euthanasia of unwanted pets? And yet the information was being dispensed as though he was a hero: he was a noble caretaker, he was a suffering martyr in his euthanizing. Repulsive.
Beneath her the pool was peaceful, black and smooth. So tranquil was the pool: look at the pools, pretend the pool alone was real, its dark relief, simplicity. She would creep backward, if she could do it silently and without tripping—back away from the conversation. After all, if these two were still here, there could be other guests lingering. She might still be able to redeem herself, as a hostess. She should sweep the rooms and make sure. She started her retreat.
Quiet.
“You’re so pretty,” said the man more loudly, in a different tone. His words still ran together, but now he was projecting.
“Shh,” said the girl.
“Come on. Lemme—”
“No.”
“Your eyes are nice.”
“We’ll get you some water,” said the girl.
He was trying to force himself on her, pushing his face up to hers. Jesus, she thought, a guy who used dead dogs as foreplay.
It was a new one on her.
There was the sound of it, the flesh sound of arms or chests, of soft fronts blundering.
“Stand up,” said the girl firmly. “It’s alcohol. That’s all.”
A long moment and then the man stood up droopily.
“We’ll go inside,” said the girl. “We’ll get you some water.”
She reached for her handrims and Susan stepped back into a nook, back behind a bush—the rhododendron, thick and waxy. In a minute they went past her, the girl ahead in the chair, the man slowly following. She recognized him from behind: Addison.
Where was Nancy? Asleep, maybe. Sleeping girlfriend in a wheelchair, dying dogs. That was the strategy. He was golden.
When they had disappeared she stepped up to the pool again and stared down into it.
•
There were others, she discovered, but they were fast asleep. Casey was lying on one length of the L-shaped couch in the cat room, a blanket pulled over