White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,40
got involved with someone. Erika Lunquist.”
“I don’t know her.”
“You’d probably know her if you saw her. I didn’t tell you before you went on leave. I thought it would blow over. I stayed at the Gordons’ a couple of weeks, and then Lawrence and I agreed we’d try and start over. He stopped seeing Erika, at least that’s what he said.
“I can almost respect a man who’s got enough passion to love two women at once. But it turns out I’m not the sort of person who can share. It tore me up, and I told him he had to choose. He chose to stay married. He said it was over with Erika, that it had been more about sex and fascination than love. Those weren’t his words, but that’s more or less what he said.
“So we took up life together again. But a couple of weeks later I ran into Hasse, Erika’s husband. He asked how I’d weathered the camping trip. ‘What camping trip?’
“‘The one our spouses were on together.’ I thought Lawrence had been working.
“When he got home from work, I lost it. He told me the trip had been planned for a long time, and they’d needed to say good-bye. Good-bye! That’s all you needed to say, I told him. One word. It didn’t require four days together. He said he understood why I was upset, he was sorry he’d hurt me, and that he’d never, ever lie to me again.
“But then it happened again. The third time, I told him it was over. I couldn’t be married to someone I couldn’t trust. In fairness, I can’t altogether blame him.”
“I can,” said Muriel.
“No, listen. My body didn’t want him, and he knew it. Who doesn’t want to be desired? Maybe I’d have done the same thing. The point is, the marriage was dying. And now it’s dead.”
The sun was half above, half under the horizon. It traveled down the sky slowly, and then seemed to plummet. The ibis began to move differently, their attention no longer underwater. They appeared to be listening for something, some signal. Suddenly they rose as one bird and spread across the sky in a long line. It felt like a kind of holiness, white wings dipped in black. Alice looked out over the calm, darkening waters of the dam and began to cry. She threw a rock hard toward the water, and it landed with a splash. The sky was deep purple except for a rising sliver of moon.
“Will you stay here?”
“I don’t know. I’m still in our house in the Old Village. He moved out with Daphne.”
“You gave him your beautiful Daphne?”
Don’t, she wanted to say. “Yes, I gave him Daphne. We’d better head back.”
Muriel walked in front of her, and every so often she turned around and said wise things, half of which Alice didn’t hear: “You’ll be happy again, you’ll see.”
Tears leaked out in the darkness. The path widened and soon they were walking side by side over a rutted track toward the place where they’d parked the truck. They held hands to steady each other in the dark.
Muriel started the truck and drove toward the Old Village. “You know,” said Alice, “you and Eric don’t have to stop liking Lawrence.”
“Are you kidding? I never want to see him again.”
Part of her was glad to hear those words. She never wanted to see him again, either.
At home, Muriel said good-bye, and her truck lights disappeared down the road. Alice opened a can of sardines for the cats, and Magoo purred and rubbed against her ankles. “Where’s Horse?” she asked. The long-legged, cross-eyed one.
She picked up the soapstone carving of the boy’s head she’d bought on that first trip here. The boy’s face was innocent, hopeful, as she’d been. The soft stone was greenish gray with small scratches and dents. She held it in her hands and thought about something she’d once said to Lawrence. They were lying in bed. He turned to her, hoping to make love, and she told him she couldn’t—her body felt nothing for his. It was true, but an unforgivable thing to say.
Once upon a time, she couldn’t have imagined a day without him, and now she shuddered to think of his hands touching her breasts, shuddered to think how she’d taken off her clothes while his eyes traveled the geography of her nakedness.
What scrap heap in the world could hold all the loves once felt, now vanished?