Mrs. Small’s eyes were shiny as she turned to Dottie. “Annie Appleby used to be a friend of ours. Well, she was someone we knew. She was someone we—” Her husband cut her off with a subtle gesture of the sort that long-married couples can use with each other, and they finished their breakfast in silence.
Midmorning they left the house together. They left the house, which is what everyone who came there did: leave. Dottie was always reminded that people were there to visit others, or—as in the case of the Smalls—to be part of their business world, or, frequently, to see their children at the college. Whatever it was, they were connected to something in the little city of Jennisberg, Illinois; they stepped out into the street with a purpose. The big oak door closing, accentuating this, the muffling of voices the moment they were on the front porch, the inescapable whisper of abandonment—well, that was part of the business too.
Mrs. Small came back alone right after lunch. She undid the scarf from around her neck and dallied a bit in the lounge, looking at the old photos on the wall, while Dottie worked behind the desk. “I’m Shelly,” said Mrs. Small. “I don’t know if I properly introduced myself before.” Dottie said it was lovely having her stay, and continued with her business. People sometimes got confused in a B&B, not knowing how friendly they should be, and Dottie understood this; she tried to give allowances. In Dottie’s youth she had been extremely poor, and for many years afterward—more than needed to be—whenever she went into a store, whether a dress shop or the butcher’s or a pastry shop or a department store, she expected to be watched and then asked to leave. Dottie held this indignity dear; anyone who came into her B&B was never to feel that way. And Shelly Small, who gave no indication of having suffered poverty of any kind—though of course one never knew—was really very nervous; Dottie was aware of that. In a few minutes Shelly brought up the actress Annie Appleby again. As she stood looking at the photo of the theater, Shelly said to Dottie, but without looking at Dottie, “I think about Annie a lot. Much more than I need to, let’s just say that.” She gave Dottie a quick smile then, and what passed over her face was a look that caused Dottie to feel for a moment as if a small fish had swum through her stomach, a feeling she recognized as a symptom of—well, almost pity, though pity was a confusing thing, and Dottie would hate for people to pity her, as she knew had been done in the past.
Dottie suddenly asked the woman if she would like a cup of tea, and Shelly said, “Oh, wouldn’t that be nice,” and so they sat in the living room, which was really the lounge. Shelly Small didn’t take more than one sip of the tea; that was just a prop, as they would say in the world of theater, just a piece of furniture, so to speak, allowing her to sit in Dottie’s house on that autumn day while the light shifted through the room. That cup of tea, Dottie saw, gave her permission to talk.
And to the best of Dottie’s ability, as she recalled it later, this was the gist of what Shelly said:
—
Dr. Small had served in Vietnam years ago with another physician, a man named David Sewall. They were never in danger in Vietnam, Shelly claimed; it was quite dull, really. They worked in a hospital in a safe area toward the end of the war, with plenty of notice to leave the country in time, they were not hanging from helicopters during the fall of Saigon, nothing like that, nor did they, in the hospital, even see a lot of “awful stuff,” really—Shelly didn’t want Dottie to get the impression that these men were traumatized the way so many people were…Well, you know, those who served— Okay. Slapping her hands gently down onto her black-slacked thighs. So. When Richard came home from the war he met Shelly on a train that was heading to Boston, and after a year they got married and David was their best man. David later became a psychiatrist and married a very pretty woman named Isa. They had three sons. The Small family and the Sewall family were friends—they lived in the same town outside of Boston, and were both involved with fundraising for the orchestra and, oh, you know how things are, you get a set of friends and the Sewalls were their friends. The wife, Isa, was always a little odd, unknowable, very restrained, but a nice woman. David drank too much, everyone knew that, but he managed not to show up at the office with drink on his breath, being a doctor or a minister, those were the two professions where you could never have drink on your breath—and the sons, oh, it didn’t matter, they were how sons are, two turned out fine, one not so fine. Isa was always worried, David was often strict, and the point is that after thirty years of marriage David and Isa divorced. It shocked everyone. There were other couples you’d have placed money on way before you’d have placed any money on the Sewalls splitting up, but there you are. Shelly Small raised her thin wrists, palms upward, and gave a tiny shrug that was somehow very serious. “We had our own troubles, you know,” she said. “For years I kept the name of a divorce lawyer in my desk drawer. Right up until we renovated the cottage on the lake for what will be our retirement home,” she said. Dottie nodded her head just once.