“She is packing,” he said, unfolding his napkin. “I’ll have the oatmeal again, and you needn’t prepare anything for her.”
Dottie nodded, and after bringing him his oatmeal she went to help check out the other couple that had been staying there as well. When she returned to the dining room Dr. Small was just standing up, throwing his napkin onto his oatmeal bowl. Dottie felt a deep sense of revulsion—she had been used.
Placing her hands on the top of a dining room chair, she said calmly, “I am not a prostitute, Dr. Small. That is not my profession, you see.”
Unlike his wife, who turned red quickly when surprised or embarrassed, this man turned pale, and Dottie knew—because Dottie knew many things—that this was a far worse sign.
“What in the world do you mean by that?” he finally said. He seemed unable to help but add “Jesus Christ, lady.”
Dottie stayed exactly where she was. “Precisely what I said is what I mean. I offer guests a bed, and I offer them breakfast. I do not offer them counsel from lives they find unendurable.” She closed her eyes briefly, then continued, “Or from marriages that are living deaths, from disappointments suffered at the hands of poor friends who regard their houses as a penis. This is not what I do.”
“Jesus,” said Dr. Small, who was backing away from her. “You’re a whackjob.” He bumped into a chair, and seemed almost ready to fall. He straightened himself and said, pointing a finger, shaking it at her, “You shouldn’t be dealing with the public, good Christ.” He walked into the living room, then headed up the stairs. “I’m surprised no one’s reported you, though I suspect they have. I’ll go online myself, by God.”
Dottie cleared the dishes. Calmness had come to her quickly and quietly. No one had ever lodged a complaint against her. Nor would Dr. Small, who most likely could barely use the Internet; his materials, she remembered, had been in a binder his first morning at the breakfast table.
Dottie waited until she heard the Smalls descending the stairs. Then she went and held the front door open for them; she did not say “Fly safely,” because she did not care if they flew right into the sea, but when she saw Shelly’s red nose, the drop of fluid hanging from its tip, Dottie felt momentarily sad. But Dr. Small said, as he pushed past Dottie with his suitcase, “What a goddamn whackjob, Jesus Christ,” and then Dottie felt the wonderful calmness come to her again. She said politely, “Goodbye now,” and closed the door behind them.
Then she went and sat behind her desk. The house was absolutely silent. In a few minutes she saw the Smalls’ rental car drive from the driveway, and then she took from the far back of her top drawer the slip of paper with the lovely man’s name on it: Charlie Macauley. Charlie Macauley of the Unspeakable Pain. Dottie kissed two fingers and pressed them to his signature.
Snow-Blind
Back then the road they lived on was a dirt road and they lived at the end of it, about a mile from Route 4. This was in the north, in potato country, and back when the Appleby children were small, the winters were icy and snow-filled and there were months when the road seemed impassably narrow. Weather was different then, like a family member you couldn’t avoid. You took it without thinking much. Elgin Appleby attached a sturdy snowplow to his sturdiest tractor, and he was usually able to clear the way enough to get the kids to school. Elgin had grown up in farm country and he knew about weather and he knew about potatoes and he knew who in the county sold their bags with hidden rocks for weight. He was a closed book of a man, he inhabited himself with economy, but his family understood that he loathed dishonesty in any form. He did have surprising and sudden moments of liveliness. For example, he could imitate perfectly old Miss Lurvy, who ran the Historical Society’s tiny museum—“The first flush toilet in Aroostook County,” he would say, heaving back his narrow shoulders as though he had a large bosom, “belonged to a judge who was known to beat his wife quite regularly.” Or he might pretend to be a tramp looking for food, holding out his hand, his blue eyes beseeching, and his children would laugh themselves sick, until his wife, Sylvia, got them calmed down. On winter mornings he let the car warm up in the driveway as he scraped the ice from its windows, exhaust billowing about him until the kids tumbled down the salt-dappled snow on the steps. There were three other kids on the road, the two boys in the Daigle family and their sister, Charlene, who was close to the age of the youngest Appleby child, a strange little girl named Annie.