Free Open House by Elizabeth Berg Page B

paws.”
    I’d asked him the names of the other trees we passed. He knew them all, tried to show me how to identify a tree by looking at the bark, the leaves, the structure of the branches. I learned Dutch elms, oaks. Birches, of course. Black locust, whose blossoms he told me smelled like grape lollipops. “Cardinal,” he said, about a sound we heard coming from the tops of one of the trees, “hear how it’s like a whistle?” I asked if he could see the bird and he handed me the dogs’ leashes and used his big hands to make a frame, and then I saw him, too. I learned blue jay (creaky gate) and catbird. “It
does
sound like a cat!” I said, and King smiled. “Ain’t life a playground?”
    “What are you doing with all these dogs, anyway?” I asked, when we stopped in a park to rest. And he told me walking dogs was his job for the day, he took jobs by the day. Just so happened that his assigned area was near my neighborhood. Yesterday he’d handed out samples of cheese at a supermarket. Smoked Gouda. Very good.
    “I see,” I said. I didn’t really see. I think what he does is pretty nutty. But I like him. He’s such a nice man, plain but really good, like bread and butter. And so easy to be with. Relief. I told him to come by tomorrow, if he could.
    D AVID ATE LESS than half of what was on his plate. Clearing it, I ask, “No good?”
    “No,” he says, “it’s fine. It’s great. I’m just . . . I’m trying to cut down on that stuff a little. You know.”
    “Oh. Sure.” He had half a glass of wine to my three, too. I put the plates in the dishwasher. I should have made chicken. Fish. No. I should have made something brand-new, oh God, of course I should have.
    “Dessert?” I ask.
    “Aw, Sam. I have to pass. But God knows Travis will finish it.” Travis had taken a huge piece of lemon meringue pie up to his room, then come down for another.
    “Coffee?” My voice is thin, taut. “Want coffee at least?”
    If he refuses that, I’ll tell him to leave.
    “Sure,” he says. “But let me go and say good night to Travis. Then we can talk.”
    About what? I think. After Travis left the table, we went over money, what days were whose with our son. Then there was an awkward silence that lasted so long I had a strange impulse to burst out laughing. David was looking down and chewing at his lip, an old nervous habit, and it was no longer my job to remind him not to do it. He moved his spoon left, right. Left. I wanted to snatch it from his hand and say, “Look at me!” but I didn’t know what I’d say after that.
    “Be right back,” he says.
    I watch him walk toward the stairs. I have always loved how he looks from behind. The bit of hair over his collar. His broad shoulders, a good butt, even Rita always admitted that. I hear the stairs at the top of the landing creak in their familiar way. A father, going upstairs to say good night to his son. What has happened here? How have I lost this? I pour two mugs of coffee, bring them into the family room and set them on the coffee table. I sit at the end of the sofa, then move to the middle. I use my finger to quickly check the corners of my eyes for chunks of mascara, ruffle my hair to make it look fuller.
    When he comes back downstairs, David says, “He’s asleep already!”
    “Yeah. He’s been doing that.”
    He looks at his watch. “Eight-thirty?”
    “He’s been getting up earlier lately.”
    David takes his mug of coffee, sits at the edge of his recliner. He looks like he has a body-wide itch he can’t scratch. He doesn’t really want to talk, not about anything. He was just being polite, he feels sorry for me. “Where’s your roommate?” he asks.
    “Spending the night at her boyfriend’s. Sometimes she does that.”
    “Really!”
    “Yes.”
    “Well.” David clears his throat, sets his coffee down
no good?
and then there is silence except for a slight humming sound from one of the lamps.
Quiet!
I want to tell it.
Can’t you let me