Free The Dogs of Littlefield by Suzanne Berne

her neighbors. The park was a haven, not a kennel. Out of this conviction she had conceived last spring of posting signs where dog people tended to gather. Reminders that the park did not belong to them, no matter what they might think. But then someone else had taken up her idea and begun posting crude, threatening signs. Not what she would have written.
    And now dogs poisoned left and right, the park turning into a no-man’s-land. Horrible, horrible. Ban dogs from the park altogether, for their own good, that was the only answer. She’d devoted her latest column to outlining this position; tonight she planned to defend it in front of the board of aldermen.
    If only having Tina in the house wasn’t such a strain and a distraction. Tina was so unpredictable, in a way Mrs. Beale recalled from Tina’s adolescence: fogs of brooding alternating with spells of sultry good cheer, alternating with frosty petulance. Also self-indulgent: she turned up the heat, left on the lights. Bottles of chardonnay crowded the refrigerator door where Mrs. Beale liked to keep her Lactaid milk. Peculiar foods lined the shelves: yogurts and a green vitamin powder that Tina mixed with orange juice and drank at breakfast. Mrs. Beale’s own daily breakfast was an apple, of which she consumed even the core, and a glass of milk. She did, however, allow herself a finger of Scotch every evening. Sometimes two.
    Worst were visits from Tina’s new beau, whom Mrs. Beale could only bring herself to refer to as the Hairy Man. He wore musky cologne and jackets with Nehru collars. He had big white teeth and a thicket of black hair on his head. He had hair even on the backs of his hands, like a werewolf. Last week he snuck up behind her while she was reading the paper at the dining room table and put his paws around her neck . To get her to loosen up, he said. She’d almost had a coronary.
    With all the recent upset she found herself missing her husband. Several times since Tina’s arrival, Mrs. Beale had opened a shirt package in his dresser. Took out the shirt, shook it. Breathed in a whiff of starch.
    She’d even found herself missing George. Two weeks ago he’d stopped by to fix a gutter that had become detached from the side of the house, said he noticed it while out for a walk. Tina, however, was adamant that she was relieved to be free of George. A monster of self-involvement. A narcissist. Talked about himself ad nauseam. Didn’t help enough with the boys. She’d had to do all the planning for their bar mitzvahs, for instance, even though George was the one who was Jewish. Never mind that it was Tina who insisted on the bar mitzvahs, George claiming to be agnostic. “They need something spiritual,” Tina had said at the time. “This is a frightening world.”
    Mrs. Beale was fond of her grandsons, but she could not detect anything spiritual about them after their bar mitzvahs. If anything they seemed somewhat more material, having received a good deal of money and several electronic gadgets apiece as rewards for those Sunday mornings spent at Hebrew School.
    Final indictment of George: selfish in bed.
    â€œPerformance issues,” confided Tina one recent evening when they were sitting at the kitchen table, Tina drinking wine, Mrs. Beale nursing a mug of warm milk, while rain smacked against the windowpanes and the radiators clanked. “So you’d think he’d be willing to try something else. I’ve got needs, too. But I can count on two hands in all the years we were together that he agreed to—”
    â€œPlease,” Mrs. Beale said in a small voice.
    Tina shook back her lion-colored hair. “Oh, come on, Mother. Do you even know what I’m talking about? Don’t be such a prude.”
    Mrs. Beale looked deeply into her mug. She had become adept over the years at knowing certain things while simultaneously not knowing them, especially when it came to her own