On their first date he invited her to a reptile zoo. Carol had doubts about this. Could you even call it a date, this meet-up that had started at the coffee shop—a safe space, in keeping with online dating protocol—a long talk followed by a walk, taking her where she’d never been?
Ernie was balding but not overly heavy, he knew how to smile (even when there was no apparent reason), and he was an animal lover. This last fact, listed on his profile, had brought her here today. The first hour passed swiftly, sharing photos on their phones. Ernie adored birds. “This is Rhonda.” He scrolled to an emerald-plumed parrot. “We’ve been together twenty-three years.”
“They live so long, don’t they!”
“One hopes.”
Rhonda was a good talker, according to Ernie, but susceptible to drafts. “We’ve been through a lot together.” He grinned.
“This is my Johnny. I just lost him.”
“What a sweet beagle! I’m so sorry. How long were you together?”
If he’d asked, Was he easy to train? or worse, Do you plan to get another? the conversation would’ve been cut short. Carol felt a familiar tightening in her throat, an upwelling of tears; but she took a deep breath, and mastered herself. She shared other photos, and presently she felt better, even grateful for this opportunity to talk about Johnny. Perhaps it was easier speaking with a stranger. And maybe this man would become a friend.
“Isn’t ‘pet’ a silly word?” Ernie asked. “Actually, it offends me. So many people don’t see the big picture.”
Indeed they didn’t! She and Johnny were two distinct beings, with obvious unbridgeable differences, and yet. Once she’d known him, Carol couldn’t imagine her life without him. If that wasn’t love, what was? Skeptics might say it was only an exchange, a domination, a deal about food. But Carol knew better. Toward the end, when Johnny was too ill to eat or leave his basket, she’d stood by aching for words and he feebly thumped his tail. He could see her distress, and he was trying to comfort her. So brave and loyal to the end, her Johnny. Carol fell to her knees and began to weep uncontrollably, but she didn’t wail, not wanting to upset him. “What am I going to do without you? Oh my Johnny. You have been good to me.”
~
After the coffee shop they took a stroll and soon came to the park, where Ernie suggested a visit to the reptile zoo. “I come here sometimes. It gives me ideas.”
Along the way, they’d done The Verification, a ritual she’d performed on other meet-ups. It consisted of questions, direct or indirect, to corroborate information that appeared on the other’s profile. Some people were brazen about their bait and switch.
“You’re divorced?” Ernie asked, smiling.
“Three years now.”
She remembered how when Ted had walked out the front door with his suitcase on his way to move in with their ex-real estate agent, a woman seventeen years his junior (they’d been doing more than looking at houses), he didn’t pause to say goodbye to Johnny, or even to acknowledge him in the vestibule, not because he didn’t also love Johnny (he did, Carol believed), but because the quality of Ted’s love was compromised by cowardice. That had been her experience, too. The man lacked courage to face the end. He closed the door in Johnny’s face.
“And you have one child?”
“A son,” Carol said. “He works for the Forest Service. He fights fires.”
“Good for him!”
Carol hoped so. There’d been a time not long ago when J.J. was still using, and she’d slept with her credit cards and car keys under her pillow. Her son would steal anything for drugs. His love for getting high surpassed any other consideration in life. But in the last two years, J.J. had cleaned up and was sticking to his steps.
“And you never married?” Carol asked. “No kids?”
Ernie shook his head. “Naw. I’ve got Rhonda.”
At the reptile zoo, she let him pay for her ticket. “Snakes don’t bother you?” he asked.
“Not really,” she lied.
“They’re not my favorite. Do you mind if we go straight to the lizards?”
She consented and soon found herself in a maze of climate-controlled tanks, with lizards that were colorful or gray as stones, that skittered with impressive alacrity or crept in a slow-motion strut; they might’ve been born last week or 40 million years ago. Who could say? Ernie struck up a conversation with an employee who seemed to know him, inquiring about the creatures’ diet. “How’s the new mash? The supplier is reliable?”
Carol felt invisible and when they finally left the lizard house she told him she’d had enough of the zoo, so they exited and continued their walk through the park and a nearby neighborhood where the houses were small and the trees tall. Ernie stopped in front of a clump of hydrangeas, whose lush, gigantic blooms screamed their bursts of purple. “Wow, those are out of this world!” Carol marveled. “I wonder how they do that?”
“It’s the soil pH. If you work at it, you’d be surprised what can be restored.” He thrust his hands in his pockets. “Would you like to come in?”
It took her a moment to understand.
“What—you live here?”
Set back from the street was a little stucco house with trees towering behind it. Marigolds lined a broken sidewalk leading to the front door. In the picture window, she could see the bell-like outline of a birdcage.
“Yes. I could show you my garden.” He smiled. From his pocket he fished out a key. “I think you should see it.”
“Uh—thank you, but I’ll go home now.” She held out her hand.
As they shook, Carol imagined her empty kitchen and the long evening stretching before her. When Ernie released his grip he didn’t immediately withdraw his hand. The touch continued, their hands resting on each other. In those two seconds—three seconds—his eyes met hers.
“Are you sure?”
Carol made a show of looking at her watch, which was also a pretext to remove her hand. “OK—I got a few minutes. Show me your garden.”
He led her on a path along the side of the house, beside rows of staked tomatoes and basil, to a metal gate. He inserted the key into the lock. “The seasons are funny now, don’t you think? Do you garden?” He spoke in a higher pitch, eager.
“A bit,” she lied.
Beyond the gate was a wall of climbing creepers and a narrow path to plots with raised beds and raspberry bushes. Following, Carol picked a berry and brought it to her lips. Ernie stared. “I had a feeling that I could trust you with this.”
Ahead, in a clearing, a figure with a bobbing gait moved slowly on the ground. A turkey, Carol thought. Perhaps a peacock?
“Come.”
Drawing closer she saw, chained to a stake, a pterodactyl.
~
“That’s Adam.” Ernie waited a second and then he laughed.
“Oh my Lord.” Carol knelt to observe from a better angle, and Adam nervously edged away, dragging the chain attached to his foot. “Is that what I think it is?” she asked. “Is it possible? Hey there, kiddo.” Adam had a large spade-shaped head, a horny beak, and rough russet feathers.
“You’re the first person I’ve shared him with. It’s been driving me crazy, keeping this to myself. I can trust you, right?”
“Of course.” She stood up, unsure of his meaning. “I wouldn’t want him to come to harm. It’s not every day you see a pterodactyl.”
Ernie scratched his cheek. “It’s a pterosaur, maybe a pterodactyl. I’m still working on that question. But it’s definitely a pterosaur. When he first showed up here I wondered if he was a sick eagle, he’d eaten some poison or something, because of those greasy-looking feathers. But his head, those funky feet—well, obviously that’s no eagle. Honestly, I didn’t know what to think. Then it hit me.”
“But how? We’re talking millions of years, right?”
“Sixty or seventy. I don’t know how. You read about scientists discovering fish that were previously believed to be extinct. Maybe Adam’s crew somehow kept under the radar. Or these heavy rains and landslides we’ve been having lately—maybe they exposed some preserved and unpetrified eggs and they hatched. But I’ll tell you this much,” Ernie clasped his hands together, “that day he showed up in the garden, he was in such poor shape and so weak he could hardly move, eating snails off the dirt…and I…well, I felt like he was my purpose now. My responsibility. He’d come to me. He’s why I’m here.”
Adam had reached the end of his chain and his ankle violently jerked, upon which he circled back, fixing a green, viscous eye on Carol.
She didn’t know what to say. Ernie’s talk sounded far-fetched. Adam edged closer, leaving a trail of urine, hissing. Carol stepped back.
Ernie beamed. “You wanna feed him?”
~
The back door opened onto Ernie’s kitchen, where the sink was full of dirty dishes and a line of ants crawled on the countertop. “Sorry!” He whisked his hand on the surface. “Wasn’t expecting company. Feel like some cider?” He went to the refrigerator. “It’s my own recipe.”
“No thank you.” Carol was suddenly aware that she wanted, very much, to pee. Her consumption at the coffee shop, her nerves with Ernie, this meeting with Adam—oh dear!
“NO RUNS, NO HITS, NO ERRORS!” blared a voice.
Carol jumped.
“That’s Rhonda,” Ernie said apologetically. “We listen to a lot of baseball.”
“Where’s your bathroom?” Carol demanded.
He pointed down the hallway. “First on your right.”
With effort, she managed dignified strides, and once in the bathroom she yanked down her jeans while simultaneously inspecting the premises, which were passably clean, a fact that, while she peed, compounded her relief.
Emerging a short time later, now serene, Carol dawdled on her way back to the kitchen. She was curious about this place. The living room had piles of magazines, an upright piano covered with books and papers, lots of clutter but nothing gross or sinister. She approached Rhonda in her cage, wanting her to say something, but Rhonda edged away on her perch and turned her back. Carol returned to the kitchen.
Ernie was opening cans onto a tray. “Today we’re doing kippers. Adam appreciates a bit of variety. Rico will help me out, too. Rico—he’s the fellow at the reptile zoo?—he’s got a source for insect mash. Beetles and organically farmed grasshoppers. Rico thinks I’ve got an iguana.” Ernie chuckled. “But we know different. Carol, I’d like to ask you a favor.”
~
That night, she curled up in bed with several of J.J.’s old books. Like many children, he’d gone through a dinosaur phase, entranced by illustrations of monsters. When he was six years old, an enormous inflatable T-Rex had taken up half of his bedroom and sometimes Carol would push it around, roaring, “I’m going to eat you up!” while J.J., wearing only his underpants, ran ahead and screamed with delight.
The T-Rex was long gone now and with his addictions J.J. had fallen into another set of jaws, but thank goodness he’d survived; and these days, parachuting into fires, he tried to save a bit of what was left in this world. Carol was proud of him, of his newfound sense of higher purpose. It made her feel closer to him again, like these early books, these traces of innocence. Maybe she hadn’t got rid of J.J.’s books for the same reason she kept Johnny’s travel cage at the top of the basement stairs. It pinched her heart to see it, but she couldn’t be parted from that pinch, that pain.
There wasn’t much information about pterodactyls in the books. Clearly they weren’t the stars of the dinosaur world. She learned more on the internet but could find no cases of confusion with contemporary fauna.
Ernie’s requested favor had been a simple one, but it implied confidence. He would be out of town for two days to attend a sales convention. “I’m giving a speech on plant-based biodegradables. While I’m away, could you come over and feed Adam?”
“Ernie, I don’t know…”
“You have time, don’t you? You said you’re not working.”
This was true. Over coffee she’d mentioned her early retirement from Omega Insurance, though she didn’t say that her chief reason for leaving was because her ex-husband Ted also worked at Omega, and retirement spared her having to see his fat fucking face.
“It’ll be easy-peasy,” Ernie insisted. “Adam will be no trouble. Carol, you’re right for this, I can tell.”
~
On Tuesday when she came by to retrieve a set of keys and instructions for pterosaur kibble, Ernie invited her into the living room where he’d set up a card table and put out china cups and saucers, along with linen napkins. “I thought we could have tea first. And I made carrot cake.” He bustled into the kitchen. “It’s still warm!”
Carol noticed that the room had been straightened up, its books and magazines now aligned in neat stacks. Ernie returned with a pan in his oven mitt.
He cut her a slice and filled her cup. She sipped and looked around, pausing at the bird cage. “Not too talkative today, is she?”
Ernie whispered, “Depends on her mood. Rhonda might seem aloof, but deep down she’s very shy.” He said loudly, “Carol is pleased to meet you, Rhonda. Aren’t you, Carol?”
“Oh—sure,” Carol said.
He cut himself some cake. “And when you come for Adam, maybe you could feed Rhonda and turn on her ballgame?” He pointed to the music system. “I’ll have it set for the station. That’s for tomorrow. On Thursday there’s not a game but I’ve recorded an old one, it’s all cued, just right here.” Ernie got up and brought her the remote control. “She likes her ballgame. You don’t mind?”
“No,” she lied.
“Thanks. I knew you had a good heart from the moment I heard you speak about Johnny.”
Carol wished he wouldn’t bring this up. It felt invasive. She changed the subject.
“What went through your mind when you first found Adam?”
“A million things! Golly. He was so weak, I brought him in the house to take care of him. I was afraid I’d lose him. And I started reading up. You know some adult pterosaurs could grow as tall as a giraffe—if he was one of those kind, what was I gonna do? Now I don’t think that’ll be Adam’s case, but in the beginning, it was all so new! When he got his strength back I let him fly around the house but that stressed Rhonda pretty badly, and then he started getting ornery.” Ernie jumped up and peeled back his shirt, revealing an enormous red welt, still inflamed and swollen and scabby. He pulled his shirt down. “That’s when we shifted to the current arrangement. Remember to be careful, Carol. More tea?”
She declined, and he spoke about the neighbors, who fortunately minded their own business. Children stayed away, too. And as for cats…
“They’re assholes.” Ernie’s face grew grave, lines creased his forehead. “They’re responsible for ornithological speciecide! It’s happening, even as we sit here. We can’t look the other way!”
Carol blinked, taken aback by this sudden vehemence, which was a side of Ernie she hadn’t seen before. Although she considered herself pro-dog, if she was obliged to choose a camp, she’d never felt particularly concerned by cats. She also remembered a day in the park when Johnny, who enjoyed chasing after squirrels, trotted up to her with a dead pigeon in his jaws and dropped it at her feet.
Ernie continued, “I worried about Adam in the beginning. Cats used to walk along that back fence. Some days I’d even see the fuckers in the garden. There was a big orange tomcat that used to lord it over the neighborhood, he roamed everywhere. But then one morning I came out and he was in the garden, over there…” Ernie traced a circle around his cup. “And a bit over there…” He continued the circle. “And the rest of him there. It was more than curiosity that killed that cat! Our Adam can stand up for himself.”
~
On Wednesday Carol let herself in the front door and greeted Rhonda, who gave a slight flutter, more like a shudder, then looked the other way. Carol spooned out her designated measure from Ernie’s seed stockpile, then she turned on the ballgame. In the kitchen she took out Adam’s food, liver dumplings that Ernie had prepared specially, and went out to the back garden.
Adam hissed when she put the tray on the ground, but he shambled forward and gobbled up his dumplings. She unfolded a lawn chair and lingered long afterward, observing Adam and his after-dinner perambulation, circling his stake. Sometimes he made a little hop, like a hint of dance.
He’d performed the same movement the first time she’d seen him, and Ernie had said, “If he could get up a run, he’d lift off the ground and fly. But I don’t know where he’d go or how long he’d last on his own. I struggle with that. I want to give him more time to recuperate.”
Now, as he made his orbit, dragging his chain, intermittently hopping, Carol told him, “I know how you feel, honey.”
He came round again.
“But this world is all we’ve got.”
Darkness fell, and mosquitoes began to bite.
“I’ll be back,” she promised.
~
That summer, she skipped her book club and scaled back on her yoga classes. Her visits to Ernie’s place were frequent and though there was a sameness to them, as June melted into July, they offered a variety of pleasures. In the back garden, Carol sat on her lawn chair, sometimes with a novel, while Ernie puttered nearby, weeding his beans or exclaiming over his cucumbers, while Adam, as regular as clockwork, made his rounds, his mouth open in the heat, his tongue a luxurious turquoise blue with yellow spots that seemed to shine of their own volition. She fed him chicken gizzards and an insect blend provided by Rico. “Can you get more of this?” she called to Ernie. “He really digs the beetles.” On rare occasions Adam halted—it was as if the clock had stopped—and stared at Carol with his snot-green eye. It gave her a peculiar sensation. A thrill, really, the first time it happened. He pivoted his head to bulge his other eye at her. Carol sat very still and stared right back. She felt she was falling into a bottomless gulf of time.
Then Adam resumed his rounds, but something shifted in his manner and pace, which became a saunter.
One day, with Carol sitting nearby, Adam settled on his stomach and fell into a snooze. She put her finger to her lips and waved at Ernie to come over.
“Isn’t he precious?”
Ernie smiled. “He sure is.”
“I wonder what he thinks is going on. How much he understands.”
Ernie leaned on his hoe, resting his chin on his hands. “You know, sometimes Rhonda talks when she dreams.”
“Rhonda dreams?”
He appeared startled by this question. “Parrots have REM sleep, Carol! Researchers have known that for a long time. Oh yes, Rhonda dreams.” He nodded. “I haven’t had as much opportunity to observe Adam, but I don’t doubt he’s a deep one.” There was a silence, as they looked on, then Ernie added, “He seems to be accepting you. He’s not the same around me.”
Carol had noticed this, too. A definite contrast to her relationship with Rhonda, who still gave her the cold shoulder. Carol had thought it would be amusing to hear Rhonda talk, and Ernie was full of anecdotes about how Rhonda was determined to assert herself, even if she didn’t fully understand the human semantics of her sounds. But whenever Carol was in her presence, Rhonda fell silent. Not a peep. Other times, when Carol was in the back garden and Ernie entered the house, she overhead Rhonda’s voice through the screen door. Carol felt vaguely insulted, and had come to dislike the stifling atmosphere of the living room, the unpleasant sensation of being judged. She preferred the garden. With Adam, she could chill.
“Lately I wonder,” said Ernie, tilting his head, “if Adam is a he. Could be a she.”
Carol laughed. “An Eve? How can we tell?”
“Well, the colors of those feathers might suggest a female. Or maybe pterosaurs are sexually dimorphic. It’s possible. Not sure anybody knows.”
“So we could have eggs? Little pterochicklings?”
“If the conditions were right. Wouldn’t that be special?”
Then he stepped forward and kissed her on the mouth. Carol was unprepared for this, so surprised that she didn’t even try to move away. Until this moment, she’d assumed that they’d bypassed romantic expectations and had settled into another kind of arrangement.
“What was that?” she asked, when his lips left hers.
“You don’t want me to?”
“Not really.” He was silent, and then she joked, “What if Rhonda saw?”
He gazed at her, unsmiling, then turned back to his hoeing. “OK.”
But the incident made Carol wonder, and a few days later, she asked, “Ernie, have you ever been in a serious relationship with a person? Have you lived with anybody?”
His face grew solemn. “Couple times. I got married when I was a kid just out of school, it was over quickly, I hardly think about it. But the second one lasted six years.”
This conversation took place in the kitchen, while Ernie prepared fruit over the sink, cutting out bruised or buggy bits before making a compote. He tossed the leavings in a pan that Carol would take out to Adam. Ernie put down his knife and reached behind a shelf of cookbooks and removed a framed photograph.
“She’s very pretty,” Carol said, honestly.
“Yes, she was. A lovely person. But we were wasteful together, no sense of sustainability. It wasn’t meant to be.”
He took the frame from her hands and replaced it behind the cookbooks.
Watching him, Carol recalled how when Ted had abandoned her, she’d suffered terribly from insomnia and she started using sleeping pills. One night, in a moment of anguish, she’d considered swallowing the whole bottle and ending everything.
For Ted! The thought deeply embarrassed her now. How foolish! What a waste that would’ve been.
To this day she kept the unfinished bottle in the back of her medicine cabinet, not in the event she changed her mind, but as a reminder of past illusions.
~
That summer, Ernie visited Carol’s house only once. She could sense his disapproval of the way she lived, of her straggly ferns and her indifferent lawn with a gas grill in back, beneath a towering untrimmed hedge, under which she’d buried Johnny. “There’s a lot you could do with this!” he’d declared, his front teeth biting his lower lip. Carol shrugged. With the hedge this tall she didn’t worry about the neighbors; she could walk around naked if she felt like it. Ernie was eager to crawl up into her attic to inspect her insulation, but she refused his offer. Instead, they went out to the ferns and gathered snails. These they took back to Ernie’s place and fed to Adam, who avidly crunched them down, shells and all, like popcorn.
“He loves them! Look at him go. Snails are his favorite.”
“His soul food,” said Ernie.
“Maybe he’s French.” She threw him another. “Oui, tu adores ça!”
Other days they shared picnics in Ernie’s back garden. Carol brought smoked salmon and let Ernie handle all the other preparations. She had to credit his skills, his veggies and subtle use of herbs. She’d never tasted such wonderful salads. Ernie made diligent use of Adam’s feces, which emerged loose and absinthe green but which quickly dried so you could break it neatly off the ground. Ernie extolled its fertilizing qualities. “Full disclosure, Carol: it’s the secret behind the hydrangeas.”
One night they got in Carol’s car and drove to the river bluffs outside of town to admire the sunset, which was more spectacular this year due to fires raging in nearby states. They walked along the lookout points. Recently Carol had removed her profile from the online dating site but an instant before she clicked delete, it occurred to her to check Ernie’s profile. She discovered that he’d already removed his. He hadn’t said a word about it, but this action seemed significant.
As they hiked along the bluffs, they passed other couples who’d come to survey the horizon. And suddenly, Carol found herself face-to-face with Ted.
“Well hello.”
She’d spotted him first, so she had the jump. Plus, she was with a stranger, which added an ingredient of confusion, while Ted’s companion, the real estate agent, was all-too-familiar to Carol. Her name was Sofia. And look at her little skirt. Oh my.
“Well, hey,” he said.
A hot breeze swirled around them.
Carol turned to Ernie. “I’ll introduce you to Ted.”
Ernie held out his hand. “I’ve heard about you.” He managed to make his tone civil but with an undercurrent of insolence, which Carol appreciated.
“This is my friend Ernie.” She put her arm through his. “And Sofia. How are you?”
Sofia nodded gamely. “Fine, Carol. Thank you.”
They made small talk about the infernal, copper sky. Then they continued their separate ways. Ernie was silent—perhaps waiting for her to comment?—but for Carol there was nothing more to add. Oh sure, Sofia looked good, but her contrast with Ted was even more striking than before. How long could he fool himself? Time shows no mercy, Carol thought. You have to see what’s coming.
~
“Hi Mom.”
“J.J.!”
“Hey.”
“How are you?”
“Great. How are you?”
“Fine.” Carol was out of breath, sitting on her exercise bike when she answered the phone. “How is it with those fires? I’ve been watching on TV. Where are you now?”
“Listen, I’ve got news. Excellent news.”
“Yes?”
“Great news. You want to hear it?”
“Of course I want to hear it.”
There was a crack-rattle on the line.
“OK, here it is. I’m getting married.”
“What? Really?”
“Sure, really!”
“Wow. Congratulations. Who is she?”
“She’s awesome, Mom. She’s great. Life has never been so…you know, fulfilled? It makes sense now. Everything makes sense.”
“I’m so glad for you, J.J. Who is this person? What’s her name? Tell me about her.”
“We work at the same place. She’s great.”
“She’s a fire jumper? What’s her name?”
“She’s great. Angela. Angela jumps with me.”
“Where are you now? I hope you’re keeping safe.”
“Of course we are. I’m calling you with this big news. We’re getting married.”
“When? Have you set a date?”
“I mean now. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Now?”
“I need to ask a favor. I’ll pay you back. We’re getting all kinds of bonuses for overtime. When we jump. But I need a thousand dollars.”
“A thousand dollars?”
“Yeah. That’s what I need to make it work. You can wire it to me. Western Union would be fine.”
“It costs a thousand dollars to get married? Now?”
“Oh, we wanted to do it at home, we wanted to have a family ceremony, all that stuff. But we’re in love. And with your situation with Dad, well, it’s delicate. I don’t want it to be awkward. So if you could wire me a thousand dollars, that would take care of everything. Everything would be OK.”
“It would?”
“Sure! Great. Even—six hundred?”
“J.J., are you taking care of yourself?”
“Absolutely! Isn’t this great news?”
“I don’t think I can wire you money.”
“Mom!”
“No.”
“Mom!”
“Ask your father, J.J.” Carol looked around the room. “Congratulations.”
She put down her phone and rested her head on the bike handlebars, weeping.
~
Often when Ernie was away at work, Carol took the liberty of going to his place. She didn’t enter the house but opened the back yard gate with a duplicate key she’d surreptitiously made and went to the garden where she sat on her lawn chair and spoke to Adam, mainly in French.
At first Ernie had found such talk amusing but lately he’d grown touchy since he didn’t follow it and felt left out. Now Carol reserved these moments for when she and Adam were alone.
“On est dans le même cas, tous les deux. Il nous reste peu de temps. Qu’est-ce qu’on fera?”
Adam circled his stake and Carol felt as if a crack had opened in the earth. The sky throbbed. What did the future mean now?
She got up from her chair and picked raspberries. She ate a few, and brought back a handful to Adam and threw them on the ground. He stopped and slurped them up. Then he resumed his circles and periodically, he hopped. When he did so, Carol hopped, too. Together, they danced.
~
The breaking point came with Pat.
“Pat? Who’s Pat?”
“Patricia. My sister, Pat,” Ernie said. “She’s coming for a visit.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
Ernie had mentioned his parents, his father dead, his mother in a nursing home in Fort Chivington. “Pat’s done a hell of a lot for Mom. If she wants to come see me, of course I have to be hospitable.”
Carol felt suddenly anxious.
“What about Adam?”
“What about him?”
“Well, how’s that going to work? Aren’t I the only one who knows?”
“Yes. But don’t worry. You’ll like Pat. It’ll be fun.”
“Why shouldn’t I worry?”
“She’s not going out to the back garden. I know this.”
His dismissive attitude irked her.
“How do you know this, Ernie?”
“She’s heavy, OK? Pat uses a cane. She’s not going to try those steps.” He cleared his throat. “She’s certainly not going to do any dancing.”
Carol was shocked. He must’ve seen her. But how? She felt sheepish but also troubled that he hadn’t mentioned it, that he’d saved it till now. She pretended not to understand.
“Well, thank you for the invitation. I’ll be glad to meet your family.”
On the appointed day she arrived at Ernie’s house, noticing a brown van with Colorado plates parked at the curb, and instead of using the side gate, as was her habit, she walked up the broken sidewalk and reached for the doorbell. It felt like a charade. When the bell rang, she heard an excited yapping on the other side. Ernie opened, grinning. He wore a white polo shirt she’d never seen before. “Look who’s here. It’s Carol!”
Inside, Pat sat on the piano bench, clutching an excited little dog. She let it down after Ernie closed the front door. The dog, a fluffy Pomeranian, fell silent and skipped past Carol and then reversed course to come up behind her. Carol turned to see the dog studying her intently with eyes like tiny black marbles.
“Hello there,” she said.
The dog growled, revealing a jagged underbite.
“That’s Dido,” said Pat.
Mindful of her ankles, Carol approached Pat, who remained seated but offered her hand. “Nice to meet you.” Ernie busied himself setting up the card table, placing it in front of his sister. Pat wore a huge green dress which draped around her like curtains, almost touching the floor, under which there appeared to be enough space to conceal any number of small creatures.
Ernie brought out the teacups and plates while Carol chose a chair with her back to the birdcage. Ernie had made two kinds of zucchini bread. They sipped tea and passed around a family photo album and Carol had the impression that the siblings didn’t know what to say to each other and were groping for a subject. In one photo, Ernie and Pat, young children in bathing suits and skinny as ferrets, stood beside a mountain lake and squinted at the camera. Carol noticed Ernie’s clinging trunks, the stubby little point of his penis. Rhonda fluttered and rattled the wires of her cage but didn’t say anything.
“Pomeranians are highly intelligent,” said Pat, while Dido, who’d returned to her lap, allowed herself to be scratched behind an ear. “But she’s a scamp. Gets into all kinds of trouble.”
Dido yawned.
“Carol, tell her about Johnny,” Ernie urged. “Pat, you’re not the only dog lover here.”
“You have a special friend, too?” Pat asked.
They looked at her expectantly, and a smothering sensation engulfed Carol. She didn’t want to talk about Johnny. There was a silence. She swallowed. Haltingly, briefly, Carol described him. Then she stood up. “Excuse me a moment.”
She headed for the kitchen and slipped out the back door, down the steps and into the garden. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, trying to compose herself. She watched Adam as he bobbed along.
“We can’t continue like this. What are your dreams? De quoi rêves-tu?”
Eventually she went back inside and rejoined them at the table.
“Are you all right, dear?” Pat asked.
“Fine, fine. Just stepped out for a smoke.”
The conversation crawled on for several minutes then suddenly Ernie sat up straight. “Where’s Dido?”
“I don’t know,” said Pat, looking around the room. “She can’t have wandered too far.”
Carol realized what Ernie was thinking. And in the pressure of the moment, she couldn’t recall if she’d shut the back door tightly. They both sprang up and ran to the kitchen.
The door was closed, and they found Dido with her snout in the trash.
Ernie picked her up and slung her under his arm. He whispered accusingly, “Since when do you smoke?”
Then he and Dido returned to the living room.
~
The following week, a few days after Pat’s visit, Carol was waiting in the back garden where she knew Ernie would find her.
The clap of the screen door.
“Carol?”
A moment later, “Carol!”
In seconds his face was close to hers, shouting, “How could you?”
Then he was running a ring around the stake, as if he might somehow find Adam there, or even launch himself into the air in pursuit.
“How COULD you?”
“I honestly don’t know what to say to you.”
“Believe me, nothing you could say would be enough. Goddamnit! It wasn’t your decision to make. I trusted you, Carol. But—but you’re a traitor.” Ernie looked at the sky, his chest heaving. “You have no idea if he was ready. You don’t know how I’ve struggled with the responsibility. You presume, as if you were God.”
“Oh, spare me, Ernie. Don’t tell me about your struggles. You enjoyed having him. You’re a hypocrite.”
“And you’re a narcissist! You think he liked you best, so you get to decide. Do you know how infantile that is? The way you wooed him? How can you know what he needs? How he’ll end up? There’s a good chance he’s dead, even as we speak, because of you.” Ernie kicked at the ground.
“Jesus, you’re such a drama queen.”
“Don’t you see how important this was? What’s at stake here? If Adam avoided extinction, maybe we can, too. Carol, we’ve got so much to learn!”
“You can say that again. But you’re going to figure it out in your own garden? That’s deluded, Ernie. Adam didn’t come looking for you. You’re not the chosen one.”
Ernie’s lips quivered. “I thought you were my friend. You’re nobody’s friend. Get out. I never want to see you again.”
He pointed to the gate.
“Go!”
She turned and walked away without looking back. Past the raspberries, through the gate, past the staked tomatoes and basil. The hydrangeas.
Starting her car, Carol noticed her hands were shaking. She glanced one last time at the house. She was sorry to leave Ernie in such a state. But she knew he had Rhonda.
~
When she arrived home, she carried in bags of groceries and began unpacking items on the kitchen countertop. Lamb chops and rocket salad. A nice bottle of Bordeaux. Charcoal for the grill.
From her purse she extracted a baggy of beetles and shook some out into a bowl. She hesitated, then shook out a few more.
Carol looked out her kitchen window to her back yard, where Johnny’s old travel cage lay on its side. “Salut, mon pote.” The sleeping pills had worn off. He was awake now, she could see, testing the chain.
She didn’t know how many dances remained. And she wanted—the world needed—so much more.
But for tonight, well, the party could begin.
