9

ANNIE THE DOG barks. Eleanor begins to emerge from a dream where she has not finished graduate school, has a young family, and is forced to commute to another city to the university where her advisor now teaches. The dog fur, the wet nose in her face, on her eye, rouses Eleanor from sleep. “No, Annie,” she says and the dog retreats from the bed. The light from the windows, brighter than it usually is when she wakes, revives her. She remembers that she has her master’s degree diploma buried in a box in the basement somewhere, and does not have small children whose lives would be ruined by her commute to finish her degree. By the clock, it is eleven, and she doesn’t remember setting an alarm. It is Saturday, the day after seeing Phil for the first time in so many years, which is the next thing she thinks about, after the dog, after waking up, after her dream. After thinking of Phil, she thinks of Frank, who is nowhere near. She wouldn’t want Frank to know she was thinking of Phil.

She hears Frank’s footsteps on the stairs. The house is over one hundred years old and creaks as Frank climbs. With her head now under her blanket, Eleanor pretends to be asleep. Annie leaps onto the pillow above Eleanor’s head, and traps her under the blanket. Eleanor doesn’t move. Frank makes an apologetic noise, as if not wanting to—but really wanting to—disturb her. He sets a mug of coffee on the bedside table. The scent wafts toward Eleanor. Frank stands over her; she can tell, in that strange way one feels a person hovering like a low-wattage electric shadow. Then he leaves and she feels free to bring her head out from under the blanket and to let her thoughts wander back to Phil and the meeting on the previous evening.

There were questions she had wanted to ask him: Are you going to the class reunion? Do you miss being in the military? What do you recall from when we were teenagers?

There are questions she would like to ask now: Why would you meet me at a time when there was every chance that your soon-to-be-ex-wife and your mother-in-law would also be there? Was that meeting really just to hear your daughter sing in a noisy bar for twenty minutes? Was it a test? Were you checking me out to see if I was the same person as the photo? In imaginary conversations there are no real answers.

And then there was Kaye. Next time, Eleanor will give Kaye a drink limit.

Frank interrupts, calling out from downstairs that he is getting ready to leave. Eleanor already knows that Frank is going to play golf with Napoleon. They will spend their time together competing for the best score, and at the same time, talking about how they ought to be playing better. It won’t be their best game. It never is their best game. She hears the squeak of Frank’s sneakers on the wood floor by the back door, and the clank and crash of his golf clubs as he sets them down. Is he being loud on purpose to get her attention? Or is he just not even trying to be quiet because he thinks she is sleeping? Eleanor believes the noise is all for her benefit, an opportunity for her to not ignore him.

Frank leaves and Eleanor gets out of bed. Downstairs it is quiet in the kitchen, and the strong midday light washes the room from the northern windows. She takes the milk from the refrigerator to put into the coffee Frank had brought her. Frank is the sort of person who doesn’t complete a task. In his attempt to do something kind for her, he has forgotten that she takes milk.

What would it be like to invite Phil over to visit? Would Frank be observant? Would he notice the crush she has on Phil? Frank is rarely observant. Eleanor stirs the milk in her coffee absentmindedly with her index finger and drops her hand to her side, where Annie licks it. Annie makes a low, guttural sound, nearly singing out for more, and Eleanor imagines Phil standing there with her, flirtatiously telling her that she shouldn’t let the dog lick the coffee from her finger. Then he would make up something ridiculous after that, about licking fingers, and she would laugh. Even this gives her a tingle.

Eleanor’s phone vibrates in the pocket of her robe. Kaye’s name is on the screen, along with a text about meeting soon for lunch. Kaye wants to hash out the evening with Phil and his family. But Kaye embarrassed Eleanor so much with her police detective act that Eleanor doesn’t answer the text. Kaye never understands why she embarrasses her friend.

Just as she is about to check her computer for email, hoping to see something from Phil, Eleanor hears boy feet flapping on the stairs, and a voice that sounds as if it has been ruined by years of cigarette smoking, though it belongs to a seventeen-year-old who has likely never smoked a thing in his life but is allergic to waking up.

“Mom,” Eugene says. “Mom, I think I put all of my clothes in the washing machine last night and forgot to put them in the dryer. You weren’t here to remind me.”

“To remind you?”

“Dad doesn’t.”

“All in one load?”

“I don’t have much.”

Eleanor closes her laptop. “Put them in the dryer now.” She is feeling frustrated at being interrupted.

“It will take an hour.”

“So?”

Eugene looks at her with widening eyes. “I have a study group in thirty minutes. I have no clothes to wear.”

“Not even a shirt and pants?”

“It’s all in the machine.”

Eleanor pictures the balance of her washing machine ruined by every piece of Eugene’s clothing, the darks and lights, all mixed together. From upstairs she hears the triumphant shout of her younger son, Liam, “He is NOT wearing my clothes!”

Eugene shakes his head and continues down the stairs to the basement with the slow resolute gait of someone who does not want to do what he is about to do. From her seat at the kitchen island, Eleanor hears Eugene shut the metal dryer door, then watches for him to climb the stairs and appear in the doorway. When he does, his eyes are puffy, his dark, shoulder-length mop of curls frizzed into a halo around his head. She knows it will be a while before she can read her email. She asks him, “Is the dryer on?” Without answering, he turns and makes his way down the steps to the basement again.

ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Phil writes to her:

Eleanor, I love the idea of visiting you. Thanks for the invite. It will be a nice break from the crap here at the house. Let me know when your barbecue is. Maybe I should stay the night and we could have some time to really catch up. Talk soon, Phil.

On Monday, Phil’s wife begins communications with an email message. Eleanor is sitting with her morning coffee on the bed, with the laptop open. She hears the sparrows outside and puts off breaking up the latest nest. She feels her blood pressure spike as she sees the message from Linda@ … She knows who it is.

“Who are you?” Linda writes.

They had barely met. Why would she put out this effort with a divorce imminent? Why care? Does she know the extent of Eleanor’s correspondence with Phil?

Usually, this is the time of day, after Frank has left for the commuter train, before the boys go to school, when Eleanor has been writing to Phil. It is a private time, when she can briefly forget that she is married and part of a family. She writes about the people in her neighborhood, the demands her sons make on her, what recipes she has extracted from the newspaper and whether they work out. So far, Phil has been very interested.

The meeting with him to hear his daughter sing had been arranged at the last minute. Does Eleanor want to tell this to Linda? It is not clear, from what Phil has written, how much Linda knows about their correspondence. Eleanor wants to tell the almost-ex that she didn’t know she and her mother would be at the concert, and that she was just meeting an old high school friend. The whole meal was not even something Eleanor had thought would happen. What am I getting into? She thinks as she prepares to type.

Eleanor knows she spends way too much time wondering what Phil is doing during the day, trying to imagine what his house is like, where his wife’s room is in proximity to his, what their conversations are about. Perhaps the awkwardness between the divorcing husband and wife is something they have grown into. Eleanor had only seen it once. He says that she thwarts his attempts to salvage the family dinners by attending the evening church service. He says that he finds her reading self-help books. Does this sound like the portrait of a woman who would send an email? For a moment, Eleanor decides that she will not respond. Then, thirty seconds later, she changes her mind, but she will not do it right away. She is going to think more on it.

She gets out of bed, leaving the sparrows to continue condo building. She hears a faint, low expletive from the other side of Eugene’s door as she knocks to tell him he has to get up for school. She watches Liam move toward the bathroom, then back and forth to his own room to get items of clothing and drop them on the floor. Eugene yells from his room, “Five more minutes, Mother.” But if Eleanor relents, he will miss the bus and she will get a phone call asking her to drive him to school because it is too far and too late to walk. Every day, as though she is training for an athletic event, she watches the clock, timing her sons’ departure to middle and high school. Liam is on time. Eugene is not. Even though he is the older son, Eleanor must regularly push him out the door. Maybe this is because he is the older one, and she has done something different with Liam.

Eleanor waits for them, and in her brain she draws a blank on how to answer Linda’s email. Her heart thumps. At last, the boys leave. Now, she wants to be done with the email to Linda.

She wants to write to Linda, “Who do you think you are? How did you get my email address?” But as Eleanor knows, this is too much for now. And if Linda is like Phil—as couples who have been married this long tend to be—she won’t answer these questions. Then Eleanor thinks, “I am a big deal.” She wants to be a big deal. She will wait just a little longer to answer.

She showers, dresses, and leashes the dog. Annie jumps at the door and then claws at Eleanor’s stomach as she tries to bend to put on her shoes. Outside, new pale green shoots are growing in neighbors’ flowerbeds because the weather is warming. The sun is strong for May, and she can feel it on her cheeks and arms. Annie pulls forcefully and Eleanor yanks her back to try to correct her behavior. But she is not in the mood to discipline the dog. She knows that Phil’s almost-ex has found the emails from a past “other woman.” She is not sure how Linda got into Phil’s computer. Wouldn’t Phil take measures to protect himself?

Eleanor considers the two of them living in the same house because, though the almost-ex wants to leave Phil, she won’t move out. Yet he says they have all the divorce papers filed with each other’s lawyers. Phil says that she has walked in while he was on the telephone with Eleanor, and she was angry. This, of course, makes the whole thing more exciting for Eleanor, in a dangerous way, she concedes. Linda is a jealous person. Her temper swings, and Phil says this is because she has trouble with her menstrual cycles. Eleanor has never felt this way—the danger and the edginess—in all of her married life with Frank.

Annie sees another dog, something short, white, and fluffy. She crouches into herding mode, with her ears pricked so that just the tips flop forward, and her eyes stare ahead, steady and unblinking. Her tail is parallel to the sidewalk and she pulls at the leash. Eleanor stops. Annie stops. “Does your dog want to play?” the woman holding the leash of the other dog says. The other dog trots blindly toward them as Annie lunges and bares her teeth. Eleanor now has to explain, “She isn’t friendly to other dogs.” The woman walks a large circle around and away from Annie, glaring at Eleanor as if to say, “You could have warned me.” Eleanor drags Annie home.

Inside her kitchen, Eleanor takes a glass of water and sits at her computer. She opens Linda’s email. “I am just a friend who grew up with Phil,” she replies. “That’s all.” She nearly writes that she doesn’t mean any harm, but stops short of admitting she has done something wrong. Only in her head.

Linda’s response is quick, as though she has been there, at her computer, waiting. “I know that. But who are you? What do you want? What is going on between you and my husband?”

Had Phil been open about his past affairs? Or simply not been careful? But what is happening now isn’t an affair. “Dear Linda,” Eleanor writes. “It’s not what you think. I have a husband and two sons. And I am aware that you and Phil have a complicated divorce.” Wait—scratch the last sentence. “Are still married.” Send.

At this point, Eleanor decides not to mention this correspondence to Phil. She wonders what Phil has said to his almost-ex, and about which one of them—husband or wife—is more truthful. Then she goes off to sort clothes for the laundry. The piles are smaller than usual, Eugene having recently done his own. She puts on talk radio but doesn’t pay attention to it. Then, at the computer, she writes to Linda, “What is it you want from me?” as if this distraction is overwhelming her attention.

Whether from at work or home, Linda is still answering. “You ought to know,” she writes to Eleanor, “that he has left a trail of women.”

“I am not interested in Phil that way,” Eleanor writes back.

“They have all said that. But I’ve seen it before. He sucks it all in, and forgets, and someday it will explode. I’ll be there to pick up the pieces for him, married to him or not. There is a list of women Phil has left behind. He tosses them in my face, like he did at the club, while our daughter was singing.

“I don’t understand why you were there to hear her play,” Linda continues to write. “Even if Phil asked you to come, why would you do that when I was there and my mother was there?”

Eleanor is now feeling guilty and manipulated. She doesn’t quite understand Linda’s intent, though she does understand Phil’s. She thinks she understands the idea of a safe relationship, a friendship under the watch of their families. She writes back that Phil only invited her because she lives in town, that she brought her friend, that she didn’t know the rest of the family would be there. Then she stops. How do you convince someone who is likely inconvincible? She deletes what she has written. Linda emails, “I’m praying for you.” And suddenly, just as quickly as she had appeared online, she is gone.