A Permanent Member of the Family

by Russell Banks

  “What’ve you got in mind? Bury her in the sand? That’s a real cute idea, Ed. Bury her in the sand and drive on our merry way, just like that.” She looked at her hands for a moment. “I don’t like thinking about it either, you know.”

  He eased himself from the driver’s chair, stood uncertainly, and walked back through the living area and the tidy galley to the closet-sized bathroom, where he got down carefully on his knees and drew back the shower curtain and looked at the body of their dog. She was a black and white mixed breed, Lab and springer, lying on her side where Ed had found her this morning, when, naked, he’d gone to take a shower. He studied the dog’s stiffened muzzle. “Poor bastard,” he said.

  “Maybe we should try to find a vet!” she called from the front.

  “She’s dead, Alice!” he hollered.

  “They’ll know how to take care of her, I meant.”

  Ed stood up. He was seventy-two; the simple things had gotten very difficult very quickly—standing up, sitting down, getting out of bed, driving for longer than four or five hours. When they left home barely a year ago, none of those things had been difficult for him. That was why he had done it, left home, why they both had done it, because, while nothing simple was especially difficult for them, they were old enough to know that whatever they did not do or see now they would never do or see at all.

  It was Alice’s idea, too, not his alone—the romance of the open road, see America and die, master of your destiny, all that—although the actual plan had been his, to sell the house in Troy and all their furniture, buy and outfit the RV, map and follow the Interstate from upstate New York to Disney World to the Grand Canyon to Yosemite to the Black Hills, man, he’d always wanted to see the Black Hills of South Dakota, and Mount Rushmore was even grander and more inspirational than he’d hoped, then on to Graceland, and now the Outer Banks. He hadn’t once missed the hardware store, and she hadn’t missed the bank. They’d looked forward to retirement, and once there, had liked it, as if it were a vacation spot and they’d decided to stay year-round. There were no children or grandchildren or other close family—they were free as birds. “Snowbirds,” they’d been called in Florida and out in Arizona. When they left home, their dog, Rosie, was already old, ten or eleven, he wasn’t sure, they’d got her from the pound, but, Jesus, he hadn’t figured on her dying like this. It was as if she had run out of air, out of life, like a watch that had stopped because someone forgot to wind it.

  He dropped his cigar butt into the toilet, looked at it for a second and resisted flushing—she’d scowl when she saw it, he knew, because it was ugly, even he thought so, but he shouldn’t waste the water—and walked heavily back to the front and sat in the driver’s chair.

  “Vets are for sick animals. Not dead animals,” he said to her.

  “I suppose you want to leave her in a Dumpster or just drop her at the side of the road somewhere.”

  “We should’ve found a home for Rosie. When we left Troy, I mean. Should’ve given her to some people or something, you know?” He looked at his wife, as if for a solution. She was crying, though. Silently, with tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she cried steadily, as if she had been crying for a long time and had no idea how to stop.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Alice. Hey, c’mon, don’t cry. Jesus, it’s not the end of the world, Alice.”

  She stopped and fumbled in the glove compartment for a tissue, found one and wiped her face. “I know. But what are we going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, Ed. About Rosie. This,” she said and waved a hand at the rain and the sea. “Everything.”

  “It’s my fault,” he said. He stared at her profile, hoping she would turn to him and say no, it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t anybody’s. But she didn’t turn to him; she said nothing.

  Slowly, he rose from his seat again. He walked to the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. He kneeled down and gently lifted the dog in his arms, surprised that she was not heavier. Lying there she had seemed solid and heavy, as if carved of wood and painted, like an old, unused merry-go-round horse. He carried the dog to the side door of the RV and worked it open with his knee and stepped down to the pavement. The rain fell on him, and he was quickly drenched. He wore only a short-sleeved shirt and Bermuda shorts and sneakers, and all of a sudden he was cold. He carried the dog to the far corner of the parking lot, stepped over the barrier between the pavement and the beach, and walked with slow, careful steps through the wet sand toward the water. The rain blocked his vision and plastered white swatches of his hair to his skull and his thin clothes to his body.

  Halfway between the parking lot and the water, he stopped and set the dog down. He was breathing rapidly from the effort. He wiped the rain from his eyes, got down on his hands and knees and started scooping sand. He pulled double handfuls of it away, worked down through the wet, gray sand to the dry sand beneath and kept digging, until finally he had carved a large hole. Still on his knees, he reached across the hole and drew the body of the dog into it. Her hair was wet and smelled the way it had when she was still alive. Then, slowly, carefully, he covered her.

  When he was finished and there was a low mound where before there had been a hole, he turned around and looked back at the RV in the parking lot. He could see his wife staring out the windshield from the passenger’s seat. He couldn’t tell if she was looking at him or at the sea or what. He turned his gaze toward the sea. The rain was still coming steadily in curtains, one after the other.

  He stood and brushed the crumbs of wet sand from his clothes, bare legs and hands and made his way back to the parking lot. When he had settled himself into the driver’s chair, he said to his wife, “That’s the end of it. I don’t want to hear any more about it. Okay?” He turned the ignition key and started the motor. The windshield wipers swept back and forth like wands.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He backed the RV around and headed toward the road. “You hungry?” he asked her.

  She spoke slowly, as if to herself. “There’s supposed to be a good seafood place a few miles south of here. It’s toward Kitty Hawk. So that’s good.”

  He put the RV into gear and pulled out of the lot onto the road south. “Fine,” he said. “Too bad we have to see Kitty Hawk in the rain, though. I was looking forward to seeing it. I mean, the Wright brothers and all.”

  “I know you were,” she said.

  The cumbersome vehicle splashed along the straight, two-lane highway, and no cars passed. Everyone else seemed to be inside today, staying home.

  Ed said, “We could keep going, y’know. Head for Cape Canaveral, check out the Space Center and all.”

  She said, “They shut the space program down, I thought.”

  “I guess maybe they did.”

  LOST AND FOUND

  He knows her from some other crowded room, but can’t remember which room or when. Good-looking brunette, broad forehead, high cheekbones—eastern European, he guesses. A little fleshy from drink and insufficient exercise. Fortyish, with minor evidence of wear: a younger woman’s butch haircut laced with gray that she would color but doesn’t believe she’s old enough yet for a dye job, black pantsuit to hide her muffin top, red shoes. They’re called pumps, he thinks.

  He takes her in as she slips between strangers, not exactly on a beeline for his corner of the ballroom but not stopping to sniff the roses either. He likes to read people from a distance—that’s what he calls it, reading people. Speed-reading. She’s trying to disguise her intent, glancing at him as if by accident, then looking away as if she’s not coming for him but for some guy on his right or left, one of these hearty fellows, hard drinks in hand, bellowing so as to impress each other and the occasional nearby woman with their intelligence and wit and the size of their annual bonus.

  Like him, they’re plumbing and heating supply sales managers, retailers and wholesalers from all over, most of them middle-aged and older men with wives at home. There are some w
ives here, of course, heavyset women in their fifties and sixties wearing pastel and silently monitoring their husbands’ alcohol intake from their seats at the tables while keeping a wary eye on the few female sales reps working the room for new accounts. Maybe that’s what she is, a manufacturer’s sales rep he flirted with at some other January convention in some other Sunbelt city, and she enjoyed it enough to give him a second shot at writing her a purchase order. With female reps it’s usually kitchen appliances and sinks or high-end bathroom fixtures. He’d definitely remember her if he’d signed on the first time around.

  She half smiles and lets her left hand float toward his. Slight makeup overkill, large green eyes, mascara running from contacts worn only when she goes out. The nail polish matches the red pumps. No wedding ring, he notices. Recently divorced? She says, “Hello, Stanley.”

  He takes her hand in his, holds it a half second longer than he would a stranger’s. “Well, hello! Nice to see you.” He doesn’t say “again.” He’s not 100 percent sure they’re not strangers. She knows his name, but why not, it’s stuck to his jacket lapel. He flicks a glance across her breasts in search of a name tag, but there isn’t one. Must not be a rep. Definitely not a hooker. Not friendly enough.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you, Stanley?”

  “It would help if you wore your name on your chest like the rest of us.” He flashes the smile he sometimes uses to change the subject.

  “I work for the hotel. Remember? Events coordinator?”

  “Right! Events coordinator.” It was here in Miami, then, the Marriott. Had to have been five years ago, the last time the suppliers’ National Business Association held their annual meeting here. Since then it’s been Phoenix, New Orleans, Atlanta, Memphis. He met her in this very ballroom. Five years ago.

  Her name is Ellen, that much rushes back, but not her last name. And not much else, though he feels his face heat up as if he’s embarrassed. He’s not sure if it’s because he didn’t recognize her right away or because of something that happened between them, something said or unsaid, done or undone, something he can’t quite call to mind—like her last name—without her help. He’s sure she remembers everything, her direct gaze tells him that much, and he is afraid that she expects him—or until this moment, expected him—to remember everything, too.

  She looks mildly amused by his embarrassment. Forgiving.

  He says her first name, “Ellen!” as if he’s been waiting to say it since he got off the plane this afternoon. “You look terrific,” he says and means it, up close she does look terrific, smart and energetic and good humored without being one of those scary, live-wired women who live on a permanent stage. She’s a woman who keeps an interesting tension between high spirits and control. The sort of woman he’s always been attracted to. Like his wife.

  That’s when he remembers. It was late the last night of the convention, and they ended up in his room, both a little drunk. How could he have forgotten? It wasn’t the sort of thing that he’s done more than once or twice in his entire twice-married life—in fact, now that he thinks of it, the first time he ended up in a hotel room alone with a woman who was not his wife was nearly twelve years ago. Not many months afterward, that woman became his second wife and eventually the mother of his three children. All the more reason he should have recognized Ellen right away, should even have anticipated seeing her here. And looked forward to meeting her again, or dreaded it. He’s not sure which. He is sure he didn’t sleep with her.

  They met that first time at the registration table in the lobby. He said his last name, and without looking up she passed him an information packet and his plastic name tag. Then she glanced at him and quickly smiled, as if surprised by his good looks. He knew he was conventionally handsome. Not male model or movie star quality, just handsome for a plumbing and heating supplier.

  “If you have any questions or need anything, don’t hesitate to call me,” she said. She reached into her purse, took out her business card and gave it to him. He held her card in both hands and read it, smiled back and thanked her by name. Damned attractive woman. Friendly too.

  After that, they kept running into each other in the hotel, at first by accident in the lobby, then on the elevator, at the hotel gift shop where he’d gone for toothpaste and she was picking up a pack of cigarettes, and then in the evening deliberately at dinner in the main ballroom sitting next to each other as if they hadn’t planned it, ducking the after-dinner speakers and heading for the hotel bar “for a nightcap” that lasted till midnight. They met for breakfast the next day and had lunch at a sidewalk café by the bay. They kept their voices low and their heads close.

  With increasing speed they had dropped into personal, almost intimate conversations, and he thought of her as his only friend at the convention, although he was more than casually acquainted with dozens of the other managers here. He talked about his wife, Sharon, and his kids and described his life in Saratoga Springs, careful not to complain, but making his cloudy dissatisfaction with his life obvious. “It’s a good town for raising kids. For owning a split-level house with a two-car garage, shopping at the malls, running a plumbing supply company.”

  She got it. “Sounds a little lonely,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, you can be lonely anywhere, I guess. Even in a crowd. Like here.”

  “Maybe especially in a crowd. Crowds can sting your heart when you’re alone in the world. Like me.”

  He liked that phrase, “sting your heart.” Not something Sharon would say. “C’mon, you’re not really alone in the world. Attractive single woman, financially independent, exotic city like Miami, et cetera.”

  “Unmarried, no kids, no close family nearby, et cetera. No steady boyfriend. Just a cat named Spooky to greet me when I come home from work. That’s being alone in the world, Stanley.”

  “And you’re not lonely?”

  She shrugged. “No more than you, I suspect. With your wife and kids and minivan.”

  “Maybe not.”

  She had quickly become the only person at the convention he wanted to talk and drink with and sneak out onto the terrace to escape the crowd and smoke cigarettes with—the same brand, he remembers, American Spirits, which she jokingly claimed were good for you because the tobacco is organic. They were both trying to quit. Without stating it, they felt smarter and sexier, especially when together, than the people surrounding them. Whenever they spoke of the conventioneers and their wives, they spoke with irony and slight, but not unkind, condescension. Neither of them took the convention or the plumbing and heating supply industry seriously.

  To him, regardless of which room they happened to find themselves in, Ellen was definitely the most desirable woman in it. And looking around at his colleagues, most of whom were overweight, badly dressed, red faced and loud, he figured he was the most desirable man in the room. At least to her. The competition wasn’t exactly stiff, however.

  He knew by then that Ellen was thirty-four, fifteen years younger than he was, divorced, and her parents lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she’d been raised. She’d come to Miami to study marketing at Florida International University. The week after graduation she’d eloped with a man a decade older who had been her statistics professor. “We lasted four years. Luckily there were no kids. Turned out the professor still had a thing about sleeping with his students,” she told him. “Male as well as female,” she added.

  “Weird.”

  “What, sleeping with students, or swinging both ways?”

  “Swinging both ways, I guess.”

  “Not so weird. You’d be surprised how many handsome male college professors swing both ways. It’s not about sex. They’re scared of sex. They want acolytes. But maybe it’s Miami,” she added and laughed.

  “Miami is a pretty sexy city.”

  “That’s marketing directed at northerners, Stanley. Don’t fall for it. Miami’s no sexier than Saratoga Springs, New York.”

  His turn to laugh. “Yeah
, right.”

  The last night of the convention they slipped away from the closing party, crossed the lobby and stepped outside and lighted cigarettes. He remembers the moist smell of the Gulf Stream in the warm offshore breeze. A pair of palm trees clattered in the wind. The driver at the head of a line of waiting cabs flicked his high beams at them.

  “You want to go somewhere?” Stanley said.

  “No.”

  He waved the driver off. “Where’s your place?”

  “The Gables. Coral Gables. It’s a ways.”

  “Want to go up to my room and raid the minibar for a nightcap?”

  She looked away and then down at her feet, turned and rubbed out her cigarette in the standing ashtray next to the door and said, “Sure.”

  When they turned to reenter the hotel, five of his colleagues, all men, came jostling out the revolving glass door. Stanley guided Ellen around them by the elbow. He knew one of the men slightly, a beefy guy in his fifties named Bernie who ran a supply house in Syracuse.

  “Hey, Stan, c’mon out with us!” Bernie said. “We’re going over to the beach and do a little sightseeing. South Beach, man! The night’s still young!”

  “Thanks but no thanks, Bernie. I’ve got an early flight out tomorrow.” He gave the revolving door a push and Ellen walked through and he followed.

  Bernie laughed and said, “Yeah, sure.”

  His room was on the twenty-seventh floor with a wide, floor-to-ceiling view of Biscayne Bay and the port where the cruise ships, parked like pale dirigibles, waited for their passengers to arrive from the north, and beyond the bay the glittering lights and pulsing neon of South Beach. East of the condo towers, hotels and clubs of South Beach, beneath the scraps of cloud lit pink from below, he could see the Atlantic Ocean, a long dark arm speckled with moonlight.

  He opened the minibar and took out an unopened half bottle of California chardonnay, unscrewed the metal cap and poured the wine into two glasses. He counted how many drinks he’d already had tonight. Two scotches at the reception and at the final dinner four glasses of wine. He didn’t feel drunk but knew he probably was.