If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

by Robin Black

  While she holds the screen door open, Jack places one hand lightly on Lila’s back. “Step inside… one small step up… okay, about four steps to the couch.” Passing Bess, he feels their bodies brush and mumbles an “Excuse me,” to which she offers no reply.

  “Dog,” Lila whispers, barely audible, two steps in. “I smell dog.”

  “You smell your dog,” Jack corrects, as the faint odor hits him too. “Get used to it.”

  “Poor Mom. She’ll die.”

  “She won’t die.” Jack can hear his own impatience. “She’ll just have to deal with it.”

  “Have to deal with what?” As he turns he sees Bess standing just inside the door as the screen creaks shut, her arms folded at her waist.

  “My wife is allergic to dogs,” he lies, orienting Lila to the couch and watching as she sits. “But if it’s a problem, she’ll just take some medicine.”

  “I’ve had families deal with that before,” Bess says. “It’s pretty unpleasant, but it’s manageable. I’ve even heard of people allergic to their own guides.” As she speaks, she steps farther into the room.

  “It’s why she’s not here,” Jack adds, sitting in the shabby armchair beside the couch, trying to banish images of Ann and what she might be doing at this moment. Staring out their front window, alert for intruders. Examining and reexamining the cans in their pantry for signs of swelling or suspicious dents. Or quite possibly still just lying in bed by the phone, anxious, immobile, and alone.

  “Hmmm.” Bess shifts her eyes to Lila on the couch, her legs crossed at her ankles, the sunglasses still down. “Well, she probably should come out here sometime,” she says. “Just to meet Wally, before moving-in day.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.” As he shrugs the subject away, Jack sees Lila’s mouth tense. “Lila heads out to college year after next. The dog won’t be living in the house for very long, anyway.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Bess says. “Just let me get him harnessed up and all.”

  She walks past Jack and through the room. There’s something about the sway of her hips as she steps away, the braid swinging over her shoulder, falling straight down her back, something unexpectedly sexy. He glances over to Lila—almost as if to be sure she hasn’t seen him checking Bess out. Her lips are still curving down, the lower one sticking out in an unmistakable pout.

  “What’s the problem?” he asks. “You look upset.”

  “I feel bad about lying. About Mom.”

  “You didn’t lie. I did.”

  “You know what I mean.” She shifts back a little on the couch, still looking troubled. “You could have just said she’s scared of dogs. There’s nothing so weird about that.” She fills her cheeks with air and puffs it out—a mannerism of hers that predates the accident, a thread connecting her, connecting him, to those days. “A lot of people are. It isn’t like it’s some shameful thing.” And then a moment later: “Really, Dad, is it? Is it something we have to cover up?”

  Is it? Or is it just his own weariness with Ann’s concerns? “No, I suppose it isn’t. You’re probably right.”

  “Now what do you tell Mom? That she has to come here and pretend to be allergic to dogs? And pretend not to be scared? How’s she supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know, Lila. Maybe she won’t come here.”

  “She will come, though. She will if I need her to.”

  “Okay, then she will. We’ll handle it when it happens.”

  Jack watches Lila’s face fall back into thought.

  “What if the dog doesn’t like me?” she asks, uncrossing, recrossing her legs. “I’m not exactly an animal person.”

  “If you’d seen our hostess, you wouldn’t worry.” He hears his own nervous release of a laugh. “I can’t imagine the creature who won’t do exactly what she says. And that’s including you.”

  “Really? What’s she look like? Is she pretty?” Jack stares over toward the door through which Bess has disappeared. Yeah, she’s pretty. Not girlish pretty like Miranda, with her small tight body and mischievous eyes, but attractive, without a doubt.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “I wasn’t really looking for that. She’s tall, I suppose. She has a long braid, black hair. And she’s kind of muscled up. She doesn’t look like she puts up with a lot of crap.”

  Lila frowns a little at that and lifts the sunglasses, rubbing her eyes. In the background Jack can hear a dog bark. He sees her flinch slightly at the sound. “My master’s voice,” she says. She turns her head so he sees her now in profile, and sitting there on Bess’s worn couch, she looks a lot like Ann. A lot like Ann did when they were young. The same pale complexion and angular face. The same strong, straight back. Even her half-closed eyes remind him of how Ann always seemed to keep herself a little hidden, a little obscured, back when her need to have Jack guide her through the world felt emboldening to him still, made him feel big and strong. Back before it became a burden. A long, long time ago.

  He stands up, begins to move through the room. He steps across Bess Edwards’s faded carpet, past her upright piano. It could almost have been another man’s life, he thinks. Though of course it wasn’t. As recently as last night, after the trick with the bourbon, and after he’d followed Miranda’s instructions, just lie still, just lie still, just lie still, after she was done tracing those heavenly halos with her hips and they’d fallen into two separate bodies once again, he found himself thinking, as he did from time to time, about that boy whose family they didn’t really know. The one who’d told his daughter to shake the can of paint as hard as she could. Beside him, Miranda was blowing long, narrow streams of smoke from the one daily cigarette she’d allow herself, and Jack was telling her he couldn’t even remember the kid’s name. Not Tommy. Not Billy. But something like that. Something plain and seemingly harmless. Something common and deceptively benign.

  “You’d think it would be burned into me, that name,” he said. “But it’s gone.”

  Rolling onto his side, he pulled Miranda’s patchwork comforter up around his naked waist, and he told her for the first time about the day the boy’s parents came by the house, only that once, leaving enormous, bright flowers and a long, rambling letter on the porch. A letter in which they wrote about the wheelbarrow that had been hanging on the wall, and about how they wished that there was anything they could do. How they wished they knew the Snyders better, and wished that the Snyders knew them well, knew what decent people they were, so the Snyders could understand how terrible they felt. And how terrible the boy felt too—whatever his name—how terrible they all felt that this had happened in their home. Because pain that is shared, their letter said, can be pain that is lessened. They knew that was true.

  He’d found it tucked among the flowers and thrown it in the trash, after reading it just once.

  “Did you ever talk to them, Jack?” Miranda asked.

  “No.” And he didn’t go into any more than that. But he could remember how when they had come to the front door they rang and rang and rang, seeing the lights on, seeing a car in the drive, and he didn’t answer the bell. Because they were upstairs together, he and Ann, making love to one another with all their might, still thinking they might be on the same side, still thinking that the other story might be theirs. The one in which pain that is shared is pain that is lessened, just like the boy’s parents said it was.

  “No,” he said to Miranda. “I never did speak to them. I never saw the point.”

  As she stubbed out her cigarette and rolled onto her elbows, close enough that he could feel a little of her heat shift to him, he reached over and drew a gentle line up and down her bare, pale back. “I was never a big enough guy to let them off the hook, I guess.”

  “Even the kid?” she asked. “He had to be carrying a shit-load of guilt. You had to have felt sorry for the kid.”

  Jack didn’t respond, aware of his fingertips, rough against her smooth skin.

  “I guess it isn’t your strength.”<
br />
  “What?” Jack looked her way, his hand stopping, then resuming its long trail. “What isn’t my strength?”

  But she only shook her head, a silent no, a partial shrug, and lowered her face onto the pillow so he could keep his fingers moving easily all the way down her back, up to the base of her neck again, just to where he could feel the silky, downy hairs. Up and down. Down and up. A straight line over the knobs of her spine.

  “So tell me then, Miranda, what is my strength?”

  But by then she had fallen asleep. For a few moments, he watched her breathe, studied her unconcerned rest. Then he rose to dress and stepped quietly out her door, the question still hovering, unanswered, in the air.

  Jack hears his daughter sigh, a theatrical, gusty sound, and turns to see her feeling at the face of her watch. “What’s your hurry?” he asks. She’s perched on the edge of the couch, bouncing impatiently.

  “It just seems like a long wait,” she says. “How complicated is it to get a dog ready?”

  “You should know by now, Li. Everything turns out to be more complicated than you think.”

  “Tell me about it, Dad.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be ready for you soon,” he says. But her face stays tense.

  Jack looks away. A picture of Bess smiles down from the mantelpiece. Bess kneeling beside a big, dark dog. He walks over and picks it up. She’s wearing the same grin she gave him on the porch, over Lila’s head, a grin that looks as though she’s in on something fun. As if she’d be ready to manage whatever came her way. An easy, open face. Maybe the face of someone who does something just to feel decent from time to time.

  “Okay, Lila.” If Bess notices Jack holding her picture, she gives no sign; and he puts it where it was. “Wally’s all ready, out back. Why don’t you come with me.” She turns Jack’s way as she walks toward Lila with an arm ready for her. “Jack, if you like, you can come out to the back porch. I’m going to take them pretty far out, where I have a path. I don’t want him meeting you the first few minutes, but you can watch. Just give us a little time. There’s some coffee in the kitchen. If you don’t mind rummaging, feel free to find a cup. Kitchen’s a mess, but milk’s just where’d you’d expect, in the fridge. I’m not sure about the sugar, but it’s there somewhere.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll poke around.”

  Lila turns in her father’s direction and he smiles, certain that he’ll see her smile too, that odd exchange of expressions they so often have, that she never sees. He stands silently, waiting for the grin, waiting for the flash of humor and the line he knows will come. The joke she has to make. He can almost supply it for her, knowing her nervous patter so well. Something about being leader of the pack. Something about being top dog, maybe. Something to which he can reply, “Very funny, Lila. Now go get to work.” But instead he sees her mouth relax into a child’s tentative lips.

  “See you in a little bit, Dad,” she says, and turns away.

  Bess’s kitchen is small and cluttered, a far cry from the scrubbed hygienic laboratory Ann inhabits, and nothing like the near empty, seemingly unused room in which Miranda grabs bottles of liquor and microwaves frozen food for them after sex. Among Bess’s things it takes him longer than he can believe to find the coffeemaker, which is full, as promised, but hidden behind bags of white and whole wheat flour, loaves of bread and mason jars of who knows what. He opens and inspects three cabinets before locating a mug. The one he chooses advertises a local folk art museum—one of the many places he’s told himself he ought to see but hasn’t managed to yet. Because he can’t take Lila; there’d be no point. And he’s promised Ann not to be seen in public with Miranda, to show her that much respect, anyway. “Just don’t make a spectacle out of us. And please don’t let my daughter know. That isn’t asking too much, is it, Jack?”

  No. No, it wasn’t asking too much. He’s been very careful to do as Ann asked. Lila knew nothing, he was sure, and Miranda has only seen Lila once, a few months earlier, back in the fall. Jack picked her up at the café after work and on an impulse, his impulse, they drove across town to Lila’s school, just in time to watch the kids boarding the late bus for home.

  “That’s her,” he said, pointing out his lanky daughter, curls pulled back into a messy knot. She was walking arm in arm with her best friend, Gabrielle. The blind leading the blind—personified. He was grateful to Miranda for not making the joke. “That’s my Lila,” he said. “The tall, pretty one in the red T-shirt.”

  And for some moments Miranda looked silently toward the girls. “But they’re wearing the same shirt,” she finally said. “In different colors.”

  Jack saw that she was right. Sure they were. They often were. “Yeah.” He nodded and he started up the car. “On any given school day… One kid made a fortune selling them.”

  “What does it say?”

  He told her.

  “Funny,” she said, as he pulled out into traffic.

  “Yeah, funny,” he repeated, some seconds later. “I guess it is.”

  Jack fills the art museum coffee cup, though he doesn’t really want the coffee. He steps out the screen door onto a small wooden porch.

  Behind the house is an open field, and twenty yards or so away there’s a dirt track where Bess and Lila stand, close together. At first Jack can’t see the dog, but as the two figures step apart, he finds him there. His broad, tawny back is bound by the harness, no ordinary leash, even from that distance, but the unmistakable constraints of a guide dog at work. The stiff lead is in Lila’s hand and Lila looks suddenly blinder to Jack than she has for years, as though something about the image has been completed, the last piece of a puzzle snapped into place. From two dozen yards away, his daughter is visibly blind. For all the world to see. And for a moment, he stands still, snagged on the paradox of being glad that at least she can’t see herself like this.

  “Jesus,” he says, out loud. “Jesus Christ.”

  Eleven years. It’s been eleven years. You have to let go, Jack, Miranda would say. You have to let her go. He sits onto the steps, slowly, his hand behind him as if to be certain the wooden surface will be there, as though he is the one who must feel, to be sure. And then, without noticing, he begins sipping at the coffee he didn’t want—but there’s a chill in the air and the warmth feels welcome after all. Holding the cup close to his face, he watches through the rising steam. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls his glasses out, the ones he has always needed for distances but didn’t wear for years and years after the accident, not until Miranda gave him holy hell for the notion that walking around in a blur would somehow help his child.

  Lila begins to move, very slowly, the dog many steps ahead. Then Bess joins her, says something, and Lila stops, starts again, pulling the animal closer to her side this time. She walks another ten feet on the track, then stops. Then pulls him close, again. Every once in a while, Bess Edwards pats the dog. And after she does that a couple of times, Jack sees Lila begin to do the same thing. He watches as his daughter’s face moves very close to the dog’s and her hands run over his ears and nose. Her lips are moving; her head is tilted to the side. Bess Edwards take a step away from them. Soon she looks up at him and waves. Lila just keeps talking to, touching the dog.

  Wally. The animal’s name is Wally.

  “Jack!” Bess calls out and he can almost feel himself materialize as Lila’s head swivels, seeking him.

  “I’m over here. I’m over here.” Jack raises his arms overhead and waves as if toward his daughter, who waves back, in the right direction—more or less. “Looking good, Lila,” he calls. “I like your new friend.”

  “Wally?” Her voice cuts through the air, banishes his invisibility, calling him back to her again. “I’m not so sure about the name,” she says. “I think he’s more of a Hubert, myself.”

  “Get to work!” Jack has his hands cupped as a bullhorn around his mouth. “You still have a lot to learn.”

  “Are you kidding? This is a breeze
.”

  When Lila turns away, Jack settles back onto the step. He watches the scene, and tries to take it in. This is the creature who is to become his daughter’s eyes from now on. Jack’s replacement in a way, he understands. Just like Miranda said.

  The dog barks, as though in response to Jack’s thoughts, a deep, confident bark. This is who she must trust completely now—even when others turn out to let her down. Wally. The companion she’ll have for years and years. Because her guidance counselor talked them into it. Because Ann handed him the card. Because the other phone was busy. And because Bess Edwards is a woman who thinks that we should all do something decent now and then.

  “It’s the best way to do adulthood,” the counselor said about her own guide.

  It probably is, Jack thinks. It probably would be for anyone. He looks at his watch. Just past ten. Miranda should be rolling out of bed now, sleeping late the one luxury she cares about. He thinks again about their conversation, about the way the question of his strengths was left hanging in the air.

  “I can’t remember his name,” he said to her.

  More lies.

  The kid’s name had been Oliver. Oliver Franklin. A skinny little boy with dark blond hair and eyes that filled with tears all too fast, that October afternoon. A little boy who cried much too easily when Jack stepped into the child’s yard and found him—caught him—tossing a ball up into the air. Playing, alone. Playing with a ball. Throwing it up into the sky, and knowing how to catch it as it fell. Knowing where to put his perfect little hands and catch the falling sphere. Every goddamned time. “It might have been Bob,” he said as they lay side by side. “Except I don’t think it was. It was something like that, though. Something simple and harmless-seeming like that.”

  He’d been light as nothing, and Jack had just picked him up in his arms. Just the work of a moment, lifting him and carrying him behind the hedge. Away from any adults watching them. Away from the sight of the child’s house, where the mother must have stood, fixing dinner, or maybe sat, resting for a moment in front of the TV. Away from the garage, where it had happened. Away from the wheelbarrow. The can of paint.