Good Karma

by Christina Kelly

  But Fred was studying the woman and thought she looked vaguely familiar. During his last visit to Lewiston with Lissa, they’d played Simon Says with Tommy. Simon says take a big breath in. Simon says breathe out. Simon says take a big breath in. Simon says hold it. Now breathe out. But he could barely breathe watching the woman and her dog. Something inside him wouldn’t let him catch his breath.

  Stop with the drama, he heard Lissa say. You’re fine.

  The woman picked up a tennis ball where her dog had dropped it at her feet. She brought her arm back and then threw it in a heady parabola.

  “Not a bad arm, either,” Ernie said.

  “You are sure right.”

  Ernie looked at his watch. “I gotta go anyway, so I’ll be the bad cop. You be the good one. You’re better at that.” With one hand on the arm of the bench Ernie raised himself and walked slowly toward the woman. Lulu and the new dog eyed each other, then took tentative steps forward until they met, sniffing with delight. The woman had turned and was looping her leash around one of the hooks.

  Although Fred couldn’t hear their conversation, he knew Ernie would lead the woman through the protocol for entering the park. With his top-secret committee clearance, Ernie made it his business to introduce himself to all new members and make sure rules were followed. Was she aware of the registration procedure at the Seven Oaks office? Did her dog have up-to-date vaccinations? Did she understand the parking rules? She must be a patient woman, Fred thought, for she nodded dutifully and laughed again. Shortly, Ernie collected his dog and leash and left.

  Fred suddenly noticed a change in the air. Slate-gray clouds had gathered in the west. The wind picked up, and dried leaves skipped across the grassy expanse. The woman walked halfway across the park, closer and closer to Fred. She wore comfortable dark shorts with a flowery short-sleeved shirt, and had a toned, shapely build. Meanwhile, her dog made wide circles around the park.

  She turned toward him and smiled. “Hellooo,” she called shyly and waved.

  “Well hello to you,” he replied, and heard a surprising playfulness in his own voice.

  The Boston terrier found his tennis ball and placed it at the woman’s feet again. “Okay, here we go.” She picked it up and threw it over the natural rise in the center of the park and, although he couldn’t see it, he imagined it rolled down to where the grass met the pine straw and overgrown cedar trees. Her throw was solid, the ball going farther than Fred expected. He imagined she must be an athlete and almost unconsciously noted the curve of her hips.

  To Fred’s surprise, Sequoia pushed herself into a standing position, stretched, and trotted to where the woman stood. He knew most people would be fearful of the dog—Great Danes didn’t have the natural smiles of Labradors and goldens—yet the woman knelt to eye level and patted Sequoia’s head. “Hello again, gorgeous,” she said.

  “She’s friendly,” Fred called to her.

  “Yes, I know.”

  There was something about the woman. Perhaps they’d played together once in a golf scramble, or maybe she’d been an acquaintance of Lissa’s, someone he’d met at her crowded memorial service.

  “Sequoia, right?” she asked, smiling. The woman’s white hair was pulled back into a youthful short ponytail. As she approached, he could see her bright green eyes.

  “Yes. But I’m embarrassed. Have we met?”

  “The Village Café. Almost three months ago.”

  And then Fred remembered. “Of course. How could I forget? She practically climbed into your lap. My apologies.”

  The woman neared the bench and Sequoia shadowed her, step by step, as if they’d been training as a team for Westminster. “No need to apologize. I liked the attention.” She stopped and looked out to her dog, who had taken an unbridled interest in a patch of dull grass. “I mean, Karma isn’t the most loving dog in the world.”

  “Karma?”

  “You know, as in ‘Good Karma!’ ‘Bad Karma!’”

  Fred laughed, vaguely remembering the name, but didn’t really know anything about karma. As with a slow cooker, he understood what it was but not how it worked. It was something rather magical—alternative, his daughter might have corrected him—having to do with luck and fate.

  The woman sat next to him, and Sequoia sat too and rested her large boxy head on the woman’s lap. “Well, I see you haven’t lost your charm with her.”

  “Bathing with Gravy Train is my dirty little secret.”

  When Catherine stepped into the park and first saw the harlequin Great Dane, she remembered her from the restaurant. How could she not? She’d never seen an animal as colossal and gentle. Like a small horse. And she liked the name: Sequoia. She even remembered the gentleman—handsome and tall with a wide forehead and good posture. He reminded her of a broadcaster on the six o’clock news. Someone you could trust. He might have been a little overdressed for the setting, in a light windbreaker, blue button-down shirt, and khakis, but she liked his kind face and sweet smile.

  Karma raced up to Sequoia and skidded to a stop in front of her. He pawed at the ground. Sequoia looked up at Catherine, seemed to smile, then placed her head back on Catherine’s lap.

  “Sequoia’s eight,” Fred explained. “She’d like to play, but she might have forgotten how.”

  “I don’t think anyone ever forgets how to play,” Catherine answered. “They just lose interest.” She was thinking of Ralph. How in the first few weeks of getting the dog, he’d taken Karma on walks in the woods or brief errands but quickly abandoned the excursions. What with the bags and the leash and the treats, he felt it was all a bit too complicated.

  “Is Karma a puppy? He’s so youthful.”

  “Why thank you,” Catherine replied, feeling herself blush, feeling complimented in an indirect way. “He’s five. I found him at the Humane Society.” It had been just before Mother’s Day, and Ralph was traveling again. With all the television commercials featuring sons bringing mothers roses and taking them out to brunch and delivering handwritten cards, Catherine felt it was time to have something to love, something that was intrinsically hers. It was all rather serendipitous, and it occurred to Catherine that it was sort of how she met Amity in the closet. Good karma, indeed. “What about Sequoia?”

  “She was my wife’s. Our daughter moved, got married, and had a baby, and Lissa felt, I don’t know . . . replaced? She always had a lot of love to go around, and felt like she’d lost Danielle. I wish I’d been more aware . . .” His voice trailed off. She wondered if the man was widowed or divorced. Widowed, she assumed, since he wore no ring and no woman in her right mind would willingly leave a kind, handsome man who loved dogs.

  Sequoia stood and stepped back from the benches. She raised her head and looked into Catherine’s eyes for a moment as if to tell her something. “What is it, beautiful?” Catherine stroked the dog’s broad chest.

  Suddenly Sequoia’s ears were alert, stretched straight in the air, noting some intangible sound in the distance. The Great Dane drew up her head even higher, her eyes closed, a jazz musician waiting for her turn in a complicated ensemble passage. At once the dog trotted off stiffly to the field and over the rise in the center of the park. Catherine felt sympathy for the animal as she watched her gait. She was beginning to feel that way in the mornings herself, as if she’d turned into a marionette overnight, a slender wooden rod in her lower back.

  “Uh, I’m afraid your dog is doing a little business,” Fred said.

  Catherine had lost track of Karma. “Oh, yes. Sorry.”

  Rising from the bench, she grabbed a plastic bag from her shorts pocket. Doing a little business. She liked that. Ralph would have said “taking a dump.”

  She reached the center of the park, picked up the deposit, and walked over to the nearest trash can by the water bowls. She was at the highest point of the sloping grass and could look down to where the open space bordered the woods. Although the crowded trees made it hard to see, Catherine thought she caught a glimpse of a red
headed woman in a golf outfit. She thought she saw her bending over to stroke Sequoia, but in the next moment she was gone.

  Catherine felt a raindrop grace her cheek, just where a tear might have fallen had she been crying. It surprised her because she didn’t think rain was in the forecast.

  She moved back to the bench and held out her hand. “I’m Catherine.”

  “Fred,” he replied, taking her hand and shaking it gently. “It’s a pleasure.”

  When Catherine let go she felt a sizzle of excitement, a static shock, as if she’d been wearing wool socks on a carpet.

  “So I take it you’re new here?” he asked.

  “Three months. My husband retired from a job on Wall Street last year.”

  “How do you like it?”

  She didn’t know if he meant relocating in general or Seven Oaks or her husband’s retirement. Catherine considered telling him the truth, he looked so trustworthy and dependable. She might have told him that Ralph’s retirement had changed everything. “It’s an adjustment,” she said.

  “Life is an adjustment.” Fred pulled his hand through thinning hair. “Have you met many people since you moved?”

  Catherine might have mentioned Amity. She might have confided that she suspected her real estate agent, Audrey Cunningham, had the hots for Ralph. And maybe, just maybe, the feelings were mutual. She might have said something about trying to go regularly to the gym, but instead she heard herself say, “Now I’ve met you.”

  He liked the way Catherine spoke. She had a thoughtful way of hesitating before answering, so different from Lissa, who shared whatever popped into her mind.

  Did not.

  It was a good thing. You kept me on my toes.

  Well, thank god for that.

  Fred had met Lissa as a college freshman. A deliberate woman who remained thoughtful and optimistic throughout her life. Two days before she died, she even suggested they book a cruise for the fall. Maybe they could convince Danielle and Tommy to come.

  “How is security here?” Catherine asked suddenly.

  “Security?”

  “You know, are there any cat burglars?” She laughed nervously.

  He smiled and considered asking her what there could be to steal. Cholesterol-lowering statins? Viagra? Wraparound sunglasses? “No. It’s very safe. The gates keep the crime out. The only thing you’ve really got to watch out for are the old men at the dog park.” He felt himself wink. Felt himself get a little giddy. He hadn’t flirted in years, but here he was. What was he doing?

  “Don’t worry. I can tell Ernie is a bit of a player, but I’m not really attracted to Santa Claus impersonators.” She laughed too, and as she did a light rain began.

  “Why, this isn’t very conducive to our little parade.” Fred extended his open hand, feeling the wetness on his palm.

  “No. I didn’t even bring a jacket.”

  But the rain was rather refreshing, as if it were floating from a wide wand attached to a kinked garden hose. Neither of them moved.

  “First things you learn when you move to Savannah, Catherine: order the milkshake at Clary’s; don’t miss the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade; and bring an umbrella just in case.” Fred watched Catherine as she closed her eyes briefly, then lifted her head skyward. She didn’t seem in a hurry to rush home. And he certainly wasn’t, with Lissa’s old boxes waiting for him on his coffee table. He’d promised himself he’d get to them on the next rainy afternoon. And here it was. Yet he felt as if he and Catherine were settled at the closing credits of a mesmerizing movie, like it was time to go, but something invisible was keeping him in his seat. Suddenly he realized Sequoia was no longer by his side. He looked around.

  “I saw them head down to the woods,” Catherine said.

  Fred nodded and laughed. “She’s certainly old enough to take care of herself. Even in Afghanistan.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s what everyone calls it back there. We don’t go in because it’s too dangerous. Too many IEDs.”

  “IEDs?”

  He leaned over and whispered, “Indelicate extreme deposits.”

  Again she laughed. She had a girlish way about her, and he liked her pleasant temperament. He wondered if she were the kind of person who woke up in a good mood, like Lissa. His wife would open her eyes and want to know when their first activity started, as if each day were summer camp.

  The rain came down more heavily, the garden hose unkinked, and they both stood.

  “C’mon,” he said and they racewalked to the front gate. By the time they reached the entrance, the skies had opened. Within minutes mud started to pool by the hooks. “Here,” Fred said. He grabbed his umbrella and unfurled it. “Please.” He opened his hand, inviting her underneath, protecting her from the downpour. Then he stepped away and into the rain, the water seeping into his shirt. “Sequoia! Karma!” He whistled loudly, as if calling a taxi in Midtown Manhattan, as if they’d just stepped out onto Forty-Fourth Street after a late lunch at Sardi’s.

  “This is so odd,” Catherine said. “Karma hates rain.”

  He called again, but the rain fell harder and louder, and he moved back under the umbrella.

  “Maybe they found a nice dry spot under a tree,” Catherine said. “I saw Sequoia with a woman by the back gate.”

  “Back gate?”

  “You know, by the nature trail. Afghanistan.”

  But Fred knew the far gate was kept locked. It was only opened once a week so the public works department could bring in grass-cutting equipment. He’d served on the original dog park committee when the project was initiated. He’d helped design the park. Even ordered the benches, choosing durable metal over more comfortable plastic. Ernie would have made sure there was no deviation from the rules. “Did she have a dog?”

  Catherine hesitated. “I didn’t see one, but she must have. Maybe Sequoia and Karma are cuddling under the trees,” she said, shouting now. Rain pounded on the umbrella, splashing in bursts around them like water on a hot griddle. Their shoes absorbed the runoff from the earth.

  Fred tried to imagine it, had a mental image of Sequoia blocking the downpour, his dog’s large body curled around Karma to keep the smaller dog dry. “Cuddling?”

  “Huddling!” Catherine raised an eyebrow. “I said huddling!” He wondered if she were flirting with him, too.

  As they moved together toward the dark edge of the park, the wind picked up and the air cooled. Without conscious thought, Fred handed Catherine the umbrella, took off his jacket, and placed it around her shoulders. “You must be getting cold.”

  She leaned into him. Although they barely touched, for a moment he felt like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain, Debbie Reynolds by his side. They reached the top of the slope but didn’t see the dogs. As they continued on, the sweet smell of damp earth came to him. For a moment, he imagined they were a young couple in a Manet painting, strolling along the banks of the Seine.

  When they reached the border of Afghanistan the wind stilled, as if the world had stopped rotating. Fred had a fleeting thought about how quickly life can change. Things like weather and health. Love and itineraries. The travel brochures that had sat forever on his coffee table. He and Lissa had had countless conversations deciding whether to cruise along the Rio Negro or spend a month exploring the eastern Mediterranean and Greek Isles. They’d talked about dogsledding in Sweden, maybe even staying at the Ice Hotel, or riding an elephant in India. But in the end, he’d sat by Lissa’s hospice bed, reading her detailed advertising copy and showing her photos from full-color brochures, as if she were just a child: Here’s Iguazu Falls in Brazil. Just look at that water. Isn’t that nice?

  Their lives had taken a sudden hairpin curve, and cancer hadn’t figured into their ambitious itineraries. He and Lissa had once daydreamed that they’d leave the world together, neither left alone to tie up the loose ends of their lives. If it hadn’t been for traumatizing Danielle and Tommy, they might have liked to perish softly,
in a faulty single-engine plane that glided into the warm waters off the Galapagos, like slipping into a pleasant bath. Or maybe on the last day of an around-the-world tour, their hot-air balloon unexpectedly setting down into the lush Masai Mara.

  And as Fred thought about journeys discussed but not taken, scripts written but not acted on, he saw the metal gate. Wide open.

  Their dogs were gone.

  chapter 21

  Ida Blue stood on Fred Wolfe’s walkway, somewhere between his mailbox and front steps. She was mesmerized by his house—the line of leafy azalea bushes, the two rocking chairs on the porch, the wide living room window where she had seen the apparition of the older woman. The house was ordinary, the neighborhood familiar. Under other circumstances the home might have been part of a television set for a sitcom about prosperous families leading happy lives. But The Brady Bunch didn’t have a ghost. Maybe someone had laced her Lucky Charms with LSD.

  If Ida Blue had been more cognizant of her surroundings, had only moved her head to the left or the right, she might have seen the dark clouds approaching from the south, like waves rolling in on a rough sea. If she had raised her gaze from the front window, she would have noticed the treetops swaying. But her focus remained on the house. On the window. On the possibilities ahead.

  She was so in her own world that when she first heard the roar of rain she mistook it for an approaching truck. Then, with the hard drops on her head and shoulders, her natural reaction was to rush to the safety of the porch rather than back into the storm and toward her car. As she raced up the steps to Fred Wolfe’s front door her heart pounded. Once at the top of the steps she stopped for almost a minute to recover. Doubled over, hands resting on knees, she felt her breath return to her, a rubbery helium balloon slowly filling inside her chest.

  She didn’t know what she would do if Fred Wolfe opened the door to find her there. Perhaps she could have played the role of the concerned neighbor. Are all your windows closed? Is your Great Dane inside? Did you fix your Internet? Or even, Did you know your house is haunted?