Bound
Page 22
For the woman who now took care of the dog, it had been the worst nine months of her life. First she’d had to break up with her boyfriend Lance, which had been rougher than she’d imagined, their having been together for some time, and the fact that everyone, including her parents, had grown accustomed to his presence in their lives. “You like him so much, you live with him!” Elise was tempted to demand. She wasn’t young any longer, and her parents, who’d had her late in their lives, the surprise and accident after three planned children, wished to see her safely settled. They’d not felt great affection for Lance, but he was at least familiar. He was a locatable body to whom they could hand responsibility—not fiscal responsibility, but Elise already was in possession of that. They couldn’t bear for her to be alone, and Lance was nothing if not capable of simply hanging around.
Lance himself had surprised her. His passionate anger at being dumped far surpassed any degree of passion he’d otherwise exhibited. Wow, did he not want to break up! So for a few weeks, back and forth Elise had gone, to his new room in a house of roommates, back to her town house with him. They argued over the phone, by e-mail, in person—and they made up the same ways.
He and the dog only tolerated one another. Neither was sorry to see the last of the other.
Of all the antidepressants Elise had tried, Prozac was the name that the dog responded to best. And the dog herself was a much better form of antidepressant than any drug Elise had taken. She would have probably preferred being in love, truly in love, but the dog made it possible to finally leave Lance and not look back.
And then after the breakup, her mother had grown gravely ill, and soon after, her father fell and broke both hips. This led to a nursing home, in which they both now sat, waiting to see who would die first.
Once, on New Year’s Eve, Elise had gone home with a man she shouldn’t have. In her absence, the night dissolved into disaster; the dog had escaped from her yard and been picked up by the authorities and impounded. For forty-eight hours, the duration of the holiday weekend, the shelter had tried to reach Elise, who’d made a heart-shaped plastic tag for the dog as soon as she’d returned to Phoenix with it. When those calls had failed—Elise at the party, Elise at the first bar, Elise at the next bar, Elise in this terrible man’s apartment, all the while her phone ringing and ringing—the shelter had accessed the implant in the animal’s neck. A new series of phone calls began. Long distance.
It was only luck, and her bright blond hair and her blue pleading tear-filled eyes, that had returned the dog to Elise. That other owner, that one in Houston, Texas, had not been the one who dashed at dawn to the Phoenix pound to sit for hours talking and conniving and begging and lying until the dog was finally released into her care. She’d bought it from the owner. She’d rescued it. She’d found it three years ago in her yard, she told the next person to whom she spoke. It was being beaten, she’d sneaked it out of a terrible situation. She’d inherited it from the previous owner, the previous owner had died, whatever manner of story seemed likely or useful or necessary. The point was: she could not lose this dog. It hadn’t been clearer to her than the moment when it seemed she would. Ambivalence then turned to certainty.
And so the dog had been restored to her. Plush extravagant fur, expressive eyebrows, sinuous coyote body, meek sweeping tail. She would never risk losing her again. Her fence was secured; Elise installed a new microchip. In the fall, when she made her annual pilgrimage to Colorado, to her family’s former land, she would take the dog with her. They would trespass together on private property, hike the hillside beneath Dracula’s castle, and sit haunch to haunch at the edge of the fire in the dark. She attached herself as if in marriage to this creature, health, illness, prosperity, despair, to a life in which she would never betray it. Do you promise … ? She did.
Prozac, she had named the wild yet good girl. And by now she was learning to respond to her name. You weren’t stuck with just the one. You had chances, there were choices. You could change your life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my invaluable and tireless readers Bonnie Nadell, Anton Mueller, Kathleen Lee, Mimi Swartz, Connie Voisine, Sheila Black, and Robert Boswell.
And, for support, thanks to the United States Artists Simon Fellowship, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Inprint, and the University of Houston.
And thank you ALC chum Laura Moats, singular shopkeeper Sarah Bagby, inimitable roommate Dana Kroos, and abiding angel Lillie Robertson.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Antonya Nelson is the author of nine previous books of fiction, most recently the critically acclaimed story collection Nothing Right. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, Redbook, and many other magazines, and has been included in anthologies such as Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and The Best American Short Stories. Nelson is married to the writer Robert Boswell and lives in New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas, where she holds the Cullen Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Houston.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Novels
Living to Tell
Nobody’s Girl
Talking in Bed
Short Fiction
Nothing Right
Some Fun
Female Trouble
Family Terrorists
In the Land of Men
The Expendables
Copyright © 2010 by Antonya Nelson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Nelson, Antonya.
Bound : a novel / Antonya Nelson.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-59691-575-6 (hardcover)
I. Title.
PS3564.E428B68 2010
813'.54—dc22
2010009791
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2010
This e-book edition published in 2010
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-300-4
www.bloomsburyusa.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Add Card
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Fall
Chapter 1
Winter
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Spring
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Summer
Chapter 15
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Author