What Dottie had not understood until the Smalls came to stay was that there were different experiences she attended to in this business that made her feel either connected to or used by other people. For example, there had been the dear, dear man who came in one night about dinnertime—a man almost but not quite her age—and took his room and then decided he’d rather watch television, and she’d sat with him watching one of those British comedies—oh, Dottie thought they were funny, and she tried not to laugh out loud since this man was not laughing—when she became aware that he was in serious distress. He began to make a noise that she had never heard before; it was not entirely unsexual in its sound, but it was a sound of terrible pain. Unspeakable pain, she often thought later. He mimed to her, as she quietly asked questions, and Dottie found it remarkable how much they were able to understand each other. First thing, she’d asked if he needed a doctor, and he shook his head and waved a hand in a way that indicated this was nothing a doctor could help with. Tears began slipping sloppily down the man’s deeply creased face; oh, bless his poor soul, she always thought, remembering him. Okay, she had said, and she sat on the couch next to him, and he looked at her so searchingly, so deeply, she had never been looked at by any man so deeply, she thought, or looked at a man that deeply herself, and he was positively mute, even though earlier, asking for a room and then permission to watch television, he had most certainly been able to use words. She stayed calm and made statements he could either agree with by nodding or disagree with by a dismal shake of his head. For example, she said: “I’m going to stay right here to make sure you’re all right.” And he nodded, those poor tired eyes searching hers. She said: “Something seems to have happened to you, but you will be okay, I think.” She said: “I’m not frightened by this, just so you know.” And that caused a sudden extra burst of effluvia from his eyes, and he squeezed her hand hard enough to almost break it. Then he held up the same hand in what Dottie took to be a gesture of apology. She said: “No worries, I know you meant no harm.” He shook his head sadly in agreement. Dottie could no longer recall every part of this, but the two of them did, it seemed to her, communicate quite well, all things considered—and apparently there were many things to consider!—and she was able, by asking, to find out that at midnight he could take a pill and sleep for five hours. “All righty,” she said. “But not too many pills, am I correct?” He had nodded. And in this way—really, it was a remarkable event—they had spent the evening together while he seemed to wash out his very soul in front of her. At midnight she brought him water and walked him to his room and told him where her room was should he need her, and then she had raised an index finger and said, “Not an invitation, which I’m sure you understand, but I always feel it’s best to be clear about things,” and he had almost laughed, with real mirth, she could see his eyes relax, and they had this sort of not-out-loud but quite riotous laughter about what she had said. He left at seven in the morning: a tall man, and not altogether bad-looking now that his face was washed by rest, and he had said “I thank you very much” with embarrassment and sincerity. She did not ask if he needed breakfast, she understood the awkwardness of his being served eggs and toast by a woman who had seen something she had not been meant to see, that no one had been meant to see.
And so he left. They always did leave.
She kept his registration form the way a child would keep a ticket stub as a souvenir of a special day. Honest as a brook in spring, the entire thing had been. She never looked him up on the Internet, nor was she ever tempted. Charlie Macauley was his name. Charlie Macauley of the unspeakable pain.
The next morning at breakfast Shelly did not acknowledge Dottie. Not even a thank you for the whole wheat toast. Dottie was very surprised; her eyes watered with the sudden sting of this. But then she understood. There was an old African proverb Dottie had read one day that said, “After a man eats, he becomes shy.” And Dottie thought of that now with Shelly. Shelly was like the man in the proverb; having satisfied her needs, she was ashamed. She had confided more than she had wanted to, and now Dottie was somehow to blame. As Dottie thought about this, going back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room, she saw Shelly Small as a woman who suffered only from the most common complaint of all: Life had simply not been what she thought it would be. Shelly had taken life’s disappointments and turned them into a house. A house that, with the clever use of the right architects, had managed to stay within the legal code yet became a monstrosity as large as Shelly’s needs. Tears had not popped into her eyes over her daughter’s obesity. No, they came to her when she reported the assault upon her vanity. She had won against her husband the War of the House, but it had not been enough. What Dottie had not said to her, because it was not her place, was that Shelly had a husband who would break into song at the breakfast table with her in a room with strangers sitting nearby, and that was no—excuse me, Dottie thought—small thing.
To listen to a person is not passive. To really listen is active, and Dottie had really listened. And Dottie thought that Shelly’s problems, her humiliations, were not large when you considered what was happening in the world. When you considered the people dying of starvation, getting blown up for no reason, being gassed by their own government, you choose it—this was not the story of Shelly Small. And yet Dottie had felt for her small—yes, Small—moments of human sadness. And now Shelly could not return the decency of even looking her in the eye. This kind of thing Dottie did not care for, she would like to know who would!