When Shelly did glance over her shoulder to inquire whether there was more jam to be had, Dottie said there was, of course. In the kitchen—and while it was a terribly conventional form of revenge—she spit in the jam and mixed it up and spit again, as much as she could gather in her mouth, and took some pleasure in seeing the jam bowl empty by the time the Smalls left. People had been spitting in the food of those they served most likely since the beginning of time. Dottie knew from experience that the ease this provided was very short-lived, but then most ease was short-lived, and that is how life was.
Shelly was out for the entire day, and the couple did not return to their room until very late. That night Dottie heard—and she was surprised—so much suppressed giggling coming from the Bunny Rabbit Room that she got out of bed and walked in her slippers down the hall. And what she heard was Shelly Small making fun of Dottie in terms Dottie found outrageous. These terms had to do with Dottie’s body parts ostensibly not having been made use of in quite some time, and Dr. Small, not surprisingly, was quite graphic during his part of the discussion and they had a very merry time doing this, as though Dottie was a clown on stage tripping over shoes too large; their humor was like that. And then began, as Dottie realized would happen, the sounds of people, as her decent Aunt Edna had put it, who love each other. Only Dottie did not hear the sounds of love—she heard sounds from the man that made her think how some women thought of men as pigs. Dottie had never thought of men as pigs, but this man did a good imitation; it was revolting—and intriguing—in the most ghastly way. Listening in the hallway, she did not hear the sounds of a woman enjoying the love of her husband. Instead she heard the sounds of a woman who would do anything to make herself feel superior to an old lady who was, as Shelly had put it only minutes earlier, so puritanical as to object to almost anything. In other words, the unhappiness of Shelly Small was something she could ease by being a sexual woman, unlike Dottie. But she was not a sexual woman, Dottie could tell. Shelly got into the shower promptly after, and to Dottie this was always the sign of a woman who had not enjoyed her man.
—
In the morning only Dr. Small was at the breakfast table. “And will your wife be joining you?” Dottie asked.
“She is packing,” he said, unfolding his napkin. “I’ll have the oatmeal again, and you needn’t prepare anything for her.”
Dottie nodded, and after bringing him his oatmeal she went to help check out the other couple that had been staying there as well. When she returned to the dining room Dr. Small was just standing up, throwing his napkin onto his oatmeal bowl. Dottie felt a deep sense of revulsion—she had been used.
Placing her hands on the top of a dining room chair, she said calmly, “I am not a prostitute, Dr. Small. That is not my profession, you see.”
Unlike his wife, who turned red quickly when surprised or embarrassed, this man turned pale, and Dottie knew—because Dottie knew many things—that this was a far worse sign.
“What in the world do you mean by that?” he finally said. He seemed unable to help but add “Jesus Christ, lady.”
Dottie stayed exactly where she was. “Precisely what I said is what I mean. I offer guests a bed, and I offer them breakfast. I do not offer them counsel from lives they find unendurable.” She closed her eyes briefly, then continued, “Or from marriages that are living deaths, from disappointments suffered at the hands of poor friends who regard their houses as a penis. This is not what I do.”
“Jesus,” said Dr. Small, who was backing away from her. “You’re a whackjob.” He bumped into a chair, and seemed almost ready to fall. He straightened himself and said, pointing a finger, shaking it at her, “You shouldn’t be dealing with the public, good Christ.” He walked into the living room, then headed up the stairs. “I’m surprised no one’s reported you, though I suspect they have. I’ll go online myself, by God.”
Dottie cleared the dishes. Calmness had come to her quickly and quietly. No one had ever lodged a complaint against her. Nor would Dr. Small, who most likely could barely use the Internet; his materials, she remembered, had been in a binder his first morning at the breakfast table.
Dottie waited until she heard the Smalls descending the stairs. Then she went and held the front door open for them; she did not say “Fly safely,” because she did not care if they flew right into the sea, but when she saw Shelly’s red nose, the drop of fluid hanging from its tip, Dottie felt momentarily sad. But Dr. Small said, as he pushed past Dottie with his suitcase, “What a goddamn whackjob, Jesus Christ,” and then Dottie felt the wonderful calmness come to her again. She said politely, “Goodbye now,” and closed the door behind them.
Then she went and sat behind her desk. The house was absolutely silent. In a few minutes she saw the Smalls’ rental car drive from the driveway, and then she took from the far back of her top drawer the slip of paper with the lovely man’s name on it: Charlie Macauley. Charlie Macauley of the Unspeakable Pain. Dottie kissed two fingers and pressed them to his signature.
Snow-Blind
Back then the road they lived on was a dirt road and they lived at the end of it, about a mile from Route 4. This was in the north, in potato country, and back when the Appleby children were small, the winters were icy and snow-filled and there were months when the road seemed impassably narrow. Weather was different then, like a family member you couldn’t avoid. You took it without thinking much. Elgin Appleby attached a sturdy snowplow to his sturdiest tractor, and he was usually able to clear the way enough to get the kids to school. Elgin had grown up in farm country and he knew about weather and he knew about potatoes and he knew who in the county sold their bags with hidden rocks for weight. He was a closed book of a man, he inhabited himself with economy, but his family understood that he loathed dishonesty in any form. He did have surprising and sudden moments of liveliness. For example, he could imitate perfectly old Miss Lurvy, who ran the Historical Society’s tiny museum—“The first flush toilet in Aroostook County,” he would say, heaving back his narrow shoulders as though he had a large bosom, “belonged to a judge who was known to beat his wife quite regularly.” Or he might pretend to be a tramp looking for food, holding out his hand, his blue eyes beseeching, and his children would laugh themselves sick, until his wife, Sylvia, got them calmed down. On winter mornings he let the car warm up in the driveway as he scraped the ice from its windows, exhaust billowing about him until the kids tumbled down the salt-dappled snow on the steps. There were three other kids on the road, the two boys in the Daigle family and their sister, Charlene, who was close to the age of the youngest Appleby child, a strange little girl named Annie.
Annie was skinny and lively and so prone to talkativeness that her mother was not altogether sorry when the child spent hours by herself in the woods playing with sticks or making angels in the snow. Annie was the only Appleby child to inherit the Acadian olive skin tone and dark hair from her mother and grandmother, and the sight of her red hat and dark head coming across the snowfields was as common as seeing a nuthatch at the birdfeeder. One morning when Annie was five and going to kindergarten she told the car full of children—her brother and sister and the Daigle boys and Charlene—that God spoke to her when she was outside in the woods. Her sister said, “You’re so stupid, why don’t you shut up.” Annie bounced on the seat beside her father and she said, “He does, though! God talks to me.” Her sister asked how did he do that, and Annie answered, “He puts thoughts in my head.” Annie looked up at her father then, and saw something in his eyes as he turned to look at her that stayed with her always, something that did not seem like her father, not yet, something that seemed not good. “You all get out,” he said when he pulled up in front of the school. “I have to speak to Annie.” When the car doors had slammed shut he said to his daughter, “What is it you saw in the woods?”