Attach ments(48)
“DO YOU LIKE basset hounds?”
Lincoln was sitting in The Courier break room eating homemade potato soup and still thinking about Scott Bakula and Sam when Doris interrupted him. She was loading Diet Pepsi into the machine behind him.
Lincoln wasn’t exactly sure what Doris’s job was. Whenever he saw her, she was stocking the vending machines, but that didn’t seem like it should be a full-time job. Doris was in her sixties with short, curly gray hair, and she wore a red vest, sort of a uniform, and large eyeglasses.
“Excuse me?” he asked, hoping he sounded polite, not confused.
“Basset hounds,” she said, pointing to the open newspaper in front of him. There was a photo of a basset hound sitting on a woman’s lap.
“I’d never have a basset hound if I lived so close to the ocean,” she said. Lincoln looked at the photo. He didn’t see any ocean. Doris must think he’d already read the story.
“They can’t swim, you know,” she said. “They’re the only dogs who can’t swim. They’re too fat, and their legs are too short.”
“Like penguins,” Lincoln said thickly.
“I’m pretty sure penguins can swim,” Doris said. “But a basset hound will drown in the bathtub. We had one named Jolene. Oh, she was a pretty little girl. I cried all night when we lost her.”
“Did she drown?” Lincoln asked.
“No,” Doris said. “Leukemia.”
“Oh,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“We had her cremated. Put her in a nice copper urn. It’s only this big,” Doris said, holding up a can of Wild Cherry Pepsi. “Can you believe it? A full-grown dog like Jolene in a tiny, tiny urn? There’s not much to any of us once you take out all the water. How much is left in a person, do you think?”
She waited for an answer.
“Probably less than a two-liter,” Lincoln said, still feeling like it would be rude to act as if this was anything other than normal conversation.
“I’ll bet you’re right,” Doris said sadly.
“When did she pass?” he asked.
“Well, it was when Paul was alive, let’s see, sixteen years ago. We got two more basset hounds after that one, but they weren’t as sweet …Honey, do you need any change while I’ve got this thing open?”
“No,” Lincoln said. “Thank you.”
Doris locked up the Pepsi machine. They talked a bit more about Jolene and about Doris’s late husband, Paul, whom Doris missed but didn’t get all choked up about the way she did Jolene. Paul had smoked and drank and refused to eat vegetables. Not even corn.
By the time she got to Dolly, her first basset, and Al, her first husband, Lincoln had forgotten that he was talking to Doris just to be polite.
HE STAYED HOME from work the next day. He went to his sister’s house instead and helped her bring Christmas decorations down from the attic. “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked, untangling a chain of plastic cranberries. “Did you just feel like taking a break?”
He shrugged and reached for another box. “Yeah. A break from taking a break.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He’d come to Eve’s house because he knew she’d ask him that. And he’d hoped that when she did ask, he’d have an answer. Things tended to come into focus when she was around.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just feel like I have to do something.”
“Do what?”
“I don’t know. That’s what’s wrong. Or part of what’s wrong. I feel like I’m sleepwalking.”
“You look like you’re sleepwalking,” she said.
“And I don’t know how to wake up.”
“Do something,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Change something.”
“I have,” Lincoln said. “I moved back. I got a job.”
“You must not have changed the right thing yet.”
“If I were in a movie,” he said, “I’d fix this by volunteering with special-needs kids or the elderly.
Or maybe I’d get a job in a greenhouse …or move to Japan to teach English.”
“Yeah? So are you going to try any of those things?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”
Eve looked at him coolly.
“Maybe you should join a gym,” she said.
From: Beth Fremont
To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
Sent: Tues, 11/16/1999 2:16 PM
Subject: My Cute Guy.
We’re not calling him My Cute Guy anymore.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I don’t think I ever called him that.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> We’re calling him My Very Cute Guy. Or maybe My Very Cute, Kind, and Compassionate—and Also Sort of Funny—Guy.