Devotion (8 page)

In the kitchen he drank a glass of water, tried to read more of
Manuscript of a Country Doctor,
but his mind kept detouring. He went to the cupboard, took out a bottle of Irish whiskey, poured a shot glass, threw it back. Opened his notebook, scrawled in big sprawling letters
YOU FUCKING IDIOT
, then went out on the porch carrying the bottle and glass. He sat on the porch swing. Polishing off six shots in less than half an hour, he concluded that the collapse of all good things was due less to grim errors in judgment than to a self-destructive impulse natural to his character. He conjured up probably the most nefarious rationalization possible, in or out of his notebooks:
The sort of thing that happened in London would've happened sooner or later. Therefore Maggie's better off without me.

Out on the lawn he wandered aimlessly. He had one loafer on; the other was on the porch. It was now well toward dawn. A mile away, lobster boats were on the Bay of Fundy. The lobstermen would see the sun rising. But the pond and surrounding woods of the estate remained socked in with fog. David stumbled to the pen. Leaning against the gate, he said, “Sss-swans, swannies,” pathetic now, the alcohol stammer, and then he began calling the swans, “Here, Marcel, here Dr. H,” both characters from novels by Anatole
France. For a good two or three minutes, as he repeated the names, the swans didn't react. Finally one trundled over to investigate, got close to David and then, as if a vaudeville cane had hooked its long neck, it effected a U-turn and joined the others near the trough.

David lifted the latch, opened the gate and lay down, blocking the exit. Using outsize movements, like an escape artist loosening chains underwater, he removed his sweater, folded it into a pillow. “I promise I'll go swimming with you, Dr. H,” he said, tucking his knees to his chest, closing his eyes. Half a dozen swans folded out from the corner like illustrated Japanese fans come alive. In a few moments David was dead to the world.

 

Naomi Bloor drove up in her jeep. Her bimonthly examinations were always scheduled for 7
A.M.
When Naomi separated a swan out, it most often reacted in a predictable way, a kind of white explosion of wild-eyed protest, until she managed to embrace the swan, chortle “It's okay, it's okay,” or hum in a low monotone, then slip the leather hood over its head, at which point the swan generally stilled. She wore a catcher's mask and chest protector, which she'd purchased in a sporting goods store in Truro. It didn't always go smoothly. “Swans, behavior-wise,” she told David, “you have to be constantly on the alert. Seeming calm is their best trick. Because it's right then you have to figure some nasty thought's
just started to percolate in their swan brains. Wings suddenly flare out. Bony ends of the wings, the bill, both can do real damage.” Now and then she asked David to assist. Tasks such as holding a swan's bill closed while Naomi put in eye drops.

On another occasion, Naomi filled David in on how the swans came to be on the estate in the first place. “I get calls from all over this part of the province,” she said. “Kids shoot them. A storm caused one to collide with a radio tower, broke its wing. Things like that. Freak accidents. Years back, word got around, the Tecoskys take in wounded swans. I brought them one myself, first year I was the neighborhood vet. You might have noticed one can't turn its neck back to preen? It was shot in the neck's why.”

Naomi was thirty-six, with dark blond hair cut in what she called a “serious pageboy.” She liked how it framed her narrow face. She typically wore overalls and a cotton shirt and lace-up boots, a utilitarian outfit. While earning her degree at the University of California, Davis, she'd married another student; the marriage didn't last a year. Her first postgraduate posting was with a veterinary clinic in Regina, Saskatchewan. When that ended, she went home to Truro to visit her parents. On this visit she read an ad in a Canadian veterinary journal announcing a “neighborhood practice” for sale in Parrsboro. She inquired by telephone and drove right over. She had lunch, then dinner with Dr. Alvin Frame, seventyone years old, who'd been born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and had had his Parrsboro practice for forty-seven years. He was tall but stooped, with a head full of white, unruly hair, and Naomi could tell right off he didn't suffer fools. The next morning she drove with Dr. Frame to his office, then to the Tecosky estate. On the way he said, “The caretaker's name is William Field. William, not Bill. I told him we were visiting.” Two hours later, while they ate sandwiches at the Minas Bakery, he said, “Ail right, Dr. Bloor, I'm satisfied you won't reverse all my years of goodwill.”

“I hope to extend your goodwill,” she said. This made Dr. Frame chuckle, possibly at his own obtuseness.

“Of course you'll do just that. You seem a very competent young woman. You have respectable bona fides. I don't care, really, if this sounds hokey, but my longtime clients, their confidence in me, put two daughters and a son through university. But it's time I get out. Though I won't give up my house in Parrsboro: my wife's buried here. As for the practice, you just study the files, you'll be fine. It's mostly dogs and cats. There's Mrs. Kelb, near Economy, who keeps toucans and parrots, in cathedral cages, you'll see. What else? It's rare but not unheard of the forest service will bring you a deer or coyote someone's hit with a car. I repaired a bobcat once. Like I said, it's all in the files.”

“I look forward to the whole thing,” Naomi said.

“Well, you can have the whole thing. Including the deep
dark secrets of my accounting methods and tax deductions. You can have my practice lock, stock and barrel, Dr. Bloor.” And then he named a price.

Dr. Frame mailed notices of his retirement, which contained a request to welcome Dr. Naomi Bloor. Her first full day at the clinic was diverse, also exhausting. Since she wanted to make a good impression, she spent an inordinate amount of time with each patient and owner. That day, between 7:45
A.M.
and 6:15
P.M.,
she removed porcupine quills from the face and inside the mouth of a mutt who whimpered nonstop, licking the pliers as if pleading directly with them (from 12:30 to 1:00, while she ate a tuna sandwich at the bakery, Dory Elliot told her, “Mrs. Ebbet stopped by, not expressly to say so, but still, she did say you handled yourself well with those porcupine quills. I don't mean to make a pun, but Mrs. Ebbet can be prickly. You got an A-plus on your report card is what I'm saying”); gave regular checkups to three other dogs; put drops of medicinal astringent in the ears of a cat with ear mites. Late in the afternoon a woman from Great Village, Constance Sugrue, called, distraught that her four-year-old daughter, also Constance, used their parakeet's droppings as fingerpaint. “She painted a whole nativity scene on a sheet of manila paper,” she said. “I think she inhaled something went to her brain, because why else would she paint a nativity so far from Christmas?” Naomi said, “I don't have a strong background in parakeets,
Constance. I'd call your family doctor. My opinion? I don't think harm was done.”

Driving her pickup home to her one-story house in Parrsboro that evening, Naomi stopped to buy a piece of salmon, head of lettuce, tomato, scallions, bottle of olive oil, bottle of vinegar, bottle of white wine. It was a warm night out, a salty breeze off the Bay of Fundy. Listening to the radio, she made oil-and-vinegar dressing, tossed the salad, broiled the salmon. Near dusk she sat on her porch, ate dinner and drank two glasses of wine. Three boys pedaled past on bicycles; they'd each fastened a playing card to the frame with a clothespin and the cards fluttered against the spokes.
I've come into a good situation here
, she thought.
I already know Parrsboro a little bit and like what I know. I'm well past my stupid marriage. Today was a useful day. I'm going to eat my supper and not drink this whole bottle of wine, because I've got an 8
A.M.
appointment. It's Mrs. Boomer-Bower's springer spaniel, Berenice.
Mrs. Boomer-Bower told Naomi on the telephone, “My house is on the dirt road off Route 2, just before the cemetery.” Naomi wrote this down on a file card.

William had apprised Naomi of the general situation between Maggie and David. (“They're still married on paper,” he said.) “I can't think about it much,” Naomi said. “I wasn't invited to their wedding, as you know. Still, I wish them the best.” However, after David was caretaker for a month, she was flirtatious with him, mostly by indirection. She was
scarcely conscious of this at first, then did it on purpose. While examining the swans, she sometimes filled David in on local gossip, talked “out of school” about her women friends' “social lives.” She had something of a raunchy sense of humor, though David felt she forced it a little. Dory Elliot called her “high-strung.” David found her nice to look at, certainly that; he never confided in her, however, tried never to be anything but civil and direct in her company. He sometimes ran into her at the bakery; they'd had coffee together. He valued her intelligence, her veterinarian's know-how.

Naomi had other designs. Designs that seemed plausible, on the drawing board at least. The previous December she'd asked David to accompany her to a movie in Halifax. He'd said “Sure,” followed by “I've been feeling really cooped up here.” It was a three-hour drive round-trip, plus the movie itself, so they wouldn't return until quite late. On the drive down they chatted freely. The theater was on Water Street. The movie was
Straight Time,
a psychological character study. Dustin Hoffman played a seedy fellow addicted to robbing jewelry stores; just out of prison, he takes up with a woman who loves him, but when he and another man botch a heist, things quickly go from bad to worse. The woman goes on the lam with Hoffman, but he abandons her at a gas station out in Nowheresville, USA. She asks why she
can't go with him. “Because I'm gonna get caught,” he says, and drives off.

“Altruism was a phony reason to ditch her,” Naomi said in the lobby after the movie. “Though he did do her a favor, didn't he?”

When they stepped out to the street, David's heart leapt, because he thought he glimpsed Maggie walking past. But it wasn't her. “That Dustin Hoffman, as an actor, I mean, he really—”

“Yes, he was very good. But the thing is, I've had girlfriends attracted to men like that,” Naomi said.

Late the following January they drove in a minor blizzard to Halifax to see
The Cherry Orchard,
starring Megan Follows, who as a child played Anne of Green Gables on television. Naomi noticed how David looked nervously about the theater as the audience filed in. “I don't see her either,” she said. “And I'd understand how you'd be upset if Margaret
was
here.” Her saying that had been fine with David. It was the truth.

They left at intermission. Naomi had insisted; she saw it was impossible for David to concentrate on the play. She was put out. “What a waste,” she said. “The acting was good.” What's more, unbeknownst to David, Naomi had secured a reservation at the Haliburton House Inn, on Morris Street in Halifax. She'd stayed there on two occasions, once
alone, once with an attendant at the children's zoo. (She'd mentioned him to David. “When he said he wanted a platonic relationship, I asked didn't he think Plato regularly slept with anyone?”) The inn was cozy and discreet, rates were reasonable, breakfast was free with good choices. In the truck, David turned on the ignition, cranked up the heat. Civility had replaced everything; still, Naomi ventured forth. She took his right hand in her left hand and held it against her forehead, as if he should check for a fever. She kissed his palm lightly. David looked out the window. Letting go his hand, Naomi faced stiffly forward. “During the play, I daydreamed us kissing like teenagers—I'll be honest about it. Now I think better of that.”

“Look, Naomi—”

“I was just holding hands, David. For comfort, you know? I wasn't suggesting a hotel room.”

The next day, from the clinic, she telephoned Haliburton House Inn and apologized for not canceling the reservation.

 

Naomi noticed David sprawled at the pen's entrance just as she climbed down from her jeep in the driveway. The gate swung back and forth as swans exited. Naomi carried her black veterinarian's bag to the pen. Two swans stepped on and over David's body, one got a solid bite to his nose, and both caught up with three swans along the path to the pond. For all they knew the swanherd was dead. Naomi set her bag
on the ground. She stepped over David, kicked at the remaining swans until they, too, set out for the water. She leaned down over David, felt his pulse, decided she didn't need to take out her stethoscope. He had dirty webbed footprints, pasty and dried swan shit and congealed cornmeal on his T-shirt and shorts. The words, in spontaneously antique locution, that came to Naomi's mind were
Behold a pitiful sight.
But pity was not what she actually felt. More, disgust. David groaned awake without opening his eyes. “Guess you're not dead after all,” Naomi said. “Well, that's good for you, I suppose.” Still, she could not just leave him there.
(Well, I
could
just leave him here—what harm would come of it?)
She levered up David a little by the shoulders, slapped his face once, patted it roughly. David opened his eyes, said, “My head is pounding.” He reeked of whiskey and swan shit.
Quite the unusual combination,
Naomi thought.

“Just drunk as a skunk,” she said.

“Where's the swans?”

“The pond. Where else would they be?”

“Any get into barbed wire?”

“What are you talking about?”

Naomi managed to hoist David to his feet. With his arm slung around her shoulder, David leaning heavily into her, too woozy to help much, Naomi maneuvered him in fits and starts to the guesthouse. She kicked open the screen door and with great effort got David into the bedroom. She let
him fall face-down on the unmade bed and tilted his head so he could breathe. Naomi went into the kitchen, put on coffee and returned to the bedroom. David was now asleep, snoring like a walrus, but suddenly touched his blood-dried nose, muttering, “Dr. Steenhagen, Dr. Steenhagen.” Naomi had no idea whom he referred to, seeing as there was no Dr. Steenhagen in that part of Nova Scotia. She stood there looking at him for a few minutes. She heard the coffee drip. “Oh, what the hell,” she finally said. She rolled David onto his back, unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his shorts, lowered the zipper, slid off the shorts and tossed them into the wicker hamper in the corner, already brimming with rumpled clothes. David wore boxer shorts with a checkerboard design, with black and red checkers on the squares; they'd been a gift from Maggie.