Protecting Marie (13 page)

Fanny met many people in the trails, but they all seemed to have a purpose for being there. They either had dogs with them or were walking briskly, obviously for exercise, their arms swinging, backs straight. The boy's purpose was unclear.

The boy didn't frighten Fanny, but having noticed him three times in a span of only five days left her feeling both uneasy and curious. She wondered if he was watching her.

Fanny had to fight an urge to chase after the boy as she led Dinner in the opposite direction, the direction of home. They angled through the field, walked the tracks, and cut across the green. Fanny was jogging up the sidewalk in front of her house when a terrible thought occurred to her: The boy in the red cap is the son of the woman who owned Dinner. He wants her back.

She stumbled and fell, scraping her knee on the cement, tearing her favorite jeans.

New Year's Eve. Fanny whiled the evening away halfheartedly doing schoolwork, aimlessly flipping through the channels on TV, and making trips to the dining room to snack on the elegant hors d'oeuvres that had taken her mother all afternoon to prepare. Fanny had said no to going to a party at a friend's house, choosing to stay home because of the boy in
the red cap. She couldn't rid her mind of the thought that he was surely spying on her with the intention of trying somehow to take Dinner back. And how could she have fun at a party if she were worrying so?

It was when her sense of dread dwindled that she would make her trips to the dining room. “I'm being silly,” she said to Dinner repeatedly. “I know I'm being silly.”

“
Who's
silly?” asked Stuart Walker.

“Oh,” said Fanny shyly, “I was just talking to the dog.”

It had become customary over the past few years for Stuart and Adele Walker to spend New Year's Eve at the Swanns'. Instead of dinner, Ellen and Henry served hors d'oeuvres and champagne. That was all. But there was more food than if Ellen had cooked a five-course meal.

Stuart and Adele were, Fanny guessed, her parents' closest friends. The Walkers were both in their sixties, their children grown. Stuart taught photography at the university; Adele was a nurse. More than any other couple
Fanny knew, the Walkers looked like each other. They both wore glasses and had short hair the color of French vanilla ice cream that they parted on the left. When they stood shoulder to shoulder, everything matched up—elbows, waists, knees, chins.

“Your mother's outdone herself again,” said Stuart, patting his belly.

“Yeah.”

The top of the dining room table looked to Fanny like a Lilliputian town seen from above and afar. A small mountain of pâté surrounded by juniper sprigs and kumquats was the focal point. Trays and chafing dishes of stuffed mushrooms, meatballs, crab puffs, oysters wrapped in bacon, and canapés of all sorts and kinds stretched like hills and valleys from one end of the table to the other. Some of the food sat on large puckered lettuce leaves; the trays and dishes sat on a sea blue tablecloth.

“These are the best,” Stuart said, holding up one of the bacon-wrapped oysters by its toothpick and twirling it with a flourish.

“Yuck,” said Fanny, wrinkling her nose. She
thought that oysters looked unappealing and tasted worse.

“Good,” said Stuart, reaching for another. “All the more for me. By the way, do you know what these are called?” he asked.

Fanny shook her head.

“Angels on horseback,” Stuart replied.

“Really?”
Fanny flashed Stuart a disbelieving smirk.

“Really, truly. Angels on horseback. Great name, don't you think?”

Fanny eyed the platter of brown, curly
things
stabbed with toothpicks. “It doesn't really fit, though.” The name conjured up a drastically different image in her mind. The name made her think of sweet and delicate pastries dusted with powdered sugar. “I think they should be called slimy little globs.”

Stuart laughed. He selected one of the toothpicks from the heap that had collected on his plate and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. It bounced as he spoke. “Don't mind me. Just filling my plate for the fifth time,” he said in a comical voice. As he worked his way
up the table, his voice became lower, more serious. “I never see you around anymore. I remember when you used to hang out at your father's studio on campus.”

Fanny used to walk there occasionally after school to do her homework until he was ready to leave—although, because he'd let her draw and paint, she didn't get much work done. “That was a long time ago,” she said, rotating her empty plate in her hands. “He paints mostly at home now anyway.” Her upper lip disappeared under her lower one.

“I'm still fond of that photograph I took of you there,” said Stuart, “fast asleep on the floor amid that overwhelming sweep of pots and things he has.”

The photograph was black-and-white, printed in velvety tones. It hung in a simple wooden frame in Henry and Ellen's bedroom. One entire wall was devoted to it. Fanny wasn't even noticeable at first glance, almost hidden as she was among the stacks of pottery. Only a few of her stockinged toes, darkened with charcoal, were visible, poking out near
the bottom of the photograph, and just a sliver of her face showed from behind a large egg-shaped pot. But, nonetheless, it was unmistakably Fanny.

“Yeah, I really had a ball there,” Fanny said wistfully.

Upon hearing the word ball, Dinner raised her head smartly and quickly and snapped it around.

“Oops,” said Fanny. “She knows what B-A-L-L means.”

“Clever dog,” said Stuart. “And some Christmas present. Your father told us all about her.”

Not only to be polite, but because she thought he was a nice man and she liked him and she needed to ask him a question privately, Fanny said, “Do you want to play fetch with Dinner and me in the backyard?”

“I'd love to,” Stuart answered.

They bundled up and went outside.

Under the glow of the backyard light, Fanny watched Dinner and Stuart Walker play fetch.
Even though Stuart was the one throwing the ball, Dinner dropped the ball near Fanny and nosed it closer and closer to her until it touched her boot. Fanny lightly kicked the ball to Stuart.

“I guess she knows who's boss,” Stuart said. “I can tell you've spent a lot of time with her.” He brushed the snow off Dinner's snout and tapped her gently. “Some dog. What a good pooch you are.”

“She's smart,” Fanny said, nodding. She leaned toward the house, away from Stuart, and surreptitiously wiped her nose on her mitten. She had neither a handkerchief nor a tissue with her. After taking a deep breath, Fanny asked rather suddenly, “You're over sixty, aren't you?” Immediately, the words seemed indelicate to her ears and she could feel herself blush.

“Years or pounds?” Stuart replied, chuckling. He paused for the slightest moment, then said, “Yes, to both.”

Fanny pressed on. “I was wondering if it's hard for you to—” Here she hesitated, almost
adding, “—be that old?” She finally finished with, “—be that age?”

“Not really. But I'm guessing that you're thinking about your father, not me.”

Fanny bowed her head in agreement.

“At your age, birthdays are a joy. When you're my age—your father's age—a birthday isn't necessarily something to be celebrated in that same joyous manner. It
can
be, but it can feel very strange, too. So I understand why the party was canceled. And I know about his going away for the night.”

Hearing this somehow made Fanny feel better. She sighed. Her breath shot out in a steady stream like car exhaust.

Stuart continued playing with Dinner while he spoke. He didn't look at Fanny; his eyes were fixed on the tennis ball. “Knowing your father, I think this will pass.”

“But . . . did anything happen when you turned sixty? Did you
do
anything?” What she really wanted to ask was: Is he all
right
? But her shyness was increasing and to be that direct seemed impossible.

“I bought a new car and I shaved my beard of twenty-some years.”

“Did I know you with a beard?”

“Well, I'm sixty-seven, so I shaved it seven years ago.”

“I would have been five then,” Fanny said, twisting her mouth into a crooked smile, thinking. “I don't remember.”

They were quiet. Then Stuart coughed—a cough that sounded forced to Fanny, as if it were intended to shake the stillness, move the conversation. It echoed in the night. And in the long silence that followed, Fanny realized that Stuart Walker was not going to reveal some crucial insight about her father or growing older. Perhaps no one could help her with this.

“Any resolutions?” Fanny asked, changing the subject completely, needing something to say.

“I'm going to reread
War and Peace
,” Stuart told her. “And you?”

“Oh, I don't know. Maybe get an A in math.” Fanny was lying. She already knew
what her resolution would be: to keep Dinner. It would be as simple and as difficult as that.

“And my resolution,” said Henry, the back door slamming, “is to start painting again—soon—or quit forever.”

The words snapped like frozen twigs. Instantly filled with a panicky feeling, Fanny wondered if her father had heard her question Stuart. At the same time, she was deeply saddened by his comment.

“Don't be so hard on yourself, Henry,” said Stuart. He slapped Henry on the back the way Fanny had seen her father do to many men before. Women hug, thought Fanny; men slap backs. With Henry and Stuart standing side by side, it was obvious to Fanny how much whiter Henry's hair was than Stuart's.

Henry folded his arms against his chest and shivered. “Good God, it's cold out here,” he said. “What are you two doing, telling secrets?”

“No,” Fanny said defensively. The cold, crisp air was causing her eyes to water.

“We were playing with Wonder Dog,” said
Stuart.

“Well, midnight is fast approaching,” said Henry. “Come warm up before the big event. Whoop-de-do!” There was more than a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

Once inside, they watched the replay of the famous glittery ball dropping in Times Square on TV, and they toasted the new year and one another. Henry kissed Ellen and Stuart kissed Adele and Fanny kissed Dinner.

Fanny gave Dinner two dog biscuits, and she hugged her mother for a long moment as if she would never let go.

When the Walkers soon departed, there was more hugging and back slapping and kissing and well wishing. Henry stepped out onto the porch with Stuart and Adele. Ellen began carrying trays of half-eaten food to the kitchen. Dinner lingered in the chilly hallway, sniffing at the air that rushed through the crack between the door and the doorjamb. As Fanny tried to urge Dinner back into the warm house, she heard Stuart, his voice crystalline and
clear, say to Henry, “Happy New Year again, you old goat. And if you can't handle
this
dog, give me a call. I'd take her in a heartbeat.”

T
he Swanns' Christmas tree lay along the curbside like a discarded piece of furniture, a
peculiar green chair tipped over. It was one of three trees already set out on their block. Inside the house, the ornaments and the village from beneath the tree were wrapped in musty tissue paper and boxed. The strings of lights were coiled and packed into the closet in the guest room. While Fanny and Ellen were unwinding the cottony fabric that formed the snowy hills on which the village had been sitting, Fanny found the little dog statue that her father had left for her the night he had sneaked off. She had forgotten all about it. She ran upstairs and stowed it in her file cabinet.

“I always find it uplifting to take the Christmas decorations down right away,” Ellen said, her arm rising from her hip and her palm turning, dipping toward the empty-looking corner of the living room where the tree had just stood. “New Year's Day—a fresh start.”