Grace had the feeling she should tread lightly. “I’m sure you must’ve felt more”—she was going to say romantic, but thought better of it—“optimistic about Suzanne in the early days, didn’t you?”
“Optimistic? That’s not what I mean,” Morris said impatiently. “I love everything about this dog — her eyes, her body, the way she’s leaning against me right now. She’s my home. This dog is my home.”
Grace put down her pen. It was imperative, she knew, not to judge. But passing judgment is how we navigate the world, go left instead of right, do right instead of wrong. “Don’t you think, Morris,” she said softly, “that dogs are easier to love because they don’t talk back?”
In front of her this large, childlike man began to cry, with the creaking, stunted tears of someone who rarely sheds them. “Sometimes,” he said, “I wish it were just me and Molly. That Suzanne would leave us alone. You don’t have to tell me it’s stupid, I know it’s ridiculous.” He let out a low, ravaged moan, and the dog leapt up on the couch and licked his face and squirmed into his lap, and he smiled through his tears. “I love her,” he said.
To love a dog not as a pet, but as you would a person, is impossible. It’s like asking a child to be an adult, or expecting your partner to always give love and never receive, or always receive and never give. A fantasy, a refusal to negotiate the complicated, muddy emotional needs that define any relationship. All this Grace tried to explain to Morris while he cradled a hundred-pound dog in his lap. He listened and nodded and dried his cheeks. Then he said, “Thank you very much,” and left her office. She never heard from him again.
It was Morris she thought of when she saw John Tugwell again. Because she knew there was no good reason she should be so intensely interested in him; that he was a troubled person, one more likely to suck her into his trouble than to be drawn out of it. But when she saw him, the rush of gladness made her catch her breath. And none of the commonsense warnings she gave herself could counter that gladness and drag her back to earth.
Until that moment, she had told herself she was just looking for a birthday present for her friend Azra. That stopping into this stationery store in Westmount had nothing to do with the incident on the mountain. Then she saw him. He stood at the back of the store behind a counter, flipping through a book of wedding invitations with a couple. When she walked in, he glanced at her, but neither of them smiled or even nodded. Turning away, her heart thrumming, Grace browsed through some clothbound journals. In the background she could hear his voice patiently listing paper brands and prices.
Another clerk, a woman with bleached-blond hair, said, “Est-ce que je peux vous aider?” and Grace shook her head. She must have uncapped a hundred pens and flipped through every birthday card before she finally picked one out and bought a journal as her gift. He was still waiting on the bridal couple, the woman unable to make up her mind.
“I think I should ask my mom what she thinks,” she was saying.
“She’ll like whatever you like,” her fiancé said.
“But she usually helps me figure out what I like,” she said.
The blond woman, who was ringing up Grace’s purchase, met her eyes and smirked. “I give them a year,” she muttered.
Grace nodded mechanically, taking the bag. As she was turning to go, the couple thanked Tug for his time and left.
“I’m not totally dependent or anything,” the woman said. “I just trust her judgment. It’s good to get a second opinion.”
“I’m your second opinion,” her fiancé said.
Tug was smiling wryly, absently, as Grace walked toward him, trying to arrange her face in some semblance of casualness. She put her plastic bag on the counter and said, “I’m interested in some invitations.”
“Are you getting married?”
“No.”
“So what kind of event, then?”
“I’m just kind of interested,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the other clerk. “In general.”
“Hypothetical invitations, right,” he said, and flipped open an album.
Leaning over it, their heads close together, she could feel the heat coming off him. “I was just wondering,” she said, “how you were.”
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t see any crutches.”
“I’m a quick healer,” he said. He saw her looking at his throat, whose redness might have been mistaken for a rash, and flushed.
“And otherwise?” she said.
“I’m great,” he said. “Never better.”
“You don’t have to be flip with me,” she said evenly. “I’m not judging you or asking you for anything. I’m just concerned.”
“Why?” he said, sounding more curious than angry. “It’s not every day that I meet someone so … invested in my well-being.”
Grace looked up, holding his gaze. “It’s not every day that I meet someone the way I met you.”
“I’m sorry about dragging you into my life,” he said. “It’s not what I meant to have happen.”
“I don’t mind it,” she said.
She slipped a sample of expensive bonded paper out of the album he held. With one of the store’s fancy pens she wrote down her name, address, and phone number. “This is who I am,” she said. “You can call me, if you want to.”
“What if I don’t want to?” he said. “Will you leave me alone?”
Grace was taken aback. “I don’t know,” she said.
Another smile broke over him then, composed of equal parts surprise, cynicism, and amusement, and he looked like a different person, younger, sweeter. She realized he was handsome. He had a beautiful smile, with even white teeth and a dimple on the left side. “You’re something else,” he said. “I’m just not sure what.”
She smiled back, and then the blond clerk cleared her throat, indicating the presence of other customers, so she gathered her purchases and left.
Of course he didn’t call. She didn’t expect him to. They were strangers. So she tried her best to forget about him, the day on the mountain, the unexpected sweetness of his smile. But in still moments, when she was driving home, or folding laundry, or in the shower, images would flicker in her mind. Not memories, but images of what she hadn’t seen: Tug skiing by himself into the woods. Tying the rope around his neck. His body falling, heavy but soundless, into the snow. Waiting for her to come skiing down from the Chalet. Waiting to be found.
An idea came to her with the weather. She woke up on a Saturday morning to find the world softened with snow. Outside people were shoveling out their cars, the trucks rumbling through the streets, plowing and salting. Her neighbor, Mr. Diallou, cleared a path around his Honda only to see a truck banking snow around it, obstructing him again. He raised his fist and cursed the driver. Grace smiled, knowing what to do.
She called the stationery store and asked for him. When the manager said he wasn’t working, she cleared her car, loaded it up, and drove to his apartment. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock. He came to the door wearing a thick gray sweater and jeans, apparently still half asleep, his eyes heavy-lidded, his clothes rumpled.
“Let’s go skiing,” she said.
Tug looked at her with no trace of the cynical distance she’d seen in him before. Maybe she had caught him at an unguarded moment. “Do you want some coffee?” he said.
She followed him inside and took off her boots in the hall, wondering if he hadn’t heard what she said. She unzipped her ski jacket as he poured her a cup of coffee from a full pot. On the table was his own cup, the newspaper, a plate with crumbs. He was rubbing his hair absentmindedly, the loose curls spreading around his head, the lines around his eyes deeper than usual.