She wished someone were with her.
“Beverly!” she called. “Here, Bev! Come on, Bev!”
The dog came out of the garage and wagged her tail, but she would not go to Kate. She called once more, and then walked swiftly up the driveway and turned left at the sidewalk and continued walking at a fast pace, looking down at her feet, not daring to look up at the sky where the clouds rushed frantically.
It was several moments before she realized where she was going. She was heading for Julia Regan’s house.
The Alfa Romeo was parked in the driveway when she got there. As she passed the garage, she stood on tiptoe and looked through the windows to see if David’s car was there, but apparently he had not come up for the weekend. She went to the front door and rang the bell.
When Julia opened the door, she said at once, “Mrs. Regan, could we go for a drive, please?”
Julia hesitated only an instant. There was something in the child’s eyes she had never seen there before.
“Yes, of course,” she answered.
She closed the door behind her instantly, and together they walked quickly to the car.
He had burned out his anger on the parkway, speeding up toward New Haven, stopping at a diner for lunch, and then turning back and heading for Talmadge again.
He sat behind the wheel of the car now with only a weary sadness inside him, the anger all gone, wondering why life never turned out the way you expected it would.
You get old, he thought. The damn trouble is you get old.
Everything seemed the same as he turned off the parkway and pointed the nose of the car toward Talmadge. The noises in the brush alongside the road, the lush June landscape, the pines, everything seemed the same. And as he made the turn into the main street, Talmadge looked placid and peaceful, tree-shaded, the big church on the hill, the shops lining the sidewalks, the women in slacks, everything seemed the same, but you get old.
The anger had dissipated under his foot pressed to the accelerator, his eye watching the rear-view mirror for state troopers, the anger was all gone now. There was only sadness now, and disappointment. He had been deprived of something essential. Whatever her reasons, whatever had provoked her vehemence, she had forced him into relinquishing something he had desperately needed and wanted. And he blamed her now for her insensitivity, her coldness, her inability to recognize this need. He wondered what had provoked her attack. What had he done or said to so infuriate her, couldn’t she recognize his need? Damn it, couldn’t she see they were getting old? Couldn’t she understand that?
Coming up the road that led to the driveway of his house, he still could not understand. He knew only that he had been denied. The denial, he felt, was willful and impetuous. If she really loved him, if she really understood him, she would have felt his need, and subjected her own wishes to it, especially now when it was so important, especially...
He applied his foot to the brake gently. There was something in the road ahead, just in front of his driveway, a carton or a discarded garment, or... no, it was an animal, a mole probably, or a beaver, or perhaps even...
He stopped the car on the side of the road.
The animal was a dog.
He opened the door of the car. He knew even before he stepped out that the dog was Beverly. He did not want to walk to her. He saw the blood on the asphalt when he was ten steps away from her. He stopped. Oh, you son of a bitch, he thought. Oh, you bastard, who did this?
“Beverly?” he said, as if by calling her name, by getting no response, he could prove to himself this was not Beverly lying in the road with blood spreading on the asphalt.
As he approached her, he began hoping she was dead.
He looked down at her. There was not a mark on her body, and yet the asphalt was covered with blood, how...? He glanced past the dog, his eyes following the trail of blood she’d left, across the sidewalk, and into the woods beyond. She had come out of the woods then. She couldn’t possibly have been hit by a car.
Her eyes, normally brown, had a strange whitish-blue cast, as if they had been drained of all color, wide and staring in her head. Her body was stiff, as if in shock, and there was a questioning, puzzled look on her face. And as he stood over her, watching, she began to vomit blood, and suddenly she seemed to be hemorrhaging from every opening in her body, and he knew at once she had swallowed something poisonous, knew she had somehow got hold of one or maybe more of those goddamned pellets people were putting around to control field mice and moles, probably softened by the morning rain, a little rancid, Oh you son of a bitch, he thought.
He reached down for her. She whimpered as he picked her up, he had the feeling she would drain away in his hands, had the feeling she would turn to liquid in his hands as he began walking up the driveway to his house, wanting only to take her inside the house someplace, wanting only to make her comfortable. “Please, Beverly,” he said, “please, Beverly.” He walked with her in his arms. He could feel her hot blood on his hands. He was trembling. He wondered, Should I call the vet? What can I do? Oh my God, she’s bleeding to death in my hands. “Please, Beverly,” he said again.
The garage was open.
He took her into the garage and kicked an old pile of rags into place with one foot and then laid her gently on the rags. She whimpered again in pain, and he wondered, What shall I do? Jesus Christ, what shall I do?
“Amanda!” he shouted, and then remembered he had not seen the station wagon in the driveway. “Kate! Kate!” There was no answer. Her blood was spreading into the rags, staining them a bright red, her life was draining out of her as she whimpered in pain, and he thought, I’m alone in the house, I’ll call Julia, Julia will know what to do, Julia will help me, Julia.
And the dog whimpered again.
And he knew there was no time to call Julia, no time to pick up a phone and dial her number and explain about Beverly who was bleeding and dying and ask her to come over to help him, Help me, Julia, he thought, and knew Julia could not help him, no one could help him now, he was Matthew Anson Bridges, alone with a bleeding dog in an empty house, alone.
She died before his eyes. She died swiftly. He closed his eyes, and stood over her with his head bent.
He had not cried when his mother died and they walked through the stifling hot sunshine in Glen City, he had not cried when they lowered his father into his grave and cousin Birdie took a yellow handkerchief from her black purse, he had not cried. Now, standing over the dead dog with his eyes shut, the first tear came.
It squeezed from his closed lids, and he felt it slipping down his cheek, swift and hot. And then, as if this single tear released a larger flow inside him, he began trembling, and his shoulders shook, and he opened his eyes and looked down at the lifeless dog, and began to cry unashamedly and openly, began to cry in great chest-racking sobs because something he had loved very dearly was gone.
He accepted the death.
At long last, he accepted the death, and he cried brokenly in the stillness of the garage.
She saw Matthew’s car parked on the side of the road just ahead of their driveway, and she was puzzled for a moment, but not alarmed. She seemed to be driving effortlessly, the wheel in her hands seemed to move of its own accord as she sat with her thoughts and wondered what she had done to her daughter, wondered what it was she really wanted of her life, thinking quite logically and calmly as she had been thinking for the past hour while driving slowly and effortlessly. She turned into the driveway. A lassitude seemed to have come over her, a resignation perhaps, and yet there was no sadness in the resignation, there was instead a sort of peace. She saw the bloodstains on the garage floor as she made the turn. When she got out of the car, she saw the pile of bloodied rags.