"I've seen people as limp as rags that I thought were dead but weren't. And I once saw a dead guy who seemed so animated I would have sworn he was alive. You can't always be sure. Especially from a photo. Bring me the body-then I'll let you know." He handed the photo back to Anthony.
"Dipshit," Elliot said as they stepped from the building into the weak sunlight.
Chapter 29
Mason hummed to himself as he packed his lunch to take with him to the commercial greenhouse where he worked. He hadn't felt this good since… since, well, since his sister had been home. But his life was turning around. Jo was coming to visit soon, and he had a girl, just like she'd always wanted. A girl who read Proust.
"I worry about you," Jo had told him once. "I'd feel better leaving here if you had somebody. What about that nice Lauren who works at Dr. DeLong's office?"
"She isn't my type," he'd said, closing the book he'd been reading. Dostoyevsky's The Idiot.
"What kind of girl is your type?"
"I don't know." He'd looked at her light hair, her blue eyes, her sweet face. "Maybe somebody kinda like you."
She'd laughed. "Oh, Mason. You're so sweet, but you don't want a girlfriend like me."
"Why not?"
"You shouldn't limit yourself in that way. There are so many different kinds of people in the world."
In the dark of the kitchen, he replaced the lid on the mayonnaise jar and put the container back in the refrigerator. A minute ago, he'd been blissfully happy. Now a deep, unreasoning sorrow pressed down on him, coming out of nowhere. A moment ago, the world had seemed a promising place. Now bleakness stretched out before him as far as he could see.
The girl, he thought despairingly, exhaustion washing over him. Did he have enough energy to deal with her today? Earlier, he'd been so happy knowing she was in the house. Now taking care of her seemed more than he could cope with. Before, everything had been sharp and well defined. Now his thoughts were fuzzy, with sloppy, disturbing edges that couldn't be repaired.
This life is an illusion, he thought, mentally quoting Graham Morris. The words often gave him comfort in times like these.
The girl. He had to deal with the girl. He had to do something with her while he went to work. Normally, spending the day among acres of roses brought him comfort. How could it today if he spent all the time worrying about her?
Last night he'd left her tied to the bed, her mouth covered with tape in case she woke up and decided to start screaming. He could leave her there. Not even look in the room. He could leave for work and forget about her for eight hours.
It all seemed so hard. It all suddenly seemed stupid. That was perhaps his biggest fault-allowing an idea to carry him away so that he jumped into new situations without giving them enough thought.
Wearily, he made his way to the bedroom.
She was awake. Her eyes were open, and she was watching him. Even though she was wearing his sister's clothes, she was just a girl.
There was nothing special about her.
She reads Proust. How many people do you know who read Proust?
None.
True, but that didn't mean she understood it. Lots of people read books and listened to music they didn't understand or care to understand. It didn't mean she could spend hours discussing Proust.
You haven't given her a chance.
She'd disappointed him, just like the others.
What was he going to do with her?
When he was little, he'd read a book about a dog, and suddenly he wanted one. His sister took him to a kennel, where they bought a mutt. He'd wanted a real dog like a collie or Labrador retriever, but Jo insisted on getting one from the pound. "To save him from being put to sleep," she'd explained. She'd spent her life caring for strays of all kinds, so he couldn't speak against the very thing that defined who she was.
The dog was an ugly, pathetic thing, with big brown eyes and soft hair, and the most irritatingly timid nature. If Masbn as much as frowned, it would tuck its tail between its legs and piddle all over the floor.
Mason knew nothing about dogs except what he'd learned from television, books, and movies. It turned out that those dogs-the kind with leading roles on screen-were lies. He'd expected the mutt to be smarter, to be able to communicate with him and understand everything he said. At the very least, it should have been able to entertain itself.
The dog was an annoyance. A horrible, time-consuming annoyance. It had to be taken outside when it wasn't convenient, and it chewed up the furniture. Worse, it chewed on Mason's books.
It constantly wanted to play. It constantly wanted attention, and didn't like to be left alone even for ten minutes. It was a pathetic, useless creature that took and took and took, and never gave anything back except for ruined books and stained carpet.
Jo adored the pathetic creature, the way she seemed to adore all pathetic creatures. "We're all made by God," she'd say, smiling. She would toss sticks to it and pet it, talking to it in her soft, quiet voice. When she did so, the dog would actually calm down and mind, at least a little.
"Isn't he wonderful?" she'd sometimes say. "Isn't he adorable?"
The more Jo liked it, the more Mason hated it. Stupid dog. Stupid, worthless dog. Eating and shitting, eating and shitting.
Mason tried to lose it. He took it miles from home. Then, when it wasn't looking, Mason ran away. But the dog-Seymour was its name-found its way home. Which meant it wasn't as stupid as Mason thought. But that was just instinct, Mason had argued with himself when the dog had arrived panting and happy on the doorstep. Turtles had instinct. Salmon had instinct. Worms had instinct.
The girl on the bed was making Mason feel the way he'd felt toward Seymour. She was an irritant that was creeping under his skin. Someone who'd lured him with promises of being more than she was. She'd tricked him into thinking she was the prize, that once he found her, his life would be complete and the happiness that had eluded him for so long would be within his grasp.
But nothing had changed. Right now he was sad. It was an old, familiar sadness that was like a smothering blanket.
He would feed her and put her away for the day. And later he would think about what to do.
When he got so sick of the dog that he couldn't stand it anymore, Mason-in order to save his sanity and his place in the household-was forced to take drastic measures he hadn't wanted to take. But it had been Seymour's fault. If Seymour had lived up to his expectations, nothing would have happened.
One day Seymour disappeared. "Up and disappeared," the locals would have said. But he and Jo weren't locals; they'd moved in when an uncle left Jo the house in his will, plus enough money to live on for several years. Mason and Jo had moved there from Louisiana, driving all the way in an old station wagon packed with their belongings. "A new beginning," Jo had called it.
But the people in the nearby town had never really let them in. Mason hadn't cared. "They can all go to hell," he'd told Jo. She'd been hurt by their rejection. Fifteen years later she gave up and decided it was time to go. When she left, only a handful of neighbors stopped to tell her good-bye.
Mason had stayed. He had his roses, and his roses were a part of him. He couldn't leave.
When Seymour vanished, he and Jo searched the area surrounding the sprawling farmhouse. They checked the outbuildings and the barn. They looked along the pond and stream that ran through the property. Then they got in the car and drove, going door to door, asking if anyone had seen a cute little brown dog.
No one had.
"He's gone," Mason told Jo after a week had passed.
"Where did he go?" she asked, sobbing in her handkerchief. "Why did he want to leave us?"
"Maybe he followed some other dogs," Mason suggested. "Or maybe he followed a car down the road. You know how he was, always chasing anything that moved."