The Night In Question (16 page)

When Joyce woke up, Dina was standing beside the sofa looking down at her. A few bars of pale light lay across the rug and the wall; the rest of the room was in shadow. Joyce tried to raise her head. It felt like a stone. She settled back again.

“I knew it,” Dina said.

Joyce waited. When Dina just kept looking at her, she asked, “Knew what?”

“Guess.” Dina turned away and went into the kitchen.

Joyce heard her running water into the kettle. Joyce called, “Are you referring to the fact that I’m sick?”

Dina didn’t answer.

“It doesn’t concern you,” Joyce said.

Dina came to the kitchen door. “Don’t do this, Joyce. At least be honest about what’s happening, okay?”

“Pretend I’m not here,” Joyce said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Dina shook her head. “I just can’t believe you’re doing this.” She went back in the kitchen.

“Doing
what
?” Joyce asked. “I’m lying here on the couch. Is that what I’m doing?”

“You know,” Dina said. She leaned into the doorway again and said, “Stop playing head games.”

“Head games,” Joyce repeated. “Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

Dina took a step into the living room. “It isn’t fair, Joyce.”

Joyce turned onto her side. She lay motionless, listening to Dina bang around in the kitchen.

“I’m not stupid!” Dina yelled.

“Nobody said you were.”

Dina came into the living room carrying two cups. She set one down on the coffee table where Joyce could reach it and carried the other to the easy chair.

“Thanks,” Joyce said. She sat up slowly, nodding with dizziness. She picked up the tea and held it against her chest, letting the fragrant steam warm her face.

Dina leaned forward and blew into her cup. “You look horrible,” she said.

Joyce smiled.

The two of them drank their tea, watching each other over the cups. “I’m going crazy,” Dina said. “I can’t plan a trip to the beach without you pulling this stuff.”

“Ignore me,” Joyce told her.

“That’s what you always say. I’m leaving, Joyce. Maybe not now, but someday.”

“Leave now,” Joyce said.

“Do you really want me to?”

“If you’re going to leave, leave now.”

“You look just awful. It really hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Pretend I’m not here,” Joyce said.

“But I
can’t
. You know I can’t. That’s what’s so unfair. I can’t just walk out when you’re hurting like this.”

“Dina.”

“What?”

Joyce shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing.”

Dina said, “Damn you, Joyce.”

“You should leave,” Joyce said.

“I’m going to. That’s a promise. Don’t ever say you didn’t have fair warning.”

Joyce nodded.

Dina stood and picked up one of the boxes. “I heard a great Polack joke today.”

“Not now,” Joyce said. “It would kill me.”

Dina carried the box to her bedroom and came back for the other one, the one with the scissors. It was bulkier than the first and she had trouble getting a grip on it. “Damn you,” she said to Joyce. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Joyce finished her tea. She crossed her arms and leaned forward until her head was almost touching her knees. From Dina’s bedroom she could hear the sound of drawers being yanked open and slammed shut. Then there was silence, and when Joyce raised her head Dina was standing over her again.

“Poor old Joyce,” she said.

Joyce shrugged.

“Move over,” Dina said. She arranged herself at the end of the sofa and said, “Okay.” Joyce lay down again, her head in Dina’s lap. Dina looked down at her. She brushed back a lock of Joyce’s hair.

“Head games,” Joyce said, and laughed.

“Shut up,” Dina said.

Dina shifted a little to one side. She laid one hand on each side of Joyce’s face, fingers along her cheeks, and began to push her thumbs against Joyce’s temples. She moved her thumbs back and forth in tight circles, steadily increasing the pressure. At first the rhythm was fluid and almost imperceptible, but as it grew more definite Dina began humming to herself. Joyce closed her eyes. She felt her eyelids flutter nervously, then grow still. She heard the newspaper rustle in the kitchen. She felt Dina purring her song. She felt the softness of Dina’s thighs, and the warmth they gave off. Dina’s hands were warm against her cheeks. Joyce reached up and covered them with her own hands, as if to keep them there.

B
rian Gold was at the top of the hill when the dog attacked. A big black wolf-like animal attached to a chain, it came flying off a back porch and tore through its yard into the park, moving easily in spite of the deep snow, making for Gold’s daughter. He waited for the chain to pull the dog up short; the dog kept coming. Gold plunged down the hill, shouting as he went. Snow and wind deadened his voice. Anna’s sled was almost at the bottom of the slope. Gold had raised the hood of her parka against the needling gusts, and he knew that she could not hear him or see the dog racing toward her. He was conscious of the dog’s speed and of his own dreamy progress, the weight of his gumboots, the clinging trap of crust beneath the new snow. His overcoat flapped at his knees. He screamed one last time as the dog made its lunge, and at that moment Anna flinched away and the dog caught her shoulder instead of her face. Gold was barely halfway down the hill, arms pumping, feet sliding in the boots. He seemed to be running in place, held at a fixed, unbridgeable distance as the dog dragged Anna backwards off the sled, shaking her
like a doll. Gold threw himself down the hill helplessly, then the distance vanished and he was there.

The sled was overturned, the snow churned up; the dog had marked this ground as its own. It still had Anna by the shoulder. Gold heard the rage boiling in its gut. He saw the tensed hindquarters and the flattened ears and the red gleam of gum under the wrinkled snout. Anna was on her back, her face bleached and blank, staring at the sky. She had never looked so small. Gold seized the chain and yanked at it, but could get no purchase in the snow. The dog only snarled more fiercely and started shaking Anna again. She didn’t make a sound. Her silence made Gold go hollow and cold. He flung himself onto the dog and hooked his arm under its neck and pulled back hard. Still the dog wouldn’t let go. Gold felt its heat and the profound rumble of its will. With his other hand he tried to pry the jaw loose. His gloves turned slippery with drool; he couldn’t get a grip. Gold’s mouth was next to the dog’s ear. He said, “Let go, damn you,” and then he took the ear between his teeth and bit down with everything he had. He heard a yelp and something cracked against his nose, knocking him backwards. When he pushed himself up the dog was running for home, jerking its head from side to side, scattering flecks of blood on the snow.

“The whole thing took maybe sixty seconds,” Gold said. “Maybe less. But it went on forever.” He’d told the story many times now, and always mentioned this. He knew it was trite to marvel at the way time could stretch and stall, but he was unable not to. Nor could he stop himself from repeating that it was a “miracle”—the radiologist’s word—that Anna hadn’t been crippled or disfigured, or even killed; and that her doctor did not understand how she’d
escaped damage to her bones and nerves. Though badly bruised, her skin hadn’t even been broken.

Gold loved his daughter’s face. He loved her face as a thing in itself, to be wondered at, studied. Yet after the attack he couldn’t look at Anna in the same way. He kept seeing the dog lunge at her, and himself stuck forever on that hill; then his heart began to kick, and he grew taut and restless and angry. He didn’t want to think about the dog anymore—he wanted it out of the picture. It should be put down. It was crazy, a menace, and it was still there, waiting to tear into some other kid, because the police refused to do anything.

“They won’t do a thing,” he said. “Nothing.”

He was going through the whole story again with his cousin Tom Rourke on a Sunday afternoon, a week after the attack. Gold had called him the night it happened, but the part about the police was new, and Rourke got all worked up just as Gold expected. His cousin had an exacting, irritable sense of justice, and a ready store of loyal outrage that Gold had drawn on ever since they were boys. He had been alone in his anger for a week now and wanted some company. Though his wife claimed to be angry too, she hadn’t seen what he had seen. The dog was an abstraction to her, and she wasn’t one to brood anyway.

What was their excuse? Rourke wanted to know. What reason did the cops give for their complete and utter worthlessness?

“The chain,” Gold said. “They said—this is the really beautiful part—they said that since the dog was chained up, no law was broken.”

“But the dog
wasn’t
chained up, right?”

“He was, but the chain reaches into the park. I mean way in—a good thirty, forty feet.”

“By that logic, he could be on a chain ten miles long and legally chew up the whole fucking town.”

“Exactly.”

Rourke got up and went to the picture window. He stood close to the glass and glowered at the falling snow. “What is it with Nazis and dogs? They’ve got a real thing going, ever notice that?” Still looking out the window, he said, “Have you talked to a lawyer?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“What’d he say?”

“She. Kate Stiller. Said the police were full of shit. Then she told me to forget it. According to her, the dog’ll die of old age before we ever get near a courtroom.”

“There’s the legal system for you, Brian me boy. They’ll give you all the justice you want, as long as it’s up the ass.”

There was a loud thump on the ceiling. Anna was playing upstairs with Rourke’s boy, Michael. Both men raised their eyes and waited, and when no one screamed Gold said, “I don’t know why I even bothered to call her. I don’t have the money to pay for a lawyer.”

“You know what happened,” Rourke said. “The cop who took the complaint fucked it up, and now the others are covering for him. So, you want to take him out?”

“The
cop
?”

“I was thinking of the dog.”

“You mean kill the dog?”

Rourke just looked at Gold.

“Is that what you’re saying? Kill the dog?”

Rourke grinned, but he still didn’t say anything.

“How?”

“How do you want?”

“Christ, Tom, I can’t believe I’m talking like this.”

“But you are.” Rourke shoved the naugahyde ottoman with his foot until it was facing Gold, then sat on it and leaned forward, so close their knees were touching. “No poison or glass. That’s chickenshit, I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy. Take him out clean.”

“Christ, Tom.” Gold tried to laugh.

“You can use my Remington, scope him in from the hill. Or if you want, get up close with the 12-gauge or the .44 magnum. You ever fired a pistol?”

“No.”

“Better forget the magnum, then.”

“I can’t do this.”

“Sure you can.”

“They’ll know it was me. I’ve been raising hell about that dog all week. Who do you think they’re going to come after when it suddenly shows up with a hole in its head?”

Rourke sucked in his cheeks. “Point taken,” he said. “Okay, you can’t do it. But I sure as hell can.”

“No. Forget it, Tom.”

“You and Mary go out for the night. Have dinner at Chez Nicole or Pauly’s, someplace small where they’ll remember you. By the time you get home it’s all over and you’re clean as a whistle.”

Gold finished his beer.

“We’ve got to take care of business, Brian. If we don’t, nobody will.”

“Maybe if I did it.
Maybe
. Having you do it—that just doesn’t feel right.”

“What about that dog still running wild after what it did to Anna? Does that feel right?” When Gold didn’t answer, Rourke shook his knee. “Did you really bite the mutt’s ear?”

“I didn’t have any choice.”

“You bite it off?”

“No.”

“But you drew blood, right? You tasted blood.”

“I got some in my mouth, yes. I couldn’t help it.”

“It tasted good, didn’t it? Come on, Brian, don’t bullshit me, it tasted good.”

“There was a certain satisfaction,” Gold said.

“You want to do what’s right,” Rourke said. “I appreciate that. I value that. It’s your call, okay? But the offer stands.”

Rourke produced the crack about Nazis and dogs not from deep reflection, Gold knew, but because to call people Nazis was his first response to any vexation or slight. Once he’d heard Rourke say it, though, Gold could not forget it. The picture that came to mind was one he’d pondered before: a line of frenzied dogs harrying Jews along a railway platform.

Gold was Jewish on his father’s side, but his parents split up when he was young, and he’d been raised Catholic by his mother. His name didn’t suit him; he sensed it made him seem ridiculous. When you heard Gold, what else could you think of but gold? With that name he should be a rich sharpie, not a mackerel-snapper with a dying business. The black kids who came into his video store were unmistakably of that opinion. They had a mock-formal way of saying “Mr.
Gold
,” drawing out the word as if it were the precious substance itself. Finding themselves a little short on the rental fee, some of them weren’t above asking him to make up the difference out of his own deep pockets, and acting amazed if he refused. The rusty Toyota he kept parked out front was a puzzle to them, a conversation piece; they couldn’t figure out why, with all his money, he didn’t get himself a decent set of wheels. One night, standing at the counter with her friends, a girl suggested that Gold kept his Cadillac at home because he was afraid the brothers would steal it. They’d been goofing on him, just messing around, but when she said this everyone went silent as if a hard truth had been spoken.

Cadillac. What else?

After years of estrangement Gold had returned to the Catholic church, and went weekly to Mass to sustain his fragile faith, but he understood that in the eyes of the world he was a Jew. He had never known what to make of that. There were things he saw in himself that he thought of as Jewish, traits not conspicuous among the mostly Irish boys he’d grown up with, including his cousins. Bookishness, patience, a taste for classical music and complicated moralizing, aversion to alcohol and violence. All this he found acceptable. But he had certain other tendencies, less dear to him, that he also suspected of being Jewish. Corrosive self-mockery. Bouts of almost paralyzing skepticism. Physical awkwardness. A disposition toward passivity, even surrender, in the face of bullying people and oppressive circumstances. Gold knew that these ideas of Jewishness were also held by anti-Semites, and he resisted their influence, without much success.