Chapter One #4
The dog was sleeping. Wesley was sleeping. Olive was sleeping. Husband and wife opened their doors and stepped into the night.
Moonlight sifted through the clouds.
The Subaru, tinkling as it cooled, radiated the warm smell of motor oil. Mist swirled about them. The ground was damp.
She recalled these words: the void profound / Of unessential Night.
He had the sense of being inside an animal that was breathing.
She shivered.
He saw the mist gleam silver on his arms.
She batted a wayward moth.
He saw, in the cast of the car dome’s light, a fern flap with each drop that dripped off the corner of a shed.
She felt the wet prick of grass between her feet and sandals.
He was barefoot.
A mosquito hawk, as large as Olive’s hand, flitted past them.
And from the woods, the fields, the air around them, came a crescendo of unfamiliar night calls, insect, frog, a pulsing, croaking noise, a whir and trill.
—
At the house, there were no untoward surprises. A key was hidden beneath a pot of mint, as promised, nesting in a filigree of roots, between a beetle and an earthworm.
They decided to reconnoiter alone. Better not to wake the children, she said.
Who knows what they’d discover? he said.
A body, she said.
Mrs. Rumphius, he said.
Animals, she said. Snakes, raccoons, possums.
Otters.
Otters?
Inappropriate art books.
Inappropriate art.
Didn’t Miranda check for inappropriate art?
“It has occurred to me, in my moments of self-doubt,” said Kate, “that what is inappropriate for Olive is not inappropriate for Miranda.”
The door was stuck, but opened with a shove.
And there were no bodies, no raccoon nests, no otters.
It was an exceedingly conventional house.
Living room to the right, dining room to the left, kitchen with a marble counter.
It was hardly extravagant, and yet, in their adult life, neither party had ever lived in a house like this, with two couches that weren’t futons, and a real gas stovetop and a solid wooden table without the scars of children’s art projects.
There was a pristine white carpet, and pristine wooden floors, and real drapes and curtains, also white, also pristine.
And both parents had the same feelings, a combination of abundance and prosperity and terror.
Kate took Miles’s hand.
“Did you tell him about the kids?”
“The kids, yes.”
“Did you tell him about the dog?”
—
Upstairs were three rooms; for the first time, Olive and Wesley would each have their own.
Their rooms had clearly once belonged to children, and clearly hadn’t been occupied by children in many years.
In one of the rooms, the bedside lamp was in the form of a baseball player; in the other, it was a ballet dancer, en pointe.
In the photos on the wall of the room with the baseball lamp was a boy at different stages of the life of a conventional boy (sports teams, bicycle trip, graduation); in the dancer room, the same, but for a girl (friends, a horse ride, hugs).
Matching beanbag chairs had been fluffed of any trace of the boy and girl who once curled up in them.
Rooms clearly maintained by adults for adult children, but used principally for guests.
Both were very hot, and when they cracked the windows, the couple were assailed by the roaring of the night.
Wesley was too heavy to be carried. Miles hoisted Olive from her booster seat, limp and smelling of Goldfish crackers, her flood of curls stuck to her cheek with sweat.
Instinctively, she threw her arms over his shoulders and tucked her head into his neck. She awoke only as he was setting her in bed, asked where they were, and promptly curled back into sleep. He was halfway down the stairs when he heard her voice.
“Where’s Wesley?”
He stepped back into her bedroom. “He has his own room. You get your own room.”
“But I don’t want my own room.”
Her eyes wide, pleading, before this milestone for which she hadn’t been briefed.
And he had gone to comfort her when, from below, they heard their wife and mother asking if anyone had seen Giuseppe.
—
Back into the black night, cellphones lighting up the mist, whistles, calls, enticements, threats and promises, a box of kibble shaken, each thinking, This is how it begins, the dog vanishing into an unfamiliar country, a forest full of beasts.
From far away came the deep, insistent call of what must have been an owl. And rustling. Lynx? Coyote? Mountain lion?
The grass was high in the fields. Miles’s pants were soaked.
In the distance he could see Kate with her cellphone, and farther off was Wesley with his flashlight.
Olive on his hip, saying, “I’m worried, I’m worried,” and he, because he didn’t know what else to do, said, “Count to one hundred and we’ll find him. ”
Silence.
“One hundred.”
“This time more slowly.”
Silence again. He tried to conjure Google Maps, the field, the forest. Did he dare venture into the woods on this first day in the country?
“One hundred.”
“One more time.”
She didn’t question; she believed. And just when she had just begun to tell him she had finished, Wesley hallooed back at the house.
They reached the boy in the misty cone beneath the porch light.
The dog was soaked, his nose covered with dirt, his hair covered with dirt, his tongue lolling and covered with dirt; he looked as if he had burrowed deep underground.
Olive dropped down to hug him; Kate thought, Oh, pajamas; and Giuseppe tugged and paced in circles, in and out of the hands that held him, snorting, grinning, truly grinning, as if he knew a thousand secrets, but couldn’t, wouldn’t tell.