A Season for the Dead

Thirty-Seven

When Nic Costa arrived home he thought, for a moment, that he had stepped back in time. The house was alive with voices: his father, Sara, and a laughing Bea who, when he walked through the door, was playing with the dog as if some unexpected peace pact had just been signed. There were flowers throughout the downstairs rooms: roses and chrysanthemums, dahlias and sprays of lurid irises. The scent hung heavy everywhere. Sara and Bea drank champagne. Marco stuck to mineral water. In the kitchen two women, hired hands for the night, were putting the finishing touches to an extravagant cold buffet, the kind of meal his mother had once prepared so well. Plates of cold grilled vegetables, glistening with olive oil, were going on the dining table alongside scampi and lobster, bresaola and cheeses. He had to close his eyes for a moment to ensure this was not some dream.

When he opened them again his father sat in front of him, in the wheelchair, still gray and cadaverous, but wearing the broadest smile Nic could recall for many months.

“Why’re you looking so damn fed up, son?”

“I just…” he stuttered. “Did I forget a birthday?”

Marco waved a hand at him, then motioned for one of the women to pour a glass of champagne. “Do you always need a reason? Isn’t it possible I was just bored with being miserable? It’s so enervating after a while. And all this crap out there. Your work. Sara…” Marco cast a glance back at Sara and Bea chatting in the living room, the dog at Bea’s feet. “Whatever the facts tell you, Nic, I think she’s a good woman. She just doesn’t realize it herself.”

“I know.” Nic hesitated. He didn’t want to break the spell.

“That’s what makes it so hard to understand.”

“Bullshit!” Marco declared. “How can you understand someone until you get to know them? You fret about things too much. You want everything wrapped up all nice and tidy before you’ll deign to touch it. Relax, Nic. Make the most of things while they’re still there.”

Nic picked up a glass of champagne and raised it to his father.

“Salute!”

“And to you, my son. There…” Marco cocked an ear. “You know that sound?”

Women chattering. The dog, Pepe, yelping at their feet for attention. Voices ringing off the plain stone walls of the farmhouse. He knew what his father meant. “Yes.”

“How many years since we heard that racket in here? Eight? A house needs the noise of people or it starts to die. That’s what I’ve been missing all this time. I’m going to record you all secretly and play it back when you’re gone. Do that and you could fool yourself into thinking you’ll live forever.”

Nic Costa was unable to take his eyes off the women in the other room. Sara looked so calm, so lovely. Bea too seemed transformed, as if being invited back to spend some social time with Marco was the greatest compliment she could receive.

“And Bea?” he asked his father.

“She deserves it. That’s all. I’m an idiot, Nic. You should know that about your father. I was never good at seeing things in other people. That was your mother’s talent. It’s where you got it from.”

The four of them sat down around the dining-room table and admired the feast. Then the two hired women lit the large antique candles Marco had insisted be set up throughout the ground floor and turned down the electric lights. He paid the women, with much thanks, and they were gone. The farmhouse was now lit like a canvas. There were deep shadows where the guttering flames failed to reach, and rich, natural colors, the ancient timber table, the subtle red of the curtains, the ocher of the walls, in the idle beam of the waxy light.

“A toast!” Marco declared. “You were right, Nic. This is a birthday. But whose?”

Nic looked at Bea and Sara. They had no answers. “I give up,” he told his father.

Marco raised his glass to the dog. Baffled, Pepe placed his paws on the old man’s knees and was rewarded with a slice of dried beef.

“To him, of course. We bought this dog three months after your mother died, when he was eight weeks old. By my reckoning, that makes him ten today and I shall brook no arguments. Least of all from him.”

“The dog!” Sara repeated.

“And the wisdom of dogs,” Marco added. “Which surpasses our own, if only we knew it.”

Bea cast a doubtful eye over the creature staring lovingly up into Marco’s face. “Now, that requires an explanation.”

“Think of us. Consumed by worry about events beyond our control. Forever watching the clock and wondering what tomorrow brings. What concerns a dog? The present, only. Will he be loved? Will he be fed? He has no concept of tomorrow, no idea that any of this comes to an end. All he cares about is the here and now and he cares about that passionately, more passionately than any of us could imagine.”

“That’s a kind of wisdom?” Sara wondered.

“Absolutely,” Marco insisted. “Not our kind, but one that serves a dog very well. There’s a lesson for us too. You don’t remember, Nic? That little scene after we got him?”

Nic refilled the glasses with the hard cold wine. Marco was now drinking a little too. “Don’t embarrass me with childhood stories, please. That’s the cruelest trick a parent can play.”

“Not this one. It’s informative. A man should always be ready to be informed.”

Nic sighed. “And it’s about?”

“Life and death,” Marco replied, amused. “What else is there?”