Dept. Of Speculation

42

The wife braids the daughter’s hair every morning before school. At bedtime, the husband reads to her from Anne of Green Gables.

They are both worried about the daughter. At night, she writes long letters to her favorite doll, then mails them in a Kleenex box she keeps hidden under her bed.

If they ask the daughter why she is crying, she says, “Don’t talk about it.”

The husband decides to teach the daughter how to whistle and the wife listens to them in the backyard whistling away.

The wife still has a plan b just in case. I could join the Amish, she thinks whenever they pass them.

For the daughter’s birthday, they decide to get her a puppy. She is ecstatic, but it does the final work of unhinging the wife. “Can you take it back?” the shrink says more urgently than expected. “Take it back!” “No,” the wife says. It is the only thing that makes the girl happy. “You’ll have to crate it,” she says. “Often.”

Sometimes the husband says he is going to look for kindling. But later the wife sees him chain-smoking at the edge of the far field.

Sometimes she still thinks about the ex-boyfriend, but she does not hunt for him in the ether.

One morning the wife takes the puppy out for a walk. He blazes ahead then returns covered with burrs. She picks them off and lets him go again. Sky here. She had forgotten how much sky there could be. When she catches up with the puppy, he is eating something dead. “Leave it!” she says. “Leave it! Leave it!” He drops it on the ground, wags his tail at her. But later, the puppy runs back to the same place and rolls around in it.

Don’t drink. Don’t think.

The wife and the husband take the puppy to the vet to get his shots. They pass the Holiday Inn Express again. This time she manages not to say anything. She feels him notice this. After a while, he turns on the radio. The puppy licks the steering wheel. To their surprise, he is well behaved at the vet. He doesn’t pee on the floor or nip at the hand that holds him. But later when they get home, he stands on his hind legs and drinks from the toilet.

That night the wife can’t stop her hands from flapping. She goes out into the dark field to get away. But the daughter sees her and follows. “Mommy!” she says. “Mommy! Where are you going?”

So she takes the pills the doctor gives her. Her hands stop flapping. She is less inclined to lie down in the street. But her brain is still buckling. In the parking lot of a store two towns over she cries like a clown with her face on the steering wheel.