They May Not Mean To, But They Do

45

Joy thought of asking Karl to dinner. Boeuf bourguignon, a baguette, a salad — she could see the meal, it looked lovely, civilized, and Joy would have given a lot to feel civilized. Instead, she felt lurching and matted, like a wild dog. She hadn’t made boeuf bourguignon in twenty years. She’d barely eaten boeuf in twenty years. The thought of it, the fat as it browned in the pan, was sickening. And she was no chef these days, scuffing around the kitchen tugging weakly at the recalcitrant refrigerator door, burning toast.

“We’ll order Chinese,” Karl said when she told him her problem.

“We’ll eat on paper plates!”

“Like young people when they move into their first apartment and haven’t unpacked the boxes.”

Joy wondered what it would have been like to be young in a first apartment with Karl, no money, boxes of books, and a scratched desk from home. Joy and Aaron had furnished their first apartment with a decorator, Danish modern, she had gotten rid of most of it, uncomfortable stuff, though it was worth a fortune now, judging by Antiques Roadshow.

“Where was your first apartment?” she asked Karl. “After college?”

“I lived with my parents for a couple of years. Saved money. Then Joan and I got married and we bought the place I’m in now.”

“You were always careful.”

“And dull.”

“No, I mean it in a good way. You were always not careless.”

“You were always glamorous.”

“And ditzy.”

“I mean it in a good way, too. You were like sunshine, that kind of glamorous. Bright and shining and warm and cheerful. And unattainable.”

Maybe I’ll put out real plates, Joy thought.

* * *

The dining room looked pretty. Joy had stacked all her files in shopping bags that were pushed into one corner of the room. At the florist she bought a petite arrangement of small flowers gathered into an old-fashioned bouquet. There were candles, unlit; she could not find a match.

“I go,” Marta said when she had helped Karl off with his coat and settled him into a chair. Gatto jumped in his lap.

Joy said, “Just what I needed, right? A dog.”

“I had a dog as a kid. I loved that dog.”

“Never got one for your own kids?”

“No. Joan couldn’t bear it.”

“The mess, the walking, and the kids promise to take it out, but then they have homework…”

“No. It was just she loved her childhood dog so much, and when he died she was heartbroken, and well, if we had gotten a dog, they don’t live that long, it would certainly have died in her lifetime, and she said it was just too painful. She just didn’t want to go through that again.”

Joy brought the containers of Chinese food out on gaily patterned trays. It was a picnic, the takeout containers right on the table. She noticed Karl did not bother with chopsticks. Aaron had insisted on them when they had Chinese food, saying forks changed the flavor. But Joy was never very handy with chopsticks.

If Karl got a dog, she thought, they could walk their dogs together, if his dog liked to walk. Otherwise they could carry them together. People would stop them to ask about the little dogs. Karl could get a basket for his walker.

“I can’t think that way,” he was saying.

“About what?”

“Worrying about getting attached, about the pain of losing someone. I can’t live like that. Not anymore. Too old…”

Joy did not bring up her idea of a basket for Karl’s red walker. He didn’t seem to be talking about dogs anymore.