The War of the Roses

'They're all right?' She was always suspicious when he called. Outside her home, life was uncertain and dangerous. They exchanged the usual amenities. How is Josh? How is Eve? How is your practice? How is your health? How is it going? That meant the divorce. His parents hadn't been down to see them since the breakup, although they had seen the children during Barbara's trip to Boston. Barbara hadn't come. Deliberately, his mother avoided any mention of Barbara.

'There's no way you can make it up?' his mother asked.

'No way.'

There was a long pause in which he could read her mind and see her face. Such things didn't, couldn't happen in her world. Please, no tears, he begged silently, and after more innocuous words, they hung up swiftly, never having gotten used to long-distance calls. Nevertheless, he walked away comforted, wondering which was truth and which was fiction. Their life. Or his.

He hadn't intended to go back to the house, but his mind had lost all sense of space and time and before he realized it he had driven the car into the alley. When he saw where he was, he expected Benny to come running and that image brought with it the desire to go for a ride, maybe down to Hains' Point, where Benny could run around and catch a Frisbee, one of the few tricks Oliver had taught him.

He went into the garden and whistled loudly, two fingers in his mouth. Usually this was enough to disrupt Benny's perpetual sniffing after bitches. He whistled again. No answer. Then he got in the car and roamed around the neighborhood, offering periodic whistling clarions. Benny slept at the foot of his bed, and although he snored and sometimes forgot that he wasn't outside, Benny was, as Oliver acknowledged to himself, better than no one. A lot better.

Paradoxically, the irony cheered him. To think that the only loving member of his family in town was nothing but a mangy schnauzer amused him. At least Benny was sympathetic to his troubles, and on many an occasion during the past trying months Oliver had poured out his heart to him. Some things simply had to be said out loud. And Benny had looked at him thoughtfully, big brown eyes smoldering with alertness, head cocked, ears standing up rigidly.

'You cute, horny bastard,' he said when Benny looked at him that way, offering the mutt a hug, which required a special tolerance for Benny's usual gamey aroma.

It cheered him to think that he still had Benny and even his disappointment at not finding him couldn't dispel the sudden sense of optimism. Searching for him killed enough time for the movies to open and he sat through two Woody Aliens at the Biograph, surprised that he could still laugh after having seen them for the fourth or fifth time.

He ate two roast-beef sandwiches and fries at a Roy Rogers and headed home, keeping the terror of his loneliness at bay as he listened for Benny's familiar greeting. Benny usually waited for him, stretched supine under one of the bushes along the perimeter of the house, springing up to cuddle his master's leg. Oliver's coming in by car always confused Benny, since he had to run around to the rear and couldn't get into the garage. He would stand on his hind legs at the door, waiting for Oliver to open it, then lunge playfully, invariably muddying up Oliver's suit.

Benny still wasn't there. But still it wasn't time to panic. Often Benny would straggle home late at night or early in the morning. Sometimes Oliver would leave the back door ajar and Benny would push his way in and scratch at the door to Oliver's room. Still asleep, he would get up, open the door, and let the dog in.

Lying there in the large, canopied bed, alone, Oliver listened to the sounds of the house, a rhythm he knew as well as his own heartbeat. The absence of the children and Ann was tangible and he could sense the emptiness around him. Somehow their presence in the house gave him some sense of belonging, of cohesiveness. And the house itself, its very familiarity, offered some comfort. His womb, he thought, wondering if Barbara, too, felt this same sensation. He sensed her lurking in what was once their bed across the hall. 'Lurking' was the word that had come to mind. And he saw her curled in the embryo position, listening, as he was now, to the sounds of the house.

Unable to sleep, he got out of bed and searched the room for a vodka bottle. Finding one, he poured some into a tumbler, then opened the window and brought in a small carton of orange juice from the ledge. There wasn't much left and he emptied it into the glass and drank it hurriedly.

Then he went back to bed and quickly began to slip into drowsiness. Before he could get to sleep, he heard a scratching on the door.

Benny.

Without opening his eyes, he got up, opened the door, and heard Benny pad to his accustomed spot on the Art Deco rug. Oliver got back into bed, feeling better, relieved.