Up until three years ago, Carla had never really looked at mobile homes. She hadn’t called them that, either. Like her parents, she would have thought the term “mobile home” pretentious. Some people lived in trailers, and that was all there was to it. One trailer was no different from another. When she moved in here, when she chose this life with Clark, she began to see things in a new way. After that, it was only the mobile homes that she really looked at, to see how people had fixed them up—the kind of curtains they had hung, the way they had painted the trim, the ambitious decks or patios or extra rooms they had built on. She could hardly wait to get to such improvements herself.
Clark had gone along with her ideas for a while. He had built new steps, and spent a lot of time looking for an old wrought-iron railing for them. He hadn’t complained about the money spent on paint for the kitchen and bathroom or the material for curtains.
What he did balk at was tearing up the carpet, which was the same in every room and the thing that she had most counted on replacing. It was divided into small brown squares, each with a pattern of darker brown, rust, and tan squiggles and shapes. For a long time, she had thought that the same squiggles and shapes were arranged the same way in each square. Then, when she had had more time, a lot of time, to examine them, she decided that there were four patterns joined together to make identical larger squares. Sometimes she could pick out the arrangement easily and sometimes she had to work to see it.
She did this at times when Clark’s mood had weighted down all their indoor space. The best thing then was to invent or remember some job to do in the barn. The horses would not look at her when she was unhappy, but Flora, who was never tied up, would come and rub against her, and look up with an expression that was not quite sympathy; it was more like comradely mockery in her shimmering yellow-green eyes.
Flora had been a half-grown kid when Clark brought her home from a farm where he’d gone to bargain for some horse tackle. He had heard that a goat was able to put horses at ease and he wanted to try it. At first she had been Clark’s pet entirely, following him everywhere, dancing for his attention. She was as quick and graceful and provocative as a kitten, and her resemblance to a guileless girl in love had made them both laugh. But as she grew older she seemed to attach herself to Carla, and in this attachment she was suddenly much wiser, less skittish—she seemed capable, instead, of a subdued and ironic sort of humor. Carla’s behavior with the horses was tender and strict and rather maternal, but the comradeship with Flora was quite different. Flora allowed her no sense of superiority.
“Still no sign of Flora?” she said as she pulled off her barn boots. Clark had posted a “lost goat” notice on the Web.
“Not so far,” he said, in a preoccupied but not unfriendly voice. He suggested, not for the first time, that Flora might have just gone off to find herself a billy.
No word about Mrs. Jamieson.
Carla put the kettle on. Clark was humming to himself as he often did when he sat in front of the computer. Sometimes he talked back to it. “Bullshit,” he might say, replying to some challenge. He laughed occasionally, but rarely remembered what the joke was when she asked him afterward.
Carla called, “Do you want tea?” And to her surprise he got up and came into the kitchen.
“So,” he said. “So, Carla.”
“What?”
“So she phoned.”
“Who?”
“Her majesty. Queen Sylvia. She just got back.”
“I didn’t hear the car.”
“I didn’t ask you if you did.”
“So what did she phone for?”
“She wants you to go and help her straighten up the house. That’s what she said. Tomorrow.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her sure. But you’d better phone up and confirm.”
Carla said, “Why do I have to, if you told her?” She poured their mugs of tea. “I cleaned up her house before she left. I don’t see what there could be to do so soon.”
“Maybe some coons got in and made a mess of it while she was gone. You never know.”
“I don’t have to phone her right this minute. I want to drink my tea and I want to take a shower.”
“The sooner the better.”
Carla took her tea into the bathroom.
“We have to go to the laundromat. When the towels dry out, they still smell moldy.”
“We’re not changing the subject, Carla.”
Even after she’d got in the shower, he stood outside the door and called to her.
“I am not going to let you off the hook, Carla.”
She thought he might still be standing there when she came out, but he was back at the computer. She dressed as if she were going to town—she hoped that if they could get out of there, go to the laundromat, get a takeout at the cappuccino place, they might be able to talk in a different way, some release might be possible. She went into the living room with a brisk step and put her arms around him from behind. But as soon as she did that a wave of grief swallowed her up—it must have been the heat of the shower, loosening her tears—and she bent over him, crumbling and crying.
He took his hands off the keyboard but sat still.
“Just don’t be mad at me,” she said.
“I’m not mad. I hate when you’re like this, that’s all.”
“I’m like this because you’re mad.”
“Don’t tell me what I am. You’re choking me. Go and get control of yourself. Start supper.”
That was what she did. It was obvious by now that the five-o’clock person wasn’t coming. She got out the potatoes and started to peel them, but her tears would not stop. She wiped her face with a paper towel and tore off a fresh one to take with her and went out into the rain. She didn’t go into the barn because it was too miserable in there without Flora. She walked along the lane back to the woods. The horses were in the other field. They came over to the fence to watch her, but all except Lizzie, who capered and snorted a bit, had the sense to understand that her attention was elsewhere.