A Fountain Filled With Blood

watching ensembles, and on a trip to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for the concert tonight. She had declined them all, knowing that after celebrating two Eucharists and running the 10K race, the only thing she would feel up to doing was collapsing in front of the television. She pulled the linguine off the burner. “ ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends,’ ” she said, heading back upstairs to change.

Old Route 100 between Millers Kill and Margy Van Alstyne’s house was far busier than it had been on Thursday. Clare passed minivans crowded with sticky children, tiny cars with kayaks teetering on top, and bass-thumping stereos on wheels, filled with wind-whipped hair of indeterminate origin. Along the heavily wooded stretch she had to slow to a stop to accommodate a truck that seemed, at first glance, to be picking up National Guardsmen on maneuvers. It wasn’t until she got a closer look at the men straggling out of the forest that she saw the fluorescent orange and green splatters on their jackets and realized they were paintball players. Near the intersection of Route 100 and the Old Sacandaga Road, she saw no fewer than three buses headed back from rafting trips on the Hudson. She marveled that people would pay good money to get stuck, not to mention soaking wet, on a rubber raft on a day that had promised sixty-degree weather and rain.

The dogs, when she had found the key and unlocked the kitchen door, were as ecstatic to see her as they had been the last time. “Don’t get used to this,” she warned them. “I won’t always be here to rescue you from being left alone. No, Bob! Down!” She let them have the run of the backyard while she slung the already seriously depleted bag of kibble into her tiny trunk. She made a metal note to stop at the IGA and buy another fifty pounds before returning the dogs to Margy. God knew when Paul Foubert would return from Albany.

Returning to the kitchen to get the dogs’ bowls, she gave in to the temptation to take a peek at the front room. At first glance, it looked like a typical seventy-year-old lady’s living room: braided rug on the floor, comfortable well-worn furniture from the fifties, a prominently positioned television with a TV Guide and glasses on top. But the books piled on the coffee table had titles like Environmental Impact of Modern Manufacturing and The Consumers’ Guide to the Waste Stream. One wall was almost completely covered with framed photographs: small kids in ancient black and white who must have been Russ and his sister, modern color portraits of Janice’s three little girls. Margy at a sit-in, Margy beneath a banner reading SEEDS OF PEACE, and, on a page from a 1970 Time magazine, Margy face-to-face with Nelson Rockefeller, thrusting a framed picture toward the governor. Both of them were yelling at each other.

The picture Margy was holding in the magazine photo was hanging just below. Clare unhooked it from its nail and held it up. It showed a tall, too-thin young man, tan and shirtless, hair bleached blond from the sun, set off against exotic palms in the background. He could have been a late-sixties surfer, if not for the dog tags and the fatigues, and the M16 slung over his shoulder. She ran a finger over the glass. She had never imagined him that young. She would have been six or seven when this picture was taken, learning to read Dick and Jane books while he slept in mud and fought off intestinal parasites and tried to keep from getting killed every day. Their difference in age, which had never meant anything to her before, suddenly yawned wide, a vast chasm filled with events he had lived through as an adult that were nothing but stories and history and vague childhood memories to her.

Margy Van Alstyne would probably love to tell her stories about Russ as a young man. She could come out for a visit and hear about his childhood, and what he was like in high school, and where he went while he was in the service. Maybe she could find out more about his wife. Her grandmother’s voice broke in. If you don’t want to go to Atlanta, missy, you’d best not get on that train. She took a deep breath. Or, she could mind her own business and leave the Van Alstynes alone. She rehung the photograph carefully in its spot, squaring it just so with its neighbors. Then she retreated to the kitchen before she could yield to temptation again.

The ride back to Millers Kill took even longer than the ride out, in part due to the heavy end-of-the-day traffic and in part due to the necessity of driving slowly when the car was filled to capacity with dogs. It didn’t help that she felt irritated at her foray into Mrs. Van Alstyne’s living room. She was asked to do a simple favor for someone who had helped her out immeasurably by taking the dogs in the first place, and she had used it as an excuse to moon over the woman’s married son. It was just plain tacky, that’s what it was.

Everyone in the seminary had heard of some priest who had crossed the line between compassion and passion and broken up a marriage or two in the process. Nine times out of ten, it was a parishioner who had been in counseling, or the church secretary. Well, most of her counseling these days was with young engaged couples, and Lois was certainly no threat to her virtue. If she just showed a little more self-control, she wouldn’t have a problem.

There had been a time, when she was a lieutenant, that she had developed a terrific crush on an out-of-bounds man. He was a captain, directly above her in the chain of command, and if anything had happened between them, it could have meant both their jobs. Handling her feelings, she had discovered, meant never lingering over the thought of him, never daydreaming, never fantasizing. Eventually, her tour of duty finished, she left, and within a year she couldn’t recall what it was that had gotten her so hot and bothered in the first place.

By the time she pulled into the rectory driveway, her little car shimmying from Gal and Bob’s excited wriggling, she felt better. Self-discipline was something she knew how to do. As if in reward for her good thoughts, there was a message on her answering machine.

“Clare? Hi, it’s Paul. I hope you can hear this okay, I’m using the pay phone in the lobby and the thing dates back to the Eisenhower administration. Great news! Emil has woken up and is responding to speech! He’s having trouble talking, but the neurologist says that’s normal at this point, that it doesn’t mean anything. He recognized me, and his kids, and he managed to squeeze our hands a little. I feel so grateful, I can’t tell you. I hope Bob and Gal are doing okay”—the dogs both barked sharply when they heard their names—“and that they’re not wearing you out. I’ll try to reach you again as soon as I know something new. Thanks again for everything, Clare.”

“You see?” she said to the Berns. “Doing good is its own reward. Let’s go make some dinner.”

Two plates of linguini later, stretched out on the sofa with a glass of Chianti, watching the Boston Pops Esplanade concert, Clare was beginning to think she ought to look into getting a dog. It was fun having someone to talk to in the kitchen, even if neither Gal nor Bob was a great conversationalist. And seeing them stretched out on the hardwood floor was deeply satisfying. It made her feel English. The Vicar of Dibley crossed with a James Herriot story. Maybe she could get herself one of those canvas coats, and a walking stick. She yawned.

Gal and Bob got up, shook themselves, and walked into the foyer.

“What is it? Do you two want to go out?”

At the word out, both dogs barked. Clare groaned. As she rolled off the sofa, they began to whine and pant, and by the time she joined them in the foyer, their nails were clicking madly on the wooden floor as they jostled each other to be first out the door.

She opened the door to the damp and cold and the dogs bounded out, ran straight to the edge of the sidewalk, turned to look at her, and began barking.

“Shhh! Shhh!” She wrestled on her sneakers and pulled a running shell with reflective stripes over her head.