But the worst thing as far as Carla was concerned was the absence of Flora, the little white goat who kept the horses company in the barn and in the fields. There had not been any sign of her for two days. Carla was afraid that wild dogs or coyotes had got her, or even a bear.
She had dreamt of Flora last night and the night before. In the first dream Flora had walked right up to the bed with a red apple in her mouth, but in the second dream — last night — she had run away when she saw Carla coming. Her leg seemed to be hurt but she ran anyway. She led Carla to a barbed-wire barricade of the kind that might belong on some battlefield, and then she — Flora — slipped through it, hurt leg and all, just slithered through like a white eel and disappeared.
The horses had seen Carla go across to the ring and they had all moved up to the fence — looking bedraggled in spite of their New Zealand blankets — so that she would take notice of them on her way back. She talked quietly to them, apologizing for coming empty-handed. She stroked their necks and rubbed their noses and asked whether they knew anything about Flora.
Grace and Juniper snorted and nuzzled up, as if they recognized the name and shared her concern, but then Lizzie butted in between them and knocked Grace’s head away from Carla’s petting hand. She gave the hand a nip for good measure, and Carla had to spend some time scolding her.
UP UNTIL THREE years ago Carla never really looked at mobile homes. She didn’t call them that, either. Like her parents, she would have thought “mobile home” pretentious. Some people lived in trailers, and that was all there was to it. One trailer was no different from another. When Carla moved in here, when she chose this life with Clark, she began to see things in a new way. After that she started saying “mobile home” and she looked 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 that had been built on. She could hardly wait to get at 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 didn’t make any complaint about the money spent on paint for the kitchen and bathroom or the material for curtains. Her paint job was hasty — she didn’t know, at that time, that you should take the hinges off the cupboard doors. Or that you should line the curtains, which had since faded.
What Clark balked 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 and rust and tan squiggles and shapes. For a long time she had thought these were the same squiggles and shapes, arranged in 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 when it was raining outside and Clark’s mood weighted down all their inside space, and he did not want to pay attention to anything but the computer screen. But the best thing to do 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 had gone to bargain for some horse tackle. The people there were giving up on the country life, or at least on the raising of animals — they had sold their horses but failed to get rid of their goats. He had heard about how a goat was able to bring a sense of ease and comfort into a horse stable and he wanted to try it. They had meant to breed her someday but there had never been any signs of her coming into heat.
At first she had been Clark’s pet entirely, following him everywhere, dancing for his attention. She was 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 allowing 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.
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 better phone up and confirm.”
Carla said, “I don’t see why I have to, if you told her.” She poured out 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,” she said. “I want to drink my tea and I want to have a shower.”
“The sooner the better.”
Carla took her tea into the bathroom, calling back, “We have to go to the laundromat. Even when the towels dry out they 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 was going to town — she hoped that if they could get out of here, 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, all 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. 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 began to peel them, but her tears would not stop and she could not see what she was doing. 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. All of them except Lizzie, who capered and snorted a bit, had the sense to understand that her attention was elsewhere.
IT HAD STARTED when they read the obituary, Mr. Jamieson’s obituary. That was in the city paper, and his
