Who is Maud Dixon?(31)

Florence exhaled a phlegmy, manic-sounding laugh of relief and reached out her hands to scratch his ears.

A man in his sixties came running after the dog. “Bentley! Down, boy!” he shouted. “I’m so sorry, miss. Bentley, down!”

Florence waved off his apologies. She rubbed the dog’s head and neck vigorously. He raised his eyes toward the sky in ecstasy.

“Looks like he likes you,” the man said, slowing to a stop in front of her. He was wearing a blue golf shirt tucked into cargo shorts and panting lightly. In his hand was one of those plastic toys that hurl tennis balls great distances. “Bentley can smell a dog person from a mile off.”

“Hi, Bentley,” said Florence quietly. “Hi, buddy.”

The man watched them for a moment with a fond smile on his face. Then he said, “You staying at the old house down the road?” nodding in the direction of Helen’s. Florence said she was.

“So she didn’t warn you about big, ferocious Bentley?” he asked with a chuckle.

“No, she’s never mentioned him.” Bentley was licking her hands with his wet, sandpaper tongue.

“He got into her garden once or twice, and she nearly lost her mind. Now whenever Bentley sees her his tail goes right between his legs.”

Florence felt obliged to defend Helen. “Maybe she’s just not a dog person.”

“Oh no, she is definitely not that. But I guess she’s a dog-person person and that counts for something. You’re her second visitor in as many months who Bentley’s gone nuts for.”

Florence looked up in surprise. “Second? When was the first?”

“Oh, I don’t know—maybe it was longer ago, come to think of it. There was definitely snow on the ground.”

Bentley suddenly froze and cocked his ears. A second later, he disappeared into the brush as abruptly as he’d arrived.

“Oh boy, there he goes again,” the man said, shaking his head. He headed after the dog with a wave goodbye at Florence.

Later that night at dinner, Florence related the encounter to Helen and asked who her visitor had been.

“I have no idea,” said Helen. “Must have been someone staying at another house. No one’s been here.”

“Huh.”

“God, that dog’s a terror.”

“Bentley? He was so sweet.”

“Talk to me after he’s dug up all your roses.”

Suddenly the silence was pierced by what sounded like a woman shrieking.

Florence looked up at Helen in alarm. “What was that?”

Helen shrugged. “Probably just an animal.”

“Probably?”

Florence walked to the window and looked out. She saw only her own rippled reflection. Then she heard it again coming from somewhere in the direction of the road.

She said, “I’ll just go see.”

She walked out into the cold night. After the brightness of the house, it was like slipping on a black hood. She approached the edge of the driveway and peered out into the darkness. She heard the shriek again and walked toward it.

An owl lay on the ground, peering up at her with panic in its large yellow eyes, its pupils like liquid drops of ink. There was no blood or sign of injury. He screeched again, insistently.

She walked back to the house.

“It’s an owl,” she said. “He’s in bad shape. Do you have a towel or something I could use?”

“For what?”

“To carry him inside. Do you know if there’s a vet in town we can call?”

“You’re not bringing that thing into my house.”

“I think he’s going to die if we don’t help him.”

“It happens fairly often. They eat mice that have ingested rat poison.”

“What? That’s horrible.”

“So is finding mouse pellets in your pillowcase,” said Helen with one of her grim, toothless smiles.

Florence looked intently at her.

“Oh for god’s sake, Florence, it’s an owl,” Helen said in exasperation. “I can barely muster up enough empathy to cover the humans I know. Every day we’re asked to feel sorry for refugees from Syria and gay men in Chechnya and Muslims in Myanmar. It’s too much. The human mind wasn’t built to assimilate so much suffering. It was designed to produce just enough empathy to cover its own little community. So please don’t ask me to expend my dwindling reserves on an owl.”

“Okay, sorry,” said Florence quietly. She sat back down. Then she said: “It’s just that I feel like the owl is a part of our community. He’s right there.” She gestured weakly toward the door.

“You misunderstood me, Florence. I said nothing about any actual community. Haven’t you heard? We killed them all off. My community is me. And I don’t feel accountable to anyone outside of it—human, avian, or otherwise.”

Florence was taken aback. Was that really something you could just decide? That you didn’t owe anything to anyone? She could never tell when Helen was taking a position just to add a little jolt to the conversation and when she actually believed what she was saying.

She tried to imagine what her life would look like if she abdicated all responsibility.

She couldn’t picture it. And after a few minutes, the shrieking stopped.