The Source of Life and Other Stories

By David Fernbach

Post-divorce dating is one more cause for celebration (or a quick call in to the police) in Beth Bosworth's revelatory new book, The Source of Life and Other Stories. The spine of this collection is a series of linked stories about Ruth Stein, a Brooklyn author whose first book has exposed her father's abuses; while the voice here, speaking across a lifetime, ranges from bittersweet to humorous to lethal. In other stories Bosworth's narrators—a mother left to care for her son's suicidal dog, an editor haunted by a dog-eared manuscript—seem to grab hold of the reins and run off with their fates. Meanwhile Bosworth explores the extended family, the bonds of friendship, an apocalyptic Vermont, the rank yet redeemable Gowanus Canal; also rites of passage, race relations, divorce, middle-aged romance, dementia, funerals, alcoholism, and the Jewish religion. Reality is just another stumbling block for Bosworth's characters, who might help themselves but don't always choose to. There are leaps of faith here, nonetheless, as the collection dispenses a kind of narrative psychotropic for survival and redemption, with a chaser of humor mixed in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Release date: Sep 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9780822978466

Book preview

The Source of Life

The dogs don't know it but we're running out of water. The power went out for a day, a few days ago, and they told us to boil our tap water but the pump isn't working right. We can go down to the stream but the stream is pretty much off-limits, even for dogs, and the plumber hasn't answered my calls; I tried three other plumbers before Mr. Pike, who's semiretired. My husband—who does call each day at 11:00 a.m.—says I should drive straight down to New York City where the best water gets piped in, but as it happens, I point out, we need new brake lights. I could take the car to a man in Manchester but he charges an arm and a leg.

And then some, I say.

How are the dogs? What can you tell me about them, Arielle?

You sound like a talk show host.

He reminds me not to let them near the lake and we hang up.

We used to swim at Lake Aftsbury. It's a small lake and actually, up here in the north country, might very well be called a pond. I wasn't a strong swimmer but toward the end I experienced a breakthrough: the water had grown somewhat viscous, although nobody was getting sick (later a boy died), and suddenly I could swim for an hour at a time. I could breaststroke out toward the island and stroke around to the southern shore, where I'd noticed other women swimming. I believe that we all of us come from water. I believe also that, late in life, our bones hollow out and our breasts and thighs act like buoys; I felt buoyant, like the queen duck of Lake Aftsbury.

When my husband calls, I don't ask him how life is in New York. His name is Albert, and he used to have this talk show on radio and television, and then he was only on satellite but that meant taxi drivers could tune him in. The hook of his show (you needed a hook) was that listeners chose the topic of the day. Albert had, has, terrific recall, and his audience loved how no matter what they chose—car mechanics, water maintenance, sex toys—he knew enough to shift into high gear. He was handsome in a Jewish way, with warm brown eyes and a proud nose. For a while after that he tried another hook, linking up mothers—always mothers—and their long-lost children. The longer the children had been gone, the better, he discovered. If they'd failed to call home for five years, their mothers were still furious. But after ten years, especially if they were in prison, their mothers would soften. He had on this one mother, though, whose son had murdered his pregnant girlfriend, and the son was about to be released in San Diego, and the mother told him she was moving to Mexico City the day he got out. Buenos Días, Adios, Albert said, which I told him later wasn't very funny.

I hear a noise and look out: the younger dog, Fidel, is heading toward the barn, where our garbage is stored.

Excuse me? I shout but he either can't hear or is pretending not to and it occurs to me, as I hoist myself with two hands off the couch, that I don't remember leaving the barn door open. The older dog and I are circling each other, me hunting for my loafers and him not quite panting in my traces. When I open the door he glances up as if he knows he's going to disappoint me and slinks through it. I'm looking for my other shoe and listening for that old clicking of his nails on each wood step; but no. Even the smell from the barn—because of the cost of gas, I drive to the dump only every two weeks—no longer tempts him down those stairs alone. As for the barn, I call it that because we live in the country, sort of (there's a half-built development up the hill, another reason to boil water), but it's actually a three-car garage. And the house is really an old hunting shack, what they call around here a camp, somewhat improved. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was home. I knew I wouldn't have to clean or cook or sew for anybody who set foot here, and if you think that sounds old-fashioned, well, I am.

At Lake Aftsbury families would come to barbecue, fly kites and dunk their offspring. I used to watch from where I lay dogpaddling, my breasts the niftiest flotation devices and my hands flapping: how the land creatures loved emitting noises from their mouths, how they waved their arms and made odd faces! The water had a smell, I admit that much. I only ducked my head under long enough to swim beneath the rope and out to the free side. Sometimes I was the only person swimming, sometimes another woman floated within sight. And children—within the roped-off area, for a long time after adults gave up swimming there, young children would hop and dive and paddle, and urinate, of course.

It's fun to remember all the things we used to do in water. You're invisible in water. Around here you'll hardly see young people (or older people) expressing physical affection, except underwater, where they'd grope quite shamelessly and make little breathing noises as I stroked on past. On my husband's show the mothers would jump up and down for joy or horror, and the sons and daughters would shout and throw open their arms in what I thought was a rather desperate gambit, at times, but up here their reunion after many years would have gone something like this:

Hey, Mom.

Is that you, Zander? Goodness, I'd have hardly known you.

Yep.

Well, don't stand on ceremony, give your mother a firm handshake.

I find the shoe where I'd left it, by the sink, which gives off a certain odor these days. Outside, the older dog is just sitting on the deck. What's going on, my friend? I ask. When he doesn't answer, I stamp my foot and the deck shakes beneath us. He turns then and noses between my thighs and I take his muzzle in my hands and move his nose this way and that and together, step by step, we descend the stairs. I don't want to miss Albert's call, it occurs to me, and as we cross the yard I quicken my pace.

I was saving that, Fidel, I point out.

The younger dog doesn't look up: he's too busy mauling an empty sack, the black plastic kind that nobody is here to tell me used to be crude oil.

Once, on my husband's talk show, a woman stood up wearing a T-shirt that read, I love Albert Steinbaum, which is my husband's name. You aren't my mother, are you? he asked so that the audience cracked up. They really did; he never used laugh tracks.

I want to know, she said, what we're going to do about it.

Albert held the microphone out but nobody even inched toward it. Finally a young girl leaped out of her seat. She wore little braids with innumerable bright-colored barrettes, and her skin shone the color of the wood dye of our house as the older dog and I move more swiftly now across the yard. It's not like it's the end of the WORLD, the girl squeaked and dug her face into the shoulder of the man sitting next to her. He must have been a relative because he patted her bent head and said, There, there.

Fidel, what are you up to? I ask sternly.

Animals, probably raccoons, I tell myself, have gotten into the garbage. This time they've torn not only into the heaped sacks but into the seven aluminum pails with lids that I myself would have trouble removing. When I move closer, grabbing Fidel's collar so that he leaps and rolls his eyes, I think I see gashes made by teeth—long sharp teeth. I haul Fidel right around and he and the older dog and I make it back to daylight; I slam the garage door so that the bottom panel, where the wood is going, splinters half off. I'll have to fix that panel before nightfall unless Mr. Pike answers my call.

The plastic sack lies like a puddle of congealed oil on the gravel.

Fidel's name wasn't always Fidel. It used to be Bobo.

One day on my husband's show a boy with bone cancer wanted to hear people's ideas about get-rich-quick patents. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? Albert asked, humoring him. How about a way to tie up your dogs in front of a deli? a woman asked. She was from Brooklyn and insisted on explaining. There're all these dog owners who'd like to shop in your store, she told the television camera, but there's nowhere for them to tie up dogs. Shop owners should take notice. She sat down proudly. A thin man with a caved-in lower jaw stood up. When Albert handed him the microphone, he couldn't say a word. Albert waited not impatiently but no go. Then I stood up. If I'd known what Albert was hatching, I would never have set foot in that studio on the fifth floor of a six-story walk-up overlooking a brown field. Yes, Arielle, he said quietly. I would like someone to invent a rain-sensitive windshield wiper. In other words, a computerized device would tell the wiper how fast to go according to how hard it was raining. He'd heard that one that very morning, at what might have been the last breakfast (or lunch or dinner) he'd ever get cooked for him by yours truly, and he'd grunted his approval, but now he only looked at me.

Fine, I said and sat back down.

I turn to go inside, thinking it's time to try Mr. Pike, while the dogs nose around in the bushes as if hoping for a stroll. I climb the stairs, step by step, and fetch the water bowls and clamber back down the stairs and kneel by the stream and fill them, one red, one blue, and carry them slowly up the stairs again and inside. The dogs watch as I set their bowls down and they step forward, first one, then the other. After all this time, I still love the sound of a dog's tongue lapping at the source of life.

The telephone rings once, then desists with a squawk.

The sun has floated over the distant mountains.

After I dial his number, I hold the receiver out as if the recorded voice were deafening. Mr. Pike, I say, if that was you, I've been waiting for your call. We need your help, Mr. Pike. There's more garbage, and the roof, and wood to be chopped for winter. It's never too early to start drying out wood, Mr. Pike. And this isn't your problem, but the bathroom sink's backed up and what if that means septic? Please, Mr. Pike, please don't go fishing on us.

I hang up. A lone bird wheels, cries out, darts out of sight.

Is it my imagination, or has the odor from the barn begun to make itself known here even with the doors shut? I glance at my watch: 11:05. I like Albert to find the landline busy because he worries. I don't want you staying there alone, he used to say. Yes, you do, I told him. Your bitterness is killing us, he told me right back. In order to effect change, Arielle, you need to embrace the possibility of change.

You sound like a talk show host, I told him.

Bobo, he said then, dance, Bobo.

Whenever he said that the puppy would do the Victory Dance, which began with him flopping down, legs splayed and muzzle lowered to the floor of our two-bedroom in Boerum Hill. Our son had wandered home from college and brought the puppy. He—Zander, I mean—was pasty faced and underachieving and piping up about responsibility and carbon footprints. He was majoring in carbohydrates, from the looks of him, which I mentioned just once. Tell him how we met, I demanded of his father.

I know where you met, our son said.

At the last rally against the Vietnam War, I said when he didn't go on.

What a great dog my dog Bobo is, Zander remarked, leaning down with a Hot Fry. And Dance, Bobo, the two of them shouted because Bobo chose that moment to do his Victory Dance. The older dog wasn't jealous; he isn't the type. He just looked at me and sidled over and together we observed the performance.

Fast forward: I was packing to leave and Albert must have known it, because he kept taking his old transistor radio, the one that runs on batteries and has its own faux-leather case, out of my suitcase. I kept putting it back in. Did you really think that through? I asked him.

I thought you would be pleased, he said after a moment. I thought you and our son would find it in your hearts to forgive each other.

He never did anything except eat us out of house and home.

Maybe that's what you have to forgive him for, Albert said smugly.

I've never been so humiliated, but that's what you want me to say, isn't it?

As if in response, he reached down and pulled out the transistor radio. After a minute or two, though, he walked back in and laid it atop my stretch slacks. It's not too late, but it's getting later, he told me before stalking out again. That woman was right, I called, meaning the woman from Brooklyn, the one who wanted a better way to tie up your dogs.

When the telephone squawks I pick it up and hear a click and that's when I hear them, whatever's roaming through the barn; they're making animalistic noises and when I look out, expecting hogs or foxes or bears, I see a small band of disheveled teenagers, boys stripped to the waist, girls in sweat suits, all grabbing old milk containers and empty plastic bottles in which, it's true, a sip of water here or there resides, and they see me seeing them and lift their booty high and rush off down the driveway. They hoot and laugh as they pass running through the trees, which only last week still had leaves, green leaves.

Well! I pick up the receiver and call Mr. Pike and I leave him another message, and then, because the machine cuts me off, I call back and leave the rest of the message, and then because I'm worried that the two halves might confuse him, I call a third time and leave the message in brief: Mr. Pike, please have the human decency to call about this problem, I say and slam the receiver down. There's something about Mr. Pike that gets to me, but what if he takes it into his head never to answer?

Is he all right, Mom? he asked in front of the entire universe. I mean Alexander, my son. I've read, and I believe, that radio and television waves, even cable, shoot right through the lower and upper stratospheres and then they're in Forever Land. You could be tooting along in your spaceship on the far side of Paradise and there Alexander and I will stand, awkwardly facing one another, the two of us at least three times the size of who either of us used to be. At first I thought he meant his father, who was standing there with the microphone. Give your mother a hug, he was saying. But she's huge, Alexander blurted, stumbling forward. The joke was that he was too; I'd have cracked up myself. Instead I said the first words that blundered into my head: Zander, I said, tears streaming down my broad cheeks, "I'm starving."

Never mind: the dogs have emptied their water bowls and for a moment I'm tempted to scold them for always needing more! Instead I pile them into the car and slam the rear door and then I go into the garage and grab a sack and throw it in my trunk and another and another and I turn on the motor which splutters but does start and I drive down the driveway and onto the road, a nice dirt road, and I pass the band of teenagers yanking up my neighbors' sprinkler system just in case, I suppose, there's residue in that hose—I hate to think how it would taste or what it'd give you. And the dogs are sitting up very straight, very noble, in the backseat by the time I drive right up to Mr. Pike's house and get out and slam the door as loud as you please, so that a woman peers out the window. She appears to be sitting in the window. There's something about her but it doesn't matter: I haul the sacks, which sag but don't break, right out my trunk and heave them one after the other onto Mr. Pike's lawn (where one does burst with a spattering of coffee grounds and chicken bones) and then I drive out of there breathing hard. I drive past weathered farmhouses and newer developments, condos mostly empty now, and although my heart slows I start thinking like a teenager: those condos must have gallons of H2O stashed away. After the tragedy in New York, I should explain, a lot of flatlanders raced up here and a lot of money changed hands and a lot of septics got built without much attention to the water table, but also some of those families, heads of families, must have stashed guns and flashlights and cans of soy mash or tuna fish, and water. I can imagine in this moment becoming the woman who with one thick fist on a windowpane breaks in and makes off with other people's life sources.

We turn in at the state park sign.

In principle the lake is off-limits too, but people