A Place I've Never Been Read Online Free PDF Page A

carrying her back into the kitchen, shouting, “No! No!” She returns with a sponge and a bottle of urine-stain remover. “I’m a whiz at this,” she says.
    â€œEva,” Arthur says, rolling over and unbuttoning his pants, “you never fail to amaze me.”
    Across the house the puppy wails for her mother.
    In Arthur’s bathroom one medicine cabinet is full, one empty, but still, for some reason, on the soap dish, one of Claire’s earrings hangs haphazardly, as if she’d just pulled it out of the tiny hole in her earlobe. Next to it lies a fake gold tooth, from the days when crowns were removable, which Claire wore most of her life and only took out during her last stay in the hospital. Arthur saved the earring because he couldn’t find its partner; for hours he searched the bedroom and the bathroom, desperate to complete his inventory of Claire’s jewelry so that he could finally get rid of it all, but the second earring failed to materialize. Finally he gave up. After the rest of the jewelry was distributed among the children and Claire’s sisters he could not bring himself to throw the one earring away—it would have killed him, he said in group. It is a gold earring, shaped like a dolphin; its tiny jade eye glints up at him from the syrupy moat of the soap dish.
    â€œHave you been brushing her regularly?” Mrs. Theodorus asks, examining the puppy on the kitchen table. “Her furnishings look a little matted. Remember, Arthur, this is a high-maintenance dog you’ve got here, and you’d better get in the habit of taking care of hernow if you don’t want her to scream when she goes to the groomer later on.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Eva,” Arthur says.
    Mrs. Theodorus smiles. “Well, I’ll be happy to help you,” she says, as, yelping loudly, the puppy tries to bite the comb that is pulling the fur from her skin. “But you’ve got to remember,” Mrs. Theodorus adds, looking at Arthur sternly, “she’s your puppy, and finally it’s your responsibility to take care of her. You can’t count on me being around all the time to do it.”
    â€œWe’re going to be late, Eva,” Arthur says.
    â€œI know. I’ll be done in a minute.”
    She finishes, and the puppy is returned to the dark, private world in which she spends most of her time. “What I’m interested in, Kathy,” a voice on the radio says, “is how
you
feel when your husband makes these suggestions. You have to think about your own desires, too.”
    â€œThat puppy is going to be ruined, listening to Dr. Pleasure,” Mrs. Theodorus says as she gets into her car. They still go in separate cars.
    It is the third Thursday of the month—spouse night—and even though Arthur and Mrs. Theodorus are no longer technically spouses—both have recently lost their loved ones—they still attend with needful regularity. Claire, Arthur’s wife, died two months ago of a sudden, searing chemical burn, a drug reaction, which over five days crisped and opened her skin until she lay in the burn unit, her face tomato-red, her body wrapped in mummylike bandages, and wrote to Arthur, her hand shaking, “I’m scared.”
    â€œScared of what?” Arthur asked, and she pointed a bloody finger, as best she could, tothe tubes thrust down her throat to keep her breathing; she had pneumonia. In the terrible humidity of the burn unit, surrounded by the screams of injured children, Arthur tried to reassure her. He had on three gowns, two masks, a flowered surgical cap, rubber gloves. His spectacled eyes stared out from all that fabric. A children’s tape deck he had bought at Walgreen’s played Hoagy Carmichael songs in the corner. Above it the nurse had written: “Hello, my name is Claire. Please turn over the tape in my tape deck. Thanx.”
    Meanwhile, Mr. Theodorus—jolly, warm, wonderful