A History of Forgetting by Caroline Adderson Read Free Book Online Page A

they came to a bit of bread, and then another. Then Malcolm saw that Denis had been breaking off pieces to mark a trail. Here, on the ties, a crow, so black it looked dyed, was choking down a piece.
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    Hands on hips, he watched Grace snuffle the perimeter of the sandbox, watched with distaste. She had been with them weeks now, at their table perched on Denis’ lap accepting morsels off his fork, burrowing between them in their bed, curling next to Denis’ neck, her stump in Malcolm’s face. The sound of Mrs. Parker’s motorized scooter came into earshot, nearly drowning out her faint hail.
    â€˜Malcolm!’
    On colder days, Mrs. Parker wore her signature tam, but she was bare-headed today, revealing hair she had finally allowed Malcolm to rid of its apricot tint. Mitzi, her chihuahua, rode in the scooter basket. Malcolm lifted down the dog.
    â€˜We must stop meeting like this, Mrs. P.’
    She gripped his forearm, fixing on him a flirty look.
    Within minutes the elegant Mrs. Rodeck joined them with Hugh, her epileptic pug. Mrs. Rodeck used to wear a rat, but Malcolm had changed all that as well. Then Miss Velve arrived, Miss Velve who looked like some necky waterbird. For decades she had run an antique shop on the boulevard, specializing in not quite complete sets of English china and Coronation mugs. ‘Gone to walk the dog,’ read the card taped on her shop door at this time every day.
    The dogs sniffed each other’s backsides—they did it in a ring—and the ladies didn’t seem to find this behaviour smutty in the least. ‘Look,’ said Miss Velve. ‘Look what Malcolm’s done to Grace.’
    Mrs. Rodeck clucked. ‘Isn’t that the cutest thing?’
    He had put on her a rhinestone collar and combed up and tied with a bow the wiry hairs that fell into her eyes, not so much to prettify her as to play up the ridiculous kind of dog she was. When Grace’s eyes didn’t show, you couldn’t see the brown matter that they wept.
    â€˜Adorable,’ said Mrs. Parker and Grace’s ears pricked up. She answered to flattery of any kind. Malcolm could even summon her by calling, ‘Vanity, Vanity,’ in a saccharine voice. Bouncing over to Mrs. Parker, she began her grotesque little jig, rising onto her hind legs, pawing the air. Her stump—the size of a man’s thumb severed at the knuckle, covered with long dun hairs—wiggled.
    â€˜Aren’t you precious? Aren’t you precious?’ cooed Mrs. Parker.
    Mrs. Rodeck’s pug thundered over, pop-eyed with jealousy, and knocked Grace aside. The ladies laughed and groaned and the pug looked around, confused. His lips were too large, loosest at the corners, almost fluted, pebbly-textured and moist, like blackened female genitalia. Malcolm looked away, to Grace splayed pornographically as she cleaned herself. He avoided ever looking at Miss Velve’s Lady; she had a dangling growth. The chihuahua wandered in a seemingly inoffensive circle, except that in the few short weeks that Malcolm had been a dog walker, he’d learned to recognize the signs preliminary to defecation. He had a moment like this every day, when he didn’t know where to look.
    When the dogs had finished what they were there for, the pug kicking out behind himself with pride, plastic bags were produced from coat pockets and purses and Malcolm, ever the gallant, offered to do Mrs. Parker’s dirty work. It was so difficult for her to stoop. Their rendezvous over, they said goodbye until tomorrow.
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    Last week Mrs. Soloff had told him, ‘This group you meet when you walk your dog? They think you love dogs, too. They think you feel the same way they do. But you don’t. You are an impostor. Am I right or am I wrong?’
    Mrs. Soloff was long ago a Russian, before worse things happened to her; this lent some gravity to her words. Mal colm, feeling both guilty and