The dogs cling to the kitchen floor, their forearms and chins flattened down, like a spinning carnival ride. Indoors, nature fails the animals, and their useless instincts send them under chairs and low tables, airless and dusty. Only the paunchy bees are happy, loitering in the air around the wooden gate, friendly as drunks. The ceaseless fan, the windows opened all the way, make the dining room feel like public space: a classroom, a Sunday School picnic pavilion, a limestone cave with a plate rail.
Summer is too early. The rainy, gothic days of April never came, yet May is weeks away. We who are older remember weather that never happened. The world never did go right—my mother in 1967 opening the trailer door as she cooked Christmas dinner. The Easter snow storms and chilly July swimming of my childhood—the selfishness and perversity of dead people who were, at one time, 40. The atmosphere will always be wild, and young. But we will remember a more seasonal time, as our instincts mislead us.
