Dinosaurs: A Novel

by Lydia Millet

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

"Over twelve novels and two collections, Lydia Millet has emerged as a major American novelist, writing vividly about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her exquisite new novel, the first since A Children’s Bible, tells the story of an Arizona man’s relationship with the family next door, whose house has one wall made entirely out of glass. The story delivers attraction and love, friendship and grief. But Millet also evokes the uncanny. Through close observation of human and animal life in the desert, she captures the daunting scale of human society without losing sight of the real difference one person can make in the world. Written with humor and benevolence, Dinosaurs asks big questions: Can a person be good? Can a man be good? Compellingly told, emotionally moving, and intellectually rich, Dinosaurs may be Millet’s finest novel yet."

Release date: October 11, 2022

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Print pages: 234

Sample

WHEN HE DECIDED to leave New York, he chose Arizona because of some drone footage he’d seen. It wove through the canyons of red-rock mountain foothills, over sage-green scrub and towering cacti with their arms outstretched. Then up into the higher elevations, where there were forests of ponderosa pine.

Sky islands, was what they called those desert mountains.

Gil was keenly aware, watching the video, that he himself would never glide over the rolling landscape with that hypnotic steadiness. Would never coast over trees as the metal bird did—close enough to see the clusters of green needles on the pine boughs dip and sway in the wind.

He was also aware of the artifice of the soaring choral music the footage was set to. No landscape came with that.

Still it captured him. The desert had an alien beauty that seemed as different as you could get, within the lower forty-eight. The opposite of Manhattan.

He recognized the pattern. He went to new places because they weren’t the same as the old ones.

But he wanted to feel the distance in his bones and skin, the ground beneath his feet. Not step onto a plane and land in five hours after a whiskey and a nap.

And not drive, either, with the speed and convenience cars gave you.

He wasn’t looking for easy. He had nowhere to be and no one who needed him.

On hiking websites he researched what he should carry, the weight of camping gear and water and food. He plotted his route painstakingly, spreading out paper maps on his kitchen table, checking each segment against local data from Google. The route that cut sharply south, because of the cold that would descend before too long, then straight west, along the bottom of the country from Georgia to Louisiana, through Texas and New Mexico.

Not much longer than the Appalachian Trail. Which people hiked, from beginning to end, every year. But harder in several details, since the asphalt arteries of the nation weren’t designed for feet.

Then he’d sold his loft in the Flatiron District. Bought a house in Phoenix sight unseen, save for virtual tours and curated, artfully lit photos. Packed up his possessions and had movers come and take them there.

The long walk lasted for almost five months. He rested whenever his legs or back were aching—an ache that got less acute after the first couple of weeks—and stayed in motels when he could find them. The farther west he went, the greater the distances from one to the next. In Texas, even at a pace of twenty-five miles a day, sometimes four days passed between gas stations. And more than a week between motels. He had to carry a lot more water then. Ration it carefully.

Besides the weight of water and the cold, bathroom and shower availability were his most serious problems. He got rank when he had to camp out for too long—he knew this rationally, though he was mostly immune to the odor—and sometimes a front-desk clerk gave him attitude. At first glance, he looked and smelled homeless.

But his credit checked out and he cleaned up nicely.

On the walk, time moved so slowly that he ceased to measure it. It could be relentless in its tedium.

Other times the slowness seemed like grace.

At those moments, he looked back on the measured days and hours of his life in the city—its boxes and rows, its tidy compartments—and came to believe that version of time was the false one.

A grid designed, like the city itself, to keep everyone in their assigned seats.

FOR WEEKS AFTER he moved into his new house, the glass one next door was still up for sale. Curious, he’d taken a break from arranging furniture to go to a showing.

It was a mid-century-modern masterpiece, the real estate agent boasted.

Though technically, built in the nineties.

From his place you could see most of its interior, except for the bedrooms and bathrooms. It was laid out in an open plan: entry, living area, dining area and kitchen. On the side facing his house, the wall was one long stretch of glass.

On the other side, in the bedrooms, there were regular picture windows. He was the only neighbor with a view of the glass-walled stage.

He’d asked himself who would choose to live there. On display.

But he was still getting used to the air and silence of his house—older than the glass one, with such spacious rooms and high ceilings that he thought of it as a castle—when a family of four took up residence there.

A husband, a wife, a girl, and a boy.

He lived by himself. So it was hard not to look at them. At first they seemed like a group of mannequins to him, in a high-end department store window.

Say Bloomingdale’s. Or Saks.

MAYBE PRIVACY JUST MATTERED LESS to the family, he thought, than what you could see from within. The glass wall was equipped with remote-controlled screens—the realtor had shown him their quiet movement—that rolled down to keep out the heat, protecting the house from the desert summer. At the end of a hot day you could press a button, if you liked, and raise the screens again.

That way you could watch the sun rise in the morning. And in the evening, from the windows in the west-facing bedrooms, you could watch the sun set.

At night the indoor lights made the glass house into an even brighter theater, its colors and figures vibrant against the surrounding dark.

The parents were slightly younger than he was, he guessed. Late thirties or early forties, possibly. The woman was blond and wore her hair up in an elegant roll when she went out, taking it down with one deft hand at the back of her neck when she came in again. The man was tall and had chiseled features, a sweep of black hair on his high forehead, olive skin.

The little boy was his father in miniature, and the teenage girl resembled her blond mother.

ONE AFTERNOON HE NOTICED the wife moving around in the kitchen—it was a cloudy day and the screens had been raised. When he sat down to read a book in his favorite armchair, and looked up from the page, he could glance through a gap in the drapes of the window beside it and see the full sweep of the open plan.

Idly he watched her stretch out the end of a roll of silver foil, rip off a neat sheet. She covered something in the foil, then gestured to the children—the boy, who sat building Legos at the dining-room table, and the girl, who roused herself from a couch in front of the TV.

The three of them went out their front door, the wife carrying her foil-wrapped plate, the children lagging.

They walked down to the sidewalk and turned toward his own front yard. Then up his front walkway.

For a second he felt trapped. Not ready for a meeting.

He looked down at his feet: one sock had a hole at the big toe.

But they had to know he was home—his car was parked in the driveway. If his car was here, he was here. Phoenix was built for cars, like LA. You barely moved without them.

Buying a car had been his first act, when he arrived. In New York he’d never needed to own one.

They rang the doorbell, so he shoved on his shoes and went to the entryway. On the screen of the security console he could see them—the wife smiling up at him, the tops of the children’s heads behind her, indistinct.

Damn, was his thought, and he felt his pulse quicken. Alarm, but also a sliver of anticipation: it had been a dull sequence of days.

And opened the door.

The wife, who was even more elegant up close, said what friendly neighbors said in TV shows from the fifties.

It was a peach pie. She hoped he liked it—she was a mediocre cook, but when it came to baking you just followed the recipes.

Plus her daughter had helped. She liked to make desserts.

Her name was Ardis. The children were Clem and Tom.

Gil said his own name and stiffly shook hands all round, stooping to reach the children. They were awkward. Not used to handshaking. It wasn’t a thing, he realized, with kids.

Maybe you weren’t supposed to shake hands with them, these days.

Then he accepted the pie. Said thank you and stood there holding it. A man who had received an offering.

Was he required to ask them in? He thought not. The kids wouldn’t want to hang around.

“We won’t keep you,” said Ardis.

He was supposed to utter a protest, manners dictated. But his lips didn’t move.

“Thank you again,” he said finally. “It looks delicious. This is very kind. It should have been the other way around—I should have thought of it myself. Brought you flowers, or something. Not used to the neighborhood yet. I got here recently, too.”

“Not at all! Honestly. We just needed a project.”

“Well. I appreciate it.”

Another person would have asked questions. As soon as they were gone, he’d think of some.

For now, nothing occurred to him. He was a deer in the headlights.

“You have a lovely home,” he ventured.

“Oh! Yes. So do you.”

That was established now—they both had lovely homes. They’d bought them with money.

The children turned to go, and he reached out to put the pie down on a ledge. To allow him to shut the door.

Ardis started to follow them, then swiveled and looked back at him. Smiled with a new animation—as if, having performed the small talk, she was released into the real.

“When we decided to get the place—I mean, I fell in love with it, so—but I did worry,” she said. “About the glass wall. I thought, wow, whoever lives next door is going to have a human fish tank to look at. There used to be this tinting on it, to make it more one-way? But over the years it faded, I guess. It’s this specialty firm that does the re-tinting, and they have a long waiting list. I didn’t know how long, at first. And with the screens up, after a while, I start to feel claustrophobic. So I just wanted to say, for now, I hope it’s not too annoying. Our fish-tank reality show. Over there.”

He struggled to find the right words.

“Yeah, I’ve—I try not to stare. On purpose. But it’s kind of—it’s the landscape there is. I just look out. And then I feel like a Peeping Tom.”

Behind his mother, Tom glanced up. Summoned.

“Oh—sorry. An expression.”

He wanted to kick himself. Right off the bat, he was introducing the idea of perverts.

Nice. Coming from the bachelor next door.

“Of course, anyone would,” Ardis reassured him. Nodded in understanding. “Anyone would feel that way.”

“Last year, when I bought this house, I was back East. I found it online. I’d never visited. I did look at the satellite view. But I didn’t really look at the other houses.”

“You had no idea you’d have to be a voyeur.”

But she smiled again. Sincere.

“Well. I’ll try not to be one,” he said. He felt sheepish.

“Forget it!” said Ardis. Threw her hands up. “It’s not your fault. You should look where you want to. Put your eyes anywhere! When you’re inside your own house. You have to be free!”

She had a certain exuberance.

As though anything was possible. And she had nothing to hide.

IN HIS FORMER LIFE, before he left New York, he hadn’t noticed birds. He’d thought of them the way you might think of butterflies or flowers—passing impressions of a life elsewhere. He’d pictured tropical kinds. Flurries of color.

But here most of them were brown or gray. The common ones on the castle grounds, anyway. They hopped and pecked. Except for a gray dove that didn’t hop. It trundled along with a comical gait—swayed side-to-side, its red feet splayed a bit. Its breast was swelled out. Plump. Front-loaded.

He discovered it was building a nest. Near the top of a sliding door to his back terrace, on a light fixture. Twigs and paper shreds. He took out the bulb, because the light was motion-activated, like all the castle’s outdoor lights. He was afraid the nest might catch fire.

Security came to do a sweep. The nest had been there maybe a week, and the gray bird sat on it.

The guy from the company checked the perimeter, the sensors. Replaced a backup battery. Gil followed him around, watching. He saw him spot the nest.

“Should I remove it for you?”

“No!”

“It’s just a mourning dove,” said the guy. “She’ll build one somewhere else in no time flat. We have ’em at my place, too. Make their nests over doorways. And other high-traffic locations. Fly out all bothered and scare the bejaysus out of you. My wife screams. Every time.”

“No, but thanks anyway,” repeated Gil.

“Without the light, though, your visibility’s gonna be compromised.”

“That’s OK.”

THE HUSBAND WASN’T HOME as much as the others. He seemed to work Sundays as well as weekdays, though for shorter hours. He went out after lunch wearing a jacket and tie, returning for dinner.

Their backyards were separated by a fence and two privacy hedges. That way if one neighbor decided to take down a hedge, the other would remain as a barrier. But the castle was two stories atop a slight, sloping hill, and the glass house was one floor, so Gil could see over the hedges.

His yard had desert landscaping, beds of cacti and rocks in the sand. The glass house had a single tall, old tree and a large expanse of grass Tom liked to play on.

He never succeeded in getting his sister to play with him. Through the glass Gil saw him beg before he went outside, but she shook her head and turned back to her phone.

So he went out alone, often wearing padded protective gear: bulky shin guards and arm coverings. Though he had no opponent.

On the lawn he leapt and kicked and chopped the air in a frenzy, shouting Hi-ya! And Hi-yee!

A martial arts practitioner.

Self-taught, Gil strongly suspected.

Tornado kick! Hi-ya!

After a few days of this, the husband emerged in pajamas one morning and hung a punching bag from their tree. Tom trailed behind him, watched as he tied the bag up. Then landed a series of punishing blows.

The last was a wild, fierce kick. The boy fell awkwardly.

Gil laughed. Not out of meanness but joy.

How long had it been since he laughed out loud? He couldn’t recall. At night he watched the political comedy shows, but a smile was all they drew from him.

Tom went limping back to the house with his dad. The limp was theatrically exaggerated.

First he favored one leg, then the other. Just didn’t have it down. ...