There’s life in the house, Elspeth.
I kept at my work, slowly, and slowly it stopped being work. The dog went from being listless to being… on the crest. Wobbling on the curve of the moon. If he tipped one way, he’d be illuminated and face earth; if he tipped the other way, he’d slip into darkness and forever disappear. He was in the balance. What would he choose? The body always wants to live. The spirit is less certain, more susceptible to the heart. You were clear, when it was your turn. You held on as long as you could. I always hoped you didn’t overstay for my sake—and I also hoped you did. Selfish.
I continued my slow movements, soaking his fur, rubbing the hairs between my fingers. Every few minutes I drained the sink while still holding him under the warm tap, and then filled it and began the cleaning again. I heard the water drain from the upstairs tub. Footsteps circled, the slow and the swift, a reassuring syncopation. I gave Star a final warm rinse and dried him with a kitchen towel. He looked like a different creature once I’d fluffed him up.
Mrs. Circumstance reappeared with a spiffed-up Nan in clean pants and a little red sweater. Nan’s eyes widened at Star’s new look.
“He needs food. I can feel his ribs,” I said.
Mrs. C. reached for him. “If he’s starving,” she said, “he should have only a little food at a time. He could do with some eggs.”
“We don’t have any.”
“Or maybe we do.”
She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of eggs. They weren’t part of my food plan, but I wasn’t going to quibble with her.
She scrambled them quickly. Nan closed her eyes and inhaled the buttery scent. Mrs. Circumstance noticed and cracked two more into the pan. I knelt on the floor and guided Star’s head to a bowl of water. He swung away. I tried again with the same result, and finally dipped my hand into the bowl and brought up a palmful. He lay down, and I began to worry. Mrs. C. put a plate on the floor next to us and sat Nan at the table with a plate of her own. I tipped my hand and spilled the water back into the bowl and picked up a little egg. I held him close to my heart, near the beat of life. Beyond me Nan smacked her lips. No one has ever made such an uncouth noise in this house before! I looked up at Mrs. C., who knew exactly what I was thinking. We got a case of the giggles that I kept trying to quell, but we set each other off, over and over. The child was too busy with her eating and smacking to notice. The egg fell from my hand and I kissed the dog on the top of his head.
“Look!” Mrs. C. said.
Star was bent over the plate, wolfing his food. We all watched, transfixed, until he finished and topped off the meal with a big yawn. “I need a cup of chocolate for all my labors. You don’t like chocolate, do you, Nan?” I was teasing, but she looked at me quizzically. Poor thing.
I chose the yellow Quimper, hoping it would amuse her. Mrs. C. arranged the tray, the chocolate in a small pitcher, and a plate covered with rings of cookies. Nan watched carefully, and I was aware of giving a performance for her. I don’t think anyone has ever watched me with such pure interest—at least not since we were children, El, and you were my openhearted little sister.
I picked up Star again, and we all headed in a procession to the glass room. I created a little nest out of an old cashmere blanket for Star on the sofa. Mrs. C. predictably frowned. “A new broom,” I reminded her. Although he’d eaten and was clean, I didn’t think he was ready for the child, and thought it best to be between them. Mrs. Circumstance asked if there’d be anything else.
“No, thank you, and I thank you very much for your steadiness today.”
“If you need me—”
“I’m fine. I have a guard dog now.” And so I discovered I had decided to keep him.
Star stretched at just that moment, and exhaled deeply. Mrs. Circumstance isn’t a woman lavish with love, so she surprised me when she said, “I’ll bring him a tidbit later. And you be a good girl.” She shook her finger at Nan, who reached for that admonishing finger and giggled when it was pulled away before she could grasp it.
Life in the house!
The child lunged across me to get at Star, but I caught her, sat her back down, and told her “No!” This didn’t faze her. She gazed around and rubbed her hands on the sofa’s soft slipcover. Such an uncivilized thing she is. Unruly. Crazy hair. But Mrs. Circumstance had brushed it out so it looked like a soft, mohair blanket, frizzy in an angelic way. I wanted to touch it, but held back. I barely knew her. I wouldn’t touch a strange adult’s hair, would I? The best way to teach her how to be civilized was to behave that way toward her.
Yet I also wanted to delight her, and wished I had already painted the glass room, disguised its stark whiteness with tropical glamor. At least the somber family portraits are in Philadelphia, and weren’t sneering down at her.
I showed her how to hold the cup and wrap her finger inside the handle. It tipped, of course it tipped, how could I have imagined anything else might happen? I caught it before it spilled, but it was a close call. I shifted strategies and showed her how to hold the cup with both hands from underneath, but she wanted to do it the other way, shrewd creature, knowing it was better, more grown-up. I should have taught her with an empty cup or with water rather than chocolate, but it was too late for that. She watched her fingers and guided them with great effort, poking her index finger through the handle correctly, but balancing the whole cup was beyond her powers. Again, I took her fingers and placed them on the cup. The surface of the chocolate had grown hard, so I broke it with a spoon.
“Open your mouth.” I put a spoonful of chocolate in her mouth, and then took one myself. I rolled it around, tasting it with every part of my tongue. The thick rich oily sweetness was an avenue of escape and forgetting, a conduit to an inward journey. I lifted my cup, my finger hooked through the handle, but with the other hand placed beneath. She copied this successfully. She took a sip, then slid off the sofa and placed her cup on the table. She performed an ecstatic modern dance, pressing her mouth with her hands, moaning and more moaning, and swaying side to side. Chocolate!
“You are a hungry baby bird, aren’t you? This is surely the best worm you’ll ever eat.”
She handed me the spoon, and we played the game of moaning after every bite. I was like the pied piper, drugging the child. She spun in circles and rolled around the room as if the floor were pitched like a hill. I put on music for her. Calypso, Harry Belafonte’s record that always makes me happy. Could it be that she’d never heard music before? Her reaction was somewhere between terrified and insane. I had to run after her, catch her, hold her and soothe her; keep holding until she understood that it came from a machine and not from some god in the room. I showed her how I lifted the needle on and off the record, but this I wouldn’t let her try. She accepted the restriction and settled into the sofa, holding her hands above her head and swaying them to the rhythm. I copied her. We played a game of one making a move, the other imitating, and so on. Star slept through it all. The afternoon passed.
Lances of late sunlight pierced the windows and cluttered the floor like swords laid down after a battle. Nan stretched out on the wicker sofa flat on her back. She didn’t require a story, but I so rarely hear my own voice these days that I took the opportunity. I made one up, about a glen in a forest known to only two people. When one person went there alone, it was only a forest glen. When both went together, they could have whatever they wished for, the only limitation being they must stay in the glen. I made them a boy and a girl. They asked for cups of chocolate. They asked for a puppy but wondered what would happen to him if they couldn’t take him out of the glen—hunger, predators, and loneliness. Nan breathed deeply, fast asleep, but I kept going, enjoying the invention.