by Jane Rule
“That’s human?” Harry whispered to Anna in the kitchen right after he’d got home from work to be confronted in his own living room with the children’s “stray.”
“He’s perfectly all right, only a bit damp,” Anna said, softly but cheerfully.
“How long is he going to stay?”
Anna shrugged. “Until it stops raining, I guess. Sally says his newspaper house on the beach leaks.”
“But in Vancouver it can rain for weeks!” Harry protested. “Anyway, it’s illegal to camp on the beach.”
“All the more reason for him to stay here,” Anna said.
“He’s a grown man,” Harry said. “What kind of a man would follow a couple of young kids home?”
“Shh…” Anna warned him. “He’s no more than a boy.”
“Is he old enough for me to have to offer him a glass of wine?” Harry asked, as he poured himself and Anna one.
“I think so.”
Harry sauntered back into the living room, fighting the instinctive mistrust he felt for this scarecrow with an ample head of seaweed who sat in Harry’s chair, the children at his feet, as intent upon him as if he’d been an alligator or monkey or other exotic nonhuman Harry had been tempted by all through his own pet-deprived childhood. It was the only time in his life Harry saw a sudden, profoundly distasteful parallel between his wife and his mother, who had also collected strays, several of whom she’d married.
“A glass of wine?” Harry said slowly, as if the creature were deaf or didn’t speak English.
“Poison.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Poison,” it said again, still in a faint, sinister whisper.
“No it’s not,” Sally said. “Mom makes it herself.”
“It’s all right, Sally,” Harry said, reassured at this indication that she was not in thrall. “Lots of cats don’t like milk.”
“Xgo’s on a vision quest,” Joey said. “Sometimes he doesn’t eat anything for days.”
“Xgo…What kind of a name is that?” Harry asked.
“From numbers,” Joey said. “He made it up from numbers.”
“Xgo, you’d better get off Dad’s chair now,” Sally said, a friendly authority in her voice. “That’s where he sits.”
Xgo, like a sullen, untrained dog, didn’t move.
“Come on,” Sally said.
She and Joey together half hoisted Xgo out of the chair and steered him to the couch.
Harry sat down with the glass of wine he might have given to Xgo and picked up his evening paper.
“Male chauvinist,” he thought he heard, but it was faint enough for him to ignore it, the paper hiding his increasing agitation.
“You’re going to sleep in the guest room,” Sally was explaining. “That’s really my room, but I don’t sleep there. I sleep with Joey.”
“Incest.”
Harry knew he couldn’t actually be hearing what this sea oracle was saying. It must be Harry’s own paranoia inventing these responses.
“She’s afraid of the dark,” Joey said, a kindly contempt in his voice.
Harry skipped an article about a bear mauling a child near a garbage dump in North Vancouver and went on to read about the failure of institutions of higher learning to teach people to read and write.
Called to dinner, Harry momentarily regretted that they had broken down the wall between the dining room and the kitchen for a sense of space and friendliness. He would have liked to impose as much intimidating formality as possible to make it as clear to the rest of the family as it already was to Harry that Xgo was a creature meant to live out of doors. On this week night there wasn’t even anything to carve. Anna was serving meat loaf from the stove.
When everyone had a plate, Xgo bowed his head and said something that sounded to Harry like, “Cannibals,” then picked up a small portion of mashed potatoes in his fingers.
“Oh, no!” Sally said, scandalized. “Watch me.”
Sally still held her fork like a shovel, and her elbow did a lot of high work. Xgo imitated her exactly. She looked doubtful.
“Maybe you’d better watch Dad,” she suggested.
Xgo dutifully stared at Harry through the rest of the meal.
“I think he’s a vegetarian,” Joey murmured to his mother.
“Speak up, son,” Harry commanded. “Or am I going deaf?”
“I don’t think he eats meat.”
“Surely Xgo can speak for himself?” Harry suggested.
“Woof,” Xgo said.
Joey laughed.
“You have to eat a little of everything,” Sally explained to their guest, “even if you don’t like it. Meat’s good for you. Even dogs like meat. And this isn’t hard to cut or chew or anything.”
She was busy demonstrating by wiggling her fork in her own meatloaf and chewing with exaggerated ease. Xgo took a bite and made a noise that could have been a suppressed word or a sob. He reached for his glass of milk.
“No,” Joey checked him. “You have to swallow first. Then you can have a drink.”
Harry was fascinated at Xgo’s obedience to the children. He was sure that, if either he or Anna had corrected him, Xgo would have defied or ignored them. Anna sat serenely as if what happened at the table was not a bizarre inverted Rousseauian experiment, civilized innocence ascendant over natural man.
Did Harry hear the words, “Junk food,” as Anna put dessert in front of Xgo?
“Now, watch Dad. He’s the champion ice cream eater round here,” Joey said proudly.
Harry stifled a noise in his own throat as he demonstrated his prowess under that bright, malignant stare.
“Dad and I are going to have coffee in the living room tonight,” Anna explained. “You kids can show Xgo how to help with the dishes.”
“I stand on a chair,” Sally said, getting up to demonstrate.
Harry made his escape before he could observe more.
“You can’t be serious about letting him stay,” he whispered urgently as soon as he and Anna were in the living room.
“He’s perfectly harmless,” Anna whispered back. “And aren’t the kids good with him!”
“They’re treating him like a moron or a tame bear!”
“They seem to be treating him very much the way we treat them,” Anna said, amused.
“But he’s not a child. And he’s anything but harmless. He’s downright hostile.”
“Oh, Harry, he’s only shy.” Anna said. “And adolescent. Think how worried his parents must be. If when Joey’s sixteen, he decides to do something crazy, I hope there are people around to take him out of the rain.”
“Joey has more sense!”
“Now,” Anna said as if she looked forward to an inevitable and dreadful metamorphosis of her beloved son.
“Well, if he’s going to take up with every beach bum who comes along…”
“The kids are being kind,” Anna said.
And Harry wasn’t. There was no point in arguing that he was only fulfilling a duty to protect his family from outside threats. This creature was inside where the duty of nurturing took precedence. All right, Harry would be kind.
“We’d better get Xgo’s room ready,” he suggested when the dishes had been done.
It was a rule in the house that Anna did no more chores when dinner was over; so Harry and the children found clean sheets for the bed and made it up while Xgo sat on the hope chest like a patient in a hospital.
“Maybe you’d like a book or two,” Harry suggested.
He didn’t wait for the encouragement he knew would not be forthcoming but went off at once to locate Xgo something to read. The adult library was in Harry and Anna’s bedroom. Anna had just finished reading Atwood’s Life Before Man, a title so appropriate it might seem offensive. Harry was rereading Dickens, whose social conscience should be having a more profound effect on Harry’s than it was. What would that piece of human driftwood read? Harry picked books at random, knowing whatever he chose would fail X
go’s test of taste. Simple kindness must go undaunted by scorn.
“Xgo’s into meditation more than books,” Joey explained at Xgo’s refusal even to put out a hand to accept the books.
“We’re a bit short on prayer mats around here,” Harry said cheerfully and went off to join Anna before his high spirits got the better of him.
“How’s everything?” she asked, looking up from the paper.
“Why just fine,” Harry said. “Water him regularly and he may soon cover all the walls.”
All day the next day, Harry kept looking out the window, and he irritated other people in the office by turning on the radio for every weather report.
“You’d think you still had your boat and it was Friday,” someone complained.
“It’s going to rain for weeks,” Harry said glumly.
“Well, it’s March. What do you expect?”
“A break. A minor miracle. Just one day of sun.”
Harry knew, no matter what Xgo did, Anna wouldn’t put him out in the rain. Though Harry didn’t think of himself as particularly possessive about his things, he wished he’d checked his camera, his binoculars, his fishing tackle. Less selfishly, he began to list each thing in the house Xgo might steal and sell, from Anna’s mother’s silver to the television set. “We hardly ever use either of them,” he could hear Anna saying. Harry answered aloud, “That’s not the point!”
“What’s not the point?” his secretary asked.
By the time Harry got home that night, he was surprised and relieved to see the house still standing, though it couldn’t have burned in this downpour. Still, he expected to discover it gutted of all valuables.
There was no one in the living room, but the furniture was still there. He could hear Anna in the kitchen.
“Hi! Everything all right?” Harry asked with false cheerfulness.
“Oh, Harry, I’m afraid not.”
“What’s happened?”
“Xgo’s gone,” Anna said.
“What did he take with him?” Harry demanded.
“Nothing but maybe my hairbrush. I haven’t been able to find it all day.”
“Are you sure? Did you check my camera?”
“Xgo’s not a criminal. He’s just an unhappy, confused kid. And he’s so dumb. He broke the bedroom window to get out. I guess he couldn’t open it. It was painted shut. But he could have walked out the door. We weren’t exactly holding him prisoner.”
“Where are the kids?”
“They’ve gone out to look for him. I told them there wasn’t any point. He obviously didn’t want to stay.”
“They’ll be drenched,” Harry protested.
“They’ve got their rain gear on.”
“If they bring him back, I’m not letting him into this house!” Harry said with finality.
“The kids’ feelings are really hurt,” Anna said. “They really were trying to help him.”
There were the sounds of boots on the front porch. Harry rushed to the door to find no one but his two very wet, dejected children.
“He didn’t go back to his house,” Sally said.
“It isn’t even there,” Joey said with disgust. “Somebody took it down or it dissolved.”
Dinner was a glum affair.
“It’s bad enough when a dog runs away,” Sally said. “When Cricket’s dog ran away, she said it was because her mother made it eat cheese soufflé. We didn’t make Xgo eat anything awful.”
“Maybe he thought we were going to make him take a bath,” Joey said sadly.
Though Harry was tempted to preach a joyful sermon about their failure, which had to do with not treating people like dogs or bums like guests, he was too touched by their grief to take advantage of it.
“Why don’t I take us all to the movies tonight to get our minds off Xgo,” he suggested.
“Nothing but X-rated in a ten mile radius,” Joey said. “Anyway, it’s a school night.”
The next night the children were no more cheerful, and Anna seemed infected by depression. Every time Harry tried to lift their mood, he was treated like someone having an uncontrollable fit. No one was unkind. Even when he suggested going out for fudgesicles, Sally said in a resigned tone, “That’s okay, Dad.”
What his poor kids needed and had needed all along, was a pet, something small and dependent enough to be within their ability to take care of. Harry was through arguing with Anna about it. It was time to take things into his own hands.
In the pet shop, Harry studied the puppies and kittens. They seemed far too fragile to him for the circumstances. He might run over one and finally break Sally’s heart. Or it might run away like Cricket’s dog or Xgo. He looked at the tropical fish. Though they were beautiful, he couldn’t warm to them. Then a small yellow canary began to sing, a sound as bright as sunlight in the room.
“There!” Harry said, and he bought it along with the largest cage in the store.
Harry knew what Anna would say, and he had plenty of time to rehearse his argument on his drive home. While she was absolutely right that human beings were the most important, kids couldn’t start at the top like that and suffer those kinds of failures. They had to begin with something small, like this bird. Even when God was making the world, He started small…well, that might sound a bit pompous, particularly from an agnostic like Harry. But he’d use it if he had to.
“A bird in a cage?” Anna said, in absolute disbelief.
“‘In the prison of his days/teach a free man how to praise,’” Harry said and then added, “Auden, Freshman English.”
“Is he happy in there?” Sally asked.
“Listen to him,” Harry said, for the obliging bird had already begun to sing a sharp, trilling melody that went on and on.
“How do you turn it off?” Joey asked.
“You cover the cage,” Harry said, very slowly.
“Well, I mean, it’s okay and all,” Joey said.
“I think he’s beautiful,” Sally said.
“And here’s his seed and some cuttle fish,” Harry said, “to keep him happy.”
“Can we keep him, Mom?” Sally asked seriously; she knew what a concession it would be.
“Oh, well…” Anna said.
“Just a bit of bird seed, and it’s perfectly safe in there,” Harry said.
“You kids will have to take care of it,” Anna said. “I’m not cleaning a bird cage.”
“I will,” Sally said.
“Okay, I’ll take my turn,” Joey said.
“But this is not the thin edge of the wedge,” Anna said firmly. “There’s to be nothing more. This is it.”
“Then you should have got a dog, Dad,” Joey said.
The bird stopped singing abruptly.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Sally shouted. “You’ve hurt his feelings.”
“It’s just a bird,” Joey said, defending himself, but he turned to the cage and gave a long, hopeful, imitating whistle.
The bird replied.
“See?” Joey said. “That’s how you turn him back on.”
Harry watched Anna. He wouldn’t have to start back at the beginning of creation, but he would have to say more about the nature of cages, the creatures who were at home in them, the creatures who had to break out.
MUSICAL BEDS
HARRY HAD A BAD habit of opening his mail at the dinner table, in principle because he was an open man, in fact because he couldn’t stand news—good or bad—unleavened by his wife’s and children’s response. Whether it was the Memorial Society announcing that they could have not only cheap funerals but also cheap charter flights or an appeal for crippled children or a cheque from the lottery, he wanted his plans for burial, holiday, charity, or riches shared. Harry got no more than half a dozen personal letters in a year, and with those particularly he did not want to find himself alone.
“It’s from your mother,” Anna said, setting the dinner plates under the pale blue envelope Harry dangled like a dead rodent from his relucta
nt index finger and thumb.
“Our grandmother,” Sally said, more speculative than assertive.
“Our real grandmother,” Joey added in a tone that made her sound less rather than more important. Some months ago they, as a family, had adopted a pair of grandparents at the YWCA, who suited them all very well.
“There’s nothing wrong with real ones,” Harry said, a sharpness in his tone clearly distinguishable to everyone at the table as guilt.
“Well, no,” Joey conceded, “I guess not if you know them.”
“I know my mother,” Harry said, haughtiness turning to glum confession in the space of that short sentence.
“We don’t,” Sally reminded him.
“Well, are you going to open it or drop it into the stew?” Anna asked.
Harry contemplated the alternatives, sighed, and reached for his fork. Anna’s stew was so tender there were no knives on the table.
“He’s opening it with his fork!” Sally announced.
“He’s going to eat it,” Joey concluded with delight.
“I am going to read it,” Harry said, and he did…in silence.
When he had finished, he put the letter in his lap with his napkin and began to serve dinner.
“No carrots, please,” Sally said.
“One carrot,” Anna corrected.
“How is your mother?” Joey asked.
It saddened Harry that he could already guess about a nine-year-old child that he would grow up to be a used-car salesman or worse. “She’s fine.”
“Where is she?” Anna asked.
“On a cruise,” Harry said, “with a friend. It ends here.”
“Is she coming to stay with us?” Sally asked.
“She’d like to,” Harry admitted.
“What about George and Mary?” Joey asked. “Won’t they be mad?”
“Why would they be mad?” Harry demanded. “It hasn’t anything to do with them.”
“I thought real grandparents were like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny,” Sally said, “only they turned out to be George and Mary instead of you and Mommy.”
“Look,” Harry said, “Real means real. We went to find George and Mary because most of your real grandparents are dead, but you have one real grandmother who is very much alive. Only she happens to live in South America, which is very far away.”