In the basement, Bob eases the bat down on the floor of the cage. His sisters hang back, refusing to get near the cage, where the bat lies prone, its wings drawn around itself. Bob shows his sisters how he’s not afraid to take the bat out of its cage and pet its head.
“What if it’s rabid?” asks Ann.
“Let me hold it,” says Chrissy, grabbing at the animal, seeming to forget her initial fear. She tries to tug at the little claws at the end of the wings. “Why won’t it open them? Now it just looks like a mouse.”
“It’s daytime, so it’s sleeping,” Bob says. “Dummy.”
Bob takes the bat back from Chrissy and sets it in the cage. He’s pretty sure the bat isn’t rabid.
“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?”
“I can’t see anything,” Bob says.
“I mean the baby.”
“I hope it’s a boy. I’m tired of so many girls,” Bob says.
“I hope it’s a boy too,” says Chrissy, squinting her eyes at Ann.
Gretel
The Doctor comes home with a German Shorthaired Pointer puppy he’s already named Gretel. The Doctor’s wife is assured that the puppy will be the Doctor’s responsibility. The kids are thrilled about the new dog and immediately start to play with her. The Doctor’s Wife narrowly saves Gretel from being made to wear a doll’s dress.
A week after she has joined the family, Gretel is feverish, won’t eat, and her eye oozes with pus. She coughs, has a fever, and vomits in her cardboard box in the basement.
“Your puppy is sick,” the Doctor’s Wife says when she calls her husband’s office. Hazel Adelsheim is upstairs helping out with the kids. The Doctor’s Wife had planned on chairing a sewer meeting with Nancy.
“You’re going to have to pull double duty today,” she says to Nancy on the phone.
“What’s wrong?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Kid?”
“Dog,” the Doctor’s Wife says.
“It doesn’t look good,” the vet says. He’s a fishing buddy of the Doctor’s. “Such a pretty little dog too. She has diphtheria. Dogs don’t really ever get better from it. Even if they live, the encephalitis can cause bad trouble with the brain and the muscles. Any treatment would be only supportive. Want me to put her down?”
No, neither the Doctor nor the Doctor’s Wife want that.
Gretel pants heavily in a cardboard box in the kitchen, whimpering. It’s an awful noise, so full of suffering that the kids steer clear of the box, playing quietly upstairs. The Doctor is called away to Providence for an emergency, but she and the Doctor work as a team. She can’t just let that little dog die.
She uses an eyedropper to keep Gretel hydrated. She wipes pus from Gretel’s eyes, she cleans out the cardboard box as it becomes soiled, she puts cold clothes on the hot doggy body. This goes on for days until the Doctor’s Wife starts to think that maybe it would have been better to allow the vet to do as he suggested.
But Gretel lives.
The Lake
Chrissy gobbles down her lunch, hoping that today the Doctor’s Wife will forget her rule that they wait half an hour to get in the water. She doesn’t forget.
“It’s boring to wait,” Chrissy wails.
“If you’re bored, I’ll give you something to do,” her mother says brightly.
Ann gives Chrissy a poisonous look. Everybody receives assignments. Ann’s job is to vacuum and Chrissy’s is to dust. All Bob has to do is take out the trash. The trash will only take two seconds and the vacuuming is easy too. Dusting will take years. Chrissy is prepared to rebel, but then an interesting thing happens. The Doctor’s Wife walks quickly into the downstairs bathroom and shuts the door behind herself. Chrissy draws close enough to the door to hear a retching sound.
“Are you sick?” Chrissy asks.
The Doctor’s Wife opens the door, toothbrush in mouth. “Sometimes when one is pregnant, one vomits.”
“Did you throw up when you were pregnant with me?”
“Of course.” She fixes her eyes on Chrissy. “Don’t you have a job to do?”
Chrissy does, but she takes the long way around to the broom closet, through the kitchen instead of through the den. She opens the refrigerator and takes out two carrots. Chrissy loves carrots, crunchy and tasting of the color orange. She doesn’t have time to scrape them today, and, anyway, she doesn’t mind the skin. These are the first of the day, and they barely touch her hunger. She’s eaten so many carrots this summer that her skin has started to turn a very pale yellow. Chrissy’s goal is to turn orange.
“Right this instant,” her mother says.
“I’m almost there,” Chrissy replies, swallowing the last bite and entering the broom closet. Big roasting pans, splatter screens, a very large sieve and a smaller one with a black handle, a colander, and the biggest stock pot hang on hooks. Cleaning solutions including a big bottle of ammonia, Windex and Pledge sit on the middle shelf at the back of the closet. Chrissy grabs the canister of Pledge. The small vacuum cleaner used on the stairs looks like baby elephant draping its trunk over a hook. Next to the trunk hangs the stuffed bag of rags, soft and clean.
“Chrissy!” her mother says.
“I’m getting a rag,” Chrissy explains, leaving the broom closet with her rag and canister of polish. In the living room she vigorously mists the top of the piano, drawing the rag over the wood and then pounding on the keys with the wadded up cloth.
“Quit banging!” Ann yells over the noise of the stand-up vacuum cleaner she runs across the carpet in front of her.
“I’m not banging,” Chrissy yells back, thumping with her fist. Just because Ann can play the piano doesn’t mean she should tell Chrissy what to do with the instrument. For good measure, Chrissy gives the low keys a last whack before slamming the lid and tackling what everybody calls the bone table, then all the little side tables, and then the mantle. At the bookshelf, she plops down to look at the German bible with the family names in it. Ann hits her thigh with the vacuum cleaner.
This causes yelling, tears, and the girls are sent upstairs to tidy their room peacefully.
Chrissy wads up her clothes and shoves them in her dresser drawers. Ann is so perfect that she’s perfectly folding all of her clothes into prissy little rectangles. Chrissy doesn’t know why she and Ann have to share a bedroom. Her grandparents only come a couple times a year—why do they need a whole bedroom to themselves? If she could have that room instead and not have to share with Ann, then she’d be happy. Chrissy’s bed is lumpy, no matter how much she tries to smooth it.
“Here,” Ann says, yanking the coverlet into place, and now they’re done. The sun shines brightly outside. It is cruel to be kept cooped up like this. Chrissy calls her mother upstairs.
“Will it pass the white glove test?” the Doctor’s Wife asks.
“Oh, yes,” Chrissy says, hoping she won’t look inside the drawers.
“Go outside and swim,” the Doctor’s Wife says.
Chrissy rips her clothes off and puts on her bathing suit, still slightly damp in the lining from the day before.
Sun Valley
The trip to Sun Valley is conceived of as a way to please everybody. There are horses. Her husband can fish. The kids can swim in the pool or go to the swimming hole down the path. There is even bowling in the lodge.
It takes over twelve hours to drive to Idaho, so they leave as the sun is rising, aiming to arrive by dinnertime. They head over the mountains, stopping for lunch in eastern Washington, at an oasis of sorts, a dark grove where they sit at a picnic table. They eat bread and butter sandwiches, pickles, and fried chicken the Doctor’s Wife prepared the night before. After lunch, the Doctor’s Wife stubs out her cigarette and they climb back in the car, driving through the dry heat of Eastern Washington, Yakima, and into Oregon, through Pendelton, and down through Idaho. It’s very hot, and the kids start to complain. The Doctor’s Wife would also like to complain. The horizon line shimmers in th
e distance and the hills are dry with little scrub pines.
“I have heat exhaustion,” Chrissy says.
The Doctor’s Wife wonders where she picked that phrase up. “If you really had heat exhaustion you couldn’t talk.”
Chrissy opens her mouth and lolls back against the seat.
“Let’s play a game of ‘In My Grandmother’s Trunk,’” the Doctor’s Wife says, beginning, “In my grandmother’s trunk there’s an argyle sock.”
It’s supposed to be a learning exercise. They prompt each other so that even Chrissy is able to reach to the end of the alphabet. When they’re done, the Doctor’s Wife looks down at her watch. This activity has taken about fifteen minutes. After about a hundred rounds of Twenty Questions, they climb up the pass though the mountains and it starts to get a bit cooler. Sun Valley spreads below.
They have three adjoining rooms in the lodge. After the luggage is carried in by all hands, the kids ask if they can go swimming.
“Of course, that’s why we’re here,” The Doctor’s Wife says, relaxing at the thought of the lifeguard at the pool.
Dinner is cowboy beans, cornbread, barbequed chicken, and salad, with gingerbread and whipped cream for dessert.
“This cooking isn’t half as good as yours,” the Doctor says. This is beside the point. The best thing is that the Doctor’s Wife neither has to cook nor clean up. It’s becoming a bit less comfortable to move around. Tomorrow she’ll lounge in a deck chair and read a book. She hasn’t done this in a long time.
An hour after the kids have been tucked into bed, there’s a knock on the adjoining door.
The Doctor’s Wife puts her book down. Ann presents her tear-streaked face. Chrissy is right next to her, dry-eyed.
“What’s wrong?”
Ann shakes her head.
“Did you have a bad dream?”
No.
“Did you and your sister argue?”
No.
“Are you sick? Does your stomach hurt?”
“I want to go home,” Ann says in a feeble voice.
Chrissy glares at Ann.
“Why? What’s wrong?” the Doctor’s Wife asks.
“I’m homesick.”
“We just got here.”
“I’m homesick.”
“There are horses! Mom, tell her! Don’t listen to her,” Chrissy wails.
Ann sets her jaw.
The Doctor’s Wife looks to her husband for help. “Do what you want,” he says.
“It’s too late to drive home tonight. We can wake up with fresh eyes tomorrow,” the Doctor’s Wife says, though she’s witnessed Ann being stubborn before.
The next morning, Ann packs her small bag. She refuses to swim, bowl, read a book, go fishing with her father, or ride horses.
“I want to go home,” she says to every suggestion. What can the Doctor’s Wife do in the face of determination like that? She admires it. The next day they leave for home.
Outside
Chrissy and the others grab beach towels off the utility porch and then run down the lawn with the dogs, Ace barking and Gretel trying to keep up. Humans and dogs thunder to the end of the dock and then stop, looking down at the water. The lake is fed by cold springs and is a hundred feet deep in the center. No matter how sunny it gets, the lake stays chilly. Chrissy screws up her courage and jumps. As she hits, her heart seizes up for a second and her stomach contracts.
“It’s warm today,” Chrissy declares when she pops above the water.
“Hot,” Ann confirms.
They scramble up the slippery steps of the ladder to leap off the dock and into the water, over and over. They are crazy, they are different characters, kicking out and splashing down. Chrissy can feel herself growing colder, especially on the dock. The wind has picked up, pushing the water into waves that catch sunlight, chilling it in the process. But it isn’t bad as long as she keeps moving, keeps jumping. The wind can’t touch her if she’s completely underwater. She opens her eyes underwater, pretending she’s a shark, swimming to eat her sister. She clamps on to Ann’s ankle with her right hand. Ann kicks away, swimming to the ladder, Chrissy in hot pursuit. They leap in again and this time Ann chases Chrissy.
They swim until they are all three blue and their mother calls them in for lunch. Chrissy ignores the first call. Ann, who always does what she is told, says, “Come on!”
“One more jump,” Chrissy says. And still she lingers, swimming in toward the shallows. This is vastly preferable than walking back along the exposed dock. She swims until she can feel pebbles on her belly. The water barely covers her, and she is at the ladder to the deck in front of the cabana. She stands part way up and then hunches under the dock, lifting a heavy rock. A crawfish shoots backward between her legs. “I need a bucket,” Chrissy yells at Ann. “I found crawdads.”
“They’re always there. You need to get out of the water,” Ann replies. Chrissy climbs up the ladder and wraps a towel around herself.
The sun shines fully, beating down on the lawn. The wind is blocked by the trees. Chrissy trains her eyes on the grass, trying to find a bee to trap in her cupped palms. She loves the electrical feel of the buzzing in her hands, but the trick is to catch and release before being stung. She’s been stung many times this summer. In a patch of clover Chrissy finds a huge bumblebee, slow moving, easy prey. She catches it, feeling the fur tickle her palms.
“Hurry up, slow poke,” Ann says, her hands on her hips. Chrissy lets the bee go, free to return to his hive. Chrissy wishes she didn’t have to go indoors.
“Can we take sleeping bags and sleep down on the beach tonight?” Bob asks when they sit down for lunch.
“Yes, can we?” Chrissy asks.
“We’ll see,” the Doctor’s Wife says.
“May we spend the night on the beach?” Bob asks again at the dinner table.
“Sure,” the Doctor says.
“Take your elbows off the table,” the Doctor’s Wife says.
Chrissy’s not worrying about what she’s eating, mechanically shoving in the steamed broccoli, a roasted chicken thigh, big gulps of milk, and peach cobbler for dessert. After Chrissy and Ann finish washing and drying the dinner dishes, Chrissy and the others load up the wheelbarrow with wood and steer it down the front lawn. Bob and the Doctor build a fire in the pit on the beach. The Doctor’s Wife brings marshmallows down and once those have been eaten, her parents go back up to the house.
Chrissy and the others stretch sleeping bags out on the lawn, close to the fire. Small waves lap the shore. Chrissy looks at the Milky Way, a white smudge across the black sky. Bats flit around above her, lots of them. She’s never slept entirely outdoors before. Once in Yellowstone, they were in a tent and the Doctor had to bang pots together to make a bear go away. Now there is no tent, no pots, and no dad. Chrissy hasn’t even seen any bears nor has she heard about bears around here but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. Chrissy hears something splashing in the water. It sounds big and like it might be climbing up the sand. Chrissy is terrified, but she doesn’t want to be teased. She doesn’t say anything as she scoots her sleeping bag as close as she can to Ann’s.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m cold.”
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
“Ace will protect us,” Ann says confidently.
Ann knows everything and sometimes this is a good thing. What she says is true. They are safe because Ace guards them, sitting like a sphinx.
In the morning, the sleeping bags are damp from the dew and Chrissy is woken up by the rhythmic licking of Ace’s tongue on her face.
Bond Issue I
Nancy Taylor and the Doctor’s Wife perch on the sofa in front of the television camera. Frank Anderson from the Community Development Bureau sits in an armchair close by. There’s real coffee in the coffee pot and it’s Nancy’s job to pour cups for everybody three minutes into the show.
“Just talk to each other naturally, as if you
were at home,” the producer, a man from Channel 9 says.
“Naturally?” Nancy asks. “We’d better get the kids here too, then.”
“And the dogs,” the Doctor’s Wife says.
“I’m sure he doesn’t want us to curse.”
The producer laughs nervously. The lights are hot and the Doctor’s Wife feels sure she’s perspiring. She takes her compact out of her purse and powders her forehead so she’s not too shiny. She hopes it’s obvious to the viewers that she’s pregnant and not just overweight.
The whole things is only fifteen minutes, enough time to talk about bacteria levels, the immediate and long term costs of the bond issue, and how it will be spread out over fifteen years so nobody gets socked with a huge bill all at once. There is to be a special election on October 16, 1958 for the bond measure. The interest on the bonds will be paid from monthly service charges and the charges will be capped at $4.50 a month. The Doctor’s Wife is satisfied that she has all of the facts in order in her head.
“Four, three, two,” the cameraman says, counting down with his fingers. The cameras begin rolling. This is a live show.
“Everybody remembers a couple years back when the algae bloomed and it started to smell,” the Doctor’s Wife says.
“It was terrible,” Nancy agrees.
The Doctor’s Wife gives her speech. This seems to be going spectacularly well. A page of Frank’s notes slips from the coffee table. Frank starts to talk. “350 people showed up to the first Community Development meeting—out of a town of 3,500!”
Nancy, smiling brightly at the camera, reaches for the coffee pot, starting to freshen up the cups. Frank moves his leg excitedly as he talks, crumpling the notepaper underneath his foot, but he doesn’t notice the noise he makes. An assistant crawls on his hands and knees below the camera shot. Nancy pauses mid-pour as the assistant creeps toward them. The coffee keeps coming, overflowing the cup and streaming down the side of the table. The producer is gesturing frantically at the cameraman. The cameraman pans the camera up so that the spilling coffee won’t be filmed.
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