The Age of the Child

by Kristen Tsetsi

  Millie screamed, “Well, I don’t like you, either, you stupid animal!”

  The dog’s feet slipped and scraped in a scamper to the far side of the living room, and Millie instantly came so close to crying that her eyes burned. How terrible a person was she that even a dog couldn’t love her? She willed herself cold and resisted the impulse to lunge for the dog, pull it to her chest, and squeeze it until it kicked. Instead, she stomped to the corner where they kept the starter toy basket the bureau had provided. She dug around until she found a ball and threw it so hard into the kitchen that it bounced off the wall and zinged back at her, slamming her ear before she could dodge it. Ear burning, she dove to get it from where it had rolled under the couch and hurled it into the kitchen again.

  “FETCH IT, YOU ASSHOLE!”

  In Millie’s imagination, Bubbles ran after the ball, carried it proudly back to her, dropped it at her feet, and waited for the next toss just as every family dog did in the movies. Their evaluation animal only huddled near the end of the couch with its ears straight back and its head tucked low.

  “FETCH IT!” she screamed again.

  The dog lowered its head even more and looked away. Millie went to it and wrenched it to standing. She pressed both hands to the dog’s solid hind quarters and shoved it toward the kitchen, its toes squeaking on faux oak laminate.

  “Stop that immediately, Ms. Oxford,” a voice said from the walls, the ceiling, the corners.

  The dog escaped to its crate. Millie looked for a camera and found a small lens on the shelf between her New Orleans chocolate alligator and one of Hugh’s writing awards. She stood in front of it.

  “If the board would assign me a better dog,” she said, “I’m positive—”

  “Thank you, Ms. Oxford.”

  “You’re…I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

  “That will be all.”

  “And what do you mean by that, please?”

  “This concludes your trial.”

  “But your dog doesn’t like me!”

  “You would like another opportunity.”

  “Yes. Please.”

  “All right, Ms. Oxford. How much time did you invest in researching and then actively trying to accommodate the dog’s needs? How much exercise does Bubbles require, for ex—”

  Millie screamed at the ceiling, “IT’S A DOG!”

  “No, Ms. Oxford. It was an evaluation.”

  When Hugh came home that night, he asked why Millie was smoking in the house and why Bubbles wasn’t there to greet him.

  “They assigned us a defective animal, Hugh, but they’ll let me try again,” she lied.

  Hugh nodded, went to the refrigerator, opened a beer, and brought the bottle upstairs to the bedroom.

  Millie followed him. She watched him pack.

  “I told myself I’d stay until you didn’t need me for this, anymore.” Hugh scooped rolled socks from his drawer and arranged them in a flat layer in the bottom of his large suitcase. “At first I thought I really got through to you. ‘She’ll try,’ I thought. ‘She’ll change.’ You didn’t, not even for a day, and I was this close to leaving when then they gave us the dog. I thought, ‘Well, I can’t leave her alone with that dog.’ I told myself I’d stay until Bubbles was gone. For a minute I even thought the dog’d help, somehow. Maybe she’d bring something out of you I couldn’t. But then the second day came, and the third. So, this morning I told myself, ‘If I get home tonight and that dog still couldn’t like her after I smeared goddamn peanut butter on her shirt, this thing is done.’” He tossed in a stack of neatly folded t-shirts.

  THIRTY

  From the far side of her bedroom, far enough away so there was no chance of Millie seeing her through the window, Lenny watched Millie watching the house from her small yard. Hugh popped out from behind one of the black vans in their driveway to waggle a rope, and a gray dog with black spots and big, pointy ears flew at him and grabbed it, pulling Hugh back behind the vans.

  Floyd said, “Hey, uh.”

  He stood in the bathroom door with a small box in his arms, the green top of his shampoo bottle poking out from under his gray towel.

  “You know,” he said, “maybe I could leave the stuff here. For later, or. Boris can sit alone for an hour, can’t he? I can still visit.”

  Lenny had talked about Boris off and on for years between Floyd’s visits to the shelter. “Love that kid,” Floyd would say, and Lenny would say, “Oh, he’s loveable, but…”

  Floyd had told Lenny he didn’t remember exactly how the whole thing happened. “He saw me after the naming, and next thing, we were talking. He’s eighteen, so not like a real kid, but there’s no evaluation, so...”

  She could imagine how the conversation might have gone during the few minutes she’d been on the phone with the monitoring center. “Mr. Floyd,” Boris would have said, knowing he’d be an easy target without Lenny around. “Could I come live with you and Ms. Lenny? I’ll do anything. Clean the house, walk the dogs, iron Ms. Lenny’s napkins…” Before his next heartbeat, Floyd would have said, “What, yeah? Sure!”

  Lenny wished she’d had a chance to warn Floyd before he decided. Boris Walton was the kind of boy—man, he was a man, now, according to law—who would need to be cooked for, cleaned up after, and reminded to shower. And because his abandonment at three years old in the plush aisle of a toy store had left him with a crippling fear of being alone, he demanded constant companionship. (At the shelter during naptime, the interims’ treasured break time, if Boris happened to be awake when the rest of the residents were asleep, he’d barge into to the lounge for their attention. He’d done it so regularly they’d started locking the door and eating their mid-morning snacks in the dark.)

  Boris could only be alone if he were truly alone, and with no one close by to worry about him. Lenny doubted he’d survive that way for very long, but his life was his own to manage. Or, it would have been, had Floyd not said yes to managing it for him.

  “If you want to take care of him,” she’d said, “you can’t do it here.” It hadn’t been an ultimatum. She’d never expected him to have to make a choice. He’d said yes to Boris, and she knew he’d stand by his commitment even if it meant moving out.

  Lenny loved that about him.

  She pressed the top on his shampoo bottle so that it clicked closed. “I’ll visit you, instead,” she said. “Do you think you’ll buy a house? Rent an apartment?”

  He shrugged. “Probably crash in the renos for a while. They stay pretty cool. Don’t cost anything. Saves time in the morning, getting to work, or.” He smiled and shifted the box in his arms. “Anyway, I could build my own house.”

  “Right.” She laughed.

  “I could put it out there.” He pointed his chin at the window. Lenny looked outside and saw Millie smoking a cigarette with her head tucked between her knees.

  “If you put Boris anywhere near this property, I’ll put a shock collar on him and install one of those electric fences.”

  “Worth it,” he said.

  Lenny checked her watch. In two minutes it would have been an hour since her last vitamin, and she wanted to take each one exactly on the hour. Whether being off by one or two minutes would ruin its effectiveness, she didn’t know. She didn’t know whether taking everything exactly as instructed would work, either. After a full day of taking vitamins, some cinnamon, what was left of the dried parsley, and some ginger she’d forgotten she’d bought for a recipe, there’d been no bleeding and no cramping. That could have been a sign of something or a sign of nothing. She didn’t feel pregnant, or what she imagined pregnant would feel like, and that there’d been no cramping could have meant nothing more than that there was no work for the vitamins to do. Her period might still come on schedule in six days.

  But she also had to accept the worst-case possibility that she was already pregnant, or would be soon (that his sperm could live for days like stubborn squatters inside her body seemed like the worst kind of invasion, a
strange thing to feel about someone she loved). If that were true, the vitamins and everything else had to work faster. If she miscarried too late, if there were complications, if they found her unconscious and took her to the hospital…

  “Worry doesn’t change a thing,” her dad had taught her when Murphy was sick. “What will be will be. That’s the only way anything’s ever been.”

  Lenny had to accept that she wouldn’t know anything until her period came on schedule or it didn’t.

  “What’s wrong?” Floyd said. “You sick?”

  He was looking down. Lenny relaxed her hand, which she hadn’t realized was clutching her shirt at her abdomen. It hurt to uncurl her fingers.

  “Why don’t you take that box out?” she said. “I’ll make sure Boris isn’t getting into anything downstairs.”

  Floyd stepped closer. He kissed her over the box the way he kissed her when he wanted more. “In a minute?” he said. “Boris’ll be fine. He’s got a list.”

  Lenny patted his arm. She’d have no sex of any kind until she knew she was pregnant or until her hormone was reactivated, but she didn’t know how to say that to Floyd. He was the one person she hadn’t told even a compassionate lie. Surely omitting information didn’t count if it meant saving him from being frustrated or unhappy.

  She said, “Oh, you!” and giggled her way out of the bedroom.

  After taking her vitamin and making sure the door to the basement was still locked, she found Boris standing in the middle of the living room with the fingers of one hand hooked into Floyd’s slippers and his other hand clutching the list.

  “I forget what’s next,” he said.

  Floyd said he’d planned to take with him only what he’d brought to Lenny’s, but she insisted he pack up some dishes, pots, pans, and any doubled-up utensils taking space in the drawers.

  Boris found his way to the kitchen after Floyd had gone outside with a small box and while Lenny was making a list to prepare the basement for Gabriella.

  “Thank you for everything, Ms. Lenny.” Boris hugged her with big, tender arms and thanked her, too, for not talking “Mr. Floyd” out of it. Bertram rubbed at his ankles, and he bent down to pet him. “I don’t know if I’d make it on my own.”

  “Oh, Boris, probably not,” she said. “But that’s okay. Not everyone can.” She patted his back. “He’s just as lucky to have you.”

  In six days, the basement suite was ready with clean linens in the bathroom closet and snack food in the cabinets. (Lenny would do the real grocery shopping once she knew what Gabriella wanted or needed.) An hour before Gabriella was due, Lenny took a vitamin, inserted the fresh parsley finally allowed by her ration card, and stood at the breakfast bar where she could watch for Millie without being seen.

  Arrival days always made her nervous. Outside of the trusted channel Lenny had cultivated, the only person who knew about Lenny’s basement boarders was Floyd.

  “They catch you, I couldn’t live knowing you were in Exile, so I’m dying too,” he’d said after finishing construction on the suite. “Together, right?” They’d shaken on it.

  Now that Floyd had Boris, she assumed—hoped—he would let her go alone, if it came to that. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But if it did, and if Floyd did stay behind, at least there would be someone to take care of the animals.

  The sun went down. An interior downstairs light across the field allowed Lenny to see Millie smoking at her dining room table, a glass of wine in her free hand. Lenny heard a car pass her kitchen window, and soon Hugh’s headlights shined on his and Millie’s front porch. Millie crushed out her cigarette and stood. She flattened down her hair before pushing it behind her ears, then faced the door with her hands on her hips. Hugh entered, but didn’t go to her. (Floyd had always come to Lenny.)

  Millie’s powerful stance crumpled after Hugh had been inside for just a few seconds. She waved her arms, excited, as he passed her to get to the kitchen, and then she followed him to the dark staircase. The upstairs bedroom light flicked on and Hugh marched to the closet. Millie looked small watching him from the doorway.

  Lenny waited for the dog to show up in the bedroom, but it didn’t. Her dogs followed her everywhere—up and down the stairs and from this room to that room. They kept her company now, Andy sleeping in front of the refrigerator and Jenny half in the foyer and half in the kitchen with her chin between her paws. She looked for the dog crate she’d seen earlier that week, tucked against the wall near the kitchen. The space was empty. She squinted, watching the shadows for any non-human movement at all, but the house was too far away. She got her parents’ old camera from its case in the coat closet and focused the zoom lens on the lit windows. There were no dog toys on the floor, no food dishes in the kitchen.

  Lenny clapped, forgetting the camera. The strap yanked hard at her neck when it fell. She kept clapping, almost crazily, even though she’d known—she’d known—Millie would never pass. She tossed off the camera and crouched to pet her dogs.

  Whoever Millie’s baby might have been was safe. “Safe!” she said aloud. Jenny moved to stuff a snout between Lenny’s thighs (the parsley, probably), but knocks at the front door stopped her before Lenny could shoo her away.

  Onetwo. Three. Four…Five.

  Gabriella.

  “Upstairs,” Lenny whispered to the dogs. They went.

  “I don’t know quite what to think of this,” Gabriella said about the painting in the foyer. She let go of her suitcase handle and crossed her arms under her breasts. Her starched white shirt wrinkled stiffly. A long wave of dark hair fell into her open collar.

  Lenny’s boarders didn’t usually pay much attention to the little girl and boy. If they weren’t familiar with the fairytale, which most weren’t, it was just a painting of two children eating from the side of a candy and gingerbread house. Lenny had bought it for the suite’s entry point because the abandoned brother and sister have a happy ending.

  “Am I the evil step-mother?” Gabriella said.

  “The step-mother?” It hadn’t ever crossed Lenny’s mind that someone who did know the story would identify with the step-mother. She massaged a dull ache creeping into her lower back and said no, of course not. Gabriella was the woodcutter.

  “But the woodcutter is poor. He has an excuse. What’s my excuse? My explanation?”

  “Oh, you can’t take fairy tales literally,” Lenny said. She pressed her thighs together to scratch a parsley itch. “We all have our own versions of impossible situations. But if you’re having a change of—”

  “No,” Gabriella said. She touched a finger to Gretel’s cheek.

  Lenny invited Gabriella to stand closer to the painting, then asked for her hand and guided it to a section of wall to the left of the frame. They pushed it together. A panel separated at the seams where the ends of the short wood boards met. At a soft click, the door opened outward on a spring to a narrow downward staircase. Soundproofing panels lined the walls to the bottom.

  Lenny recited the rules of living in the suite—when and when not to go upstairs, where to find the circuit breaker, that phone calls could only be made from the basement’s untraceable phone line—while Gabriella put away her clothes. Afterward, Gabriella changed into a long red robe and tucked herself into the corner of the loveseat. Her collar, stretched to one side, revealed an indented, shiny scar the size of a dime.

  “You’ve seen it once before,” Gabriella said, touching it. “I don’t expect you to remember. There were others, and they were much younger.”

  Because most abandonds were afraid to give even their first names, Lenny usually remembered them when they did. Lenny said “Gabriella” didn’t sound familiar, and Gabriella confirmed she was one of the many who hadn’t identified herself.

  “But then, I wasn’t Gabriella when you found me,” she said. “I was Rose…Well, I think Rose is enough.”

  Gabriella tucked her feet under her robe and began telling Lenny when and how she’d been found, but Lenny’s
back pain distracted her from listening. Was it her back, or was it her abdomen? Both? Wishful thinking, probably.

  “…nine years old when your van came,” Gabriella said, “and deathly hungover from the first and only birthday party my parents ever held for me…”

  …parents had filled her with glass after glass of peach schnapps and orange juice …(Was that a cramp?)…no memory even now of having gone to bed that night…scared awake on a strange sidewalk in a strange town by a small, barking dog, “an ugly little schnauzer, I remember,” she laughed (Lenny instinctively clenched, a reaction to dampness—or perceived dampness, because it was probably nothing, and it was so hard to say with the parsley stems)…

  “Oh, quiet me down. I’m boring you,” Gabriella said.

  “No, not at all.”

  “The tales you must have heard over the years. I shouldn’t bore you with another.”

  Lenny encouraged her to go on. The truth was, she wanted to hear about Gabriella’s life as an abandoned. She’d never knowingly come across one of her old collections in their adult years, and she was thrilled to see that one seemed to have turned out so well. She ignored the soreness and listened.

  Gabriella stroked her scar and said Lenny must have been just a teen-ager when she and her friends had found her across the street from the Tinytown animal hospital, though at the time they’d all seemed very adult to Gabriella. They’d brought her and some younger children to a shelter that wouldn’t let them in. Gabriella remembered that part vividly, she said, because she’d felt incredibly lucky at the time to have been delivered by chance to a different shelter where she was adopted almost immediately.