“Hi,” she said.
She felt something move between the brothers, invisible and cellular. Andy looked up and back down. Eric watched him.
“Do you like animals?” she asked.
“Um hm,” said Andy. His brown eyes showed intelligence and strength, veiled by a thin, protective opacity.
“We have a cat,” she said. “His name is Blue.”
“We have a dog at home,” said Andy.
Eric looked up suddenly and said, “His name is Roscoe.”
“He’s a genius,” said Andy. “For a dog.”
They both looked at her. Eric had a delicate elfin chin. His intelligence seemed more fragile than his brother’s.
“Blue was an orphan when we found him,” she said. “He was living with his brothers and sisters under a deserted house.”
“What’s an orphan?” asked Andy.
“Children with no parents. The mother cat had left them, and my brother Rick found them when his friend’s dog ran up to the house and started barking because he smelled cats. Blue was just four weeks old, but he came out and stood up to the dog. He arched his back and spat, and the dog was so surprised he just stopped. Rick saved the litter and we adopted Blue.”
She expected them to cheer Blue, or to ask about him, but instead they abruptly slid off their chairs and ran to play with their toys. She was puzzled and even a little hurt; she thought they would like the story. She walked over to where they played and crouched beside them. They had a strange assortment of toys, some of which weren’t even toys. They had rubber dinosaurs, colored rocks, a metal truck, a turtle with hair, a cymbal with a pink elastic wrist strap, a stuffed dog, a battery-operated gorilla, a knotted leather cord with two marble balls on either end, a wind-up chickie, and a ceramic mermaid. Alex had the metal wind-up chickie and Eric had the mermaid. They talked urgently in cartoon voices and marched their toys around so that they acted out a story. They talked loudly, as if they were putting on a show for her and, at the same time, using their loudness to shut her out. On impulse, she picked up the gorilla and made it walk up to Eric’s mermaid. “Hey, good-lookin’,” she said. Eric tensed. “Hey,” she said. She wiggled the gorilla. Eric ignored her; she blushed. She felt as if she were trying to squeeze into a spot too small for her. She decided to do the dishes, even though there were only two of them.
She washed the cereal bowls with a little bit of green steel wool. Then she wiped the counter with it. She looked at the baby, who wasn’t doing anything. She sat at the table by the window. On the table was an old digital clock and an empty bud vase made of clouded plastic. The clock said 9:41. Elise looked out the window. There were people out walking around now, and she watched them. Normally at this time of day she would be walking up and down Granville, asking people for change. Most of the panhandlers her age sat on the sidewalk and begged in groups. They sat huddled as if they were glad to have arrived at the absolute bottom, where it was nice and solid and they could sit. They sat huddled as if protecting something very special, and their begging seemed like an after-thought. Elise much preferred the walking method. People were more apt to give you money if you went up to them and asked them for it, and besides, she liked the big dumb rhythm of everybody going in the same two directions and, inside that, all the tiny, concentrated rhythms of different walking styles. She liked moving quickly in and out of other people’s rhythms.
Sometimes she’d have a conversation with someone who gave her money or insulted her, and for a moment that person would loom out of the generality with a loud blare of specificity and then fade back as Elise walked on. Once, she had approached a young guy who had come out of a fast food store and was opening the box of fried chicken he’d bought there. He gave her a dollar. He said he was giving it to her because she reminded him of a girl he knew in San Francisco. “She’s a sex worker,” he said, “a pros-tee-tute.” He dragged the word out singsong style and smiled at her with an aggressive, bristling air as rank and particular as a deep body smell. “I’ve thought of doing that,” she said. His aggression turned into surprise and then into a funny, sour acceptance. He asked her if she wanted some chicken. She said yes and tore all the fried juicy skin off the breast. “Hey,” he said, “it’s no good without the skin,” but he still let her sit with him and eat, even though she’d ruined his chicken.
Andy ran over to her with his metal chickie. “This is Jago,” he said. “He’s a fighter orphan bird. When the hunters come into the forest to get birds and they see Jago, they scream and run away!”
“Oh!” said Elise.
“You pretend to be the hunter,” said Andy. “You’re coming in the woods and you see this bird and you don’t know it’s Jago so you start to shoot, okay?”
Elise pretended that her finger was a gun and pointed it at the metal chick.
Andy flipped up one of the chick’s metal wings to reveal Jago written on the underside in felt pen.
Elise waited.
“It’s Jago!” prompted Andy.
“Oh, no!” said Elise. “Jago!”
Andy ran back to his game in triumph.
Little kids always wanted to set things up so they got to yell a certain satisfying thing or to make you yell it. When she was little, she or her brother Rick would yell something like, “Why did Miss Grinch and Miss Butt take all their clothes off?” and the other would yell back, “Because they wanted to!” Then they would roll around, tickling each other and giggling, yelling more questions and yelling the same answer again and again.
The sunlight shifted, and the surface of the table became warm and bright. Elise extended her arms into the warmth; her pale arm hairs stood up in the air, and the sight made her feel tender toward herself. All those thousands of tiny hair follicles, each earnestly keeping its special hair going. She lifted her arm and rubbed the soft hairs against her lip. Outside, a child flashed down the street, waving something bright in his hand.
When she was seven and Rick was eight, they would dress in skirts and hats and dance around the mulberry bush in the backyard of their old house, picking the berries and singing, “Oh, we haven’t got a chance for our vegetables! For our vegetables!” Their mother had taken pictures of them in their outfits, each holding a plastic bucket of mulberries. Elise stood with her stumpy little legs apart and made her stomach stick out on purpose. Rick posed with one hand on his slim hip, his smile innocent and arrogant and glad. His bare legs were long and finely shaped and made him look more delicate than he was.
With a soft blending motion, that memory turned into another one. She and Rick cuddled on the couch while the family watched TV Their mother sat on the end of the couch with her legs tucked up under her; Rick leaned against her hip and Elise sat against him. They were eating sticky refrigerator cookies and watching It’s a Wonderful Life. Through her thin nightgown she could feel his warm haunch and his bare foot, cool and faintly sweaty against her thigh. He was radiant, thoughtless, quick, and very male. His heart was tender, but the rest of him was darting around too fast for him to feel it. Elise could feel it, though. Their mother’s old knit afghan covered their laps and legs, and while their heads were busy watching TV and eating the special cookies, under the afghan she was knowing him and letting him know her, in an invisible way too complicated for words. Meanwhile, their father presided in his leatherette recliner. Their little brother, Robbie, sat close to the TV, but instead of watching the movie, he was concentrating on his red crayons and his drawing. They were safe in their lair.