– Well, we made french fries from scratch. She scrunched up her face. -Boring, huh?
– Not really. Not if the point is to get someone to feel happy and normal. Food is good that way. My dad is, like, the king of comfort food. If you like whole steamed sea bass.
– Is your dad, um, Asian?
(And a second husband? Because he himself was blond? She was so obvious.)
– Naw, he's just a foodie. When he's jetlagged, he used to go to the Fulton Fish Market to get the first catch, back when it came in there at dawn. Makes his own duck confit. You know, like that. My other dad-
– Stepfather?
– No. Two dads, no mother.
– Oh, Peter! she chortled, and rather sharply he said, -What?
– Sorry. She ran a fingertip down his arm in apology. -Peter Pan. "Haven't got a mother."
– Lost boys, he said. -That's us, all right.
– Except for your sister.
She lay waiting to listen, but he could feel her quivering with another quote.
– Spit it out, he said, and she chortled, -"Girls are far too clever to fall out of their prams."
He pinned her deliciously down. -Better stop reminding me of my sister, or things could get weird.
– How weird? she purred.
He pulled back slightly and she gasped, -God, I'm an idiot. You're not there for a reason, and I-I'm sorry, I'm just an idiot. She bunched her fingers in his curls -Sorry- and kissed him.
He had kissed his sister exactly once. They were both fifteen, and both a little drunk, and she said, OK, let's just get it over with, so they puckered up, but at the first sign of moist inner membrane they broke apart, going Eew! like six-year-olds, and Eloise said, OK, so now can we stop worrying?
And he said something blindingly original like, Yeah, I guess.
He'd still been a little scared, then, that he'd like his sister the way her dad liked his dad. It was a huge relief, so huge they never spoke of it again. He was sure his sister was back home with them tonight. Eloise got along with both of them so well. Her own dad didn't scare her, even now.
This kiss was enthralling, deep and thoughtful. He always liked the kisses that happened after, building their way back to urgency, but not there yet, not urgent, just deep. He liked the way she assumed there would be an after, too. She wouldn't kick him out before he was ready to go.
– So it's just us, she murmured into his cheek. -Just you and me, and a city full of people full of their own crazy business out there, who don't know we're even here.
– With no idea what we're up to.
– Not a clue.
Was he talking too much? She seemed to want it, but did he?
Mouths licked and pinched and sucked between words. Words dropped in between their busy lips and teeth. She said, That's nice… and he occupied her mouth with his to keep words out, to keep words in.
– Not thinking of your sister now, huh? she asked him, and he moaned, No- and so, of course, then he was.
His sister said he couldn't possibly remember the first time; they were too young. But that was her, not him. He was five whole months older. He remembered, really well.
They were in the living room high above the city, with all the glittering lights, the fire in the fireplace, the huge tree, the spread of cakes and fruit and decorated Christmas cookies-some the gifts of clients, the best ones baked by his dad-the spiced wine they each got a sip of… he could have been remembering any year, sure. The tree never seemed to get less huge, no matter how much he grew. Maybe their dads kept buying bigger ones. He wouldn't put it past them to think of that.
But he remembered seeing the book for the very first time that night. Eloise was on her own father's lap on the sofa, he was sitting on the floor next to them, and Linton reached one arm out around his little girl to show Kay the pictures. The book was little, with pale blue cloth and animals stamped on the front in gold, and the smell of the old paper rose up even through the pine and spices.
"He's going to get chocolate on it," his own dad said, but Linton just kept holding the book out to him.
"It's OK, Graham," Linton said. "They won't know it's not hundred-year-old chocolate by the time it goes to auction next."
"What about carbon dating?" muttered Eloise.
"That's just for dinosaurs and fossils," Kay said. "Gimme."
"'Give it to me,'" Linton corrected.
"Please," added Graham.
He held the book carefully. There were line drawings of animals, almost on every page. They all wore clothes. You could tell the animals were still little, though, because of their being next to leaves and grass and things. There were colored pages, too, pretty and pale, of animals rowing boats. "Read," Kay said.
Linton opened the book, began reading something about spring-cleaning. Then he said, "No. Not tonight. I think it should be more…" He flipped through the pages, and began again:
Home! The call was clear, the summons was plain.
"Ratty!" Mole called, "hold on! It's my home, my old home! I've just come across the smell of it, and it's close by here, really quite close. And I must go to it, I must, I must!"
Kay had barely understood it, the first time, but it was the voice that mattered.
Home! Why, it must be quite close by him at that moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken, that day when he first found the river.
The voice, warm and flexible and fluid like the river, taking him somewhere he'd never been before, introducing the two animals who were such good friends, and looked after each other when they were lost in the snow, and found the pathway to the Mole's little house in the ground, and Ratty made the fire and cooked some snacks, and then-and then-
– He's a musician, he said, -my other dad.
– What kind?
– Piano, mostly.
It was the harpsichord, really, but there was always one thing he changed or left out whenever he talked about them. He just did.
– Jazz?
– No. Classical. And new music. Downtown stuff.
– Is that where you get it from, the music?
– He's not my bio dad.
She pulled both his arms around her, flattening her breasts against him. -Sorry.
– He hates what I do, my band, anyway.
– Music snob?
– No. He thinks I've got no technique. And know what? He's right.
– Ohhhh, you've got technique, all right. I love your technique.
Every year after that, Linton read from the book on Christmas Eve. The same chapter, Dulce Domum, where they're trudging through the snow on their way back to Rat's cozy River Bank digs, but Mole suddenly catches the scent of his old underground home, and they go and find it but then it's all cold and there's no food and then they build up a fire and then Rat finds some biscuits and sardines and then they light candles and then – and then they hear voices, and Mole says, "I think it must be the field-mice. They go round carol-singing this time of year," and then they open the door to the field-mice with lanterns and mittens and little red scarves and then-and then-
We others, who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses, have not even proper terms to express an animal's intercommunications with his surroundings… and have only the word "smell," for instance, to include the whole range of delicate thrills which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day…
– Enjoying yourself?
He was giving her all he could, holding back carefully, holding back to observe her giving in to him, to observe how she enjoyed it, to admire his own skill and selfless self-restraint.
– Mrrrrrph…
– Is that a Yes? It is, isn't it? Cat got your tongue?
– You're evil.
– No I'm not. I'm good…
Linton tried reading Dickens once instead, and Eloise nearly had a meltdown. They were very young. Funny how, now that things were surreally bad, his sister was acting like nothing was wrong, and he was the one who couldn't stand it. Especially since it was her dad who was so messed up.