“Ah,” said Dr. Meescham, coming up behind them, “you are studying my poor, lonely giant squid.”
“Lonely?” said Flora.
“The giant squid is the loneliest of all God’s creatures. He can sometimes go for the whole of his life without seeing another of his kind.”
For some reason, Dr. Meescham’s words conjured up the face of William Spiver, white haired and dark eyed. Flora’s heart squinched up. Go away, William Spiver, she thought.
“That squid is a villain,” said Flora out loud. “He needs to be vanquished. He’s eating a boat. And he’s going to eat all the people on the boat.”
“Yes, well, loneliness makes us do terrible things,” said Dr. Meescham. “And that is why the picture is there, to remind me of this. Also, because the other Dr. Meescham painted it when he was young and joyful.”
Good grief, thought Flora. What did he paint when he was old and depressed?
“Now, you will sit on the horsehair sofa, please,” said Dr. Meescham, “and I will bring out the jelly sandwiches.”
Flora sat down on the couch. Ulysses was still on her shoulder. She put up her hand and touched him. He was warm. He was a small engine of warmness.
“The giant squid is the loneliest creature in all existence,” said Flora out loud.
And then, to keep things grounded and in perspective, she muttered, “Seal blubber.”
And then she whispered, “Do not hope; instead, observe.”
She kept her hand on the squirrel.
Dr. Meescham came out of the kitchen holding a pink plate with small sandwiches on it. She sat down next to Flora.
“You are enjoying the horsehair sofa,” she said to Flora.
“I guess,” said Flora. She wasn’t sure exactly how someone enjoyed a horsehair sofa.
“You will eat a jelly sandwich,” said Dr. Meescham. She extended the plate to Flora.
Ulysses leaped off Flora’s shoulder and into her lap. He sniffed the plate.
“Our patient is hungry,” said Dr. Meescham.
“He never had breakfast,” said Flora. She took two sandwiches and handed one to Ulysses.
“This sofa,” said Dr. Meescham, “is the sofa of my grandmother. She was born on this sofa. In Blundermeecen. She lived the whole of her life there. And she is buried there in a dark wood. But that is a different story.
“What I meant to say is that when I was a girl in Blundermeecen, I sat on this sofa and spoke with my grandmother about inconsequential things well into the gloom of the evening. That is what a girl in Blundermeecen did in those days. She was expected to speak of inconsequential things as the gloom of the evening descended. Also, she must knit. Always, the gloom was descending in Blundermeecen. Always, always one was knitting outfits for the little trolls.”
“What little trolls?” said Flora. “And where’s Blundermeecen?”
“Never mind about the trolls for now. I meant only to say that life was very gloomy then, and one was always knitting.”
“It sounds lousy,” said Flora.
“It was exactly this: lousy,” said Dr. Meescham. She smiled. Her dentures were very bright; there was a smear of grape jelly on one of her fake incisors.
Flora reached for another sandwich. Had TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! ever warned against eating jelly sandwiches in the house of a woman from Blundermeecen?
“Your father is a lonely man,” said Dr. Meescham. “Also, very sad. To leave you, this broke his heart.”
“It did?” said Flora.
“Yes, yes. Mr. George Buckman has sat on this horsehair sofa many times. He has talked of his sadness. He has wept. This sofa has seen the tears of many people. It is a sofa that is good for tears. They roll off it, you see.”
Her father had sat on this couch and wept as the gloom of the evening descended?
Flora suddenly felt like she might cry, too. What was wrong with her?
Seal blubber, she thought. The words steadied her.
She handed another sandwich to Ulysses.
“Your father is very capacious of heart,” said Dr. Meescham. “Do you know what this means?”
Flora shook her head.
“It means the heart of George Buckman is large. It is capable of containing much joy and much sorrow.”
“Oh,” said Flora.
For some reason, she heard William Spiver’s voice saying that the universe was a random place.
“Capacious heart,” said Dr. Meescham’s voice.
“Random universe,” said William Spiver’s.
Capacious. Random. Heart. Universe.
Flora felt dizzy.
“I’m a cynic!” she announced for no particular reason and in a too-loud voice.
“Bah, cynics,” said Dr. Meescham. “Cynics are people who are afraid to believe.” She waved her hand in front of her face as if she were brushing away a fly.
“Do you believe in, um, things?” said Flora.
“Yes, yes, I believe,” said Dr. Meescham. She smiled her too-bright smile again. “You have heard of Pascal’s Wager?”
“No,” said Flora.
“Pascal,” said Dr. Meescham, “had it that since it could not be proven whether God existed, one might as well believe that he did, because there was everything to gain by believing and nothing to lose. This is how it is for me. What do I lose if I choose to believe? Nothing!
“Take this squirrel, for instance. Ulysses. Do I believe he can type poetry? Sure, I do believe it. There is much more beauty in the world if I believe such a thing is possible.”
Flora and Dr. Meescham looked at Ulysses. He was holding half a sandwich in his front paws. There were blobs of grape jelly in his whiskers.
“Do you know what a superhero is?” said Flora.
“Sure, I know what a superhero is.”
“Ulysses is a superhero,” said Flora. “But he hasn’t really done anything heroic yet. Mostly he’s just flown around. He lifted a vacuum cleaner over his head. He wrote some poetry. He hasn’t saved anyone, though. And that’s what superheroes are supposed to do, save people.”
“Who knows what he will do?” said Dr. Meescham. “Who knows whom he will save? So many miracles have not yet happened.”
Flora watched as one of the jelly blobs on Ulysses’s whiskers trembled and fell in slow motion to the horsehair sofa.
“All things are possible,” said Dr. Meescham. “When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, the miraculous happened every day. Or every other day. Or every third day. Actually, sometimes it did not happen at all, even on the third day. But still, we expected it. You see what I’m saying? Even when it didn’t happen, we were expecting it. We knew the miraculous would come.”
There was a knock at the door.
“See?” said Dr. Meescham. “This will be your father, Mr. George Buckman.”
Flora stood and went to the door and opened it. It was her father. And he was smiling. Again. Still. Which did seem kind of miraculous.
“Hi, Pop,” she said.
“You see?” said Dr. Meescham. “He smiles.”
Flora’s father’s smile got bigger. He took off his hat. He bowed. “George Buckman,” he said. “How do you do?”
Flora couldn’t help it; she smiled, too.
She was still smiling when a noise that sounded like the end of the world echoed through the hallway of the Blixen Arms. One minute her father was standing there with his hat in his hands, smiling, and the next minute, Mr. Klaus (the cat one) came out of nowhere and landed right on top of George Buckman’s unprotected head.
They were in the car. Flora’s father’s hands were on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two. Flora was sitting up front and Ulysses’s head was out the window. They were heading back to Flora’s mother’s house in spite of Flora’s protestations.