Nor was she a religious, certainly not a superstitious, woman. She’d become moderately interested in the culture of the Native Americans indigenous to the area of the Southwest she’d visited, but it was no more than a moderate interest, an intellectual’s speculation. Since early adolescence, Eunice had been incapable of believing in anyone or anything “supernatural”: she’d inherited from her mild-mannered, skeptical father a distrust of faith, which is to say the objectification of mankind’s wish fantasies into codified religions, institutions. What was skepticism but simple common sense?—sanity? An island of sanity in a seething fathomless ocean of irrationality, and often madness. The contemporary world of militant, fanatic nationalism, fundamentalist religions, intolerance.
Something will happen. Even if you don’t believe.
Eunice had affixed the feathered dream-catcher to the foot of her bed in the hope that it might stimulate her to dream, for she rarely dreamed; her nights were deep, silent pools of water, featureless, rippleless. Yet, so far as she knew, she did not dream that night, either. Her sleep was unnaturally heavy, like a weight pressing against her chest and threatening her with suffocation. Her breasts ached; she woke several times, her nightgown damp with perspiration. In the early morning, before sunrise, she woke abruptly, eager to get up. Her eyes were sore as if she’d been staring into the desert sun and her mouth was badly parched. And there was an odor in her bedroom as of something humid, overripe, like rotted fruit—a faint odor, not entirely disagreeable. And so—did I dream? Is this what a dream is?
Eunice quickly showered, and dressed, and would have forgotten the dream-catcher except, as she made her bed, the shimmering feathers drew her attention. How like a bird’s nest it looked—she hadn’t quite seen that, before. She touched the cobweb of leather twine at its center, and the glass gem which was like an eye. No dream, good or bad, had been caught in it. Still, the dream-catcher was an exquisite thing, and Eunice was glad she’d bought it.
In the kitchen, Eunice heard a strange sound, like mewing, or whimpering, from the rear of the house, and went uneasily to investigate. (Eunice had inherited the four-story Delancey Street brownstone from her widowed mother; it was in an old, prestigious Philadelphia neighborhood within walking distance of the Penn campus, and only a ten-minute drive to Eunice’s office at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. A handsome property, coveted by many, though bordering on an area with an ever-increasing crime rate.) In the winterized porch, on an antiquated sofa-swing, partly hidden beneath an old blanket, was what appeared to be a living creature—at first Eunice thought it must be a dog; then, panicked, she thought it must a child. “What?—what is it?” Eunice stammered, transfixed in the doorway. The rear porch was shut off from the house, rarely used. A smell as of decayed leaves, overripe peaches was so strong here, Eunice gagged.
The creature, neither an animal nor fully human, was about two feet long, and curled convulsively upon itself. Its head was overlarge for its spindly body, and covered in long thin damp black hairs. Its skin was olive-dark, yet pallid, like curdled milk; its face was wizened, the eyes shut tight, sunken. How hoarsely it breathed, as if struggling for oxygen!—there was a rattling sound in its throat, as of loose phlegm. Eunice thought, It’s feverish, it’s dying. Her breasts ached, the nipples especially, as if she were a nursing mother in the presence of her infant.
Eunice tried to think: should she run outside, get help from one of her neighbors? Should she call an ambulance?—the police? There were friends and colleagues she might call, a married cousin in Bryn Mawr… But what would I say? What is this—visitation? She felt a stab of pity for the creature, struggling so desperately to live; she understood that it was starving, and that there was no one else in all the world, except her, to feed it.
Now its eyes opened, and Eunice saw that they were beautiful eyes, whether animal or human: large, dark, tremulous with tears, with an agate sheen, recessed beneath the oddly bony forehead.
Aloud Eunice murmured, “Poor thing—!”
Knowing then that she had no choice: she had to nourish the helpless creature that had fallen into her care, however she could. She could not allow it to die. So she hurried to bring it water, at first in a glass, which was impractical; then soaked in a sponge, which worked fairly well, as if the creature (toothless, with tender, pink gums) knew by instinct how to suck a sponge. Then she soaked the sponge in milk, which was even better. “Don’t be afraid, you won’t die,” Eunice murmured, “—I won’t let you die.” Nursing frantically, the creature mewed and whimpered, its thin hands, very like forepaws, kneading against Eunice’s arms. Eunice felt again, with painful sharpness, that sensation in her breasts as if they were swollen with milk.
So an hour passed, swiftly. By the time the creature had drunk its full and dropped off to sleep, Eunice had soaked the sponge in milk nearly a dozen times. Her breath was coming quickly and her skin was as damp and feverish as the creature’s own; she heard herself laugh, excited, frightened. Yet I’ve done the right thing: I know it.
This, then, was Eunice’s strategy on that first day: she left the slumbering creature on the porch swing, the door to the backyard ajar and the inner door locked, and drove, as usual, to work at 8:20 A.M. It will leave, the way it came. The day was mild for mid-March, snow melting on pavement; an air of reprieve after one of the most severe Philadelphia winters in memory. The poor thing would not suffer from cold, Eunice reasoned. She was certain it would be gone when she came home.
What was wholly unexpected then, as it was to be during the course of subsequent weeks, was how adroitly Eunice shifted her attention to her duties as vice provost. As if there had not been an astonishing visitation at her home!—an inexplicable intrusion into her life! At the most, during her long, busy day at the Academy of Fine Arts, it might have been observed that Eunice Pemberton was uncharacteristically distracted; several times, during a meeting with the provost and other administrators, she’d had to ask politely, “Yes?—what did you say?” When colleagues inquired after her vacation she said, “It was fine, very—fine. Picturesque.” And her voice trailed off, her eyes vague, blinking. Eunice was thinking of the enormous desert sky, of Pyramid Lake and the shabby dwellings of the Paiute Reservation and the handicraft store where she’d bought the dream-catcher. She was thinking of the ponytailed Indian with the insolent eyes. Come back again soon, eh!
In fact, Eunice was grateful that the day was so long, and so complicated. At 4:30 P.M. there was a visiting art historian from Yale who lectured on the iconography of Hieronymus Bosch, and following the lecture there was a reception in his honor; that evening, there was a dinner at the home of the president of the Academy, for selected administrators, faculty, and donors, from which Eunice could not slip away until 10:30 P.M. When she returned to Delancey Street it was to hurry trembling to the rear porch, where she saw—now was it with relief, or disappointment?—that the swing was empty, the soiled blanket lay on the floor, the strange creature was gone. As Eunice had anticipated, it had left by the back door, as it had arrived.