“Like we regret life,” says Bryce. She is flattening spoons.
“I need an intellectual regimen,” thinks Ozark. She puts her fingertips to her temples.
“My brain feels strange,” says Ozark. What’s the word? She shuffles her flashcards. Empedocles? Bacon? Aqua vitae? Ozark slumps over the kitchen table. She fears there is something broken in her intelligence, or at least, badly sprained.
“Crossword puzzles,” advises Mrs. Borage. “They increase the mental elasticity.”
“For example, my corpus callosum,” says Mrs. Borage. “It has assumed the lotus position.” Mrs. Borage is eating Mr. Henderson’s prunes. She holds up a prune.
“The third eye,” she says to Ozark. She chews it thoughtfully.
“Would you like one?” she asks. She reaches in the bag.
“Oh,” says Mrs. Borage. “I’ve eaten all of them.”
“It’s okay,” says Ozark.
“Now I have a hundred eyes,” says Mrs. Borage.
“Like Argus Panoptes,” says Ozark.
“Like a scallop,” muses Mrs. Borage. She checks the refrigerator. Has Agnes made one of her scrumptious bivalve custards? No. Would it be in the freezer?
Mrs. Borage unwraps a popsicle.
“It tastes pink,” says Mrs. Borage. “It is delicious.”
[:]
In every nation, crossword puzzles are designed for a different category of ideal players. In England, ideal players are Mountbatten-Windsors. In the United States, they are retired sea captains.
“What’s the opposite of NNW?” asks Ozark.
“SSE,” says Fiona.
“Let me have a turn,” says Mrs. Borage. She studies the rows of empty boxes. They look like see-thru apartment blocks.
“The tri-cities!” says Mrs. Borage. “Cologne-Trier-Salzburg.”
[:]
No nation designs crosswords that target the argot peculiar to paleozoologists. The mountain stronghold of Venusberg designs circlewords for witches. The letters go around and around, in spirals. Agnes wouldn’t get to use “futhark,” perhaps ever, if it weren’t for the circlewords.
[:]
“Filthy excretions of sheep, the sweat of their auxiliary concavities, shall they cling about the surface of the tongue…”
“Oh cripes,” says Fiona.
“Such that the tongue,” continues Agnes, “scissored from the hollow of the mouth and rolled thusly in its blood upon the lees of new vintage…”
“Indeed,” says Dorcas, knowingly. “Sur lie.”
“Hath better hope of transmitting that wine’s savor than that befouled organ which ever thickens in thine jaws and tells not the larded collop from the prune though death be the difference…”
Reading faster now, Agnes holds up a finger. Ozark shuts her mouth with a pop.
“…and in death, no relief but rather torment as from the fangs of spiders grown inward from the skin, until the eglantine blooming upon the head of the marble statue of Trophonius, erected in the oracular cave of that divinity, be plucked and offered to the shepherd his flock torn by wolves across the north-flowing river or other compensation as judged meet.”
Agnes breathes out. We all breathe out.
“No, it won’t work in English,” says Agnes. “I’ve lost the hexameter.”
“It’s not very festive,” says Bryce.
“In case of party crashers,” says Agnes.
“Still,” says Bryce.
[:]
Agnes tiptoes to the little room beneath the stairs and puts her ear to the door. Would Hildegard like lunch? Agnes slips a chocolate coin beneath the door. She listens.
“L’hommelette!” says a voice.
As far as Agnes knows “h” is not pronounced in any of the Romance languages.
“Finno-Ugric?” wonders Agnes. “A magic language?”
[:]
In the front yard, Bryce has nearly finished laying the bricks, a pathway all through the cairns.
“There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home,” whispers Bryce. She clicks three times with Bertrand’s wooden clogs. A loose leaf of red lettuce falls from the closest cairn.
“Oh well,” says Bryce. What did she expect?
“Hollywood,” thinks Bryce, ruefully. Bryce regards a cockatoo. Did it always have that golden comb? Its eyes are gleaming. Bryce turns the key.
“Happy Birthday!” says the cockatoo. “Happy Birthday!”
“Shhhh,” says Bryce. “You’ll jinx it.”
X
Agnes opens the parlor door. Agnes adheres to the Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation. She spits not in the Fire and she kills no Vermin as Fleas, Lice, Ticks, &c in the Sight of Others; she lets her Countenance be pleasant but in Serious Matters somewhat grave, and above all she shews no Sign of Cholar and neither Curses nor Reviles.
Agnes trembles at the threshold.
“Even for a woman of assiduous restraint,” whispers Agnes, “A woman who pays decorous inattention to the most egregious daily insults…” She takes a faltering step into the parlor.
“Even for a queen of the turned cheek…” She lowers her forearm from her eyes.
“The word is… unendurable,” breathes Agnes. Chewing gum foils and bottle caps. Acorns and cocktail sabers. Sequined leaflets. Tea bags filled with candy hearts. No, she cannot deny it. In the straining muscles of her outthrust jaw, Agnes identifies the presage of violent distemper. Agnes swallows. Her toe stubs upon a stack of records. She winces at the crash of Hanover shellac.
“The East Chisenbury middens?” wonders Agnes. “The rub bish heap of Oxyrhynchus?” She eyes something shrouded.
“Bryce?” she hisses, and yanks the leech of a gaff sail.
“Odsbodikins!” curses Agnes. Magazines come tumbling towards her, Dusselgossips and Helsinki Winkis, Birkensnakes and La-canian Inks and… Agnes hurls herself from the parlor. She slams the door. She leans her back against it.
“Well,” says Agnes. She hums a few bars of the Colombian Anthem. The Colombian Anthem is remarkably restorative of the personal composure.
“Oh yes,” says Agnes, brightly. “Otter gauntlets.” Can you order otter gauntlets from the Dusselgossip? Not likely. Where to start looking? Agnes trips over a tower of library books and falls into the dining room. She feels light-headed. A musk otter on the mantel! It’s not moving.
“Origami,” thinks Agnes. Or is it macramé?
Agnes takes the musk otter and inspects the underside. She hears a sound.
“ZZZZZZZZZ!” says a collective voice. The sound is coming from a place that Agnes would identify as “swim bladder.” The term is not zoologically accurate, but it is polite. She hangs up immediately.
She watches Bryce tape pictures of the Finnish National Hockey Team to a television screen.
“What is a family anyway?” Agnes asks herself. “A cytoplas-mic sequence? A postal code?”
[:]
Mrs. Borage was born on Montag.
“Of course,” says Agnes. “The Moon God.”
Every twenty-eight years, the days of the month return to the same days of the week. It is impossible to celebrate your 100th birthday in consonance with the Moon God if you were born on Montag.
“According to the Julian Calendar,” observes Mrs. Borage.
Mrs. Borage follows the Calendar of Drifting Hours. It is also called the Calendar of Midnights. It may even be called the Veterinarian’s Calendar. Dorcas thinks that it is.
“Then when does the party begin?” asks Agnes.
“When the guests arrive,” says Mrs. Borage.
[:]
Bryce stops outside the little room beneath the stairs. She slips a pixie stix beneath the door. Something furry slides out.