Couldn’t get her to stop yelling and tell me what was the matter. At last she holds out her hand. There’s a tiny cut on one finger, tiny, about a quarter of an inch long. One drop of blood. I put a bandage on it and she calmed down. Wouldn’t say how she got the cut. But a couple days later she says to me that she threw away ‘the dog-face stone’ and it bit her. She says it was a dog bite on her finger.”
The aunt laughed to show it wasn’t anything to have a fit about.
“That’s what Imean . She imagines these things.” Quoyle had swallowed the squidburger. He was stifled. The aunt was making nothing out of something, sliding away from things that needed to be said. The people behind him were listening. He could feel their attention. Whispered. “Look, I’m concerned. I really am. Worried sick, in fact. Saturday morning when you went to pick up your package? We just came in to make lunch. I was going to heat up some soup. Sunshine was struggling with her boots-you know she wants to take her own boots off. Bunny was getting out the box of crackers for the soup, she was opening the box and the waxed paper inside was crackling when all of a sudden she stops. She stares at the door. She starts to cry. Aunt, I swear she was scared to death. She says, ‘Daddy, the dog is scratching on the door. Lock the door!’ Then she starts to scream. Sunshine sitting there with one boot in her hands, holding her breath. I should have opened the door to show her there was nothing there, but instead I locked it. You know why? Because I was afraid theremightbe something there. The force of her fear was that strong.”
“Tch,” said the aunt.
“Yes,” said Quoyle. “And the minute I locked it she stopped screaming and picked up the cracker box and took out two crackers. Cool as a cucumber. Now tell me that’s normal. I’d like to hear it. As it is I’m wondering if she shouldn’t go to a child psychologist. Or somebody.”
“You know, Nephew, I wouldn’t rush to do that. I’d give it some time. There’s other possibilities. What I’m getting at is maybe she is sensitive in a way the rest of us aren’t. Tuned in to things we don’t get. There’s people here like that.” Looked sidewise at Quoyle to see how he took that. That his daughter might glimpse things beyond static reality.
But Quoyle didn’t believe in strange genius. Feared that loss, the wretchedness of childhood, his own failure to love her enough had damaged Bunny.
“Why don’t you just wait, Nephew. See how it goes. She starts school in September. Three months is a long time for a child. I agree with you that she’s different, you might say she is a bit strange sometimes, but you know, we’re all different though we may pretend otherwise. We’re all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differentness as we grow up. Bunny doesn’t do that yet.”
Quoyle exhaled, slid his hand over his chin. A feeling they weren’t talking about Bunny at all. But who, then? The conversation burned off like fog in sunlight.
The aunt ate her fish, a tangle of bones on the side of the plate that the waitress called the devil’s nail clippings.
Walked back to the shop. As they came along the sidewalk, through the window he saw the part in Mrs. Bangs’s black hair as she bent over a chair seat prying out tacks with a ripping chisel.
“So,” the aunt said. “It was good to talk about this. It’s a shame, but I’ve got to stay in late tonight. We’ve got to tack off the banquettes. We’ve got to be done with the lot by next Tuesday, finished and installed. If you’ll pick up the girls. And don’t worry about Bunny. She’s still a little girl.”
But that had not stopped Guy. She had been Bunny’s age the first time.
“Yes,” said Quoyle, lightened and rived by a few seconds of happiness. Well, he would wait and see. Anything could happen. “Will you have supper in town or shall we have something for you?”
“Oh I’ll just get a bite here. You go ahead. You’ll need to get some milk and more ice for the cooler. Don’t get all fussed over nothing.”
“I won’t,” said Quoyle, “good-bye,” leaning toward the aunt’s soft cheek, faintly scented with avocado oil soap. She meant well. But knew nothing about children and the anguish they suffered.
16 Beety’s Kitchen
“The housewife’s needs are multifarious but most of her
requirements are not peculiar and most of what she requires is
to be found in the general classifications.”
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
A FINE part of Quoyle’s day came when he picked up his daughters at Dennis and Beety’s house. His part in life seemed richer, he became more of a father, at the same time could expose true feelings which were often of yearning.
The hill tilting toward the water, the straggled pickets and then Dennis’s aquamarine house with a picture window toward the street. Quoyle pulled pens from his shirt, put them on the dashboard before he went in. For pens got in the way. The door opened into the kitchen. Quoyle stepped around and over children. In the living room, under a tinted photograph of two stout women lolling in ferns, Dennis slouched on leopard-print sofa cushions, watched the fishery news. On each side of him crocheted pillows in rainbows and squares. Carpenter at Home.
The house was hot, smelled of baking bread. But Quoyle loved this stifling yeast-heat, the chatter and child-yelp above the din of the television. Sometimes tears glazed the scene, he felt as though Dennis and Beety were his secret parents although Dennis was his age and Beety was younger.
Dennis barely looked away from the screen but shouted at the kitchen.
“Make us some tea, mother.”
The water faucet gushed into the kettle. A smaller kettle steamed on the white stove. Beety swept at the kitchen table with the side of her hand, set out a loaf of bread. Winnie, the oldest Buggit child, got a stack of plates. As Quoyle sat down Bunny threw herself at him as though he had just arrived from a long, dangerous voyage, hugged, rammed her head against him. Nothing wrong with her. Nothing. Sunshine playing spider with Murchie Buggit, her fingers creeping up his arm, saying tickle, tickle.
Sitting at the kitchen table with children in his lap, eating bread and yellow bakeapple jam, Quoyle nodded, listened. Dennis was deliberate with the day’s news, Beety had the crazy stories that branched off into others without ever finishing.
The tablecloth was printed with a design of trumpets and soap bubbles. Dennis said he was disgusted; his buddy Carl had driven into a construction trench across the road up Bone Hill.