Glimmering

“Grandmother.” Her grim little face contorted. Jack edged forward protectively. The girl looked up at Keeley, ran a hand self-consciously through her filthy hair, and smiled.

“Well.” Keeley’s hands tightened on her gold-topped walking stick. “Is this a—friend? Of Leonard’s?”

“Umm, well, no—” A smile broke across Keeley’s face.

“Lunantishee, ” she said. “A cailin a vic O! What are you doing here?”

The girl’s smile faded. She glanced over her shoulder at Jack. He forced himself to smile reassuringly—for Keeley’s sake, not the girl’s. “She was outside in the cold, I just thought we might let her in to dry off, and then—”

“Of course,” said Keeley. She continued to gaze at the girl, but the wonder drained from her faded blue eyes; whatever she saw now, it was not the lunantishee. “Bring her in, she can sit by the stove”—she raised her walking stick and motioned toward the kitchen—“I’ll have Larena find something for her to wear. Go on now—” This to the girl, in the same brisk tone she’d used on generations of animals and children. “Go on.”

The girl clutched at her torn clothes, walked down the dark hallway toward the kitchen. Jack turned to his grandmother, but Keeley was already standing at the foot of the staircase, thumping her walking stick.

“Larena! Larena dear—”

With a sigh Jack headed for the huge kitchen, the most modern room in the great shaky pile that was Lazyland. His grandfather had renovated it shortly before his death in the early 1970s, as a gift for Keeley; all the original woodwork had been replaced with shiny blond cabinets and turquoise Naugahyde.

Now the fluorescent bulbs had long since flickered out. The electric range was covered with ancient outdoor gear dredged up from one of Lazyland’s subbasements: a blackened Coleman stove and tiny white gas-driven heater that boiled water and scorched rice. The refrigerator was unplugged, the occult pantry with its folding doors and lazy Susans sadly underutilized. Still, with the vivid light falling through its windows, the kitchen was the brightest room in the house, and Larena Iverson kept it scrupulously clean.

Certainly the ragged girl was impressed. Jack found her standing beside the stool where younger cousins had been wont to take their afternoon cocoa, her expression somewhere between suspicion and awe.

“This your house?”

“Yes,” said Jack. “I mean, my family’s,” he added, trying to evoke a vast hidden clan that dealt speedily and fatally with all intruders. “Look, we’re pretty busy right now, maybe I can find you a towel or something, you can dry off, and then—”

Behind him there was a soft wheeze and the pad of slippered feet. “Oh, poor thing! Look at you, soaked to the skin, what was your mother thinking?”

Mrs. Iverson struggled across the room, burdened with heavy wintry-looking clothes and a pink appliquéd bath towel. The girl looked up, confused. “Mother?”

“Wait till I have a word with her,” Mrs. Iverson went on. “Look at you, a skinny wretch, what were you thinking, get into the bathroom now! Right this minute—”

The housekeeper began herding the girl back toward the dark corridor. A moment later Jack heard the bathroom door creak shut, the gasp and blast of water surging up through the recalcitrant pipes. Mrs. Iverson’s voice rose and fell, and after a minute or two he heard the girl laughing.

“Great,” he muttered, and crossed over to the stove. A Thermos held what was left of the morning’s brew. He poured himself a mug, grimacing as he picked out bits of dandelion root and grounds, and stared unhappily out the window. The kitchen telephone sat on a shelf there beside a ragged copy of the Yonkers telephone book. He thought of picking up the receiver to see if there would be a dial tone today, checking in the Yellow Pages for whatever defunct agency had once dealt with circumstances like this. Child Welfare? New Hope for Women? Emma would know what to do. He could call her, arrange for Jule to hydroplane down the Saw Mill River Parkway and take the girl to an appropriate shelter somewhere.

Oh please! He could just hear Leonard’s derisive laughter. Shelter? Where’s your sense of Christian duty, Jackie-boy? Throw her back to the wolves!

Oh, fuck off, thought Jack, and reached for the receiver. He’d long ago stopped trying to find any sort of pattern in when the phones would work, just as he had stopped trying to find a reason for the power outages. It’s just the Way We Live Now! Leonard would cry gleefully, but more than the outages themselves it was the constant uncertainty that maddened Jack.

Because if you knew there would be no electricity for, say, the next fifty years, you could Just Make Do. Remember the Depression? Remember Sarajevo? Some people live like this all the time!