A Little Learning by Margot Early

They’ve come to look at Lola.”
    Seamus watched as Desert stood up, her long flared pants skimming the Victorian floor, one of those authentic patterned floral floors, obviously restored with care. Rory’s roommate’s head was shaved; her skin bore many tattoos, and her nose, eyebrow and lip were all pierced. Ears, too.
    She was beautiful—with model good looks, cheekbones, figure and all.
    “Oh, I’ll take you down,” she said. “We can get her out.”
    “No,” Rory said quickly. “We’ll just look at her through the glass. Let’s not bother her.”
    “She ate yesterday. She’s going to be pretty lazy, in any case,” Desert argued.
    Rory shook her head, her expression clearly anxious.
    Desert said, “Well, whatever. Come on downstairs.”
    The basement was lined with stone and surprisingly warm. Seamus noted that Rory kept close to her housemate—as if to prevent her from opening the large vivarium that stood in the center of the basement. It was a floor-to-ceiling unit—a glass room—and inside, a huge white-and-yellow snake with red eyes lay atop a boulder.
    “Lola is an albino Burmese python,” Rory said.
    “Awesome,” exclaimed Beau, coming closer.
    “Would you like to hold her?” Desert asked.
    “Sure!”
    Rory said, “Actually, let’s not.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Desert told her.
    “Desert, there are too many people here. It’s too stressful for Lola.”
    Seamus said, “Beau, let’s not do that.”
    “She’s really gentle,” Desert insisted.
    Seamus could see that Rory was infuriated by her roommate’s obstinate refusal to listen.
    Rory faced his family. “Beau, the reason we’re not taking Lola out is that she is a wild animal—a large one. She weighs around sixty pounds, and last summer she bit our other housemate and might have killed her if we hadn’t been there. That’s why we keep her safely inside her vivarium.”
    “She wouldn’t have killed Samantha. She was just confused,” Desert insisted.
    Caleb said, “I want a snake, Dad. Not a big one. A little one.”
    Rory blinked and Seamus wondered why. But he, too, heard the strangeness of one of his children actually calling him Dad. Twenty-four hours around his family, and Rory had noticed that his own children were like strangers to him—and they treated him as a stranger.
    “They’re a fair amount of work,” Rory said to Caleb. “But there are plenty of smaller snakes that make good pets. You definitely don’t want one that will grow as big as Lola. But corn snakes are gentle and fairly inexpensive. Here, check out this book, Caleb.” She went to a bookcase against one wall and selected a large colored encyclopedia of snakes.
    Watching, Seamus felt enchanted—by her kindness toward his children, he supposed. Simply by her. She was pretty, but he had known more beautiful women. Her off-balance roommate, even, was more beautiful than Rory. But the roommate didn’t have
Rory’s attentive presence, her instinctive caring—at least that was what he thought he saw in Rory Gorenzi. That when his children were present, her motivation was to listen, to attend, to care.
    Desert seemed immature, in comparison to Rory—and less of the real world. He wondered why Rory lived with a woman like that, with a rather frightening zoo animal for a pet.
    “What happened with your roommate?” Lauren asked, gazing through the glass at the python.
    “Well, Lola may not look like a lot of work, but it takes three of us to move her. We used to take turns feeding her, and then one day, we don’t know why, she grabbed Samantha’s leg and wouldn’t let go. We didn’t even know how to make her let go at that time. Now we keep some cold water ready in the refrigerator. We bring it out before we have to go into the enclosure. Supposedly, running cold water in her mouth will make her let go. Anyhow, Samantha needed stitches.”
    “It was that essential oil she was wearing,” Desert insisted.
    Rory shrugged. “Maybe.