after her handicapped by the syringe
she held aloft. Negotiation in the downstairs hall where Boney Rasmussen died, on his way to the toilet. Yes okay French toast
if you’ll just, Sam I haven’t got time to argue: laughter rising helplessly in her throat, laughter of bewildered frustration,
cosmic laughter maybe because this really
was
just a game, as Sam (laughing too) believed or knew; but it had to be got through anyway, had to. Sam be serious.
Done at last, tears but at least she didn’t spit it out (Rosie had tried mixing it into juice but Sam never drank the whole
thing, and Rosie never knew in what part of the drink the medicine—medicine she called it, it cured nothing—was lingering).
While Sam ate her French toast Rosie packed, Sam’s book about mice who go up in a balloon, a book for herself too (
The Company
by Fellowes Kraft, she had been becalmed in the second chapter for some weeks), Brownie and blankie, cookies and juice and
the bottle of phenobarbital and the syringe and all the various papers.
They went out at last through the front hall and the big door (passing unseen and unseeing around or through Boney Rasmussen
himself, who since his death on July Fourth night had been standing there before a door that would not open, unable to go
forward and certainly not back) and out into the fragrant morning, a nice day, another nice day.
Though she was now at the very least the acting director of the Foundation, Rosie wouldn’t pay herself more salary; every
week she wrote out for herself a check for the same amount she had been getting as the Foundation’s part-time secretary. Today
though she would allow herself the use of Boney’s great black Buick that lay dormant in the garage, formerly carriage house,
at the turn of the drive. On her own Bison station wagon—not even hers but Mike’s, he hadn’t bothered to demand it from her
or was holding the demand in reserve to be laid on the table later—the struts were weak and brakes insecure, and the thought
of driving it on the highway far from home made Rosie uneasy,though Spofford said that if it was going to go, or stop rather, it was more likely to do it careening over a dirt road in
the Faraways than on the interstate. She said she saw the logic.
She had found the Buick’s key in the pocket of Boney’s winter overcoat, left there the last time he had driven, and yesterday
they’d gone out to the carriage house, Sam delighted and laughing, to start it up. They’d pushed the big stable doors open,
Rosie marvelling that Boney hadn’t ever bothered to put in a real garage with a roll-up door and concrete floor. Sam inspected
the sleeping dragon, putting her fingers in the gulp-holes in the side (which were actually fake, Rosie found, went in an
inch or so and stopped; on her father’s surely they had had some function, swallowed air or something). It came right to life,
strong and willing. Sam cheered.
Like all this, it wasn’t hers, even if it was hers to use. If it belonged to anyone it belonged, as did all of Boney’s remains,
to Una Knox.
I’m leaving it all to my old girlfriend Una Knox
, Boney said to her a month before he died. The way he’d said it, and the fact that nothing official ever turned up with this
name on it, convinced Rosie that Una Knox was a joke of some complicated kind, the kind that deeply private and solitary people
enjoy playing on themselves; or on the other hand was maybe a momentary ploy, a name snatched at random to fend off Rosie
and Allan who were forcing him to talk and think about his own fast-approaching nonexistence: that, in any case, there was
no such person. Which didn’t keep Rosie from imagining her appearing one day, sailing darkly tall into Arcady, come to claim
what was hers.
Vroom
. Sam cheered again at the miracle of the car’s starting. Rosie guided the great length of it out of its lair inch by inch,
certain that by day’s end it
she held aloft. Negotiation in the downstairs hall where Boney Rasmussen died, on his way to the toilet. Yes okay French toast
if you’ll just, Sam I haven’t got time to argue: laughter rising helplessly in her throat, laughter of bewildered frustration,
cosmic laughter maybe because this really
was
just a game, as Sam (laughing too) believed or knew; but it had to be got through anyway, had to. Sam be serious.
Done at last, tears but at least she didn’t spit it out (Rosie had tried mixing it into juice but Sam never drank the whole
thing, and Rosie never knew in what part of the drink the medicine—medicine she called it, it cured nothing—was lingering).
While Sam ate her French toast Rosie packed, Sam’s book about mice who go up in a balloon, a book for herself too (
The Company
by Fellowes Kraft, she had been becalmed in the second chapter for some weeks), Brownie and blankie, cookies and juice and
the bottle of phenobarbital and the syringe and all the various papers.
They went out at last through the front hall and the big door (passing unseen and unseeing around or through Boney Rasmussen
himself, who since his death on July Fourth night had been standing there before a door that would not open, unable to go
forward and certainly not back) and out into the fragrant morning, a nice day, another nice day.
Though she was now at the very least the acting director of the Foundation, Rosie wouldn’t pay herself more salary; every
week she wrote out for herself a check for the same amount she had been getting as the Foundation’s part-time secretary. Today
though she would allow herself the use of Boney’s great black Buick that lay dormant in the garage, formerly carriage house,
at the turn of the drive. On her own Bison station wagon—not even hers but Mike’s, he hadn’t bothered to demand it from her
or was holding the demand in reserve to be laid on the table later—the struts were weak and brakes insecure, and the thought
of driving it on the highway far from home made Rosie uneasy,though Spofford said that if it was going to go, or stop rather, it was more likely to do it careening over a dirt road in
the Faraways than on the interstate. She said she saw the logic.
She had found the Buick’s key in the pocket of Boney’s winter overcoat, left there the last time he had driven, and yesterday
they’d gone out to the carriage house, Sam delighted and laughing, to start it up. They’d pushed the big stable doors open,
Rosie marvelling that Boney hadn’t ever bothered to put in a real garage with a roll-up door and concrete floor. Sam inspected
the sleeping dragon, putting her fingers in the gulp-holes in the side (which were actually fake, Rosie found, went in an
inch or so and stopped; on her father’s surely they had had some function, swallowed air or something). It came right to life,
strong and willing. Sam cheered.
Like all this, it wasn’t hers, even if it was hers to use. If it belonged to anyone it belonged, as did all of Boney’s remains,
to Una Knox.
I’m leaving it all to my old girlfriend Una Knox
, Boney said to her a month before he died. The way he’d said it, and the fact that nothing official ever turned up with this
name on it, convinced Rosie that Una Knox was a joke of some complicated kind, the kind that deeply private and solitary people
enjoy playing on themselves; or on the other hand was maybe a momentary ploy, a name snatched at random to fend off Rosie
and Allan who were forcing him to talk and think about his own fast-approaching nonexistence: that, in any case, there was
no such person. Which didn’t keep Rosie from imagining her appearing one day, sailing darkly tall into Arcady, come to claim
what was hers.
Vroom
. Sam cheered again at the miracle of the car’s starting. Rosie guided the great length of it out of its lair inch by inch,
certain that by day’s end it
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