sliding out of the bed when she said, “Hey, for real, can we turn up the heat real hot, just for this one day?”
I got up and flushed away her puke and turned the thermostat to seventy-nine. Underneath us, the furnace whirred into motion with great purpose, like it had finally been called upon to fulfill its dreams.
“Hey, it’s snowing,” she said. By now there were already a couple of inches on the ground. It had even covered over the hole in the Wozniaks’ roof.
I thought of something my dad used to say. “Snow is the one thing the movies have never gotten right, and therefore haven’t yet destroyed.” He was prone to grand claims like that.
She smiled and sat up straighter to get the full view of it. “Yeah, that’s true.”
We watched it coming down in its weightless way, turning the whole back yard and alley into some kind of dream. I wanted to help her somehow. “Anybody you want me to call?” I said, but she wouldn’t answer. “Anybody you believe in?”
She made a sound like wind rushing through her teeth.
“Me neither,” I said, which was just about true. The praying had been only an experiment, and look what it yielded.
A pair of little dogs started yelping at each other in the alley and Molly said, “I’d like to do something for those goddamn dogs, before I go.”
T he extra heat brought a funny new set of smells to the house, a kind of festering mushroomy jungle quality, and it really did start to feel like we were on vacation someplace exotic. The landscape outside was powder-coated and muffled, totally uncorrupted by shovels and snowplows. We sat at the kitchen table eating sandwiches and staring dumbly out, and I knew that one way or another she was going to vanish as abruptly as she’d arrived. And even if she didn’t take anything at all, I’d spend the rest of my days going from room to room trying to figure out what was missing. But for now she was just making chewing noises and shifting in her seat, making plans.
Her idea for today was to break into the old homes of all the dogs I recognized and let them go curl up and sleep in their old beds, out of the snow. At least for the night. She said, “Don’t you think that would quiet them down a little?”
I didn’t answer.
She wanted to start next door. “While you rustle up Mabel by the collar I’ll climb in the back windows and open the door for you. I’m good at this,” she said.
“With the snow we’ll leave tracks,” I said. “From our house to theirs. It’ll be obvious who did it.”
She said, “It’s kind of sweet how you still think anybody cares.”
I went back to my sandwich, thinking it over, and she went on trying to convince me. A real hopeful look came over her face, like she was imagining that those houses inside still looked like they used to, with couches and chairs, and bowls of dog food on the kitchen floor, and beds with blankets and pillows, the whole place warm and dry. She was right that the dogs would be overjoyed at first, unable to believe the world had finally heard their appeals and decided to put things right. They’d race through the door barking, “Honey, I’m home,” and scramble on their long, unclipped claws from room to room. They’d go hunting for traces of their lives, finding foul new smells and wires exposed and puddles from burst pipes. Big empty spaces where the beds had been. They’d start making those panicky high-pitched noises and they’d look back at us, perplexed and answerless, all of us realizing together that we had no solution at all for this. We knew nothing. I knew this because I’d already tried it before.
FAMILY PLANNING
I NSTEAD OF THE gold-plated onion domes Josie had hoped for, the view from their room revealed only the grimy, cement backside of the Oktyabrskaya metro station, where a few merchants had set up tables selling flimsy newsprint magazines bearing pictures of naked women. She held her map of Moscow up to the window,
I got up and flushed away her puke and turned the thermostat to seventy-nine. Underneath us, the furnace whirred into motion with great purpose, like it had finally been called upon to fulfill its dreams.
“Hey, it’s snowing,” she said. By now there were already a couple of inches on the ground. It had even covered over the hole in the Wozniaks’ roof.
I thought of something my dad used to say. “Snow is the one thing the movies have never gotten right, and therefore haven’t yet destroyed.” He was prone to grand claims like that.
She smiled and sat up straighter to get the full view of it. “Yeah, that’s true.”
We watched it coming down in its weightless way, turning the whole back yard and alley into some kind of dream. I wanted to help her somehow. “Anybody you want me to call?” I said, but she wouldn’t answer. “Anybody you believe in?”
She made a sound like wind rushing through her teeth.
“Me neither,” I said, which was just about true. The praying had been only an experiment, and look what it yielded.
A pair of little dogs started yelping at each other in the alley and Molly said, “I’d like to do something for those goddamn dogs, before I go.”
T he extra heat brought a funny new set of smells to the house, a kind of festering mushroomy jungle quality, and it really did start to feel like we were on vacation someplace exotic. The landscape outside was powder-coated and muffled, totally uncorrupted by shovels and snowplows. We sat at the kitchen table eating sandwiches and staring dumbly out, and I knew that one way or another she was going to vanish as abruptly as she’d arrived. And even if she didn’t take anything at all, I’d spend the rest of my days going from room to room trying to figure out what was missing. But for now she was just making chewing noises and shifting in her seat, making plans.
Her idea for today was to break into the old homes of all the dogs I recognized and let them go curl up and sleep in their old beds, out of the snow. At least for the night. She said, “Don’t you think that would quiet them down a little?”
I didn’t answer.
She wanted to start next door. “While you rustle up Mabel by the collar I’ll climb in the back windows and open the door for you. I’m good at this,” she said.
“With the snow we’ll leave tracks,” I said. “From our house to theirs. It’ll be obvious who did it.”
She said, “It’s kind of sweet how you still think anybody cares.”
I went back to my sandwich, thinking it over, and she went on trying to convince me. A real hopeful look came over her face, like she was imagining that those houses inside still looked like they used to, with couches and chairs, and bowls of dog food on the kitchen floor, and beds with blankets and pillows, the whole place warm and dry. She was right that the dogs would be overjoyed at first, unable to believe the world had finally heard their appeals and decided to put things right. They’d race through the door barking, “Honey, I’m home,” and scramble on their long, unclipped claws from room to room. They’d go hunting for traces of their lives, finding foul new smells and wires exposed and puddles from burst pipes. Big empty spaces where the beds had been. They’d start making those panicky high-pitched noises and they’d look back at us, perplexed and answerless, all of us realizing together that we had no solution at all for this. We knew nothing. I knew this because I’d already tried it before.
FAMILY PLANNING
I NSTEAD OF THE gold-plated onion domes Josie had hoped for, the view from their room revealed only the grimy, cement backside of the Oktyabrskaya metro station, where a few merchants had set up tables selling flimsy newsprint magazines bearing pictures of naked women. She held her map of Moscow up to the window,
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