Bathing the Lion Read online

  Alford was silent a while but eventually said, “Maybe the first half of our life is meant for living, and the second half is for remembering—or trying to. When you consider it that way, both of us were wrong to waste time missing our wives so much after they died. Because mourning does no good: it only makes you feel helpless and lost.

  “What we should do instead is try to remember and then savor whatever details we’re able to dredge up from our past. This is possible and each time you do it you feel good because it brings something more of them back to you; like you’re rebuilding them from scratch.” Ken suddenly laughed. “It’s a little bit like making your own Frankenstein version of your wife out of what you still remember about her.” He chuckled again. “I’m being facetious, Bill, but you know what I mean. It’s one of the reasons why I always keep the knife in my pocket: touching it reminds me to stop regretting and keep trying to remember.”

  While listening to Ken speak, Edmonds held the ocher-colored elephant and turned it over and over in his hand. He wanted it to speak too. He wanted it to recount exactly what happened the day he gave it to his wife. What had she said? What was she wearing? As Ken Alford talked, Edmonds closed his fingers around the elephant and silently mouthed the words, “Tell me.”

  * * *

  Josephine appeared for the first time after his bus ride with Ken Alford. Edmonds had followed Alford’s advice and tried finding his lost wife and their life together in everything he did. It was like an Easter egg hunt. In the most unlikely places he rediscovered memories or things about Lola he’d forgotten or knew that he knew. One afternoon while retrieving a jar of mango chutney off a shelf in the refrigerator, the sight of the thick brown condiment unloosed memories of the way she’d spread chutney on the bologna and Laughing Cow cheese sandwiches she often made them for lunch. While eating, she would wiggle one leg under the table like a fidgety child. She often did that—it was her unconscious way of showing she liked whatever it was she was eating. The leg wiggling—how could he have forgotten it?

  Or once around Christmastime while walking down the street early in the morning, he’d looked up and seen a long white airplane contrail across the dawning sky. He suddenly remembered Lola loved contrails, and seeing this one brought her immediately to mind. Then Edmonds shifted his eyes a little to the left and on the balcony of an apartment was a small squat Christmas tree full of blinking white lights. It was exactly the same kind of tree and lights she would set up in their living room year after year. Edmonds was indifferent to the holidays but his sentimental Italian wife loved everything about them. A contrail and a Christmas tree in the sky at the same time? Suddenly he felt like she was very close and talking loudly to him, saying hello there, Pulcino—remember these things?

  The little girl appeared an hour after he’d seen the Christmas tree on the balcony. Edmonds was having breakfast at the diner five doors down from Kaspar Benn’s store. He ate breakfast there every day and always ordered the same thing: fried eggs, bacon, a plain donut, and hash brown potatoes. Two cups of coffee and the check, please.

  While chewing a piece of bacon, he saw the girl enter the place holding a small plastic Christmas tree in her left hand. She walked to his booth and without asking permission sat down across from him. She put the tree on the red Formica table.

  Neither of them spoke. Edmonds’s eyes drifted between the shabby little tree, the room, and the girl while waiting for her to say something. She was nothing special to look at. She was pie-faced, and her expressionless eyes appeared to be green. Her lips were thin and pale. Was she smiling? He couldn’t really tell. Her ears stuck out from her head a bit. She looked seven or eight years old. She wore a brown parka half opened and a red sweater beneath it that matched the color of the table.

  “This is for you.” She slid the little tree toward him. The branches and tiny ornaments shivered as it moved.

  “Thanks. Who are you?”

  “You can call me Vedran if you want.”

  Edmonds put down the piece of bacon he was about to eat and wiped his lips with a paper napkin he pulled from a silver dispenser on the table. “Did Ken send you?”

  “Nope.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think he did.” Lifting his gaze he scanned the diner again, sure he’d see Ken Alford somewhere nearby just waiting to catch his eye. But Ken wasn’t there. “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Ken Alford.”

  “I don’t know. Can I have a piece of your bacon?”

  Edmonds slid his plate across the table to her. Right away she began gobbling up what was left.

  “How do you know about Vedran?”

  Having just swallowed, the girl said, “Lola told me.”

  “Lola told you?”

  “Yes.” She bit off another piece of bacon while looking him straight in the eye.

  “When did she tell you this?”

  “Today. Before I came here.”

  “Today?” Edmonds slid both hands up and down his thighs and took a long deep breath. “That’s not funny. Whoever told you to say that, it’s not funny at all.”

  “I don’t think it’s funny either. But you asked the question and I answered it.”

  “You talked to Lola today? My wife, Lola?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lola’s dead.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  This child with her plastic Christmas tree, eating his breakfast, saying she’d spoken to his dead wife.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?” He spoke harshly, really irritated now, despite the fact he was talking to a child.

  “Do you want to know about the amber elephant? The story you keep trying to remember?”

  How could she know?

  “You went to Krakow to meet up with old Marine friends who were stationed with you at the embassy in Warsaw. After you visited the Wawel Castle, you were walking back to your hotel on Kanonicza Street and saw the store that sold nice amber things. You went in and couldn’t decide between a necklace and the elephant. But you didn’t want to spend much money so you bought her the elephant.

  “My name’s not really Vedran—it’s Josephine. I only said Vedran to make you pay attention to me.”

  Josephine was the name Edmonds and his wife had chosen if they ever had a girl: Josephine for a girl, Nevan for a boy. Lola found the name “Nevan.” Edmonds had never heard it before. It meant “little holy one” in Gaelic. It was the sort of thing Lola loved—strange, beautiful, and obscure. More important, they had never told anyone the names they chose for their children. Both thought if they did it would jinx their chances of it happening.

  But they never were able to have children, although they tried for years. It had made Lola’s death even more difficult for Edmonds to bear because when she was gone there was no physical trace left of her. A child; how wonderful it would have been to have had their child to hold his hand during those days of black grief after his wife’s death.

  “I’m here to stay with you now a while.”

  “What do you mean, stay?”

  Josephine finished eating from his plate and licked her fingers one by one. “Lola was wearing her faded rose robe when you gave her the elephant. While she opened the package she kept looking at you and then the box. She was excited because she thought it was going to be something really good. She kept asking what was inside but you wouldn’t say. When she saw what it was, you could tell how disappointed she was. Because the box was small, she was hoping you’d brought her a piece of jewelry, which she loved, like a nice ring or earrings. But there was only the dumb yellow elephant instead. She tried to pretend she liked it, but you knew she didn’t. Lola wasn’t very good at pretending, remember?”

  Edmonds said nothing. Lola was terrible at pretending.

  The girl stared at him, her expression saying nothing. “Do you want me to tell you other things?”

  He didn’t know what to say.

  Afterward they left the diner tog
ether. The fifteen-minute walk back to his house was done in silence. Josephine didn’t seem to mind. She skipped most of the way there, sometimes lagging behind, sometimes running way up ahead of him. Edmonds didn’t notice. He looked at his boots mostly. Thick comfortable Red Wing boots he’d bought at a store in Seattle while visiting another Marine friend out there after he’d retired. That was what, six years ago? Seven? Time doesn’t fly, it steals. Like some skilled pickpocket or magician, it gets you to look the other way and when you do, it ruthlessly steals your essential things—memories, great moments that end much too soon, the lives of those you love. It knows how to trick you and then steal you blind. What had he done on that Seattle trip? He couldn’t really remember anymore except for a few silly details. Why hadn’t Lola gone with him? He couldn’t remember. He’d bought these boots. He’d bought these boots and eaten lots of fried oysters. And now here was this mysterious child telling him things about his own life he should have remembered but didn’t.

  While skipping along in front of him, the girl asked over her shoulder, “Do you remember anything?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tenbrink. Do you remember what that is?”

  “Ten what? No.”

  “What about Pipetoe?”

  Pipetoe?

  When Edmonds didn’t respond, Josephine craned her head forward and nodded slowly in an exaggerated way, as if he were very dumb and she was trying to encourage him to give the correct answer.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Grassmugg or red slap? The House Inside the Horse? Come on, you’ve got to remember some of those things! No? Really? Wow. All right, forget it. Where were you born?”

  Edmonds stopped walking. “New York.”

  “Where?”

  “Doctors Hospital.”

  “When?”

  “In 1949.”

  Josephine slapped her cheek in obvious exasperation. Turning away, she skipped off down the street. He could only follow her.

  She was waiting on the porch of his house by the front door when he walked up the path.

  He reached into his pocket for the keys. “Where’s your Christmas tree? Did you leave it back at the diner?”

  “No, it’s inside on your kitchen table. I thought you would like it there.”

  Edmonds scowled but said nothing. Pushing her gently aside, he unlocked the front door with the key Lola had once used and walked into his house.

  “There, look.” Before he had a chance to turn around and see what she was talking about, Josephine had crossed the hall to the living room and walked over to a potbellied stove, an original Railway King he’d found years ago at a junk store and lovingly restored to its original condition. She took something off the top of the stove and turning to him, extended her hand.

  She held a small aluminum coffeepot. An Italian Bialetti Brikka Lola bought on a visit to her home in Gallarate many years ago. It was one of his few truly treasured possessions because stained, streaked, and scratched as it was, it held the memories of thousands of breakfasts together, snow out in the yard, or the kitchen windows wide open to let the redolent summer breezes blow through, Lola’s dark red lipstick on a white mug, her scratchy cigarette voice saying to him, “This morning I am arrapata for you. Come on, enough coffee, let’s go back to bed.”

  Edmonds looked at the coffeepot and then at Josephine. Taking it out of her hand he placed it back on top of the stove. She snatched it off and jumped away from him when he reached for it.

  “Give it to me. Come on, kid, don’t fool around.”

  “Nope. You have to start thinking now. You really have to get going.”

  Edmonds’s first impulse was to just grab the girl and get his damned coffeepot back. But her voice was so solemn and adult that it made him hesitate. “What do you want from me? What are you doing here?”

  Ignoring his questions, she walked around the living room instead, stopping here and there to examine specific objects. All the while she held the silver Brikka to her chest with two hands as if it were a doll.

  “This whole room is full of signs and reminders, Edmonds. Don’t you recognize any of them? How can you not see?”

  What she said made him feel both stupid and cross. It was not a good mix for this choleric man, especially coming from the mouth of a sassy eight-year-old child. “And you’re totally annoying. How can you not see that?” he spat out.

  “You were supposed to have a daughter named Josephine with Lola, but they decided against it. I’m sorry. It would have been nice for her to live here with you. I really like your house.”

  He heard what she said but could find no words to respond. His daughter, Josephine? They?

  She put his coffeepot on a side table and sat down on the sofa. Her legs were so short they didn’t touch the floor. “Do you want to know why not? Because sometimes children touch a universal core. When it happens, you start remembering things. They didn’t want you to remember anything … until now.

  “All right, let’s try this.” Josephine went to the other side of the room and took an object off a shelf there. It was a small netsuke figure of a sumo wrestler. Holding it out on her open palm, she extended it in front of her toward Edmonds.

  He looked at the little sumo and said, “Keebler.”

  The girl shook her head: she didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  “Lola called him Keebler. I don’t know why. When she bought it she said that’s what his name was. When I asked why, she said it’s just Keebler.”

  Josephine put the brown figure down next to the silver coffeepot. “Do you see anything? Seeing the Keebler and your coffeepot sitting there next to each other like that?”

  Edmonds studied the tableau a long time. “No.”

  Frustrated, Josephine rubbed both cheeks very fast with open hands. “This is going to take forever. Okay. We’ve got to get started.”

  * * *

  Several months later Edmonds stood in his living room, thinking about what Josephine had just said about her visit to Kaspar Benn. Stretching his thick arms over his head, he alternately reached left/right/left/right for the ceiling. Then joining his hands together, he slowly stretched up till he heard a satisfying crack in either his neck or back—he could never be sure which one it was when he did this. He rolled his shoulders forward a few times, a few times back. He twisted his head hard left, then hard right, again and again until the tension in his neck muscles gave way a little.

  Music came on from somewhere in the back of the house: Gershwin’s Cuban Overture. Josephine loved music. Whenever she was up and about she had the radio or CD player on, often humming along loudly to whatever was playing.

  The first few times the girl did this it jarred Edmonds because since his wife’s death he was accustomed to a silent house. At the time it seemed right, a fitting tribute. Their home should remain quiet because Lola was the one who’d always filled it and their days together with both sound and life. Lola with her music and her singing, her banging around in the kitchen as she prepared their meals, or watching soap operas and game shows on the different TVs around the house. Sometimes she would have all three televisions on at the same time tuned to different channels.

  Not only do you lose a person to death, but you lose their noise too—their noise and smells, gestures and facial expressions. You lose the way they talk and phrase things and laugh, the way they fill in your blanks without ever thinking about it or having to try. You lose things you love about them they don’t even know they possess.

  But eventually, sooner than he would have thought possible, William Edmonds grew to enjoy the sound of music again playing in the rooms of his house.

  He remembered very vividly what was playing the afternoon he found out the truth about Lola. Again Gershwin, only that time it was “An American in Paris.” Edmonds was drinking soup when it happened: thick, pulpy pumpkin soup with a squiggle of green pumpkin oil across the surface. He had cooked up a big batch of the soup an
d he, Josephine, and Keebler were all sitting at the table eating it for lunch.

  Keebler still had not grown accustomed to his new large body. He moved very awkwardly and to the others’ annoyance, squeaked all the time. Whenever he moved he sounded like lots of footsteps walking on old warped wooden floors. Edmonds oiled him daily but it did little good.

  Keebler also couldn’t get used to eating. Before he grew to human size, he had never eaten anything. He had never even opened his mouth, much less put anything inside of it. Why would he? Until recently he had been a two-inch-high netsuke figure sitting on a shelf. Then from one moment to the next he was transformed into a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound semi-human being with a fat guy’s appetite. Josephine said this would change as he gradually transformed into a complete person. But at the time he was only a very large semi-man who wanted to eat constantly.

  “This is good,” Josephine said with a nod and a smile.

  “Thanks. Lola liked it a lot too.”

  Keebler held his bowl in both hands and drank the soup in big loud gluggy gulps, despite the fact the stuff was just off the stove and piping hot.

  “Doesn’t it burn your throat when you drink it like that?”

  “Why would soup burn my throat? It’s not made of skin.”

  “Good point.”

  “She didn’t like it though, you’re wrong,” Keebler said as he raised the bowl again to his mouth.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your wife, Lola; she didn’t like this soup. She made a face every time you served it. She just didn’t want you to know.”

  Josephine frowned at Keebler. She was beginning to think he enjoyed being cruel. She had seen example after example of his gratuitous meanness and she’d had enough. “Why do you say those things? What’s the point? Why are you always so nasty?”