“Shatterday,” said Keithette.
But now she rose up, seeming to swell and take fire with the woman’s need to confront the worst. Keithette strode to the passage door, Andromeda and Tom a couple of feet behind her. She turned, resolute and incensed, before she seized the handle. The door opened like a lid.
And what should they see but the little puppy, quite recovered, full of beans in fact, only briefly startled and now skipping and twisting, feinting this way and that, and wagging his tail with such violence that his entire rear end was just a furry little blur. Then he swooned onto his back with his cocked paws aloft. Andromeda burst out crying and pushed herself through to kneel at the little puppy’s side.
“What’s that?” said Keithette.
“Leave him alone,” said Andromeda. “He’s a little— ‘puppy,'” she explained, with a new effort showing in her eyes. “A little puppy.”
Adorably the little puppy gazed upward.
“My little puppy,” said Andromeda.
“Why do I put up with her?” Keithette began. “Answer me, Tom. Please answer me. Where did it come from? Right from the start she never gave me a moment’s peace. Why can’t she be like any other little girl? Why? Why? That’s right. I’ll pack you off to live with the children. Or the Queers! Where did you find it? Now you listen to me, Andromeda. Andromeda, indeed. Her own name’s not good enough for her. She has to go and call herself Andromeda! What’s it doing now? Well, I’ll tell you one thing, young lady. It’s not staying here.”
It took many hours of supplication, many Blametakes and Faultfinds, and much work for Tom on the mat, over the tub, and in the sack, great play being made with the hot towels and cold compresses, the back scratchers and skin loofahs, not to mention all the hair stroking, neck nuzzling, and breast kissing—plus the tireless and tearful pleas of tiny Andromeda—but in the end Keithette was pretty well won over to the little puppy’s presence, a presence that was understood to be temporary, contingent, multiprovisoed. Naturally, the ruling could be reversed at a single snap of Keithette’s brawny red fingers. Ah, but what could you do when it came to a little puppy like this one, with his ridiculous frown and his beseeching eyes? All the little puppy had going for him, really, was his adorability. And he was adorable—yes he was. After the countless promises and penances, the clauses and covenants of the long afternoon, Keithette herself seemed quite exhausted by the fray.
“All right,” she said. “It can live here for a while.”
“He,” said Andromeda.
“Where is it anyway?”
Where was the little puppy? Snuggling at Keithette’s feet, of course, and blinking up at her gratefully. By nightfall the little puppy was ensconced on Keithette’s lap. It was all Andromeda could do to prize him free for a cuddle. Tom looked on from his leisurebench with hard-won relief. He monitored Keithette for signs of sudden mood swing or theme change. Everything seemed all right for now. But it had been some Shatterday.
Oiled, groomed, distinctly plump, and impeccably toilet trained, the little puppy was nowadays to be found, more often than not, on his favorite perch: the window ledge in Andromeda’s little bedroom. Through the mists of the half curtain, his tail wagging uncertainly, then quickening in sudden bursts of recognition or general enthusiasm, the little puppy watched the people come and go, for hours on end. Because the people—the people were so beautiful! The women striding about with their hands on their hips, occasionally pausing to talk and nod among themselves, arms folded. The girls, regal and remote, with expensive self-awareness in oval cheeks and artful hair. All colors and sizes the people were. Yes, and the old, too, with their more careful tread (easy does it), and the way light seemed to pour from their human eyes. The little boys were stern and watchful, shut-faced, on their guard. Why weren’t they playing? wondered the little puppy, in his way. Why weren’t they playing—bounding and tumbling like packs of puppies?
No one played except the little puppy. But the little puppy played a lot. The jumping games, the rolling games, the hiding games. He very nearly exasperated his young mistress with these endless larks and sprees of his. One quiet Shunday she found the little puppy frenziedly prying at a round red bauble fixed (by Tom) to the foot of her bed. Encouraged by his barking she managed to free the thing from its clasp; she then rolled it into the little puppy’s path. A ball, a red ball! The little puppy proceeded to chase it around the room. And he chased it around the room. And he chased it around the room again. Holding the ball in his jaws, he challenged Andromeda to shake it free and then throw it for him. Then he retrieved it and bounced around her until she threw it again. Really, the hysteria of the little puppy at such moments. Andromeda didn’t understand. But the little puppy clearly needed his play, as badly as he needed his love and his food. Now, when she brought him his vegetables and fruit, the little puppy often thrust his whole head into the bowl.