Roosevelt insisted on helping us clear up the remaining mess.
Although it seemed peculiar to be doing housework side by side with a
national monument and heir of Saint Francis, we gave him the vacuum
cleaner.
Mungojerrie woke when the vacuum wailed, raised his head long enough to
express displeasure with a quick baring of his fangs, and then appeared
to go to sleep again.
My kitchen is large, but it seems small when Roosevelt Frost is in-it,
regardless of whether he’s vacuuming. He stands six feet four, and the
formidable dimensions of his neck, shoulders, chest, back, and arms make
it difficult to believe that he was formed in anything as fragile as a
womb, he seems to have been carved out of a granite quarry or poured in
a foundry, or perhaps built in a truck factory. He looks considerably
younger than he is, with only a few gray hairs at his temples. He
succeeded big time in football not merely because of his size but
because of his brains, at sixty-three he is nearly as strong as he ever
was and i’m guessing even smarter, because he’s a man who’s always
learning.
He also vacuums like a sonofabitch. Together, the three of us soon
finished setting the kitchen right.
It would never again be entirely right, I’m afraid, not with only one
shelf of Royal Worcester, Evesham pattern, remaining in the display
cabinet. The empty shelves were a sad sight. My mother had loved those
fine dishes, the soft colors of the hand-painted apples and plums on the
coffee cups, the blackberries and pears on the salad plates.
.
.
. My mother’s favorite things were not my mother they were merely her
things yet, though we like to believe that memories are as permanent as
engravings in steel, even memories of love and great kindness are in
fact frighteningly ephemeral in their details, and we remember best
those that are linked to places and things, memory embeds in the form
and weight and texture of real objects, and there it endures to be
brought forth vividly with a touch.
There was a second set of dishes, the everyday stuff, and while
Roosevelt set the kitchen table with cups and saucers, I brewed a pot of
coffee.
In the refrigerator, Bobby discovered a large bakery box crammed full of
the pecan-cinnamon buns that are among my all-time-favorite things.
“Carpe crustulorum! ” he cried.
Roosevelt said, “What was that? ” I said, “Don’t ask.”
“Seize the pastry, ” Bobby translated.
I brought a couple of pillows from the living room and put them on one
of the chairs, which allowed Mungojerrienow awaketo sit high enough to
be part of the gathering.
As Roosevelt was breaking off bits of a cinnamon bun and soaking them in
the saucer of milk that he had poured for the cat, Sasha came home from
whatever business she had been about. Roosevelt calls her daughter, the
way he sometimes calls me and Bobby son, which is just his way, though
he thinks so highly of Sasha that I suspect he would be pleased to adopt
her. I was standing behind him when he lifted her and hugged her, as
though she were a little girl, she entirely disappeared in his bearish
embrace, except for one sneaker-clad foot, which dangled an inch off the
floor.
Sasha brought the chair from her composition table in the dining room,
positioning it between my chair and Bobby’s. She fingered Bobby’s sleeve
and said, “Bitchin’ shirt.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve seen Doogie, ” Sasha said. “He’s putting together a package of
equipment, ordnance.
It’s now … just past three o’clock.
We’ll be ready to go as soon as it’s dark.”
“Ordnance? ” Bobby asked.
“Doogie’s got some really fine tech support.”
“Tech support? ”
“We’re going to be prepared for contingencies.”
“Contingencies? ” Bobby turned to me. “Bro, are you sleeping with G. I.
Jane? ”
“Emma Peel, ” I corrected. To Sasha-Emma, I said, “We may need some
ordnance. Manuel and two deputies were here, confiscated our weapons.”
“Broke some china, ” Bobby said.
“Smashed some furniture, ” I added.
“Kicked the toaster around, ” Bobby said.
“We can count on Doogie, ” Sasha said. “Why the toaster? ” Bobby