The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (3 page)

“Luck isn’t luck,” the father told his kids. “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.”

The boy backed up his father’s statement. “That’s what the
big
winners say,” he agreed.

The boy and his sister were entering contests. The kitchen table was littered with forms and the entry blanks off cereal boxes. The boy held a picture of a blue Rolls-Royce, the grand prize in a sweepstakes he was too young to enter.

“Do you think it has to be blue?” he asked. “Do you think I can get it in a different color?”

“You can’t drive,” the girl said. “So it’s a moot point.”

She tore a sheet of paper from a legal pad and drew up an affidavit. It promised her the Rolls when her father won it in the sweepstakes next fall. She penciled in a line on the paper for his signature, and a line below that, and titled the second one
Witnessed By.

The father had time before his weekly appointment, so he poured himself coffee and filled in some of the blanks. In spite of what he said, the father knew he had luck. In the time that he had been home, he had won two prizes. He had won a week for two in Hawaii, airfare included, and a ride in a hotair balloon.

Sweepstakes were easy, the father explained. There was nothing to guess, no jingle to compose, no skill required at all. You wrote your name and address, then you soaked the paper in water so that it dried stiff and crackly, and was therefore easy for the judge to get a grip on in the bin. You could enter a sweepstakes as often as you liked—you could flood it if the prize or the winning was worth the bother.

The father held his hand up like an Indian saying How. “Remember the Three
P
’s,” he told his kids. “Patience, Perseverance, and Postage. The people who win these things know the Three
P
’s.”

Contests were different from sweepstakes, he said. You needed talent to win a contest, or at least you needed the knack.

“S-O-S,” the father informed. “What you want to remember is: Be Simple, be Original, be Sincere. That’s the winning system.”

When the sweepstakes entries were completed and stamped, the kids detained their father for the Jell-O pudding contest.

They said,
“Daddy
will help us—Daddy
always
wins!”

“All right,” the father said. “But don’t make me late for my appointment.”

You had to tell the judges why you liked Jell-O pudding. You had to complete the sentence, “I like Jell-O pudding because———.”

First, the father looked at what his kids had written down. “It’s sincere,” he said. “But what about original?” He said that the first thing that popped into their heads would have popped into the heads of other people, too.

The father said, “Think. What is the thing about Jell-O pudding? What is really the thing?”

He paused for so long that the kids looked at each other.

“What?” the girl said.

The father closed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. He said, “I like Jell-O pudding because I like a good hearty meal after a brisk walk on a winter’s day—something to really warm me up.”

The boy giggled and the girl giggled.

The father looked confused. “This is the Jell-O pudding contest, isn’t that what you said?” he said. “Well, okay then,” he said. “I like Jell-O pudding because it has a tough satin finish that resists chipping and peeling. No, no,” he said, “I mean, I like Jell-O pudding because it has a fruitier taste. Because it’s garden fresh,” he said. “Because it goes on dry to protect me from wetness longer. Oh, Jell-O pudding,” the father said. “I like it because it’s more absorbent than those other brands. Won’t chafe or ride up.”

He opened his eyes and saw his son leave the room. The sound that had made the father open his eyes was the pen that the boy had thrown to the floor.

“You may already be a winner,” the father said.

He closed his eyes again. “You know,” he continued, “most pudding makes me edgy. But not
Jell-O
pudding. That’s because it has no caffeine. Tastes right—and is built to stay that way.

“Yes, I like Jell-O pudding because it’s the one thing to take when you really want to bufficate a headache. Or when you need to mirtilize bad breath, unless you want your bad breath to mirtilize you.”

This time the sound that brought him around was the sound of his car keys swinging on their chain. His daughter held the keys. She said, “Daddy, come on. You’ll be late.”

“That’s what I told you, didn’t I?” the father said. “I said, ‘Don’t make me late for my appointment.’”

He followed his daughter out to the car. “Did I tell you the thing about Jell-O?” he said.

His motor skills were not impaired.

He drove slowly, carefully, the girl on the seat beside him. He turned off the freeway onto a wide commercial drive of franchised food and failing business. The place he was going to was blocks away.

A red light stopped him opposite the House of Marlene. There was a handwritten sign in a grimy window. The sign said,
CELIA
,
FORMERLY OF MR
.
EDWARD
,
HAS REJOINED OUR STAFF
.

The father’s hands relaxed on the wheel.

Celia,
he thought.

Celia has come back to make everything okay. The wondrous Celia brings her powers to bear.

The traffic light turned green. Is she really back? he wondered. Is Celia back to stay?

Through the horns going off behind him, through the fists of his daughter beside him, the father stayed stopped.

Everything will be fine, he thought, now that Celia’s here.

After the dog’s cremation, I lie in my husband’s bed and watch the Academy Awards for animals. That is not the name of the show, but they give prizes to animals for Outstanding Performance in a movie, on television, or in a commercial. Last year the Schlitz Malt Liquor bull won. The time before that, it was Fred the Cockatoo. Fred won for draining a tinky bottle of “liquor” and then reeling and falling over drunk. It is the best thing on television is what my husband, Flea, said.

With Flea gone, I watch out of habit.

On top of the warm set is big white Chuck, catching a portion of his four million winks. His tail hangs down and bisects the screen. On top of the dresser, and next to the phone, is the miniature pine crate that holds Nashville’s gritty ashes.

Neil the Lion cops the year’s top honors. The host says Neil is on location in Africa, but accepting for Neil is his grandson Winston. A woman approaches the stage with a ten-week cub in her arms, and the audience all goes
Awwww.
The home audience, too, I bet. After the cub, they bring the winners on stage together. I figure they must have been sedated—because none of them are biting each other.

I have my own to tend to. Chuck needs tomato juice for his urological problem. Boris and Kirby need brewer’s yeast for their nits. Also, I left the vacuum out and the mynah bird is shrieking. Birds think a vacuum-cleaner hose is a snake.

Flea sold his practice after the stroke, so these are the only ones I look after now. These are the ones that always shared the house.

My husband, by the way, was F. Lee Forest, D.V.M.

The hospital is right next door to the house.

It was my side that originally bought him the practice. I bought it for him with the applesauce money. My father made an applesauce fortune because
his
way did not use lye to take off the skins. Enough of it was left to me that I had the things I wanted. I bought Flea the practice because I could.

Will Rogers called vets the noblest of doctors because their patients can’t tell them what’s wrong. The doctor has to reach, and he reaches with his heart.

I think it was that love that I loved. That kind of involvement was reassuring; I felt it would extend to me, as well. That it did not or that it did, but only as much and no more, was confusing at first. I thought, My love is so good, why isn’t it calling the same thing back?

Things might have collapsed right there. But the furious care he gave the animals gave me hope and kept me waiting.

I did not take naturally to my husband’s work. For instance, I am allergic to cats. For the past twenty years, I have had to receive immunotherapy. These are not pills; they are injections.

Until I was seventeen, I thought a ham was an animal. But I was not above testing a stool sample next door.

I go to the mynah first and put the vacuum cleaner away. This bird, when it isn’t shrieking, says only one thing. Flea taught it what to say. He put a sign on its cage that reads
TELL ME I
’
M STUPID
. So you say to the bird, “Okay, you’re stupid,” and the bird says, real sarcastic, “I can talk—can
you fly?
”

Flea could have opened in Vegas with that. But there is no cozying up to a bird.

It will be the first to go, the mynah. The second if you count Nashville.

I promised Flea I would take care of them, and I am. I screened the new owners myself.

Nashville was his favorite. She was a grizzle-colored saluki with lightly feathered legs and Nile-green eyes. You know those skinny dogs on Egyptian pots? Those are salukis, and people worshiped them back then.

Flea acted like he did, too.

He fed that dog dates.

I used to watch her carefully spit out the pit before eating the next one. She sat like a sphinx while he reached inside her mouth to massage her licorice gums. She let him nick tartar from her teeth with his nail.

This is the last time I will have to explain that name. The pick of the litter was named Memphis. They are supposed to have Egyptian names. Flea misunderstood and named his Nashville. A woman back East owns Boston.

At the end of every summer, Flea took Nashville to the Central Valley. They hunted some of the rabbits out of the vineyards. It’s called coursing when you use a sight hound. With her keen vision, Nashville would spot a rabbit and point it for Flea to come after. One time she sighted straight up at the sky—and he said he followed her gaze to a plane crossing the sun.

Sometimes I went along, and one time we let Boris hunt, too.

Boris is a Russian wolfhound. He is the size of a float in the Rose Bowl Parade.

He’s a real teenager of a dog—if Boris didn’t have whiskers, he’d have pimples. He goes through two nylabones a week, and once he ate a box of nails.

That’s right, a box.

The day we loosed Boris on the rabbits he had drunk a cup of coffee. Flea let him have it, with Half-and-Half, because caffeine improves a dog’s trailing. But Boris was so excited, he didn’t distinguish his prey from anyone else. He even charged
me
—him, a whole hundred pounds of wolfhound, cranked up on Maxwell House. A sight like that will put a hem in your dress. Now I confine his hunting to the park, let him chase park squab and bald-tailed squirrel.

The first thing F. Lee said after his stroke, and it was three weeks after, was “hanky panky.” I believe these words were intended for Boris. Yet Boris was the one who pushed the wheelchair for him. On a flat pave of sidewalk, he took a running start. When he jumped, his front paws pushed at the back of the chair, rolling Flea yards ahead with surprising grace.

I asked how he’d trained Boris to do that, and Flea’s answer was, “I didn’t.”

I could love a dog like that, if he hadn’t loved him first.

Here’s a trick I found for how to finally get some sleep. I sleep in my husband’s bed. That way the empty bed I look at is my own.

Cold nights I pull his socks on over my hands. I read in his bed. People still write from when Flea had the column. He did a pet Q and A for the newspaper. The new doctor sends along letters for my amusement. Here’s one I liked—a man thinks his cat is homosexual.

The letter begins, “My cat Frank (not his real name)…”

In addition to Flea’s socks, I also wear his watch.

A lot of us wear our late-husband’s watch.

It’s the way we tell each other.

At bedtime, I think how Nashville slept with Flea. She must have felt to him like a sack of antlers. I read about a marriage breaking up because the man let his Afghan sleep in the marriage bed.

I had my own bed. I slept in it alone, except for those times when we needed—not sex—but sex was how we got there.

In the mornings, I am not alone. With Nashville gone, Chuck comes around.

Chuck is a white-haired, blue-eyed cat, one of the few that aren’t deaf—not that he comes when he hears you call. His fur is thick as a beaver’s; it will hold the tracing of your finger.

Chuck, behaving, is the Nashville of cats. But the most fun he knows is pulling every tissue from a pop-up box of Kleenex. When he gets too rowdy, I slow him down with a comb. Flea showed me how. Scratching the teeth of a comb will make a cat yawn. Then you have him where you want him—any cat, however cool.

Animals are pure, Flea used to say. There is nothing deceptive about them. I would argue: Think about cats. They stumble and fall, then quickly begin to wash—I
meant
to do that. Pretense is deception, and cats pretend: Who, me? They move in next door where the food is better and meet you in the street and don’t know your name, or
their
name.

But in the morning Chuck purrs against my throat, and it feels like prayer.

In the morning is when I pray.

The mailman changed his mind about the bird, and when Mrs. Kaiser came for Kirby and Chuck, I could not find either one. I had packed their supplies in a bag by the door—Chuck’s tomato juice and catnip mouse, Kirby’s milk of magnesia tablets to clean her teeth.

You would expect this from Chuck. But Kirby is responsible. She’s been around the longest, a delicate smallish golden retriever trained by professionals for television work. She was going to get a series, but she didn’t grow to size. Still, she can do a number of useless tricks. The one that wowed them in the waiting room next door was Flea putting Kirby under arrest.

“Kirby,” he’d say, “I’m afraid you are under arrest.” And the dog would back up flush to the wall. “I am going to have to frisk you, Kirb,” and she’d slap her paws against the wall, standing still while Flea patted her sides.

Mrs. Kaiser came to visit after her own dog died.

When Kirby laid a paw in her lap, Mrs. Kaiser burst into tears.

I thought, God love a dog that hustles.

It is really just that Kirby is head-shy and offers a paw instead of her head to pat. But Mrs. Kaiser remembered the gesture. She agreed to take Chuck, too, when I said he needed a childless home. He gets jealous of kids and has asthma attacks. Myself, I was thinking, with Chuck gone I could have poinsettias and mistletoe in the house at Christmas.

When they weren’t out back, I told Mrs. Kaiser I would bring them myself as soon as they showed. She was standing in the front hall talking to Boris. Rather, she was talking
for
Boris.

“ ‘Oh,’ he says, he says, ‘what a nice bone,’ he says, he says, ‘can
I
have a nice bone?’”

Boris walked away and collapsed on a braided rug.

“ ‘Boy,’ he says, he says, ‘boy, am I bushed.’”

Mrs. Kaiser has worn her husband’s watch for years.

When she was good and gone, the animals wandered in. Chuck carried a half-eaten chipmunk in his mouth. He dropped it on the kitchen floor, a reminder of the cruelty of a world that lives by food.

After F. Lee’s death, someone asked me how I was. I said that I finally had enough hangers in the closet. I don’t think that that is what I meant to say. Or maybe it is.

Nashville
died
of
her
broken heart. She refused her food and simply called it quits.

An infection set in.

At the end, I myself injected the sodium pentobarbital.

I felt upstaged by the dog, will you just listen to me!

But the fact is, I think all of us were loved just the same. The love Flea gave to me was the same love he gave them. He did not say to the dogs, I will love you if you keep off the rug. He would love them no matter what they did.

It’s what I got, too.

I wanted conditions.

God, how’s that for an admission!

My husband said an animal can’t disappoint you. I argued this, too. I said, Of course it can. What about the dog who goes on the rug? How does it feel when your efforts to alter behavior come to nothing?

I
know
how it feels.

I would like to think bigger thoughts. But it looks like I don’t have a memory of our life that does not include one of the animals.