Protecting Marie (11 page)

He winked at her and vanished down the hallway.

While Dinner sniffed around the bedroom, Fanny prepared a space for her between the dresser and the radiator, folding Dinner's afghan into a rectangle as best she could, given the afghan's shabby state. “There,” she said, patting the afghan. “This is your bed.”

Dinner slunk over to Fanny, turned a circle, then dropped heavily with a sigh. She became compact as a suitcase, with her legs pulled in, her tail tucked under her legs, and her head curled snugly against her chest. She batted her eyes and sighed again.

“Please, sleep here,” Fanny said. “This is your room, too, you know.” She was on her knees peering directly into Dinner's eyes. It was difficult for Fanny to turn her gaze away.

But that's exactly what she managed to do. She was tired. Her own familiar bed had never looked so soft and thick and good. Fanny switched her fan on, and she left the door ajar in case Dinner wanted to leave. As she wrapped her puffy comforter around her and jiggled her legs to warm the sheets, she concentrated intensely and said the word
stay
in her head.

STAY.

They both fell asleep in minutes. The sheets were still icy.

Fanny awoke in the middle of the night. She heard Dinner's tags rattle and her nails click against the floor. The sounds had been part of a dream, sounds that grew more clear until Fanny could almost feel them, and she started. She was crestfallen when she realized what the sounds truly were, when she realized that Dinner had risen and left the bedroom.

However, when Fanny woke up in the morning, she was elated to find Dinner back in her room, lying smack in the middle of the
afghan. As soon as Fanny stirred, Dinner stretched and hurried to the side of the bed, her tail wagging fiercely. They greeted each other with pats (from Fanny) and licks (from Dinner), and they inadvertently did a funny little dance as Fanny, with Dinner at her heels, stumbled putting on her socks and robe.

They bumped into the door, and Fanny's Advent calendar fell to the floor. She picked it up and refastened it. Because of the confusion of the past two days, Fanny had forgotten all about it.

Ellen had bought the Advent calendar for Fanny when she was a toddler. Fanny took it out of her file cabinet every year and hung it in her room. Instead of windows or doors, there were numbered tabs on the calendar, which, when pulled, revealed chubby angels with sturdy wings and red mittens carrying lanterns. The angels were hidden behind snow-laden pine trees. The angel for the twenty-fourth day was taller than the rest, and slender. More solemn looking, even rueful. She carried one large lighted candle; her head
was wreathed in stars. Against the midnight blue sky, she glowed. Fanny had named her Sparkle right from the start.

Fanny tried to remember exactly what Sparkle looked like each year. But she always made herself wait until Christmas Eve to see how closely the picture in her mind matched the real thing. It was a point of pride with her—to wait.

With Dinner at her side, Fanny slid back the tabs she had already pulled, concealing the angels that had reappeared this year. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. Then she said, “Watch this, Dinner.” Fanny tugged each and every tab as quickly as she could, drawing out all the angels. Even Sparkle. She was as beautiful as ever.

“Now let's go wake up the house,” Fanny said to Dinner.

It may not have been December twenty-fifth yet, but as far as Fanny was concerned, Christmas had arrived.

I
t was December twenty-third.

Then it was December twenty-fourth.

And then it was December twenty-fifth.

And Dinner managed to accomplish what neither Ellen nor Henry ever had; Dinner provided for Fanny a sense of calm concerning Christmas. Because Dinner was there—and
belonged to Fanny—nothing else seemed so important or crucial. Dinner eased Fanny's expectations. Any other year, Fanny would have been disappointed. She would have protested—at least with a sigh or momentary sullenness—even the smallest changes or imperfections. But not this year. Not since Dinner had arrived. Who cared if they hadn't baked all the different kinds of cookies? Who cared if Ellen forgot to buy red gumdrops to use as the garnish for the glazed ham and had to settle for cranberries? Who cared if Henry fell asleep during his traditional Christmas Eve reading of “The Snow Queen” and Fanny had to finish it herself? Dinner eclipsed it all. The days passed just as they should have, like the turning of pages in a quietly lovely book.

Fanny's newly acquired attitude faltered only once, and briefly. That was when Henry received his Christmas gift from her. She was always slightly apprehensive when this part of the morning came upon them, because she wanted to please him, and he was difficult to please.

Without hesitation, Henry said that he was delighted by her gift, and she could tell that he was being truthful. “I'll use these,” he told her. “I will definitely use these.” He lowered his head, his eyes veiled, and carefully studied the contents of the cardboard box he had just slit open with his Swiss army knife. The box held about a dozen vases, bottles, and bowls that Fanny had found in the antique stores and resale shops near campus. Henry plucked his reading glasses from the pocket of his sport jacket and hooked the wire bows over his ears. The glasses were perched at the very tip of his nose, and he went back and forth from looking through them to looking over them. The lenses glinted. Henry rubbed the lip of one vase and raised another vase up to the light. “Perhaps these will get my painting moving again.”

“Good,” Fanny said in a hushed voice, squeezing her shoulders in and up toward her ears. She smiled with relief. In no time at all, her heart slowed down and she was back to her old new-self.

It had been months since Henry had
finished a painting, although he would sit in his studio for hours on end, every chance he could get. Fanny thought that her father's artwork revealed his personality better than even a photograph of him did. He painted in oil on canvas and panel. His paintings were carefully rendered arrangements of bottles, cups, saucers, vases, and bowls. The well-ordered groupings of vessels usually sat on highly polished tabletops. Sometimes he would add a Moonglow pear or a Golden Russet apple balancing on the edge of the table. Sometimes he would place something discordant, like a rusty knife, in an exquisite, clear handblown vase, or paint a vase that had just been broken. Sometimes there would be a sere, saffron landscape behind the table. But more often than not, it was the vessels alone, against a simple background. The vessels were usually opaque, and the perspective from which they were painted was such that one couldn't see the insides of them.

Once Fanny had said to her father, “I always imagine the bowls and jars filled with
wonderful things. Like chocolate and peppermints and bubble bath.”

“Huh,” Henry had mumbled in response, sizing up the painting on his easel. “I always thought of them as being empty. Barren. Remote. I assumed that that's what everyone thought.”

Regardless of her interpretation of his work, she never ceased to marvel at it. How can paint from a tube and mere brushes re-create water droplets on a pear or the pinprick of light on the handle of a teacup? Somehow what Henry painted was more real to Fanny than the actual objects.

While Fanny and Ellen opened their presents, Henry returned to his box from Fanny. From time to time, he stared off, vacantly. Fanny knew that he was thinking about painting. She recognized the look.

She saw the look again, later in the day, when they were ice skating on the green across the street. By now, Fanny was overfed and somewhat sleepy. She was wearing three of her gifts—a bulky wool sweater patterned
with an intricate design of cables and ribs, mittens that Ellen had knitted, and a mother-of-pearl bracelet that looked like a ring of iridescent seeds.

When they had first come out, Henry and Fanny passed a hockey puck back and forth while Ellen skated backward, limning the edge of the rink. Dinner bounded joyfully from one side of the small park to the other, seemingly excited by the cold air and the few slow, lingering snowflakes. She snapped at the snowflakes. She chased the puck. She sniffed the tree trunks. Her legs twisted, and she lost her balance on the ice just like Fanny remembered Bambi doing in the Disney movie.

This was only the second time that Fanny had been skating this year. Her skates still felt a bit foreign. Last year when Fanny had needed new skates, Henry had insisted that she get her first pair of hockey skates. “You'll like them better than figure skates,” he had told her. “I'll get you a hockey stick to go with them, and then we can play together. I'll teach you a thing or two.”

At first, Fanny had missed her figure skates. She missed the row of jagged points on the front of the blades that allowed her to stop. Stopping with hockey skates was difficult, but she was learning. Henry could do it expertly. He'd bring his skates together and turn them to the side with a sharp, quick motion that would send up a spray of ice and make a cold, clean
shishhh
. Hockey skates also looked boxy and thick compared to her figure skates. To alleviate this, Fanny had dotted and striped the toes with red nail polish and changed the laces from white to magenta. She had to admit that by the end of last winter she had grown fond of the skates. Her feet had finally felt comfortable in them. However, now that it was a new season, she had to start that process all over again.

Thwack!
Fanny slapped the puck to Henry as hard as she could. It sailed between his feet and landed in a snowbank. He didn't even notice.

“Daydreaming?” she yelled.

No answer.

Fanny skated over to her father. Her steamy breath curled around her neck and dissipated. “You missed the puck,” she told him.

“What? Oh,” Henry said indistinctly.

Fanny stared at her father staring away. That's when she realized that he was thinking about painting again. A snowflake caught in his eyebrow.

“I guess I've had enough,” he finally said. “My wrists are sore and my knees aren't up to it. I'm going to call it quits with hockey for today. Let's just skate.” Henry laid his hockey stick down and floated away slowly across the ice.

Of course, by this hour it was dark, and the streetlamp in the far corner of the park was on. It seemed to Fanny that night not only came early, but quickly, as if the sun were tied to a string and suddenly yanked away. Fanny tossed her hockey stick into the shadows near her father's and scurried off after him.

Rarf. Rarf-rarf-rarf.
Dinner pranced up behind Fanny. She crossed in front of Fanny, then circled her wide.

“Here, Dinner,” Fanny said, smacking her thighs. “Come.”

Dinner came.

“Sit,” Fanny added firmly.

Dinner sat.

Fanny unhooked Dinner's leash from around her own waist and put it back on the dog. “Pull me,” Fanny commanded. But Dinner didn't understand. She wanted only to face Fanny and jump, to be petted, to be stroked behind her ears, to lick Fanny's cheeks, to fetch the tennis ball in Fanny's coat pocket, to play her own way. “Okay, then let's skate together,” said Fanny as though she were talking to her best friend, working out a compromise. “Let's chase Dad.”

They found a rhythm. Dinner led the way and Fanny skated briskly to keep up. She would glide, glide, then let herself be pulled for a few seconds. It was exactly what she had wanted in the first place. Fanny watched their shadows grow and shrink and grow again. When her shadow was dramatically elongated and pointy, Fanny waved her arms and hands
wildly. I'm a carrot monster, she thought. Better yet, an icicle monster. Then, with her fingers crossed inside her mittens for good luck, Fanny tried to reverse and move backward, but she got tangled in Dinner's leash and fell. So Henry caught up with them before they caught up with him.

The three of them joined Ellen.

“My mother,” Fanny said in the faintest whisper, her mittened hand at her mouth, while Ellen formed a figure eight.