Nine
When they arrived at Pru’s apartment the next day, Annali dashed right after Big Whoop. He backed away but, to Pru’s surprise, let her pick him up and cuddle him. He was so big that Annali could barely get him off the floor.
There was a note on the kitchen table from McKay: “Love your boy. Call me when you’re back.”
“He likes this one the best,” she said to Annali, giving her the toy that looked like a spider on a long, thin wire. Annali waved it in front of Whoop, who jumped and snatched it out of the air. Annali let out a shriek, and dropped the toy.
While Pru unpacked, Annali wandered around the apartment. She said, in her slow monotone, “Aunt Prudence, where is your TV?”
“No TV,” Pru said cheerfully. “What should we do instead?”
Annali shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”
She tried to remember what she’d seen her friend Fiona’s kids doing. “Well, how about Go Fish? Would you like that?”
Annali nodded. They sat on the floor and Pru dealt out the cards. Annali fingered her knit hat and sucked her thumb until Pru told her to pick up her cards. It quickly became apparent that she had never in her life played Go Fish. “I’ll start,” said Pru. “Do you have any sixes?”
She solemnly nodded.
“So, you give them to me.”
She looked at her cards carefully, then handed Pru a card. It was the jack of hearts.
Pru looked at Annali’s cards. “You don’t have any sixes. You say, Go fish.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t. Okay, I’m fishing. Now it’s your turn.”
“Do you have any sixes?”
“Annali, you don’t have any sixes, so you can’t ask me for sixes. You have to have something to ask me for it.”
“Go fish,” Annali said.
Pru began to gather the cards. “I know,” she said, “let’s play matching.”
She showed Annali how to turn all the cards face down and match them. After a while, Annali went back to her thumb and her hat, and watched Pru match up all the cards.
Annali looked up and suddenly said, “Tell me a story.”
Pru frowned. She could never tell a story on the spot like that. Her mother was the one with the knack for inventing little adventure tales. Whenever Pru would try, she ended up using something they’d just seen in one of Annali’s videos. In her stories, Annali was always climbing up a tree to retrieve her honey pot or making friends with a big red dog. Besides which, she found herself irritated that Annali wouldn’t let her finish the matching game.
“Let’s play something else,” Pru said.
“Okay, let’s make believe.”
“That sounds good.” But her heart sank. She didn’t really want to do any of these things. What did she think Annali was going to say, Let’s read the last three weeks of The New Yorker and go to bed early?
“You be Mary Poppins and I’ll be Jane Banks.”
“Okay,” said Pru.
They sat there staring at each other. Annali’s mouth made little sucking sounds around her thumb.
Pru couldn’t remember much of Mary Poppins. She’d seen it only once in her life, when she was six. “Spit-spot?” she ventured.
The thumb came out. “Make me take my medicine.”
“Here’s your medicine.”
“No!” Annali cried. “You have to say, Children who get their feet wet must learn to take their medicine. Then I say, Cherry cordial, and you say, Rum punch.”
They did that, then did it fifteen thousand times more.
Finally it was time for Annali’s dinner and blessedly early bedtime. Although Pru had meant to stuff fresh veggies into the girl, Annali absolutely refused to eat the steamed spinach and carrots Pru put before her. Pru was forced to prepare mac and cheese she’d gotten from the health food store, but Annali rejected it, too, saying it was the wrong kind of mac and cheese. At bath time, the shampoo Pru used to get the sand out of Annali’s hair burned her eyes and made her cry, and then they got into an argument over whether Annali was supposed to get five books before bed, or four. Lord, but Patsy had spoiled that child! Annali definitely wasn’t the same kid she was six months ago, when she was still delighted by anything Pru did. “Lie down with me!” Annali cried, when Pru turned off the lights. “Open the door! More, more!”
“It’s a good thing you’re so dang super-cute,” Pru said. “Otherwise I’d eat your head.”
Annali giggled and made room in the bed. Pru sighed, then crawled in next to her. She’d been warned that Annali absolutely would not fall asleep without a grown-up. She’d had secret thoughts about breaking Annali of that habit, too, but she was tired. She’d already tested her willpower against Annali’s, and was found wanting.
Annali sang softly and played with her hat for a while, pushing her feet into it and stretching it out, until Pru said to stop and go to sleep. When Annali’s mouth had fallen open and her breathing was deep and slow, Pru slipped out, and began to search the kitchen for a drink. She felt the need to exercise, however tenuously, her prerogatives as a grown-up. Which meant, in this case, getting a little drunk while looking at the new Pottery Barn catalogue.
Just as she was about to sit down with her usual dinner of tuna and crackers, she heard shrieks coming from the bedroom. Pru jumped up and hurried to the bedroom, her heart pounding in her chest. Annali was sitting up in bed, crying. There were monsters under the bed, she said. She saw one.
“It was just the cat, honey.”
“There was a monster!”
“You know there’s no such thing as monsters,” Pru said. Annali cried harder.
“Spray them!” she yelled, bouncing
