Animal

of being the boss’s pet. I remember she came around to my desk, smiling at me dreamily. She’d probably been ten or so and I’d been twenty-seven. She introduced herself and didn’t say much more, just smiled and hung around my desk until her father called her away. He must have told her I was a star or something, a real go-getter in the advertising world. He must have said something so that she’d take note of me because he wanted to show me off to everyone in his orbit, even his own child. Women always talk about how men are so compartmentalized, how they can fuck some cosmetics manager all week, then go home and play Scrabble with their kids and scratch their wife’s back. But Vic had just one compartment and it was only for me. His love for his children was real and large, no doubt, but his mania for me was tantamount.

—Eleanor, I said.

—You used to be hot, she said, adjusting the wire-rimmed glasses on her face.

I blinked. She wore frayed jean shorts and a pair of white sneakers and a pullover sweatshirt that said ESPRIT in large rainbow letters across the front.

—Thanks, I said.

—Do you know why I’m here? she said. It sounded foreboding because of how nice and childlike her face was. But for the same reason it also sounded ridiculous.

—I think so, I said. Her hands were trembling inside her pullover, which she was using like a muffler.

—Do you want to invite me inside?

—Wouldn’t that be stupid of me?

—I’ll do it right here, I don’t care.

I could see she thought she meant it. She was soaked through with pain and rage. I’d been there before, I understood exactly. But how could I be afraid of this little girl, of my child self, standing there on the threshold?

I told her to come inside. I opened the door wide and walked backward. Eleanor advanced slowly, pulling a gun from the front pocket of her pullover. It was marvelous in its smallness and blackness and made her seem like an adult.

She kept the gun pointed at me. Gradually her hands stopped trembling. She looked up at the high ceilings of my oven of a house.

—Not what you pictured? I asked.

She shook her head.

—Not like the movies, I said.

—Fuck you, she said. Fuck you! Sit down!

I sat down at the kitchen table and she advanced until she was four feet away. I assumed that was the distance at which she was confident about hitting her target.

—I can see your nipples, she said softly.

I looked down at them. All talk of nipples made me think of my mother. In her big round eyeglasses with her layered blond hair and her white seventies breasts. She was the buxom beautiful of movie stars. Her nipples were enormous. You could see them through wool sweaters.

—Do you want to hear a story? she asked. The gun was pointed at my head. I told her that of course I did.

—You probably already know, she began, how we go as a family to Anguilla every year.

I nodded. Vic had spun it to me as his wife’s trip, the highlight of her cold season, their Easter jaunt to Anguilla.

—Last year, she continued, Dad told us at the last minute he couldn’t go. He said he had to work and it couldn’t be remote. He had to be in the office. Such a fucking load, and we knew it. My mom was really upset. I think she knew about you or at least had an idea about you. She swept it under the rug, I guess. But Anguilla was really important to her. It was like the only time she had my dad in front of her every day for ten days. It was heaven for my mom. We’d get a nanny, too, this girl from the island, and she’d watch Robbie for most of the time so my mom could pretend she was this free woman with her husband, you know? Every night is date night on Anguilla, she said. She drank a lot, which she never did at home, and she was just so happy. Dad was happy, too, I mean especially in the beginning when I was a little kid, before Robbie was born, he and I would go snorkeling and shell picking and we built sandcastles and collected sand crabs. After Robbie, it was hard. My dad sort of detached from things, not from me so much but from my mom and Robbie. They were like this set of broken dolls or something. I think he thought that if he detached from them, he could live a normal life.

She looked like she was about to start crying. I asked if she wanted to sit down. She moved slowly and sat across from me. The table was long enough that she could keep the gun resting on it and pointed at my neck without worrying about my reaching and trying to grab for it. She talked as though we were friends and she needed to unload. Like she was me and I was Alice.

—Two days before the trip, he said he couldn’t go. Literally two days. My mom was devastated. She had all their stuff packed in one suitcase. She’d been walking four miles every day to lose her “pooch” and she’d bought all these outfits. She said they should just postpone it and he said no, no. We would lose all our money, the flights, the house we rented. He was really smart, I’m sure you know, calculated like that. He told her after it was too late to do anything about it. He said, The kids deserve it, you deserve it. You’ve got to go. I didn’t get it then. She knew what was going on and it was killing her, that he was sending her away so he could be with you, uninterrupted or whatever.

I thought back to the previous April. Big Sky had gone on a camping trip with