Free Large Animals in Everyday Life by Wendy Brenner Page A

time. It was something else. Something has changed. She thought she heard music, but there is no music. She was having a dream, maybe that’s what it was. Her little bedroom is quiet and blue-gray, as usual, her sheets still tucked neatly into the corners of her little twin bed, holding her snugly in place. But something has changed. She lies there warily, trying to remember her dream.
    What comes to mind instead is her son, who as a child always awoke from his dreams bewildered or heartbroken. “There’s a canoe in my bed!” he’d exclaimed to her one time, nearly weeping with excitement. “Oh, where are you going?” she had asked, keeping her voice casual. He seemed taken aback by this, and after a moment he told her he didn’t know. “Well, are you happy?” she asked him gently. “Yes,” he’d said, and then he looked relieved, and she herself had nearly wept with relief, tucking him back in. And what was it her husband always said, when she returned to their bed? He had not approved.
You are not making it any better for him, always being there
, he would say. What do you know about it? she would argue, and he would rollover to his side of the bed, saying,
Fine, have it your way, but only in your absence will he learn
. Only in your absence …
    The child! The dream that woke her crashes, almost audibly, back into her brain. The child was there, tied to her wrist with some kind of yellow string, but the knots were poorly tied and the child came loose, suddenly floating upward and away from her against a clear white sky. She had no time, no chance to stop it, the child was already too far up, looking back down at her with a puzzled expression.
Grandmother
? the child called uncertainly. She was not yet panicked, only confused. The grandmother tried to yell but no sound came, and when she tried to leap after the child, the weight of what must have been the whole earth held her down. Her heart beat like a bird against a window.
Grandmother
? the child called, but her thin voice was moving steadily away, getting harder and harder to hear, her body growing impossibly small against the giant sky.
Can you hear me? Grandmother
?
    She lies in bed, her hand on her heart. The child is fine, the child is safe, she is not in the sky, she’s at home. She is in her bedroom, tidying up, the grandmother can see her now.
    She understands now what has changed. And it is odd, incidentally, very odd, for she has always assumed, like most people, that it is the dead who float off toward the sky, the living who remain below. For this is what has changed: Her secret has arrived. It will be a secret no longer.
    The idea that she should be frightened registers like a speck of dust on a distant backdrop, then vanishes. She shuts her eyes and focuses on the child, whom she can see as clearly as if it were full daylight. The child is in her room, on the floor, kneeling over something on the yellow carpet and concentrating hard, her hair making a shiny curtain that covers her eyes on both sides, like blinders. Around her the room is tidy, the pine toy-chest closed, the polka-dotted comforter covering the bed, the mismatched stuffed animals set up in a neat half-circle on ashelf. The child has learned from her grandmothers the importance of taking care of one’s belongings, the necessity of surrounding one’s self with beautiful things. The child crouches now, engrossed in some scrap of paper or bit of cloth, oblivious. But around her, everything is in place, everything is exactly as it will need to be.

success story
    Claire from upstairs had a brother who from the time he was little would go outside and come back in with snakes, snakes nobody even saw until he casually picked them out of the grass and offered them for your view. This was something Claire told me, and after she told me I could not seem to hear or see enough of him. He and Claire were tall, handsome interns at a stable,