Free Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll Page A

chance to turn around and see what she was talking about, Josephine had crossed the hall to the living room and walked over to a potbellied stove, an original Railway King he’d found years ago at a junk store and lovingly restored to its original condition. She took something off the top of the stove and turning to him, extended her hand.
    She held a small aluminum coffeepot. An Italian Bialetti Brikka Lola bought on a visit to her home in Gallarate many years ago. It was one of his few truly treasured possessions because stained, streaked, and scratched as it was, it held the memories of thousands of breakfasts together, snow out in the yard, or the kitchen windows wide open to let the redolent summer breezes blow through, Lola’s dark red lipstick on a white mug, her scratchy cigarette voice saying to him, “This morning I am arrapata for you. Come on, enough coffee, let’s go back to bed.”
    Edmonds looked at the coffeepot and then at Josephine. Taking it out of her hand he placed it back on top of the stove. She snatched it off and jumped away from him when he reached for it.
    “Give it to me. Come on, kid, don’t fool around.”
    “Nope. You have to start thinking now. You really have to get going.”
    Edmonds’s first impulse was to just grab the girl and get his damned coffeepot back. But her voice was so solemn and adult that it made him hesitate. “What do you want from me? What are you doing here?”
    Ignoring his questions, she walked around the living room instead, stopping here and there to examine specific objects. All the while she held the silver Brikka to her chest with two hands as if it were a doll.
    “This whole room is full of signs and reminders, Edmonds. Don’t you recognize any of them? How can you not see?”
    What she said made him feel both stupid and cross. It was not a good mix for this choleric man, especially coming from the mouth of a sassy eight-year-old child. “And you’re totally annoying. How can you not see that ?” he spat out.
    “You were supposed to have a daughter named Josephine with Lola, but they decided against it. I’m sorry. It would have been nice for her to live here with you. I really like your house.”
    He heard what she said but could find no words to respond. His daughter, Josephine? They ?
    She put his coffeepot on a side table and sat down on the sofa. Her legs were so short they didn’t touch the floor. “Do you want to know why not? Because sometimes children touch a universal core. When it happens, you start remembering things. They didn’t want you to remember anything … until now.
    “All right, let’s try this.” Josephine went to the other side of the room and took an object off a shelf there. It was a small netsuke figure of a sumo wrestler. Holding it out on her open palm, she extended it in front of her toward Edmonds.
    He looked at the little sumo and said, “Keebler.”
    The girl shook her head: she didn’t understand what he was talking about.
    “Lola called him Keebler. I don’t know why. When she bought it she said that’s what his name was. When I asked why, she said it’s just Keebler.”
    Josephine put the brown figure down next to the silver coffeepot. “Do you see anything? Seeing the Keebler and your coffeepot sitting there next to each other like that?”
    Edmonds studied the tableau a long time. “No.”
    Frustrated, Josephine rubbed both cheeks very fast with open hands. “This is going to take forever . Okay. We’ve got to get started.”
    *   *   *
     
    Several months later Edmonds stood in his living room, thinking about what Josephine had just said about her visit to Kaspar Benn. Stretching his thick arms over his head, he alternately reached left/right/left/right for the ceiling. Then joining his hands together, he slowly stretched up till he heard a satisfying crack in either his neck or back—he could never be sure which one it was when he did this. He rolled his shoulders forward a few times, a