Work Text:
Jenny had been looking at the coins for so long that Alexis finally asked whether she expected one of them to change its mind. They were spread across the kitchen table between them in a crooked little row, not because Jenny had arranged them that way initially but because each time Alexis finished counting, Jenny moved one to check something and the whole arrangement had to begin again. The smallest coin continued to offend her. Alexis had explained twice that the dime was worth more than the nickel despite being smaller, and Jenny had accepted the information without accepting the principle. She picked the dime up now between finger and thumb, held it beside the nickel and said, with the grave patience of somebody pointing out an obvious administrative mistake, “But this one's little.” Alexis, who had already learned that correcting Jenny was easier than persuading her that the world made sense, said, “Yes, it is.” Jenny put both coins down and waited. Alexis added, “It's still ten cents.” Jenny’s mouth tightened thoughtfully. “They should make the ten one bigger.” Alexis said she agreed completely and would complain to the government the next time somebody from the government came to the door. Jenny studied her face for evidence that this was a joke, found enough to make the corner of her mouth turn up, and returned to the coins.
The kitchen around them had the Sunday-afternoon quiet of a room that had recently been used and would be used again soon. A dish towel hung from the oven handle. Two cups sat beside the sink, one with a dark coffee line cooling around the inside. The brownstone’s radiator gave a small iron knock beneath the window, followed by a hiss that made Jenny glance at it even though she had heard the sound all her life. Through the glass, the January sky over Brooklyn Heights was pale and colourless, and the upper branches of the trees scratched against it whenever the wind moved them. Cecilia sat farther down the table with a newspaper folded into a narrow column and did not participate in the counting. She had looked up when Alexis first emptied Jenny’s little ceramic dish onto the table and asked what they were doing. Alexis had answered that Jenny wanted to buy something at Feldman’s by herself. Cecilia had said, “She’s not going by herself,” without any particular alarm, merely stating the boundary as though correcting a measurement. Alexis replied that she would walk behind her. Cecilia considered that, looked briefly at Jenny and said, “Stay on this block. She doesn’t cross alone.” Alexis said she knew. Cecilia returned to the newspaper, and that was permission.
Jenny had not liked the phrase walk behind at first because it contained Alexis and therefore seemed incompatible with by myself. Her idea had been simpler. Feldman’s stood only a short way down the block, past the dry cleaner and the narrow shop that sold lamps in a window always brighter than the street. She had walked there many times with other people. She knew the bell above the door, knew the sweets were near the register and that greeting cards lived on a spinning rack close to the newspapers, knew Mr. Feldman had grey hair above his ears and sometimes gave children a paper bag even when what they bought did not need one. Jenny understood the route and therefore saw no reason another person had to belong to it. Alexis listened while she explained this, then said, “You can walk there yourself. I’ll just happen to be going the same way several steps back.” Jenny considered the distinction carefully and asked how many steps. Alexis suggested four. Jenny said six. They settled on five after a negotiation that Alexis conducted with a seriousness Jenny appreciated.
The money itself had become possible because Jenny rarely spent any of the coins people gave her. She liked keeping them in the small dish on her dresser, where their mixed colours and edges made a satisfying heap she could stir with one finger. Sometimes an older sibling dropped a coin there after finding it in a pocket. Sometimes a visiting relative gave her one for no reason Jenny understood beyond adults occasionally deciding children should possess money. Alexis had helped her count what she could spend without emptying the dish completely. Jenny disliked that idea at once. She wanted to buy something, but she did not want the dish to be empty afterward. An empty dish would look as though the money had never existed. Alexis therefore divided the coins into two groups and slid one back toward her, saying, “This stays home.” Jenny’s relief was immediate enough to make Alexis hide a smile.
What Jenny intended to buy remained uncertain. She had been very clear about the activity and strangely unconcerned about its object. Alexis asked whether she wanted sweets, and Jenny said maybe. A pencil? Maybe. Stickers? Maybe. Alexis asked why she wanted to go shopping if she did not know what she wanted. Jenny looked genuinely surprised that this presented a problem. “I’ll see it there,” she said, as though shops naturally revealed the correct purchase to a person once she arrived. Alexis could not argue with that logic because she had used it herself.
When the counting was finished, Alexis found a small purse in the hall cupboard, dark red with a brass clasp and a strap short enough not to swing against Jenny’s knees. It had belonged to someone else first, like many things in the house, but Jenny cared more about whether objects worked than whether they were new. She opened and shut the clasp several times before placing the coins inside. The click pleased her. She opened it again to confirm the money remained there. Alexis said, “It’s not a trapdoor.” Jenny told her she knew, clicked it shut and opened it once more anyway. Cecilia turned a page of the newspaper. Jenny heard it and glanced toward her mother, then pulled the purse closer to herself, not hiding it exactly, only keeping the little project within the part of the room that belonged to her and Alexis.
Alexis helped her into the old navy coat she had outgrown years before. On Jenny it was too large in every direction, the cuffs folded back twice and the hem falling low on her legs, but it was warm, which mattered more. Alexis buttoned the top button and then stopped herself before doing the rest. Jenny noticed. She took over, pushing each button carefully through its hole. The last one took longer because the fabric bunched under her fingers. Alexis waited rather than reaching in. When Jenny finally got it through, she smoothed the front with both palms and said, “I did it.” Alexis said, “I saw,” in the same tone she might have used if Jenny had completed something much larger, without making the achievement ridiculous by praising it too much.
Cecilia looked up when they reached the kitchen doorway. “Straight there and back,” she said, and Jenny answered, “Feldman’s and back,” because repeating instructions made them settle more neatly in her head. Cecilia told her not to take her mittens off in the street. Jenny looked down at the mittens Alexis had clipped to her sleeves and said she wouldn’t. There was no kiss goodbye and Jenny did not wait for one. She had learned enough of the household’s weather even at that age to know where warmth could be expected and where asking for it only made the room feel colder. She turned toward the hall instead, purse pressed against the front of her coat, and Alexis followed after giving Cecilia a look Jenny did not see.
The outer door of the brownstone required more force than Jenny had anticipated. She pushed once and it moved only a few inches, letting in a blade of cold air along the edge. Alexis stayed behind her. Jenny pushed again with both hands and managed to open it far enough to slip through. She stood on the stoop while the door closed behind Alexis and immediately checked the purse. The coins made a small solid weight against her coat. Alexis said, “Five steps, remember?” and Jenny turned to look at her. “You’re too close.” Alexis had not yet moved. She counted five exaggerated paces backward, stopping near the railing. Jenny nodded approval, faced the street and began.
The block was familiar enough that Jenny knew where the pavement buckled near one tree and where a basement gate sometimes stood open in the afternoon, but walking it under her own authority altered its scale. She did not hold anybody’s hand. Nobody decided when she should stop. Nobody steered her around slower pedestrians with a touch at the shoulder. She chose the side of the pavement herself and kept close to the brownstones because adults moving toward her tended to occupy more space than they realised. A woman came past carrying two grocery bags whose paper sides brushed together with every step. Jenny moved nearer the railings before the woman reached her. The woman scarcely noticed, but Jenny noticed that the bag closest to her contained celery sticking from the top and a long loaf wrapped in white paper. She watched it pass and continued.
At the first basement entrance a man was struggling to manoeuvre a carton through a narrow gate. Jenny stopped well before him. He looked around, saw her waiting and said, “Go ahead, sweetheart, I won’t squash you.” Jenny considered the carton, then the available gap, and said, “I can wait.” The man laughed softly and finished moving the box. When the path was clear he thanked her as though she had done him a favour. Jenny replied, “You’re welcome,” with careful precision. Five steps behind, Alexis put both hands into her coat pockets and looked at a window across the street so Jenny would not catch her smiling.
A terrier in a knitted red coat nearly ruined the pace of the expedition. Jenny saw it outside the dry cleaner and slowed without meaning to. The dog saw her too, changing direction until its owner shortened the lead. Jenny looked first at the dog, then at the woman holding it, and asked, “May I touch him?” The woman said, “Of course, honey, he thinks everybody came outside to meet him.” Jenny crouched and let the terrier sniff one mitten before stroking the top of his head. His ears were softer than the coat looked. He tried to lick the end of her sleeve. Jenny laughed, a quick little sound she immediately seemed surprised to have made, and the woman told the dog not to eat people's clothes. Jenny said, “He didn’t,” in his defence. When the woman moved on, Jenny watched the red coat bounce halfway to the corner, then remembered the shop and resumed walking without Alexis needing to say anything.
Feldman’s had no single purpose Jenny could identify. The window contained newspapers, greeting cards, batteries, a snow shovel, two boxes of sweets and a handwritten notice about keys being cut at the counter. When Jenny pushed the door open, the bell above it rang brightly and Mr. Feldman looked up from a stack of magazines. He saw Jenny first, then Alexis entering five paces later, and whatever question he might have asked disappeared. Alexis went directly toward the newspapers without speaking to him. Mr. Feldman looked down at Jenny and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Lachkovics. What are we after today?” His use of her surname pleased her, though she would not have been able to explain why. It made the purse feel more official.
The difficulty was that Jenny had no answer. At home, “I’ll see it there” had been completely adequate. Faced with a man waiting politely behind a counter, the plan suddenly felt incomplete. She looked toward the shelves and said, “I’m buying something,” which was true but not helpful. Mr. Feldman nodded as if she had given him exactly the information he needed and said, “Then you should probably have a look.” Jenny visibly relaxed. “I can look myself,” she said. “I thought you might,” he answered, and went back to his magazines.
Jenny began with the sweets because they were nearest. Bright wrappers made the display easier to understand than most of the shop. She recognised chocolate bars Alexis sometimes bought, rolls of mints Cecilia kept in a drawer, fruit sweets River liked and a kind of caramel Jenny had once been given and found impossible to chew without feeling that her teeth might remain inside it forever. She put both mittened hands behind her back and studied the rows. A chocolate bar could be purchased and eaten. That seemed straightforward. She imagined carrying it home and placing it in the ceramic dish beside the coins she had saved, then realised this made no sense at all. Food should not go in the money dish. She moved on.
The stationery shelves were more interesting because almost everything there had a purpose that could be understood from shape. Pencils wrote. Erasers corrected. Notebooks held things. Jenny picked up a small pad with a kitten on the cover, then looked toward Mr. Feldman and asked, “Can I hold this?” He told her she already was. She glanced down at her hand, recognised the literal problem with the question and said, “I mean is it all right?” Mr. Feldman assured her it was. She opened the cover and touched the first blank sheet. The paper was smooth. She liked the kitten. She also had paper at home. She put it back exactly where she had found it.
Alexis remained by the newspapers, although she had now been pretending to read the same front page for several minutes. Jenny looked toward her once and caught her examining something in the lower corner of the page. Alexis did not look up. Jenny continued down the aisle, increasingly absorbed in the process of judging objects against people and places she knew. A packet of yellow pencils made her think of Wyatt because he was forever looking for one and then irritated when somebody suggested where he had left it. She considered buying him a pencil, then remembered there were already pencils in his room. A hair ribbon reminded her of River, but Jenny could not remember River ever wearing that colour. A little packet of adhesive stars looked beautiful under the fluorescent light and belonged immediately to nobody she could think of.
She reached the rotating rack of greeting cards and gave it a cautious push. The whole thing turned farther than she expected. Jenny caught it with both hands, looked toward Mr. Feldman, and said, “Sorry.” He told her nothing was broken. She turned it again more gently. There were birthday cakes, flowers, babies, balloons and cards full of words she could not read. Jenny knew letters individually and recognised some short words, but the longer messages remained closed to her. Pictures therefore mattered more. She found a card with two cats sitting beside each other on a windowsill. One cat was large and dark, the other small and pale, both facing the same moon.
Jenny stopped turning the rack.
She pulled the card out and held it by the edges. Something about the picture felt familiar in a way she could not name. The larger cat was not touching the smaller one. It was simply there beside it. Jenny looked across the shop toward Alexis. Her sister had finally abandoned the newspaper and was inspecting a rack of chewing gum with theatrical concentration.
The card remained in Jenny’s hands.
She carried it to the counter and pushed it upward toward Mr. Feldman. “How much is this?” she asked. He turned it over and told her. Jenny opened her purse. The coins had become mixed together during the walk, destroying the order Alexis had made at the kitchen table. She frowned and moved them with one mittened finger, then decided the mitten was making everything impossible. Cecilia had said not to take them off in the street. They were inside now. Jenny removed the right one, tucked it beneath her arm and counted.
The dime caused trouble again.
She put down a nickel when she meant ten cents, realised the total looked wrong and started over. Mr. Feldman waited. Jenny’s face grew warmer. She knew Alexis was in the shop and could solve the entire thing instantly. Asking would not ruin the purchase. She understood that. Still, she wanted to arrive at the number herself before anybody touched the money.
Mr. Feldman said, “No hurry, Miss Lachkovics. I’m open until six.”
Jenny looked up. He was smiling, but not in the broad way adults sometimes smiled when children did something ordinary and were expected to feel impressive. He simply had nowhere else to be for the next minute. Jenny looked back down.
“This is ten,” she said, touching the dime.
“It is.”
“And this is five.”
“Yes.”
She put them together. “Fifteen.”
Mr. Feldman nodded.
Jenny added the next coin and reached the price correctly on the second attempt. She pushed the little group toward him. “That’s it.”
“That is exactly it.”
Her shoulders lowered.
Mr. Feldman opened the register, put the coins away and asked whether she wanted a bag. Jenny looked at the card. A bag would make it feel more like a purchase, but the card did not need one. “A little one,” she said after considering the environmental and ceremonial dimensions as far as a nearly four-year-old could be expected to do. Mr. Feldman found the smallest paper sack beneath the counter and slid the card inside.
Alexis arrived beside Jenny only after the bag had been placed in her hands. “All done?” she asked. Jenny said yes, then added, “I had the right money.” Alexis looked toward Mr. Feldman, who nodded solemnly. “She did,” he confirmed. Jenny corrected him at once. “The second time.” Mr. Feldman accepted the amendment. “The second time.” Alexis said that sounded like plenty.
Only outside did she ask what Jenny had bought. Jenny stopped on the pavement, put the mitten back on and held the bag close to her chest. “Something.” Alexis raised her eyebrows. “I gathered that much.” Jenny looked at her sister’s face, then at the bag, and seemed to reconsider whether the purchase was meant to remain private until home. “It’s for somebody.” Alexis nodded. “All right.” She did not ask who.
This restraint nearly gave her away.
Jenny had lived with Alexis long enough to know that most people would have asked a second question. Alexis often did not. She left an empty place in conversations and allowed Jenny to decide whether to fill it. That was part of why Jenny had thought of her when she saw the cats, though at nearly four she would not have arranged the feeling in those terms. She only knew that Alexis was good at waiting and that when Jenny had woken crying two nights earlier after a dream she could no longer remember, a square of chocolate had appeared on the edge of her pillow the next morning. Nobody had mentioned it. Jenny had known where it came from.
She resumed the walk home with the bag tucked beneath one arm and the purse hanging against her coat. Alexis fell five steps behind again without being reminded. Jenny crossed no streets. She stopped to watch a bus pull away because the spray from its tyres made a grey fan along the curb. She noticed a woman struggling to hold a shop door while pushing a pram through and stood out of the way until both passed. At the dry cleaner, the terrier was gone. Jenny looked briefly for the red coat and then continued.
Halfway home she opened the purse to check the remaining coins. There were fewer now, enough of a change that the bottom showed through between them. She stirred them once with a mittened finger, heard the small clink and seemed satisfied. The ceramic dish would not be empty. That mattered.
At the brownstone door she insisted on opening it herself again. The first push failed. Jenny planted one boot against the threshold and used both hands. The door yielded slowly enough that Alexis moved closer in case it swung back, but she did not touch it. Jenny squeezed through, held it with one shoulder and waited for Alexis to follow. “You can come with me now,” she said once they were inside. Alexis replied, “Very generous,” and Jenny gave her a look that suggested she recognised teasing but had chosen to permit it.
Cecilia was still in the kitchen, though the newspaper had been replaced by a cup of coffee and a small stack of household papers. She looked up when Jenny entered. “You stayed on the block?” she asked. Jenny said she had. Cecilia’s eyes went to Alexis for confirmation. Alexis nodded once. Cecilia asked whether Jenny had spent all the money. Jenny opened the purse and showed that she had not. Cecilia said, “Good,” and returned to the papers. Jenny stood for another second, perhaps waiting to see whether more would follow, then turned away without visible disappointment. Alexis had already begun removing her coat.
In the hallway Jenny struggled with one sleeve because the purse strap had tangled beneath it. Alexis started to reach over, stopped, and waited. Jenny twisted her arm until the strap came free and then pulled the coat off herself. She hung it on the lowest peg, though the hem still brushed the floor, and carried the paper bag toward the stairs. Alexis asked whether she wanted help with the purse. Jenny said no and climbed carefully, one hand on the banister.
Alexis found her several minutes later sitting on the bedroom floor with the card beside her. Jenny had discovered that buying a card introduced an unforeseen requirement: something was meant to be written inside. The blank white space troubled her. She had opened the card expecting perhaps another picture or some indication of what came next. Instead there was only emptiness and a printed line she could not read. Alexis sat down against the side of the bed and asked, “Did Feldman sell you unfinished goods?” Jenny looked at the card and said, “I have to put words.”
“You can.”
“I can’t write all the words.”
“I can write whatever you tell me.”
Jenny looked at Alexis, then closed the card quickly.
Alexis waited.
Jenny held it against her knees and said, “You can’t write it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s yours.”
Alexis’s expression changed before she could stop it.
Jenny watched closely, which meant she saw.
“For me?”
Jenny nodded.
The moment immediately became too large for her liking. She looked down and worried one corner of the paper bag between her fingers. Alexis did not hug her or exclaim or ask why in a voice that would require Jenny to explain feelings she had only understood as a picture of two cats. She simply held out her hand and said, “Can I see?”
Jenny gave her the card.
Alexis looked at the front. The large dark cat sat beside the smaller pale one beneath the moon, their tails resting close together on the sill without touching. She opened the card, looked at the empty inside and then back at Jenny. “This is excellent stationery,” she said. Jenny relaxed slightly. “It looked like you.” Alexis looked at the cats again. “Which one?” Jenny pointed to the large dark one. Alexis asked, “Why?” Jenny considered saying because it sits there, but this seemed incomplete. She considered because you’re bigger, which was true but not the reason. Finally she said, “Because the little one doesn’t have to ask it.”
Alexis became very still.
Jenny had not intended profundity. She was thinking of ordinary things. Alexis putting chocolate on a pillow without requiring thanks. Alexis moving more slowly when Jenny’s legs could not keep up. Alexis waiting while buttons took too long. Alexis sitting at a kitchen table and counting coins again because the dime remained unreasonable. To Jenny, these things did not form a theory of love. They were merely Alexis.
Her sister looked down at the card for several seconds, then said, “I like that cat.”
“I knew.”
“I suppose you did.”
Jenny leaned closer and touched the blank inside. “You have to write it.”
Alexis took a pencil from the bedside table. “What does it say?”
Jenny thought. “For Alexis.”
Alexis wrote carefully.
“And?”
Jenny frowned at the paper as if the rest might be hidden in it.
“From Jenny?”
Jenny shook her head. “Yoninah.”
Alexis glanced at her.
Jenny used her birth name within the family without thinking about its weight; it simply belonged there, the same way certain dishes, prayers and old photographs belonged there. Alexis wrote it exactly as Jenny asked.
Jenny inspected the finished line. She recognised the first letter of her name and traced above it without touching the graphite. “I want to do the Y.”
Alexis found another piece of paper first and showed her how the lines met. Jenny practised twice. The first Y leaned badly. The second looked more like a tree with one broken branch. On the card, Alexis guided only by pointing where to begin. Jenny pressed hard enough that the pencil almost dented the paper and produced a large uneven Y beside Alexis’s neat version.
“There,” Alexis said.
Jenny smiled.
Alexis placed the card on the dresser, propped against the ceramic coin dish.
Jenny immediately objected. “You’re supposed to take it.”
“I am taking it. I’m putting it where I can see it.”
“It’s my dresser.”
Alexis considered this obvious flaw in the arrangement. “Then I’m stealing it later.”
Jenny laughed.
Alexis reached over and tapped the purse beside her knee. “So. You went to the shop by yourself, paid by yourself and bought me a card with my own supervision happening five steps away. How independent do you feel?”
Jenny thought about the question seriously. “Very.”
“Good.”
“But Mr. Feldman helped with the dime.”
“That’s devastating.”
Jenny recognised the dry tone and gave her sister another look.
Alexis said, more gently, “You can do something yourself and still let somebody help one little part.”
Jenny looked at the purse.
This seemed to require consideration. Her original definition of by myself had been much stricter. Alexis behind her had initially felt like failure. Mr. Feldman naming the coins should perhaps have reduced the accomplishment. Alexis writing the words inside the card should certainly count against complete independence. Yet Jenny had chosen the card. She had carried the purse. She had crossed the block without a hand around hers. She had taken out the money and corrected her own mistake. None of those things had become less true because other people remained nearby.
She nodded slowly. “I did the buying.”
“You did.”
“And you did the writing.”
“I did.”
“And Mr. Feldman knew the dime.”
“He has many talents.”
Jenny laughed again, softer this time.
Later that evening, when the card had migrated from Jenny’s dresser to Alexis’s room, Jenny went to check that it had not been forgotten. She found it standing on the small shelf beside Alexis’s bed, propped where the cats faced outward. Alexis was downstairs. Nobody was there to see Jenny notice.
Beside the card lay a single square of chocolate.
Jenny stared at it.
She did not take it immediately because it might simply have been Alexis’s. Then she noticed the chocolate was resting on a folded scrap of paper.
Jenny opened the note.
The handwriting was Alexis’s, large enough for her to recognise the few words even if she could not yet read all of them.
The first one was her name.
The last one was fine.
Jenny knew that because Alexis had written it for her before.
She carried the note downstairs and found her sister in the kitchen. “What does this say?”
Alexis took one look and said, “You’re doing just fine.”
Jenny looked at the paper again.
Then she asked, “Is the chocolate mine?”
Alexis said, “Obviously.”
Jenny took the square from upstairs, returned to the kitchen and broke it carefully in half.
She gave one piece to Alexis.
Alexis looked at it in her palm and said, “I thought the point was that I gave it to you.”
Jenny put her own half into her mouth and replied around the first taste of chocolate, “I know.”
Alexis ate hers anyway.