Ernie's Ark by Monica Wood Page A

Danny asked.
    Cindy nodded. Francine was waving mightily from the display window, where she was lining up the flower baskets, placing them into military rows. Her big sweatshirt read SCABS OUT! UNION IN !
    “I’ve seen her down at the union hall,” Danny said.
    “She’s been volunteering,” Cindy told him. Francine was tapping on the glass now, gesturing toward a display that Cindy would have to do over. After Cindy gave the thumbs-up, Francine climbed out of the window, lowering one lumbery leg at a time. Embarrassed, Cindy glanced away. “She was four when their mother left,” Cindy sighed. “She follows me like a dog.”
    “Seems like a nice kid.”
    “She is,” Cindy said. “Smart, too. Scary-smart. She’s designing my Web site.”
    “You mean on the Internet?”
    Cindy smiled wearily. “She’s planning to make me rich.”
    He was looking at her as if to say,
You’re trusting a kid with your future?
Which was a good point, an excellent point, but she’d hitched her wagon to dimmer stars than this.
    “Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry about Tim.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “He’s gone now, anyway. Off to parts unknown. I thought you’d want to know.” He bent to adjust something on the dog’s collar. It was a sweet dog, well-mannered. We should have had a dog, she thought.
    “Anyway,” Danny said. “I’m glad you finally got the kids you wanted.”
    “They’re not the kids I wanted,” Cindy said. In a rush of regret and nostalgia, she blundered toward her former husbandand his arms came around her. They stood that way for a very long moment, long enough so that she began to remember what it was like to be held by him before they’d been worn apart by their respective sorrows.
    Francine was watching, of course, but Cindy didn’t mind. Her stepdaughter had been observing this town like a historian for months now, and she seemed to understand better than Cindy that all the rules of protocol had changed. Francine had once witnessed two women—one a striker, one a strikebreaker’s wife—leap out of their cars to slap each other’s face, then reported it to Cindy with the composure of a war correspondent.
    Danny’s dog began to tug on its leash. Cindy blurted, “Remember that game?” and before she knew what she was doing she had confessed her three-year-old con. Danny chuckled a little, shaking his head. His old face flashed out from the blotched, grieving one, and she was glad she had told him just for that, for a two-second glimpse of her old life.
    “Oh, God, Danny,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone.”
    “I won’t.” Their breath mingled in tiny, cold clouds.
    “Especially not your family, Danny. Really.” She stopped. “Listen, you don’t, you don’t happen to have a copy of the new MindMelt that I could borrow?”
    He looked at her. “We don’t play anymore. Cindy, we don’t even talk.”
    There had been a time when the Littles’ not talking would have been her dearest wish. But now she retreated into her shop, aware of Francine’s appraising eyes. Danny’s family, so fastened by blood and history, had been in love with themselves as a unit, asecret club, a gravitational force. If a family like that could collapse at this late stage, then what hope was there for hers?
    That night’s supper was a typical one in the Love household: Kenny gulping his food, holding his plate away from the table as if the lot of them had rabies; Bruce making painful small talk with Francine about her day at school; Cindy turning out radish curls that nobody noticed except Francine, who noticed everything.
    “Wasn’t that your ex-husband today?” Kenny asked.
    Bruce looked up. Then Francine.
    “I was coming out of the VideoMart,” Kenny explained, the soul of innocence. “Looked like a deep conversation.”
    “He’s having a bad time,” Cindy said evenly. She nibbled at a glazed carrot, having learned early on to give Kenny’s assaults more room than they required. “I’ve