World and Town by Gish Jen Page A

it and peering over the edge of the door to make sure it’s safely off the metal and down onto the ground before they start moving.
    “She used to say,” says Hattie, “that they were the one thing she was never moved to joke about.”
    “Who?”
    “My friend. Her name was Lee.”
    “Did she joke?” Sophy rolls her window back up a little.
    “She did. But she said peonies were too beautiful to joke about. She said they were so ordinary and extraordinary, they gave even her hope.”
    “What do you mean, hope?”
    “Hope that there were things even she would want to grow. Skeptic that she was. Hope that there were things that could turn even her into a fool for life.” Hattie stops. Oh, to be a fool for life!
    People like me take everything apart, you know, but secretly yearn to be corny .
    Sophy looks bored.
    “Do you have a vase?” asks Hattie.
    “We have a bottle, I’m pretty sure.”
    “You need a real vase; peonies are so top-heavy. Can I lend you one?”
    Sophy frowns. “My dad might not like it.”
    “Why not?”
    She gives a little waggle of the head, as if she’s drawing a figure eight with her nose. But then she sniffs and smiles again. “They’re so  … luxurious, ” she says.
    And Hattie smiles, teacherly. She’d forgotten the satisfaction of occasioning a young person to reach for a word. Luxurious .
    The car smells wonderful.
    It’s some work to persuade Sophy not only to borrow a vase, but to come in for a snack. But eventually she perches on a kitchen chair, her hands under her blue-jeaned thighs. The dogs sniff her over, then stand a moment, tails up—awaiting direction, event, something. When nothing like that comes, though, their shoulders relax and their heads drop as if some string has been snipped. Hattie introduces them.
    “That’s Reveille and that’s Cato, my old man,” she says. “See how gray he’s gotten? He moves a little slow because he has arthritis in his hips. And this is the puppy, Annie.”
    Sophy pets the older ones gingerly. The puppy, though! It’s soft, crazy Annie she falls for—all-black Annie, with her too-big head and too-big feet, who can still ball herself up, and who never starts one thing but that she starts another. She is the very picture of unobstructed energy—of qì , Hattie’s father would say—unlike Sophy, who, fascinated as she is, braces herself, one hand grasping the edge of her seat, the other held out stiffly. Finally she sticks out a sneaker, only to have Annie attack it, growling—tugging so hard, she looks to be stretching the thing a half-size up.
    Sophy does not laugh.
    “She’s from the pound in the city,” Hattie says. “They called me because she was so young when they found her, and they knew I had everything you need.”
    “Like?”
    “Like a hot water bottle, and a clock that ticks—that sort of thing. I gave her a pair of my pants to sleep on. She liked that.” Hattie’s coffee mug has some kind of a spot on it; she gives it a rub.
    “I like that name, ‘Annie.’ Come here, Annie Annie.”
    Annie yelps, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth.
    “It’s after Little Orphan Annie,” says Hattie.
    “Who’s Little Orphan Annie?”
    Hattie explains. “It was that or Jane as in ‘plain Jane,’ ” she goes on. “ ‘Plain Jane’ just being an expression. I guess because Jane is such an ordinary name, it’s come to be associated with plainness.”
    “I like ‘Annie.’ ”
    Hattie sets Sophy to feeding Annie ice cream as she explains how the pound found Annie in a barn. “Someone abandoned her right in the dead of winter,” she says. “Can you imagine? By the time they found her, her eyes were frozen open.”
    “Poor Annie!” Sophy’s eyes seem to freeze in sympathy.
    “Of course, no one knows what she is. But based on the dogs in the vicinity, the pound guessed half lab, half springer spaniel and border collie mixed. And that could be right. She’ll chase mice, anyway, supporting the