Wisp's turn

Little Wisp and littler Fia,

The first kiss and little pink tongues

October, 2010

Something is going on with Wisp. Will o' Wisp. The found cat. Little Wisp, at 3.5 kg, which is robust compared to the 1.5 kg she weighed when my husband brought her home from the path in the woods in the middle of the boucle de la Seine, where he found her lying in a puddle, taking her for a discarded rag until she raised her head and meowed. Calling to him, or signalling resignation?

"Pass. Don't be afraid. I cannot hurt you. I am dying," or "Help me. Please."?

He lifted her into his arms and brought her to mine that rainy Wimbledon final in 2007. She has barely left either of ours since. Our faces, necks and shoulders, more exactly. Her idea of heaven is when my husband and I are lying close, side by side, and she has two shoulders, two necks into which to nestle, one for each end of her body.When it wasn't ours, it was Baccarat's, who took her into her care like a lost puppy of her own, this dog who had never had a puppy of her own, only a year old -- born the day France lost in ignominy to Italy and Zidane played his last game, walking off the field in a state of dishonor, July 10, 2006. She and her mother approached this little cat, so frail and weak she couldn't stand on her own hind legs, and licked her nearly into oblivion.

If there is a direct proportional relationship between the number and force of the licks given to an ailing animal, Wisp was in really bad shape. I have told this story before.

Or, I thought I had. I have looked, and I can't find it. Perhaps this is a good thing, though, since it gives me the opportunity to tell the story again and maybe do it better, or just let it go. I have been asked to consider making my posts "stand alone" without referring to past posts or leaving the reader hanging. I have spent some time thinking about this.

I am not sure that I will ever be able to want to do this because the posts aren't columns on topical subjects, and I am not a columnist. I am a diarist, who got tired of the whiny, overly personal subjects in my dear diary and decided to see what lies between the wholly intimate and the fictional and how I might tell it. They are moments in my life, and because lives are bound to their pasts and rarely anticipate their futures, even if the future is as obvious as the punch line of a terrible joke, each post contains references to the past, never links to the future, and if the resolution is not contained in the moment, it will not appear in the post; I am left with my own fear or sadness, and so, I am afraid, is my reader, who may chose to use the tags to look for additional information, background or reassurance, but who may also use the comments to ask me.

I may or may not answer. That depends on the question.

I'd like to be a novelist, like Jane Austen or George Eliot, but I am still a good ways away from that, unfortunately, lacking, first, the will to work, second, the vision, and, third, the talent. Being totally honest, I hoped writing here would take me a step closer. Maybe it did, if you use a microscope to measure the distance traveled.

I will tell the story again, I will give this post the tag "Wisp's Story" and hope that I remember it so that I can find it again, whenever I want someone to know her story (or whenever someone wants to know her story without my thinking of it), and perhaps I will offer a prize to the person who finds the original post containing her story.

When my husband came through the door holding a sodden cat at arm's length, dripping on the terracotta tiles, my reaction was, unbelievably, to both of us, "Oh! Non."

"Comment ça 'non'? Quand tu amènes une bête à la maison, c'est 'oui', mais quand je le fais, c'est 'non'," he demanded.

He was pouting, and I hadn't even had the time to stand up from my armchair. His son stood behind him in the July rain, become standard issue summer weather in our nondescript temperate climate. I stood and reached for the animal, receiving a feather's weight of wet fur and bones gone limp, no muscles left to stiffen the spine or raise the soaking wet fur. I regretted the "non" I had let go. It hadn't been understood. I didn't mean "no", but I didn't know what I meant, either.

Oh! No, not again, is the closest to my meaning. No as in a rejection of the possibility of her state, that this little cat could come to what she was. No to the argument it would bring, anticipating that he would hand her to me, ask me to care for her, and then to ask me -- because he would -- to give her away. No, I would not care for her and then give her away. You must know me better than that by now. I find toads in the pool pump filter basket, ducks in the pool, birds everywhere, and I try to save them. I usually fail. I hold funerals. I do not give them away, so take care in what you bring to me.

He returned to try taking his walk again, and I settled the tiny, fragile cat on my lap and watched the rest of the Wimbledon men's final. Several sets in which I didn't have to think about what to do or about her future, several sets she might not even survive. She fared better than Rafa, though, and I called to the dogs to take a walk on the dirt lanes down along the fields and the Seine, the mostly dry cat rolled into the hem of my sweatshirt. She lay there as we walked, not even tiring my arms. And then, I felt wet. She had released her bladder without making the slightest movement. We returned to the house. It was a Sunday afternoon, no stores open, the only visit to the vet possibly at emergency rates. We had a night to get through. She never left the warmth of someone's arms.

At bedtime, I got out a towel, lay it next to where I sleep, and settled her into my side. She did not move. The next morning, she was still breathing. I picked up the cat on the towel, placed it on a pillow and carried her to the car. We went to the grocery store for easy to eat wet food in time for the store's opening. She was still breathing when I came out with small aluminum tins of premium wet food and the cat milk I found. She raised her head when I opened the food right there in the car, and she ate. Her energy eating surpassed any she had shown until then.

She would be alright.

I called the vet and took her in.

"Oh la," said the vet, "Qu'est-ce qu'on a ici?" I explained what I knew of her history while he looked her over. She was fur on skin on bones. You could feel each point of every single vertebra in her spine, all sides. He listened and looked up at me.

"Ca fait un bon moment depuis qu'elle est abandonnée," he confirmed. "Elle n'a pas mangé correctement depuis plusieurs mois. Je ne vous conseillerais pas de la faire vacciner. Elle peut avoir une vraie saleté, et en plus, puisque ça fait si longtemps depuis qu'elle a pu bien manger, elle est peut-être touchée."

He meant that we should not spend the money to vaccinate her until we tested her for disease. It might not be worthwhile. He meant, also, that hunger had perhaps made her too crazy. He gave her a shot that made her drop like Sleeping Beauty to the examining table between his hands, shaved a small spot on her slender neck and drew blood. Then, he gave her another shot and she raised her head like a cartoon cat, coming back to life from sudden death. He laughed. He enjoys giving that drug for the effect on the pet owners, as much as for the effect on the animals that lets him get their blood to test.

"On va envoyer ça au labo, et je vous tiendrai au courant."

I scooped the cat up, put her back in one of the three travel kennels I had gotten when our enormous American cats had flown to France 5 years before, enormous for this cat, who weighed in at 1.5 kg to their 9 kg apiece. The call came the next day. She was clean of all disease. She was merely physically wasted.

"Surveyez-la, quand-même," said the vet, "On ne peut pas encore savoir si elle va avoir un comportement normal."

I watched her. She continued to sleep by my side, in the protection of the crook of my elbow. She rode on my husband's shoulders, like Cunégonde Mouse (our brilliant rescue and magical mouse friend) had in times past. She become the chouchou of the dogs, if not the two cats, Shadow and Chloé, come from the US with their brother Nuts, since buried in the garden. She was no more touchée by her various traumas than I. I called the vet and made an appointment for her shots, and I spoke names aloud, hoping to hear one that sounded right. Sam rejected Vita (he was so right), Wilamena, and a long list of others. I got out my laptop and started searching. The details of that search are best left (along with the explanation of the name on which I settled, and which Sam approved) out. I'll give the explanation, anyway.

Will 'o Wisp is her full name. We call her Wisp, for short. A Will 'o Wisp is a magical sort of being that appears at Midsummer, and it is known by many names, including Puck in English. It is a being one cannot know if it is good or evil. It is manifested by a light, like a glow, a flame, hovering over the land, most usually marshes and swamps. In French, it is called the feu follet, which happens to also be a film by director Louis Malle, which he based on a novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. The will 'o the wisp is known as Jack 'o lantern, evoking my favorite holiday, and appears in nearly every folklore of Europe, eastern, central and western, as well as in the US, where the phenomena is called spook-lights, or ghost-lights.

We had found her at midsummer. She was but a wisp of a cat. Willow-like. We were waiting to see if she were good or evil. Oddly, little Fia was born in the "f" year. We could have named Wisp's new friend Feu-Follet, but they are not the same being, they did not have the same story.

The rest is history, and her friendship with Baccarat is family legend. Baccarat was her friend, her mother, her comfort. In October, Wisp squatted and released a drop of blood-stained urine. I took her to the vet.

"Elle n'a pas de fièvre. Je ne sens rien en la palpitant d'anormal, mais vous avez d'autres chats, n'est-ce pas?" I nodded. We did have another cat, still. One only, having lost Chloé nearly two years before, who went the way of her brother. Shadow was 11, and Shadow had not the time of day for Wisp. "Ah," she said.

The sort of "ah" that says, "Well, then it is to be expected". She explained that cats are not social beings like dogs, at least not with their own kind. They prefer to be alone, and they do not appreciate sharing a litter box. She recommended that we get another, explaining that Wisp was suffering from a cystitis, an inflammation of her bladder, idiopathic. This meant that it is a real physical problem, causing real physical pain, without a physical origin. It comes from psychological and emotional perturbation.

"On ne va pas prendre un deuxième bac à chat!" my husband objected, as though it were an intolerable luxury to have two litter boxes for two cats. I could, however, concede that one is already taking up a lot of space in our small home, and with the vet bills, even another 40 euros for another covered, double-bottomed litter box with swinging door was discouraging.

"Why," I moaned, looking around at the assortment of two and four-legged creatures, "can't we all just get along?"

Days passed, and she improved, until the day before yesterday, when she moved about the house in a perpetual squat, leaving euro coin-sized spots of urine everywhere: behind the sofa, between the television and the sofa, on the end table, on the staircase, at the top of the staircase, in a line that suggested a dribble from the top of the stairs to the bathroom door to the (thankfully) closed door of our room. Then, she yeowled at the top of her small lungs and threw up. I called the vet and cancelled the appointment I had made for that evening; she needed to go in right away. She'd be better in their hands than mine, in a cage, even.

An examination, two sonograms, several blood tests, and 163 euros later, we have a diagnosis. It is not a tumor. It is not calcium deposits. It is idiopathic cystitis. The vet handed me a box of anti-inflammatory medicine and another of something to tranquilize her. We are to try it for a month and see if it helps her.

"Quelques fois, ça aide, mais c'est des capsules --" she broke off, looking at me apologetically, and opened the little bottle to show me the capsules; they were half white and half blue, and they were big. I looked at her and grimaced. "Vous pouvez peut-être les enrouler dans quelque chose qu'elle aime manger --" she suggested hopefully. I cannot think of a single thing that she likes to eat that much, but at least they are not absolutely necessary and she does not have a tumor. She returned to the possible causes for this outburst of idiopathic cystitis. In her mind, it is the other animals, or a change, even, in the animals in the neighborhood, possibly the arrival of a cat she doesn't like, or Fia's arrival.

"Ou, la mort de Baccarat," I said.

She couldn't know how much Wisp and Baccarat loved each other. As much as I loved Baccarat. I understood that and wasn't jealous.

"Baccarat fut son doudou. Elle se mettait dans son cou et dormait des heures là, dans ses bras. Baccarat me regarda pour me dire 'Et, que fais-je mainentant' en poussant de grands soupires." The vet listened, her eyes opening wider. She nodded.

"C'est Peut-être ça," she said.

I explained how Rapide had not let her come to her for the same comfort for a long time, and how Fia is still too little. She's a better playmate than source of comfort. Even so, Rapide tolerates Wisp's need to snuggle without enthusiasm, and it is a sign of near desperation that Wisp settles in between a 5-month old lab who'd prefer to play and an aged lab who'd prefer she go away.

She misses Baccarat. She is the one who took it the hardest of all the animals. I understand that. I took Rapide to see her daughter when she was hospitalized. I did not think to take Wisp in her travel cage.

Time, my little Will o' Wisp. It takes time.

....

Necessary frivolities

Mungo & Maud

Poop pouch "Leaf"

I am satisfied. Entirely satisfied. My mother once taught me a shopping secret on one of our shopping trips to the mall. I can't recall now if we were shopping for me or for her, or if we were at Shopping Town (for some reason, Casual Corner comes to mind, but that might just be from the number of times I accompanied my mother there, as she selected dresses in which to appear as Miss Joan) or maybe in Nordstrom in Bethesda many years later. She told me only to buy what I loved and only after walking away from it, leaving it, even, in the store; if I couldn't forget it, then I really wanted it, and I had better hope that someone didn't know their mind better than I did.

She didn't say the last part. I did, just now.

Occasionally, I go to dog-milk.com, and I window shop. I can do that on-line because there are windows there, too, and not just my operating system, since I have not yet made the financial leap to Mac. I have beautiful things to buy for my dogs first. I find wonderful things on Dog Milk. Expensive things. Tempting things. I want them for my two Labrador Retrievers, Fia and Rapide.

I found Dog Milk after we lost Baccarat, and I am beginning to suspect that a part of mourning a beloved dog is yearning for expensive and desirable items for the care and accessorizing of your remaining and future beloved dogs. So far, I have exercised discrimination and restraint, until, that is, I saw the small, brown ("chocolate"... are they making a little joke?) leather pouch to hang from your dog's leash for the purpose of carrying her biodegradable poop bags conveniently. It was £38.90.

Such a price does not speak to convenience. It speaks, rather, to luxury.

You don't need to spend that kind of money on an item to carry the poop bags. You have one already, and, besides, you hardly ever walk them anywhere where you need to pick up their poop. When you do, your pocket works nicely. Speaking was my practical self. The one my husband married, or hoped to heaven he had.

"But I like it. I love it. I am yearning for it."

Close your browser window, myself instructed. I did as told, returning to my email, or facebook, or something.

"I still want it, you know."

I know. But you still don't need it, certainly not at £38.90.

I only returned to look at the poop pouch "Leaf" in "chocolate" several more times, checking out the Dog food canisters at £48.00. I'd need two, of course, one for each ultra high quality, high

protein dog food, senior and puppy large breed. And, then, there are the cats to consider. They'd need their own.

And, then, there is the special built-in cupboard I would need to stack and display them.

Or, the dog beds. I long to place one beside my side of the bed for Fia, who has claimed her place there over the whining objections of my husband, a light sleeper sensitive to her least jumping up on his face. But, which one? And I had to go and get an orthopedic one from zooplus.fr for Rapide when I could have had one of these to coordinate with my living room, build, in face, my living room furnishings around it.

So far, I have resisted the collars. I want several, but myself has so far successfully argued with me that I have Labs, and you don't make a fuss over your labs, which brought me back to the

poop pouch.

"I am still yearning for it," I addressed myself. "I can't stop thinking about it, and Mom said, you know, that if you can't stop thinking about something, you want it enough to make the purchase worthwhile."

I knew I didn't care any longer what myself said. I knew I was going to give me (not myself, who wouldn't hear of it) dispensation to buy this small, leather pouch to hang from Fia's garden center leash, the one Sam picked out at Jardiland near Chartres last September on our way to maybe get the 5 month old dog the breeder had available, the day we decided on Fia.

"And I'll be good. I won't buy a new leash."

I didn't mention collars, though. I don't like to lie to myself. I cannot be certain that I have the kind of restraint I'd like to think I do.

It came today in a white box, held closed with white tape imprinted with the MUNGO & MAUD logotype in an elegant taupe, subtly tinged with green. This white box and tape I delighted in. Inside, the poop pouch was enclosed in tissue paper of the lightest gray containing a white cloth bag with taupe drawstring and imprinted with the MUNGO & MAUD logo.

I unwrapped the tissue paper, opened the bag and slid the leather pouch out. It was chocolate leather, soft, supple with a orange braided leather cord stitched to one end to make the loop from which it will hang from my dog's leash. It is somewhat bigger than the head of a Boston Terrier (or stumpy-legged Dachshunds), and so not well-suited to toy dogs, who one can imagine dragging their "chocolate leaf" and its supply of biodegradable plastic bags down the sidewalk, but it is perfect for my black labs.

I can't wait to walk Fia downtown and have need to pick up her poop, which I can now do with an intact pride and sense of superiority. It really is the little things that add up -- I mean, that count.

....

Not Marley

Fia, five months

photo by Sam

"Elle est vraiment très bien comportée," said my husband, looking down at Fia, who had come up to gaze into his face while he finished his dinner the other night, avec l'aire de concéder quelque chose. I felt a surge of pride in my training skills.

"Elle ne fait aucune bêtise. Aucune," I confirmed, avec l'aire de ne pas trop vouloir réjouir sans pouvoir m'en empêcher complètement.

I was merely stating the obvious: Fia is not Marley. On the flip side, she would make the subject of a very boring book, of which no one in his right mind would say, "Hey! That dog would make a great movie!" I am not sure I ever completely believed in Marley, though. I mean, how bad could Marley's dad be, and if not that bad, how bad, really, could his master be? And, if his master really were that bad, how come his wife didn't throw him out with the dog? I mean, what Labrador Retriever can't pass Obedience 101 if I can get mine to do it? I didn't even mess up that badly with my first one, Baccarat, and I never saw the sire go streaking by, or even know more than his name.

Baccarat, on the other hand, was no Fia, either, but I think I can take responsibility for that. Still, by comparison with Marley, it was mild. The worst, I believe, was the morning we came downstairs to find the nose of the last tread chewed to bits. It looked like the results of a beginner's level leather working class in belt making (I know, I have done one.). Teeth marks festooned the edge of the tread, from where Baccarat gazed at me, taking a break in her decorative teething work. I had hoped my husband would somehow fail to notice. He never does.

"Tu as vu ce que cette chienne a fait?" he demanded of me, once he came down a little later.

The light was at the perfect angle to show off the depth of the imprint her incisors, canines and pointy molars had achieved, chewing, chewing, chewing her way around the step. I had seen. This was the one time I wondered if Marley's master couldn't be for real the worst with me just behind him. I nodded.

"Je vais prendre de la pâte à bois. Tu verras,"I promised him, hoping I sounded convincing, "ça ne se verra plus."

What do you do? Do you acknowledge how ineffective you might be? How awful your dog might just actually be? That the future, indeed, is terribly unknowable? No, you don't. Not if you want your dog and to remain, both of you, in your home. You acknowledge the misdeed, the poor behavior, you express regret and solidarity with your spouse, you read up more on dog training, and you buy wood paste and tint and get on the repair fast. Out of sight, out of mind.

Really. It works. Not only did Baccarat never chew that tread again, my husband was actually relieved and impressed with the results. I wondered if she didn't like the smell of the wood paste and tint, or, was it more like what the librarians always told us about damage in schools: if you let it go, the students will keep at it until the destruction is total, but if you repair it -- however many times you have to do it --, the damage is never serious. Or, maintain something, and it stays nice.

But, here was Fia, five months old and perfectly house and hotel broken, delighted with her toys and to leave our belongings alone. I was prepared to acknowledge the wealth of knowledge I had accumulated asking questions from those I knew knew more than I, from the Internet and from my earlier suspected mistakes with Baccarat, but maybe, just maybe I had to give Fia and her sire a little credit where credit was due. After all, I couldn't be that wonderful, could I?

That is a rhetorical question.

Before leaving for Argentière, midway up the valley of Chamonix-Mont Blanc, I hemmed and hawed over the purchase of a portable, folding soft-shelled travel kennel for Fia. After all, she was fully two months younger than Baccarat was when I took her for the first time four years ago. I knew before I left that Baccarat could hold it, but when I got to the hotel, I discovered that she was already widdling by the time we got to the top of the staircase, and we were on the third floor (fourth for the States).

"Non, Baccarat! Non pipi ici!" I'd correct her in an hissing undertone, so as not to announce her misdeed, and start the race to the bottom of the stairs, where we had to confront the electronic sliding door at the entry of the hotel, which always took a couple of seconds to register your presence, and then a couple more to grant you access to the outdoors, where Baccarat would squat promptly, right on the granite stoop, in full view of passersby, the hotel patrons and the diners at The Office across the street. I'd already be praying that the drops of urine just inside the door would pass for snow, melting off the skis of everyone else returning from the slopes. I don't know how many were fooled.

And then, there was the incident with the low, upholstered wood armchair with the lion claw feet. She must have appreciated those feet because she lovingly nibbled them about the ankles. The chairs might have been old and well-broken in, but the hotel did not fail to notice, and I felt the guilt that comes of having made a mild misrepresentation. I had expressly said in my email to the hotel that I had two, well-behaved and calm Labrador Retrievers; I had not said one of them was still teething at seven months old. They said nothing, however, and were as nice to us as ever, commenting, in fact, on how well-behaved our dogs were, but the next year, there was a new per diem charge for doggy visitors. I paid. Baccarat behaved like a princess.

Could I take the chance of ruining our reputation and having our welcome revoked this year at the cost of 70 euros for the insurance and peace of mind a portable kennel would provide? I broke down and ordered the thing, typing the hotel's address into the shipping information, but when we arrived at the hotel, expecting to receive the package, the receptionist said, "Le colis n'est pas encore arrivé."

"Non?" She shook her head. "Alors, on n'a pas la niche pour la chienne?" I had no choice but to be honest and acknowledge my concern. It seemed the responsible thing to do. She shook her head again. "Bon. On verra bien alors. Elle est propre et très sage, mais ça m'aurait rassuré. She nodded sympathetically. We were, so to speak, on our own.

Not that I knew how she would react to spending a day in a portable, folding, soft-shelled travel kennel. It could have been worse.

The next day, we left her in the late morning after a long walk in the forest, an introduction to the housekeeping staff, cleaning rooms at the far end of the hall (I knew them from previous years, happily), and a last pipi with two Kongs stuffed with banana, apple bits and peanut butter and went to ski.

"At least the lifts close an hour earlier at this time of the season," I said to Sam, closing the door behind us and sending a prayer ceilingward. He nodded.

At 4:50 pm, we stowed our skis and boots in the ski room and headed upstairs. She had been alone, apart from housekeeping's visit, for nearly 6 hours.

"Listen," said Sam. He cocked his head toward the door to see if she ran across the room, jumped down from a bed, or was sitting right behind the door. It appeared to be the latter. I slid the card key into the slot, and pushed it open. There they were, Rapide and Fia, sitting there pressed between my bed and the wall, just short of hysterical with joy to see us back. Sam and I set off on a tour of the carpet, chair and bed legs, and trash cans.

Nothing.

Not one thing out of place. Not one spot of wet. Not one tooth mark. Rien.

"Her Kongs are under my bed," said Sam, straightening, "with her Powerade bottle."

"Here's the stone she carried up from the back of the car," I said from over by their bed. I felt a little stunned by our success. Or, my luck. "She's five months old, and she hasn't done a single bad thing, alone in a new place, all day long." We looked at each other, and then at Fia, who looked back at us, Moi? Oui?

"Bon," I said, reaching for her leash, "we'll see tomorrow, I guess." There was still the matter of getting her down the flights of stairs and past the electronic glass door before I could claim success. She sat, I attached her leash, and we struggled out the door.

Between our last visit and this, they had installed a fire door just outside the door to our room and the next room's in the little corridor off the main one, leaving us a meter square in which to maneuver between the two. Rapide did not like that. I learned I had to stand outside the door, Fia's leash in my left hand, left leg fully extended to hold the fire door open, while holding our room door open with my free hand before she would come out. It was an unpleasant gymnastic that involved the expression of impatience before Rapide would finally budge. She is fearful of Fia's chastisement, which amounts to Fia waiting for her and then grabbing a chunk of neck fur, just below her ear, to drag her where Fia knows I want Rapide to go. She received the same from her daughter Baccarat.

That says something.

It wasn't long before I let Fia go. She went nowhere; she was too interested in making sure that Rapide did what I wanted, and leash back in hand, Fia trotted to the top of the steps, down the three flights and right up to the sliding electronic door, waited, trotted out and promptly squatted next to the granite stoop, before letting go a torrent of scalding pipi that cascaded down the sidewalk, steaming. I am not sure the passersby shared my pride in her.

The next day, and each day after that, the room went unscathed, the carpet in the hallway unbaptised, and the stoop unsoiled. We paid the customary charges for our dogs, but, like I said to Sam, you pay more for two people in the room, and still more for three, so it makes sense you pay a little something for your dogs, even when they are quieter, and possibly neater, than your British neighbors.

Today, a week after our return from Argentière, the wood garden gate came down. It will be out in the garage for the next puppy, and like I did with Fia this time, I will be sure to give that puppy lots of undivided, one-on-one attention and training.

Starting again four years after Baccarat was a puppy, I suspected that having left the two dogs -- mother and daughter -- always together and always bringing them both with me made Baccarat less attentive to me as her mistress, and I believe that my hunch was correct; each dog needs to have a direct relationship with her mistress, access to her pack, lots of exercise, good food, and clear, consistent rules with all members of her family, and a structured life. I am also a firm believer in any version of crate training as a primary tool in achieving the rest to make a well-adjusted, well-behaved, trustworthy dog.

This might be the moment, however, to mention the bêtise Fia reminds me I forgot. Socks. I cannot leave a sock or a pair of socks anywhere within reach of this rapidly growing dog, which leaves fewer and fewer safe havens.

Like the ski sock she retrieved from the sofa before I had a chance to put it on. By the time I reached for it, it was in handing from her mouth, the top of the sock gnawed and damp, the elastic dangling.

....

Winter bugs and other malaises

The Seine from the living room window

Whenever people come to the house, they want to see two things and know one: the renovation and the fabled garden and where is the Seine?

It is on winter days when the sun is bright in the afternoon that one can see that we are very nearly on the Seine. It is on these days that the Seine actually catches my attention and my eye when I look up to one of the south-facing windows on the ground floor. Every other day and moment of the year, I can at best point to an object that can be distinguished moving along beyond the line of trees after the field in the foreground and at worst to the line of trees itself, in the summer when they are in full leaf, and say, "You see the line of trees past the field? Just beyond, there is a bras mort of the Seine, then a narrower band of field, and the Seine is just there."

They must take it on faith. If they arrived by car from Méricourt, they are more likely to believe me, having followed the Seine on their right up to the S-curve at the recycling bins, where the road turns away from the river -- which cannot simply disappear --, although most people who come here are inclined to, anyway. No one shows up by accident in Moosesucks.

I didn't.

But, on days when the winter sun shows through the clouds, the Seine shines silver or gold (silver on this day, as you can see beyond the lime tree and border) and I can more comfortably boast, "Yes, we live on the Seine." This afternoon, a péniche rumbled past, its huge engines turning, and I hallucinated that it was in the bottom garden. I could hand the captain a cup of coffee and the sugar bowl.

This is about as exciting as the last week as gotten. Hallucinations of coffee with river boat skippers. Every day I think, "Today, you must make something happen, at least so you have something about which to write in your journal. Come on."

Can't it wait until tomorrow, or next week? said myself.

For those who are familiar with my prodding or worrywart self, this is another self, the most present one, the companion of my days and evenings, until everyone starts to arrive home and expect a meal, my foot-dragging, deflated self. But, perhaps it is seasonal (see again the first link above). It is neither winter, the holidays, nor gardening season, and until fortune smiles, renovation feels like the stone that did Sysiphe in.

"There might not be anyone waiting around to read about it by then."

I know. How about the plumbing failure last night? You could write about that.

"If husband's sue, I'd probably get sued for defamation for that." It's true, though. It was the latest failure in a string of failures contributing to my ultimate failure to motivate.

Did you know that bathroom sink plumbing is not generally sized to cope with violent 24-hour flu? I didn't, and my husband certainly didn't, but even if he had known, I don't think it could have made a difference last night, an hour and a half after I came to bed and he grabbed his stomach, let a breathe out and grimaced.

"J'ai mal au bide." I continued reading. He lay there.

"Ah. J'ai vraiment mal au bide." I glanced over, nervous, and we turned out the light and drifted off to sleep, until he rose quickly from beside me, negotiated the unpacked bag from my ski trip, the dog bed pressed against my side of the bed since we returned with Fia accustomed to her new access to me to sleep at night and headed out the door. A moment later, I heard him retching violently into the bathroom sink.

His? my worrywart self hoped aloud.

I looked at her with disgust, "Of course," and pushed up on my elbow to look at the time on the alarm clock. 1:55 am. The retching continued, and then I heard him go downstairs shod, unbelievably, in shoes. Not recalling him go to bed that way, I wondered what on earth he was doing, getting dressed when he was obviously in the throes of a virulent stomach bug. "Qu'est-ce que tu fais?"

"Je vais chercher quelque chose au garage. Le lavabo est bouché."

"Comment?" He was going to the garage, in the middle of the night, to unstop the bathroom sink?

"Le lavabo. Il est bouché," he said, reaching the bottom of the steps. I heard the French door grind open on the terracotta tile, and a moment later his shod steps returning up the stairs. And then the swearing began, along with the sound of the snake being forced down the pipes. The swearing gathered force, and then he headed back downstairs.

"Tu ne peux pas juste mettre un peu de produit, du Destop?"

"Non. Tu devrais le voir," and he went on to tell me how the sink had been half full and he had had to put his hands in it. Clearly, Destop was sousmusclé for this job. I nearly gagged, and then I heard him let loose an oath and hurry back down the staircase, the sound of water cascading just on the other side of the wall behind my head. I looked to the darkened ceiling and closed my eyes, listening for the next explosion.

"Merde! Putain de merde! Il y en a partout, mais PARTOUT. Putain! Pu-TAIN!"

Let us say that I was not disappointed.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" I called, feeling guilty for lying there in bed, when he was trying to clean up after his violent and painful sick and evidently having big problems, and headed to the staircase outside our door.

Passing the bathroom door, I glanced in and saw the dismantled pedestal sink, the plumbing removed, the blue plastic pail in the middle of the room. It occurred to me that having just been very sick, to get the pail he had had to unearth it from under an economy pack of paper towels and empty it of the laundry detergent and an assortment of cleaning products and rags, and then unwedge it from its tight fit between the brooms on the one side and a pile of junk stuffed out of sight on the other. I hate needing to use that pail when I feel perfectly healthy in the middle of the afternoon.

At least he'll know where you keep the box of dishwasher detergent tablets, said myself, looking on the positive side.

I peered down over the banister to see the mop leaning against the table, and my husband frantically sponging a lake of water from the table, with more on the floor.

"C'est partout, mais partout. L'eau s'est coulé en bas, et il y en a PARTOUT!" he thundered, furious.

"Mais, d'où? Comment cela?" I risked.

"Le trou dans le sol. C'est passé par le trou dans le sol."

I saw. There is a hole next to the pedestal of the sink, and when he removed the elbow, the water somehow missed the bucket, or overflowed the bucket he had retrieved from the kitchen closet, and flowed down through the hole, through the ceiling and flooded the dining table. I saw the shallow blue fruit bowl sailing on a raft made of the blue handmade place mats in the lake he had made.

A lake I suspected as being polluted with the contents of his stomach become toxic. I risked another dangerous question.

"Il y a du vomis dedans?" I scanned the scene for the piles of sick I was certain had to be there.

"C'est plus de l'eau." That was somewhat reassuring, but I didn't entirely believe him. I didn't see the sick, but I was sure I'd have cleaning to do in the morning because given my husband's standards of cleanliness, there are moments when being married is like having a child: you know you are going to wind up with your hands in it.

Myself prepared to speak, Maybe you should offer to do this for him? I knew I was right. It was the right thing to do, under the circumstances.

"Tu veux que je fasse ça? Tu es malade."

"Non. J'ai presque fini." It didn't look that way, but it was not the moment to press the point. Instead, I wandered back to my bed, and a few moments later, he came to join me, something in his hands.

"J'ai pris la cuisine-tout," he said, reading my thoughts, "Dans le cas de besoin."

"Le quoi?"

"Le cuisine-tout --" A terrible understanding dawned. Did I dare push the issue? He had brought my Calphalon aluminum pot up in case he needed to throw up again?

Please tell me no, not that, the worrywart chimed in. I had to.

"Ma casserole? Dans laquelle je fais de la cuisine?" That did it. He was more disgusted with me and my lack of concern and understanding than I was by his retching and the overflow through the ceiling and onto the dining table and floor below. He was right. "Laisse tomber. Je suis désolée."

He set the pot down, slid under the covers and went back to sleep. So did I, until I woke to hear him sit up suddenly and retch into my Calphalon, brought all the way from the States. I looked at the glowing face of the alarm clock. 3:07 am. He was beginning to become a sort of Big Ben. I was disgusted. I felt sorry for him.

Maybe you should risk offending him and go sleep in the guest room, said myself. I mean, he might have germs. I waited until the retching stopped and he got up to empty his pot.

You don't think he's going to do the same thing to the sink again, do you?

"That I cannot risk asking."

He returned to bed, placing the now empty pot back in its place. I proceeded delicately.

"Tu pense que c'est un virus?"

"Je ne sais pas. C'est peut-être le poisson."

"Mais, moi, je ne suis pas malade, et j'ai mangé le poisson aussi."

Are you sure you don't feel just a little bit off? asked myself. I focused on my stomach for a moment and wondered. He groaned, and we went back to sleep until he rolled over and the sounds of retching woke me a third time. 3:55 am. He was regular, that was for certain. I lay there and listened. Revolted. I waited for it to stop.

How impolite and uncaring is it to get up and leave? asked myself. I didn't honor that question with a response. After several very long minutes, he became silent. I lay there. He lay back into his pillows.

When is he going to get up and take that horrible pot away? myself was asking. He will, won't he?

"I think so. I mean, he can't want to lie there and try to go back to sleep with that next to him." Myself nodded, hopefully. Yes, he would get up, surely he would. And a few seconds that I measured in minutes went by and he hauled himself and the pot back out of the room.

It's probably just water by now, said myself helpfully.

"Ugh. That's enough," I said, and turning to him as he crawled back under the covers and turned slightly toward me, rather wishing he wouldn't, I asked, "Tu va pouvoir prendre ta garde demain?" He was on duty at the hospital, all day, and all the next night.

"J'espère," he sighed. In any case, he didn't have much choice. That's how it is for a doctor; the rest of the night was blessedly uneventful.

The morning light, when I finally got up, showed that what he had said was mostly true: the flood had mostly been water. Mostly. His daughter's riding magazine was soaked, and I considered throwing it away and asking him to apologize to her for ruining it, before deciding to see how it would clean up, as was a stack of mail, and there was a somewhat fouled puddle on a box I had intended to put in the recycling anyway. A little later, I reached him at the hospital to see how he was.

"Ca va," he said, "Je suis un peu vaseux, mais ça va. Il y a," he continued, "une épidémie de gastro à l'hôpital. Plein de gens l'ont eu."

"Mais, je t'ai demandé. Tu m'as dit que tu pensais que c'était le saumon, et maintenant tu me dis que c'est probablement infectieux?"

Oh-oh, said myself. See? You should have gone to sleep in the guest room.

"Oui. Mais, je n'ai pas pu le savoir."

I didn't press the issue. He was making no sense; you know, or you don't know, and if you know there is a 24-hour bug ravaging the staff at the hospital by daylight, then you knew by night. For now, my stomach is still alright. I am watching.

I'll take the cuisine-tout up to bed with me. Just in case.

....

At rest

The Argentière glacier at sunrise

We went away, and now we are returning.

In a few minutes. We are not in a hurry. We are never in a hurry to leave the vallée. It has become home for at least one long week a year, but one long week, however long, is not enough. Not if you love winter, snow, mountains, long walks with your dogs in the forest below tree line and skiing the rocky slopes above.

The dogs have been a godsend. No one should travel anywhere without dogs if they wish to meet the locals and anyone staying longer than a week, usually, however long. They are conversation starters when you cross others with theirs, walking in the forest. They attach you to a place in a way just walking alone does not, and sometimes, they become part of a place, like Baccarat.

We brought her back, like we promised ourselves we would do. For months, her ashes remained in a plastic bag, sealed with a twist-tie, inside a hideous, cheap, but certainly well-intentioned Delft china style urn provided by the crematorium (a word I do not like) in a pristinely white cardboard box, a white envelope containing a certificate attesting to the ashes really being those of our dog, Baccarat, taped with equally pure white tape to it, all inside a plastic bag from our vet's office. I put it up on a storage mezzanine in the petite maison to wait until our time to leave again for Argentière, and every time I'd go in to make up a bed for a guest or iron in the Summer room, I'd look up to the bag, sitting above my head next to an over-sized and unused lampshade and say, "Hello, Bacs."

It made me very uncomfortable. She needed to get to her place. But, time eventually passed and the day came to pack the car and drive off to Chamonix. I went for the plastic bag, containing the urn, holding her ashes in the plastic bag sealed with a twist-tie, and carried it to the car to join the bags, the skis, and Rapide and Fia for the trip back to the valley. And then, the bag and its contents sat on the daybed in our hotel room on the pile of luggage, waiting.

"Where will we leave her?" I asked Sam. "In the forest, or shall we take her up to the top of the mountain, over the glacier?"

"I don't know. Maybe both," he said, "But let's take some home." I considered that for a moment.

"You mean divide her in three? You think that's alright?"

"I don't know," he said. "I guess so."

And so, a day, and then two, and finally a third went by, and the box sat still on the daybed with the bags. Then, I got up on the fourth day and heard a voice.

When are you going to finally get around to doing this? asked myself. The prodding self that makes me get things done, including the most unpleasant and difficult things.

"I'll ask Sam."

I think, said myself, that he is waiting for you to get around to it. How about now?

Now. I set the plastic bag on the table and removed the box, peeled back the white tape, removed the envelope with the certificate, removed the tape from the cheap Delft style urn and opened it. There was still the matter of removing the bag of ashes, which was larger than the mouth of the urn. I got three small Ziplock bags and prepared to pour Baccarat into them in equal parts, without spilling any of her on the floor for housekeeping to sacrilege by vacuuming her unceremoniously up. Dust puffed up. I was breathing. I was breathing in Baccarat. I tried to breathe less.

Sam opened his eyes and watched the procedure from his bed.

"We'll take one bag up with us today, and go all the way up. Don't worry. I'll double-bag it."

I was remembering the incident from the previous day when the bag containing the apricots, figs, almonds, a clementine and half a banana exploded open in his Dakine backpack. I was sure he was envisioning Baccarat clinging to every surface of the inside of his backpack in yet another scenario of sacrilege, and this was not meant to be humorous or catastrophic in any way.

We took the téléphérique up to Grands Montets, just below the Aiguille Verte, Europe's highest ski trail, and began skiing down the black along the glacier, "Point de Vue".

Where will you leave her? asked myself. The opportunities were sailing past us the farther along we skied.

"I'll ask Sam."

"Sam?" He slowed and turned to look back up at me; I am generally somewhere up behind him. I slid in next to where he waited. "Where will we put her?"

He looked around the mountainside, "Maybe where we stopped and had lunch last year."

I nodded. That would do. It was a place that looked out over the glacier, and it was a place where we had stopped to share a meal. We skied on until we arrived at the place and took off our skis, trying not to slide down the side of the mountain into a crevasse. We did not wish to spend the rest of eternity with Baccarat, up on the glacier.

"How will we do this?" I asked, looking around at the various stones poking up out of the hard scrabble dirt and sparse tufts of golden grass, snow blown up into ridges under the little overhangs they provided. He concentrated and chose a stone. We made our way down to it, sliding on our bottoms and using the heels of our ski boots to dig in.

"I can't reach," I said, watching him finish his hole with the point of my ski pole. I had inched down a little too far and inching back up seemed too much like tempting fate.

He reached down, took the bag I held out to him and poured her ashes into their hole, and then he moved his hand in an arc, brushing snow up to cover them, trying to pat down the powdery snow. I joined his effort, brushing the light coating of feather-light snow off the stubbly yellow grass and ice to cover her deeper, and I felt a tear slide down into the foam of my goggles, and then another. We stood and made our way back up to our skis. I looked back.

"Be a good dog, Baccarat," I said, and realized they were my last words to her when I left her in her cage the night before her surgery. Silly words. "Of course you will be. You were the best dog."

I felt better, but there was the place to choose in the forest.

Sam came with me for our evening walk, after it was dark and we would be alone on the trails through the giant firs. We considered a first and then a second place.

"It shouldn't be so close to the main trail," said Sam. We turned down toward the stream.

"This is where Baccarat ran into the freezing water and got all soaked that first night," I said.

We walked along, looking at trees. Sam has become fascinated with trees, taking photographs of them like I do on my morning walks. He stopped by a tall fir, growing out of the hillside on the other side of the trail from the stream bank. We stood silently, Fia and Rapide nosing around our legs. I wondered if they understood our purpose. Rapide, anyway, although it was Fia I suspected of understanding.

"Do you want to do it here?" I asked.

"This is the first place she came into the forest," he said.

The tree divided at its base, sending roots down into the soil, and where it did, it formed two small, perfect chambers. They looked like the rooms of her heart that filled with the tumor that killed her. It looked like the perfect place to nestle part of her. I climbed up the turf, covered in soft fir needles and encased in crusty snow, and Sam turned the torch on his iPhone on for me so I could see to pour her ashes into the smaller chamber, like the place where the tumor grew, and covered them with tiny fir needles and some chunks of snow and then a rock.

We walked on home, to the hotel, and a day or two later, I took the white box and the Delft china style urn to the garbage and recycling bins and tossed the urn in one and the box in the other. That was the moment I felt the freest and the lightest since the phone rang while we waited during her surgery. We had done what we had set out to do, and Baccarat's circle was complete.

The third bag is for home in Mousseaux. Perhaps I will ask the mason to build a little chamber under the stone at the top of the steps which she made her outlook, surveying the lower garden, the field and the Seine and the world beyond. In that chamber, I can put a little box containing the other third of her in her garden.

....

Fault lines

At the Odéon

Cities have it over the countryside in the part of the winter when the snow is absent to make the mud and ugly green of winter beautiful under a pile of white. It is depressing, although not the only thing that is these days.

There is the dryer, for one. It has stopped working properly, and it's not the dryer's fault. It's the garage's fault. Which is to say, our fault, but I don't like to apportion that blame evenly. I tried to clean the garage, and I got in trouble for it.

"Je ne trouve plus rien," said my husband in his whiniest, most accusatory voice.

Where, in other words, had I dared to put his mess, and from where did those new shelves and plastic storage closet come? He knew that the old broken lamps, the bits of tubing and wire, the lengths of wood and sections of metal somethings or another, saved for the day when they would find their utility at long last, were not hidden in that new plastic cupboard. They had gone to the dump by the Fiatful, and I was to feel guilty for freeing up the floorspace to sweep clean of dust, dirt and dead leaves.

Où sont passés ma poussière, ma salté et mes feuilles mortes? I expected him to challenge me. J'ai gardé tout cela soigneusement dans le cas où j'en aurais besoin.

It takes courage to clean the garage, a storage shed, old unfinished shelves -- anything -- here. Cables to the 20-year-old Mac he hasn't used in 17 might one day find their utility, and I can be sure that I will catch hell for having thrown them out when that day rolls around in his senility. For a man who cannot remember a conversation a month before, he has a gift for recalling that he had 3 lengths of red wire he found on a sidewalk in Bergerac when he went to the market with his sister's friend visiting from Sicily under the metal shelves, behind the box with the boat model he began 23 years before, and it was very, very important to him. Having mustered that courage once, I am not liable to do it again for awhile, and, meantime, I can keep turning the dryer back on for three days until his socks and long-sleeve naturally dyed cotton t-shirts, the ones he likes, are finally dry, although a little funny smelling, while the towels, sheets and jeans pile up in damp heaps, waiting their turn.

You see, the dryer sucks air in from the floor, and with it, it sucks in all the dust, dirt, dry leaf particles and stray animal hairs, clogging the ventilation system and killing all possibility of the dryer drying anything, and to clean the floor I'd have to spend a week emptying the garage, searching fruitlessly for places to put everything we never need that is in there -- including several generations of bicycles in need of repair that no one has ridden in as long as I have been here, but which make an elevated surface upon which to pile more crap, like the cheap, give-away backpack his second son left here 13 years ago and hasn't thought about since, but which surely reminds his father of some moment. Or, it will surely just be useful some day.

Not that anyone would be caught dead with it. Possibly not even my husband.

It takes all kind of courage to clean a garage. Courage I don't have. And so, I fall deeper into despair, and from there to depression, waiting for the socks and cotton naturally dyed t-shirts to dry so I can put in the jeans, and then the sheets and the duvet cover, and possibly wash and dry our ski clothes before Sam and I leave on Saturday for Argentière. I know that is not happening. We'll be packing what I removed from the bags in August to pack the summer stuff for Dordogne, which will now have to come out so I can put the ski stuff back in them, which reminds me of the next reason for being depressed: the lack of dry closet space free of all traces of humidity and mold to put all those out of season clothes away.

One hundred years ago, closet space was unheard of. In our budget, armoirs are unheard of, and so we live in a circulating system of piles of useless stuff, out of season clothing and in season clothing still wet from the washing machine.

Then, for depression making, there is raising the stepchildren. I had lofty ambitions, surefire parenting philosophy in my store of arms, love for my husband to spur me, and a seemingly endlessly good opinion of my own strength of character and abilities, all of which I was certain would see me through to success. I forgot one thing: my stepdaughter's firmness of mind to try me. Nothing like it to drain the rest of one's resources to the dregs. It took only a little less than a month before I showed signs of stress, and just hours beyond that to split my resolve right along those fault lines as we pulled up to park the car, coming home New Year's Eve. In our space in front of the neighbors" across the street was a car with out of département plates. My husband sighed.

"Ils se sont garé dans nos places," he said.

For once, he said what I do when I see a visitor's car parked in our spots. He normally responds with "Elles ne sont pas nos places. Elles sont devant chez eux, et ils ont la gentillesse de nous laisser nous garer là," but tonight, he was taking my outlook on the situation. I nodded my agreement and sympathy as he began backing up to put the wagon on the sidewalk before our house.

"Leurs invités pourraient au moins se garer ici ou devant la mairie," I concurred, opening my door to step down before he eased the car tight against the neighbor's garden wall. And then, my stepdaughter piped up.

"C'est pas nos places. C'est devant chez eux, et ils ne doivent pas nous laisser nous garer là," she told me in the most icily, pointedly deprecating of tones. She was drawing her line in the sand, and it was clearly between her father and her on one side and me on the other. I felt my pulse quicken and a murderous impulse rise.

You must, I heard my more mature and wiser self interject with lightening reflexes, remain in possession of yourself at all times. That includes now.

"Alright," I said to that self. "Fine. I can do that," and I turned to my stepdaughter, who was slinking out of the car behind me, very clearly perfectly aware that she had fired a shot into the New Year's air.

"Nous avons un accord avec les voisins," I warned her off, "et de toute manière, ceci ne te regarde en rien."

The BMW slid into place along the neighbor's garden wall and she continued her slinking along the street wall of the house.

"Tu es insolente, et je te rappelle que ton insolence ne sera pas tolérée." You are, I informed her in the clearest of terms, being insolent, and I remind you that insolence will not be tolerated.

She stared at me, and then at the ground at her feet, trailing behind me as slowly as a human being can move while the two of us waited for her father to catch up with the keys to the house. He had heard most of the most unpleasant exchange, but I assumed I could trust him to find laudable motivations for her outburst. Just days before, in the heat of an hysterical fit, she had hurled words at me, words chosen for maximum impact (Ah! the intelligence of the hysterical and angry woman-child!), Je suis venue vivre ici pour voir mon père et tu m'empêches de le faire!

I have come to live here, she shot at me, to see my father, and you get in my way.

Cheap shot, myself said to me. The one I recognize as merely myself.

"Yeah," I agreed, watching her rail against me and trying not to smile, and wondering at myself for that in the midst of my own troops lining up, my own general ready to give the cry to engage. Who has not seen this before who has herself been a woman-child against the world?

Treat it seriously, myself cautioned. Any appearance of a smile will be taken as derision and met with rage.

"I know. Don't worry, anger is winning the upper hand here, anyway."

She was not here, then, as she had told us, to escape the endless conflict at her mother's home. Not, then, as we had believed, to find a more stable and structured environment to do her work of growing up. Not, then, as I could have believed from many comments over the past years, because here we put the children first and organize our lives around insuring that their needs are met. No. She was here because she wanted to see her father, a man who returns from work hours after she returns from school, hours I have cleared my life to make sure are available to her, to her school work, to her riding, to her peace of mind, while I am in the way of what she wants. Legitimate, but sucks for me.

These are realities that sit you hard on your bottom and dim the light around you, cause a loud buzzing in your ears, leave you with your forehead pressed against the cool mullions separating the panes of glass between you and the sodden, winter-ugly garden, feeling heavier and more toxic than mercury.

On her way up to bed on New Year's Eve, having told me precisely what I was worth to her in her early adolescent life, she called out in her winningest sing-song voice, "Bonne année, Papa! Bonne nuit, Papa!"

"Bonne année, ma chérie. Bonne nuit, et dors bien," he replied.

"It's normal," I hissed to myself. "Of course he wants to meet cheer with cheer, even if I am pointedly excluded. She is his daughter."

I limited myself to muttering all the way up the stairs, repeating "Bonne année, Papa! Bonne nuit, Papa!", imitating (with but the merest touch of mockery) her sing-song under my breath.

Very mature, said my better self.

She had been spoken to by her father for her outburst. I had not spoken to her since then, preferring to retreat to the haven of my room, with the piles of books rotating at my bedside like the piles of out of season clothes and bags at the foot of the bed. She would return from school soon, and I would be taking her to her riding lesson. I would do what I always do; I would tell her exactly what I think and feel.

"Tu maches du chewing gum," I said, watching her jaws work over in her seat. I hit the button and the window slid down on her side. "Tu sais ce que j'en pense de ça. C'est vulgaire. Avec moi, tu ne macheras pas du chewing gum. Tu peux le jeter." You know what I think of that. It's vulgar. With me, you will not chew gum. You can throw it out the window. Her eyes got big.

"Mais, ça c'est de polluer," she objected.

"C'est biodégradable. Que penses-tu arrive quand tu le mets à la poubelle et la poubelle part à la déchetterie? La même chose. Jete-le."

"Je peux le mettre dans un mouchoir," she said, removing a tissue from her pocket and folding the wad of chewing gum into it.

She turned the topic to why the French do not use recycled kraft paper shopping bags like they do in the States. A brief conversation led her to the conclusion that because they do this, apparently, in the UK does not mean that all English-speaking countries do the same; we tend to use biodegradable plastic bags, which are being outlawed there like they are here, in favor of reusable shopping bags that will eventually wind up in landfills. We rode around the small traffic circle and headed for the light. I did not turn my right turn signal on.

"On va chez McDo. Je te prendrai ton déjeuner que tu peux manger au club," I explained, keeping the unfriendliness from my voice. I was determined to be firm, but neutral, and I started again, while we waited for the light to change to green to cross, "Les relations sont fragiles,"I told her, glancing her way. She was looking at a point between her lap and the passenger window. "C'est comme un compte en banque. Quand tu mets quelque chose, tu peus en tirer, mais quand tu es dans le rouge, tu dois en mettre avant d'en tirer, et tu frôles le rouge." I glanced again as I said the last words, and I saw the smile play on her lips.

She knew. She knew exactly what I meant. Relationships are fragile, I told her; they are like bank accounts. When you have out something in them, you can take out of them, but when you have taken too much and you are in the red, you have to put back something back in again. You, I said, are very close to being in the red.

"Tu peux jouer avec Maman et Papa, mais pas avec moi. C'est comme tu veux," we drove up the rutted drive and pulled into the parking area at the stables. "Bonne équitation et à tout à l'heure."

"Merci," she said, as I handed her lunch to her after she arranged her bag with her gear on her shoulder. "A tout à l'heure." I watched her walk toward the stables, spot a friend over beyond the paddock. She raised her bag of McDo, and her friend broke into a run.

I had drawn my line in the sand, You can play with your mother and your father, but you can't with me. It's up to you.

....