Episode 5: Once More into the Fray
Image by Natalia Tench from Getty Images (text added)
Can Larry make peace with his role as the island’s only attorney, to support Ruth’s dream of adopting a child? Mind-reading, retired-greyhound Beatrix can help.
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Excerpt:
“You realize it may be difficult, at your age, to keep up with a child,” Janet says, and it is obvious that she’s said it so many times she no longer recognizes how crude the words sound, how the arrow of her words pierces the tender, vulnerable places guarded by Ego and Id.
“I’m pretty spry for sixty-one,” Larry says with a grimace.
That’s a lie. His back hurts, his legs are weak and spindly, his cholesterol level is high and he’s occasionally borderline anemic. Larry is all angles and prematurely stiff joints, his only claim to health that he is not overweight, but he’s become used to massaging the truth until he can state it as he wants to, with only the slightest twinge of conscience.
He says it again, for good measure: “I’m pretty spry.”
“We’re confident we can handle it,” Ruth says, serenity sitting as softly on her shoulders as a worn and comfortable shawl.
It works like Jedi mind-control. Janet writes “pretty spry” and “confident they can handle it” on a notepad, and then she says, “Well, I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t be approved. And since you’re willing to consider older children, I imagine you’ll hear from us fairly soon. Within six months, I think.”
“And we have a dog,” Larry says, belatedly, though he can’t tell whether he thinks that’s a factor in their favor, or whether he’s pleading with his wife to decide Beatrix is enough. “She’s a greyhound,” he adds. “Her name is Beatrix,” and then he closes his mouth with a snap, to keep more words from running out.
“A case worker will be in touch to make sure the dog is appropriate,” Janet says.
Larry and Ruth exchange glances, knowing the reality is that Beatrix will be the one evaluating the situation, not the other way around, knowing that it won’t do to say so, lest the inimitable Janet think they are senile as well as merely old.
