Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs

“Or, well, maybe just McCloskey’s.”

“That one I managed to avoid. But just barely.”

“Well, at least you steered clear of The Cat in the Hat.”

“Emmie is sleeping,” Sarah interrupted in a hushed way. “The nursery’s on the third floor — former attic, but you should be able to hear her when she cries. The acoustics are such that sound carries up and down the stairs as well as through the laundry chute. Unless the doorbell woke her, she’ll be up in an hour, I’m sure. She’s way too old for a morning nap, but last night was not so good, so I’m letting her sleep.” I tried not to take personally what I felt was the slight reprimand of “unless the doorbell woke her.” “Perhaps I should get one of those signs that say NIGHT WORKER, DAY SLEEPER,” she said, smiling. “Also, I’m going to give you a key. You should feel free just to come in. In fact?” And here she walked briskly across the room and opened a drawer full of junk — extension cords, pliers, batteries, appliance warranties — and fished out a key, which she handed me. “This will get you through the front door, darlin’,” she said in some sort of put-on voice, perhaps a line from a movie I’d never seen. That it was accompanied by a wink was intended to help me understand, though it didn’t.

She put on not her shearling coat, and not her peacoat, but some long wool jacket, with the fuzzy, tight black-and-white tweed of television static. She lassoed a cashmere scarf into a coil around her neck. “Off to the Mill!” she said. “I’m afraid it’s falling apart. Two platings and one small fire — just last night.” She smiled grimly. The spell cast by caramelized sage and its stairway to heaven was now gone.

“What’s a plating?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s like an ancient Scots-Irish temper tantrum. One of the cooks throws the other cook’s plate onto the floor. You know, my father was Jewish, so I’m half Jewish—”

“So am I!” I burst forth, as if we were random transplants from the farthest reaches of Sri Lanka. I’d never met anyone half Jewish before, and for some reason it excited me: a peculiar but benign hybrid is what I felt like, and it seemed fantastic to know of someone else freakishly, well, neutered in exactly this same way.

“Really,” she said, unimpressed. Perhaps she’d known a thousand half-Jews. “Maybe that’s why I took to you.” She smiled one of those flashed-on-flashed-off smiles. “But it’s my impression that Jews don’t act this way. Jews don’t plate. They’re above these particular things. And so they succeed.” She scratched her neck. “But my mother was a Christian and so I was raised a Christian. My whole life, as a result? I’ve been around losers. ‘Let the losers come unto me,’ said Jesus. And they came. The worst are Protestants who behave like Catholics and the best are Catholics who behave like Protestants.”

These words stunned me. “Actually, Jesus said, ‘Let the children come unto me,’ ” I said. I was surprised at my own feelings. I was surprised to hear myself say this. I had just a split second ago been so happy to be part Jewish. Whence the Christian pedantry? I was perhaps a little fresh from Christmas.

“Yes, well, whatever. The children didn’t come unto me.” She paused, collecting herself. There was a kind of jolly bristle in the air.

“Except the one upstairs,” I reminded her, and tried to give her a forced but hopeful smile.

“Yes, that’s right,” she said, adding, “I’ve left all the instructions on the counter. And you’ll need to be watchful with that baby gate upstairs. I don’t want her tumbling down. Or you tumbling up!” Then she paused. We stand there blank as walls. “Babygate! Now there’s a scandal. You’re so young, I’ll bet you don’t even know how the word gate came to mean disgrace. ”

“Watergate,” I said, though I wasn’t positive.

“Well, that’s right! Though that was well before you were born.”

“A lot of interesting things were.”

“Yes. Well. Oh! Besides the plating we did have one good thing last night: a winter minestrone made with heirloom beans and your father’s fingerlings. A big hit.”

I smiled agreeably, but I couldn’t imagine those potatoes sitting in soup. As if she could read my mind, Sarah said, “We sliced them. Right at their bumpy little knuckles.”

It was a brutal thing, food.

“Everyone loved it. Oh, before I forget,” she added. “There’s ipecac in the cupboard next to the sink. I’m not even sure how you use it — it’s for situations where poison is swallowed. A woman down the street said, ‘You’re adopting?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, what do I need?’ And she said, ‘Ipecac.’ And I said, ‘That’s it?’ and she said, ‘That’s all I know.’ So now that’s all I know.” Here Sarah looked at me mischievously, her look a complicated room one might wander through, exploring for quite some time if there were any time. “If anything goes wrong, whatever the hell you do, don’t phone me. I’ve left a number for emergencies. It’s 911.” She smiled.

“I’ll dial the paramedics directly,” I said, smiling in return.

“Thatta girl. Sorry I have to rush. They are burning the herbal holiday centerpieces as I speak and smoking fish over them.” She hurried out the back door.

I could hear her car start up and drive away. But then suddenly she was back — the car, the clamber up the stairs, the bursting return through the back door. “I forgot something,” she said, and stepped over to the counter, opened a drawer, and grabbed a kitchen knife, which she stuck gleefully in her leather bag. “A concealed weapon, or a chef’s tool? Who can say? Already, driving around in winter with a shovel in my car makes me feel like a serial killer.” Then she flew off again.

The instructions, typed and printed out from a computer, were slid into a book entitled Your Baby and Child. I took them both into the living room, where I sat on one of the pillow-ticking sofas, flipping through the pages of the book first. I looked at the chapter “Older Babies” and noted boldfaced headings such as “Beware of lightweight carriages” and “Don’t try to keep your baby clean.” I would have gotten both these things wrong. Treat him like a manual laborer. Skin is the most washable material of any in your house. The advice seemed counterintuitive and random, as if it had said, Whack him along the the neck with scarlet mittens from Belgium. Sarah’s pages seemed sane by comparison. Tassie, When Emmie gets up you will know: she whimpers then goes into a full cry. Reintroduce yourself to her. The changing table is right there in her room (where the crying will be coming from). All the changing supplies are on the shelf. There are sippy cups for milk and juice in the kitchen and she can have whatever she wants to eat — that is, whatever you can find. Sane except for this part: I have arranged for some risotto to be FedExed to her but I will also bring her something home from the kitchen tonight.

FedExed risotto? I looked in the cupboard, and in addition to a jar of matzo balls that looked like something from high school biology, I saw little jars of organic peas, carrots, and bananas for toddlers. I knew babysitters had a bad reputation for eating baby food, and although I was hungry — a starving college student! — I would try to avoid opening one up right away. Perhaps later. The bananas, I knew, were puddingy and delicious. I had heard of a woman who once, in a pinch, served banana baby food as a dessert, in parfait dishes, at a dinner party in Dellacrosse.

I stared at those bananas. Since Mary-Emma was going to get FedExed risotto, maybe … I could not resist. Besides, she was old for this food and could eat regular bananas, a bunch of which sat on the counter. I twisted open the top and wolfed it down with a spoon, then rinsed the jar and tossed it into the recycling, which was a clear plastic bag torn to hang on the knob of the back door. Though most things about the house announced themselves with clarity, others I had to figure out.