Lori Ostlund - The Bigness of the World

Thus, when Martin insisted that we could not visit Ilsa without a gift, I did not argue, for I trusted Martin about such things. We turned and ran back home, reentering through the window, and Martin went into the kitchen and put together a variety of spices — cloves, a stick of cinnamon, and a large nutmeg seed — which he wrapped in cheesecloth and tied carefully with a piece of ribbon.

“That’s not a gift,” I said, but Martin explained to me patiently that it was — was, in fact, the sort of gift Ilsa would love.

Fifteen minutes later, we stood on the porch of Ilsa’s cottage, waiting for her to answer the door. We had already knocked three times, and I knocked twice more before I finally turned to Martin and asked fretfully, “What if she’s not home?” To be honest, it had never occurred to us that Ilsa might not be home, for we could think of Ilsa only in regard to ourselves, which meant that when she was not with us, she was here, at her cottage, because we were incapable of imagining her elsewhere — certainly not with another family, caring for children who were not us.

“She must be at the pound,” I said suddenly and with great relief.

But Ilsa was home. As we were about to leave, she opened her door and stared at us for several distressing seconds before pulling us to her tightly. “My bunnies!” she cried out, and we thought that she meant us, but she pulled us inside and shut the door, saying, “Quickly now, before their simple little minds plot an escape,” and we realized then that she truly meant rabbits.

“Martin,” she said, looking him up and down, her voice low and unsteady, and then she turned and scrutinized me as well. Her hair was pulled back in a very loose French braid, and she was not wearing a hat, the first time that either of us had seen her without one. It felt strange to be standing there in her tiny cottage, stranger yet to be seeing her without a hat, intimate in a way that seemed almost unbearable.

“You’re not wearing a hat,” Martin said matter-of-factly.

“I was just taking a wee nap,” she replied. I could see that this was true, for her face was flushed and deeply creased from the pillow, her eyes dull with slumber, as though she had been sleeping for some time.

“We brought you something,” said Martin, holding up the knotted cheesecloth.

“How lovely,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together clumsily before taking the ball of spices and holding it to her nose with both hands. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, but the moment went on and on, becoming uncomfortable.

“Kikes!” screamed a voice from a corner of the room, and Ilsa’s eyes snapped open. “Kikes and dykes!” screamed the voice again.

“Martin, I will not tolerate such language,” Ilsa said firmly.

“It wasn’t me,” said Martin, horrified, for we both knew what the words meant.

“I think it was him,” I said, pointing to the corner where a large cage hung, inside of which perched a shabby-looking green parrot. The bird regarded us for a moment, screeched, “Ass pirates and muff divers!” leaned over, and tossed a beakful of seeds into the air like confetti.

“Of course it was him,” said Ilsa. “The foul-mouthed rascal. I saved his life, but he hardly seems grateful. His name is Martin.”

“Martin?” said Martin happily. “Like me?”

“Yes, I named him after you, my dear, though it was wishful thinking on my part. I dare say you could teach him a thing or two about manners.”

“Why does he say those things?” asked Martin.

“Martin ended up at the pound a few months ago after his former owner, a thoroughly odious man, died in a house fire — he fell asleep smoking a cigar. Martin escaped through a window, but it seems there is no undoing the former owner’s work, which made adoption terribly unlikely. They were going to put him down, so I have taken him instead.” She sighed. “The bunnies — poor souls — are absolutely terrified of him.”

Martin and I looked around Ilsa’s living room, trying to spot the bunnies, but the only indication of them lay in the fact that Ilsa had covered her small sofa and arm chair with plastic wrap as though she were preparing to paint the walls. “Where are the bunnies?” I asked. I did not say so, but I was afraid of rabbits, for I had been bitten by one at an Easter event at the shopping mall several years earlier. In truth, it had been nothing more than a nibble, but it had startled me enough that I had dropped the rabbit and then been scolded by the teenage attendant for my carelessness.

“I should imagine that they are in the escritoire,” she said, and Martin nodded as though he knew what the escritoire was.

“Come,” said Ilsa. “Let us go into the kitchen, away from this bad-mannered fellow. We shall mull some cider using your extraordinarily thoughtful gift.”

We huddled at a square yellow table inside her small, dreary kitchen, watching her pour cider from a jug into a saucepan, as deeply focused on this task as someone charged with splitting a neutron. “How are you, Ilsa?” asked Martin, sounding strangely grown up. She dropped the spice ball into the pan, adjusted the flame, and only then turned to answer.

“I am positively exuberant,” she replied. “Indeed, Martin, things could not be better here at 53 Ridgecrest Drive.” She paused, as though considering what topic we might discuss next, and then she asked how we were and, after we had both answered that we were well, she asked about our parents. We were in the habit of answering Ilsa honestly, and so I told her that our parents seemed strange lately.

“Strange?” she said, her mouth curling up as if the word had a taste attached to it that she did not care for.

“Yes,” I said. “For one thing, our father is home every day when we arrive from school”—Martin looked at me, for on the way over we had agreed that we would not tell Ilsa this, lest it hurt her feelings to know that our parents had lied, so I went on quickly— “ and our mother is gone until very late most nights, and when she is home, she hardly speaks, even to our father.”

“I see,” said Ilsa, but not as though she really did, and then she stood and ladled up three cups of cider, which she placed on saucers and carried to the table, one cup at a time. She fished out the soggy bundle of spices and placed that on a fourth saucer, which she set in the middle of the table as though it were a centerpiece, something aesthetically pleasing for us to consider as we sipped our cider.

“I may presume that your parents are aware of your visit to me?” she said, and we both held our cups to our mouths and blew across the surface of the cider, watching as it rippled slightly, and finally Martin replied that they were not.

“Children,” Ilsa said, “that will not do.” This was the closest that Ilsa had ever come to actually scolding us, though her tone spoke more of exhaustion than disapproval, and we both looked up at her sadly.

“I shall ring them immediately,” she said.

“They aren’t home,” I told her.

Ilsa consulted her watch, holding it up very close to her eyes in order to make out the numbers because the watch was tiny, the face no larger than a dime. Once I had asked Ilsa why she did not get a bigger watch, one that she could simply glance at the way that other people did, but she said that that was precisely the reason — that one should never get into the habit of glancing at one’s watch. “Please excuse me, my dears. I see that it is time to visit my apothecary,” she said, and she stood and left the room.

“What is her apothecary?” I asked Martin, whispering, and he whispered back that he did not know but that perhaps she was referring to the bathroom.

We were quiet then, studying Ilsa’s kitchen in a way that we had not been able to do when she was present. There was only one window, a single pane that faced a cement wall. This accounted for the dreariness, this and the fact that the room was tiny, three or even four times smaller than our kitchen. When I commented on this to Martin, he said, “I think that Ilsa’s kitchen is the perfect size. You know what she always says — that she gets lost in our kitchen.” But his tone was defensive, and I knew that he was disappointed as well.