The first thing she heard that morning was a faint, questioning, “mrrr.” She opened her eyes. A Siamese cat sat politely on the mattress, watching her. The door to the bedroom was shut and so was the window, so it must have been hiding under the bed or in the closet when she turned in last night. “Which one are you?” Ella asked. Mrs. Baghill, she knew, had four. David had told her on the plane, rattling off the names solemnly. Mamasan, Cho-cho-san, Pittysing, and Toshiro Mifune. Ella had laughed. “Toshiro…?” “I named the last one,” he’d said, smiling. Ella reached out let the cat sniff her fingers, then cautiously rubbed its head. It blinked and let out a purr only as long as a breath. “You think it’s time to get up, eh?” she asked. She sat up and heard the cat hop down on the other side. For a moment she rested on the side of the bed, her toes just touching the rug. Mainland. She was mainland today, in Pennsylvannia, in a nice little guestroom with heavy, rich looking furniture and amber colored walls. She listened. She could hear no footsteps or voices, but it was a big house. What time was it? There was no clock in the room. Judging from the light outside, she’d guess it was before seven. Maybe it was later, though. Maybe morning light wasn’t the same here as it was on the island. David’s sister, Blair, had shown her a bathroom across the hall just before they turned in. “The guest bathroom,” Blair had said. Ella couldn’t quite believe that meant it was hers and hers alone. Maybe it meant guests just got first dibs on it. The thought brought Ella to her feet. She put on her robe, picked up the folded towel on the bench at the foot of her bed, and very cautiously opened the door, feeling the cat slip out past her. She looked up and down the corridor. Not a sign of anyone. Ella practically hopped across the hall into the bathroom and closed the door. It had disappointed her that she didn’t get to see Monroeville from overhead as they flew in. David had made sure she had a window seat, and she was planning to watch, but she’d been too excited to sleep the night before, and a little before the pilot announced the descent she had suddenly become so tired she felt all trembly inside. Her memory of the airport was a blur, though she did recall Blair meeting them. As soon as they got into the car, Ella had rested her head on the car set backrest and shut her eyes just for a moment. When she’d opened them, they were pulling into the driveway of the house. Brick, as she expected, with columns and wings and a second story, but not, she was relieved to see, what she would think of as a mansion. Not quite. And then they were walking in, and she had the impression of dark walls and hard floors and an absolute solidity that made her feel small. For the first time she realized how flimsy and bright the house was back in Touperdu, where sunlight caught dustmotes in the air, voices echoed from other rooms and walking too hard made furniture tremble. David had carried the bags upstairs and Blair had told her, “You should freshen up a bit,” pointing to the half open door of a handsome bathroom that was all white marble and gold fixtures. She’d brushed her hair and applied a little lipstick, and powder, wondering where David’s parents were. Weren’t they expecting him? When she came out, David had come back downstairs. He smiled and took her hand. “Dad is waiting. Come and meet him.” Polished wood and leather chairs and sofas. A broad, black empty square of a fireplace. Mr. Baghill shook David’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. He looked at Ella and pronounced her a “pretty little thing.” “Where is Mother?” asked David, as they settled on the sofa close to the armchair Mr. Baghill had taken. “Oh, she’s having one of her lie-downs upstairs. She’ll be down for dinner.” Mr. Baghill looked at Ella. “We no longer dress for dinner, my dear. I hope you don’t mind.” It took her only a moment to realize he meant dressing formally, but there was still an instant of shock as she pictured then all naked aroud the table, and she felt as though she’d missed a step. “Oh. No, of course not.” “The war, you know,” he said. “It changed everything.” “Of course.” “So I understand you’re old Amadou’s great-granddaughter. Artie Macana’s girl.” “Yes sir.” “How is your father?” “He is doing very well, thank you.” The French door near Mr. Baghill’s chair told her it was still light outside, but in that room it was twilight. “I remember him.” She waited for him to smile, reminisce. He didn’t. “Pop has changed,” she said. “Can you believe it…” she had meant for the next comment to be light-hearted, an invitation for Mr. Baghill to laugh and shake his head say something like, “Oh, that Artie!” Instead, she looked down nervously at her lap, and “He’s grown a beard” came out sounding like a tragic confession. “How interesting,” said Blair, who had settled into the couch on the other side the room.

I’m friends with your nephew, Baily, Mr. Baghill,” she said determined to make eye contact but feeling as though she were making offerings to some God who refused to be propitiated. “He took a couple of classes with me.”

How do you smile at someone who refuses to smile back at you?

“Yes,” he said. “Bailey. Hamlin’s boy. Those would be art classes, correct?”

“That’s right, Dad,” David said, and she felt his arm go around her shoulders.

“Ella is very committed to being an artist.”

Now she could smile. She couldn’t stop smiling if she wanted to.

With David’s arm around her, she felt she could anything.

“Everyone on the island practically raves about her sketches, Blair,” David was saying to his sister. “Seriously, get her to draw a picture of you. I think you’ll be surprised.”

“A picture of me?” Blair smiled. “I’ll do that.”

She took a drag of her cigarette and let out a silky plume of smoke. “Most definitely.”

The woman standing framed in the broad doorway looked, Ella thought, like a governess, or one of those paid companions she’d read about wealthy families hiring. She thought at first it must be “Heidi,” but then the woman said, “Heidi says dinner is ready. She says it won’t stay hot forever.”

The weariness Ella had felt earlier hit her again as they all stood up. “Not a proper dinner in the dining room tonight,” said Mr. Baghill. “Our cook isn’t staying late.”

“She’s already left,” the woman said, as she turned away.

“Well, there you are,” Mr. Baghill’s voice was resigned.

Ella felt grateful. She was so tired she didn’t think she could survive Mr. Baghill’s idea of a proper dinner.

The little table was already set for dinner at the far end of the kitchen, with a covered casserole resting in its center. Ella was surprised to see the woman who’d summoned them take a seat at the end of the table opposite Mr. Baghill.

“I’m Ella,” she said to the woman.

As they sat down, David bent to kiss the woman on the cheek. “Mother,” he said. “This is Ella. This is the girl I told you about.”

“Hello,” the Mrs. Baghill said, staring at the steaming casserole in its dish on the table.

Jet lag. Aunt Kitty had warned her about it. “You’ll feel like your head’s been taken off and stuck back on the wrong way” she’d said. Ella tried to concentrate on the food in front of her, a hot pile of spinach, potatoes, and other vegetables that tasted like nothing at all. Was this jet lag too, or did Heidi really not use any seasonings?

She was conscious that David, his father and sister were occasionally talking at the other end of the table.

The other end. Weird. David was sitting right next to her, and yet it seemed almost like Ella and his mother were in one room, the rest of the family in another. Mr. Baghill was saying something about David’s two brothers.

Rex would bring the wife and kids over from Wilkes-Barre tomorrow night. They’d see Ham when they went into Pittsburgh this weekend. Blair said something about Ham “dropping by the gallery.”

That’s right, Ella remembered now. David had said she worked in an art gallery. Part time. “It’s kind of her hobby,” he’d said.

Ella felt something brush her legs, then a small head butting against her shin, and she smiled in spite of herself. One of the cats.

It withdrew, she heard a faint noise of claws against tile and the sound of something soft jumping into Mrs. Baghill’s lap. Mrs. Baghill kept eating. The sound of purring rose in the room like a faint, puttering motor.

“God that’s disgusting,” said Mr. Baghill.

Mrs. Baghill chewed for moment, swallowed. For the first time since she’d started eating she looked down the table at her husband

“Go to Hell,” she said.

Then she bent her head over her plate again. Mrs. Baghill didn’t say another word for the rest of the meal.

By the time Ella was showered and dressed and putting on her makeup, she felt like herself again. The difference between how she felt now and how she’d felt last night was so striking, she wondered if she remembered everything correctly. Surely the food hadn’t been that bad. Surely Mrs. Baghill hadn’t been that strange.

She stepped back to get a look at herself.

The perm. She’d had it done the week before the flight, but it still felt weird, and she was not at all convinced she’d brushed it out right.

She heard a meow behind her.

She turned.

“Hello,” Ella said. “Are you my friend from earlier?”

“Meow,” it replied and blinked at her.

Heidi was very nice. She offered to fix Ella some eggs, but Ella was never hungry in the morning, and just said she’d have some coffee.

“Mr. Baghill had to go into town for a meeting, Miss Blair drove to her gallery, and Mister David is still asleep,” she told Ella, as she poured her a cup.

“And Mrs. Baghill?”

“Mrs. Baghill never gets up before eleven.”

Ella added a little cream and sipped the coffee. It was okay, she guessed. Kind of watery. Maybe if she got up early enough, Heidi would let her brew a pot that was stronger. She noticed the sun slanting in through the windows.

Amazing what a good nights sleep and daylight can do for you. Ella was excited. She wanted to go out, look around. She wanted to see everything.

The back yard was a wide green square of cropped grass bordered by a low brick wall and rosebushes. There were a few flowerbeds in one corner, a couple of benches.

She stood for a moment, closed her eyes, and breathed in. Grass. Flowers. Earth. Wood. The sun on her skin was lovely. David had told her it got very cold in the winter, colder than she could even imagine, but now it felt perfect, like a bright spring day on the island.

“Meow.”

“Meow back,” she said. This wasn’t the same cat she’d seen earlier. This one seemed older, a bit more fragile.

“Are you Pittysing? Or Cho-Cho-San? Or… I bet you’re “Mamasan!”

This time the meow was more emphatic, and the cat raised one paw almost as if it were gesturing her to come down.

“Mamasan!” she said, and bent to stroke the animal which leaned against her hands, purring so loudly Ella imagined people hearing it in the house.

She’d been walking towards the little fenced in section. She straightened up and continued towards it, the cat trotting at her heels.

Water trickled over the marble of the fountain. On a pedestal a plaque depicted a little dog, a pug. On its top the name “Roscoe” was engraved in elegant black script.

Beneath it were a few lines of poetry:

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods

Live a longer life than men do,

Men a longer life than dogs do,

Dogs a longer life than love does.

Ella settled down on the bench across from the plaque, her eyes going over the words.

The cat, who had hopped onto the bench, finished grooming herself and settled in Ella’s lap.

“What does it mean, Mamasan?” Ellen asked, stroking the cat’s chin and bending to look into her blue eyes. “What’s it all about?”

Mamasan plainly knew only the sun on her fur and the soft hand petting her. She gazed up with drunken eyes and purred.

Then, as cats do, she suddenly decided it was over. With an irritable meow, Mamasan hopped from her lap.

“Are you asking Mamasan about the inscription?”

He smiled as the took the seat next to her. “She’s a cat, you know. You can’t believe a word she tells you.”

“It’s kind of bleak.” Ella said.

“A quote from an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem. And yeah, I guess ‘bleak’ is the word for it.”

“Roscoe was Mother’s dog.”

He shook his head. “I’m not real big on dogs myself. Cats are about as much as I can stand. But even by dog standards, Roscoe was pretty awful. One of those little, mean, yappy things, all eyes and tongue. Looked like Peter Lorre. Drooled constantly. Dad couldn’t stand him. None of us could, really. Except Mother, of course. Wherever she went she had the damned thing tucked under her arm. He slept with her, ate with her, crawled into her lap every time she sat down. It got to where she smelled like dog saliva.”

“Anyway, Mother… Mother got sick. Had to go into the hospital for awhile.”

“It took her three months to get to where she could come home. And by then, Roscoe had died.”

“How terrible! Your poor mother!”

“Yeah, it was terrible. Mother doesn’t believe it, but I swear to God, Ella, it was an accident. Someone left a door open, and Roscoe took off. Ran out into the road and got flattened by a car a week after Mother left for the hospital.”

“She blames Dad. Still calls him a murderer. I think she even kind of blames Blair and me, since we were here when it happened, which is… It’s just not right. I mean, Jeezus, we hated Roscoe, but we never wanted that to happen.”

“So she had this thing put up. Sometimes she comes out here and sits. Blair and I gave her a couple of cats for her birthday a few years ago. Mamasan and Papasan, who begat Cho-Cho-San and the rest. Mama said once that was about right. Five cats almost make up for one Roscoe.”

“Papasan went to his reward last year. He’s somewhere under the flowers over there. A tumor, thank God, not something she could blame on the rest of us.”

“I’m so sorry, David.”

She lay her hand on his. He took it, squeezed it, and stood, tugging her gently to her feet.

“So…” he smiled. “Now you know the worst about my family.”

“Let’s take a stroll and find someplace more cheerful to sit and talk.”

It seemed to her the neighborhood went on and on and on, handsome brick houses, long driveways, wide, trimmed lawns. “Mannered” was the word that kept occurring to her. Everything was very pretty, very solid, and very mannered.

David’s arm was around her waist. Once or twice they met people. A lady with gray hair walking her two Spaniels passed them, and David said, “Hello, Mrs Payton.” A plump man in his thirties stopped to speak to them and David itroduced her to him as “My very, very good friend Ella Macana,” and the man pronounced her “lovely.” Eventually, they came to a street of businesses, more dark brick and shade, a beautiful little mannered park.

On the little mannered bridge, going over a little mannered brook, David stopped and took her hands.

She wanted to say, “I understand about your mother.”

She wanted to tell him she knew what kind of hospital he meant.

She wanted to tell him about Pop, who was and wasn’t like Mrs. Baghill. Pop was a sweet, loveable man, even when he was ill, even when he got upset and said things he didn’t mean. He tended to blame himself instead of other people, but he, too had to go away a couple of times. It was nothing to be ashamed of. It was a sickness like any other.

“The bench over there has a much nicer view than the one at home,” David said.

“Let’s sit and talk about happy things.”

As they settled onto the bench, he said, “Rex and Sheila and the kids are coming over tonight.”

“We’re all going to go out to The Embers. A little dressy, but not too much. The steaks are the best bet there. Then we’ll all go back to the house for drinks. They want to get a look at you, of course, talk to you. I think you’ll like them.”

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” she said, and he laughed.

“I know you’ll make me proud,” he said.