Ann Beattie, a contributing editor of the Scholar, has published 20 novels and short story collections. She is the recipient of the PEN/ Malamud Award and the Rea Award for the Short Story. Her work appears in five O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies as well as in Best American Short Stories of the Century.
L ucretia was eight when she took the walk with her mother in Staunton, Virginia, where they'd moved after her mother's job in Norfolk ended. Now they lived with her mother's favorite cousin, Riley Prall, who was 52, and in a weakened condition, though he'd painted a room of his apartment lavender for Lucretia, because it was her favorite color. Her mother, Edith, had been amazed that he'd been so thoughtful—though why that should have surprised her, when he'd expressed delight at their moving in temporarily, Lucretia couldn't understand. Cousin Riley had gotten pneumonia the previous July and never bounced back, so two health aides alternated making visits twice a week, on his non-dialysis days. Both aides were women: Arna Mae and her friend Marilyn, who'd been sober for 13 years and worked for the same agency. Marilyn parked on Beverley Street and climbed the front steps, rather than driving up the steep driveway rutted with potholes and scattered with stone, as if the sky had opened and one of the gods, in an angry fit, had thrown down boulders. (Lucretia was learning about the gods in school. “This is what education's become?” her mother often complained to Cousin Riley, who tried to calm her.) Arna Mae, Lucretia's favorite health aide, drove right up the steep incline, her tires skidding on the stones, and parked with the hazard lights flashing while she visited Riley. She'd recently brought a heart-shaped, red plush pillow with a padded arrowhead sewn to look like it was popping out one side, its pleather tail protruding from the other. She was re-gifting a present her husband had bought her for Valentine's Day, because she'd thought Lucretia would like it more: her husband was a generous man who approved of spreading happiness. Arna Mae had also recently given Lucretia two potholders made of quilted fabric, made to look like vertical pigs wearing white aprons and hats. Chef's attire now occupied a large part of Lucretia's imagination; she'd requested for her ninth birthday an apron just like the pigs', though Cousin had bought her one on eBay well in advance of that day, just because. It was so long that it had to be folded after it was raised to her armpits, the strings fastened in back, then brought forward to be tied in a bow.
On the day she and her mother took the walk, they were following Arna Mae's instructions on how to find the log cabin. This was a small house made from timber, which meant wood, and you could see the cement, or whatever it was, that oozed like frosting between cake layers. Arna Mae told them to be sure to notice the funny sign beside the side door.
Lucretia really wanted to go there. She was bored. She was too young for real homework, though sometimes she had to bring in things like autumn leaves, as if she was still in kindergarten, or a family knickknack, otherwise known as a tchotchke, and tell its story. There
