On this day, as all others, she was mixing various vegetables into a potpourri of soup that required as little culinary sense as an undomesticated female needed to have. With vegetables being dumped in a crock-pot with a bit of water and pepper, it seemed to her that it was impossible for much to go awry. The lunch might have been monotonous but having little else from which to make a negative judgment, her son didn't complain about this point. His only experience was soup, pasta, and scrambled eggs that usually came out all right and pancakes and French toast that had a 50 percent chance of being burnt beyond recognition or going awry in the most unforeseen ways. Outside of giving objections about burnt comestibles, he was a truly ignorant savage; and concerning matters of culinary taste that was how she cared to keep him. When she asked him to wash his hands he went over to the sink and exclaimed, "Oh wow, chocolate."
"Get your hands out of that water! That's nasty looking stuff. Diarrhea looking, it seems to me."
"What's that?"
"The runs, my dear, the runs."
"The sink has the runs? It's sick?" She chuckled at his animistic thinking. Everything was alive in his judgment and, apart from some wild untoward behavior, he was a creature who was sensitive to the feelings of the whole world. She wished that she could keep him like this forever. The water pressure became inconsistent and unevenly went on and off in thrusts. "Diarrhea and constipation at the same time— hard life for the poor sink. Well, until they solve the problem here— whoever the they are—use bottled water. Scrub with soap." As she stirred the soup she saw a yellow school bus drive into the trailer park and a kindergartner leaving it. Her half-day was over. "Do you know that girl?" she asked.
He looked out of the window. "No, she's new; but anyway, I don't play with them girls. They don't know how to play catch. They don't know what to do with balls of all sorts."
"How would you know that?"
"Chuck told me."
"Is that a fact? Well, you haven't seen your mother play racket ball before. It isn't exactly Olympic material but it's close. Hmm…oh, my, we got so carried away with God only knows what and it looks like we've missed the first day of classes once again. Mama Gabriele would teach you herself through all your twelve or thirteen years if she didn't have to make a living. Well, I don't know. Let's ponder this situation a bit longer." She stared at the yellow bus through her little kitchen window. She abhorred it. She stared at it with the intensity of a female version of Zeus wanting to strike it with lightning but the lightning backfired. She felt a migraine headache coming on. "Honey, do me a favor and share some of this soup with Mouse. The two of you can eat outside. Then take mouse for a walk in the trailer park. Go talk to the little Girl and see what she's up to. All alone, not knowing anybody in the trailer park, you should say hello." Her sentences were dangling modifiers; but she did not care about grammar since she had a headache. "Most people if left all alone will come to no good so go talk to her and save civilization." This idea went contrary to her life's model but she didn't care about the contradiction. She just wanted to stop the headache. "Mommy's got to think now. Okay, scoot, scoot. Take the bottle of water with you. It will be like a picnic." She handed him the leash for the cat. When he was outside she locked the door. She felt the migraine intensifying like the footsteps of a wrathful god incrementally approaching her. She went into the bathroom and lit a joint. She watched a cloud of smoke rise into the fan that had been installed in the door. She inhaled her cannabis again and again.
"Miss Sangfroid—yes, you," said the higher authority with a sound and derision of her Aunt Peggy's voice, "look at yourself cowering in a toilet." The form was inconsistent. It subtly wavered between an appearance similar to that of Peggy from long ago and her own ideal form.