Regan

Be Gentle

Mrs. Montcreef and her two young children spent an hour on Saturday morning packing the car for a drive into the mountains to attend a camp retreat for single parents and their families. Paine brought his collection of trading cards, which he studied with a ferocious hunger for facts printed on the reverse sides. He knew, as a six-year-old who had recently started reading with increased confidence, that his strength as a trader was holding inside his head the valuable information of statistics. He would be able to wager more effectively through close scrutiny and memorization and to show his prowess to others by regurgitating statistics and the lingo of the card’s business. Everyone knew something well, it seemed: sports, rocks, or fantasy characters. He wrapped each card in its plastic badge and slid one on top of another in a metal box he had found in the garage, its lock secured with a tiny key whose indentations resembled a mouse’s nibble marks.

His sister Elson gathered her clothes and ordered them similarly in a rolling suitcase. At eleven, she’d never been to the mountains, much less camp. Her father had spoken often of renting a caravan and making for a lake, but circumstances prevented it. Mrs. Montcreef disliked the outdoors in general and had referred to bad memories from her own childhood. This was an exception, and she did not tell her children why they were going, only that there would be many children there just like them who would want to play games. Elson looked around her room with the feeling that she might never return, selecting items with which she would be unable to part, in case something happened.

She had watched a television program on the royal family and placed a layer of white tissue paper around each article of clothing, folded with department store precision, to prevent wrinkles in the manner of the Queen’s garments. At the last minute, Elson realized she had forgotten a crucial item and undid everything she had so meticulously organized in order to put her oldest and dearest friend, a tattered brown bear, on the bottom, out of sight. She didn’t want the other girls seeing Hymie and commenting. She had cried on Hymie’s belly many times and cared for him out of loyalty, since he had never told anyone. She understood that animals, especially stuffed ones, do not speak, yet she felt compelled to uphold this agreement. Replacing the tissue paper, she tied the contents in place with a long strip of red satin ribbon and attached it to the inside straps on her luggage.

Pulling their belongings into a hallway, Paine and Elson considered one another with the looks of strangers who have already been on a long, arduous journey together. Though they knew they would be traveling in the car for four hours, their space inside the vehicle would be separate. Elson was now old enough to sit in the front passenger seat, leaving Paine the whole back of the car. Mrs. Montcreef called out to the children to help load the car, and they ran to the kitchen to drag the ice-filled cooler full of perishable snacks toward her. They argued as if carrying a grail.

“Be careful with that,” Mrs. Montcreef said, watching them from an open car door window. “There are breakables inside.”

Taking the cooler from them, she asked the children to bring out her bags, then theirs. They scurried to accomplish the task, an American Eskimo nipping at their heels. Monsignor intuited that he was not going with them, and though a neighbor would check on his water and feed twice daily, he felt that his family would never come back. This had happened before, long nights away, strangers entering his privacy, lonely hours waiting and whimpering unheard, and eventually the tumultuous return with kissing, licking, and exhaustion. Monsignor had just endured a drastic haircut of his formerly puffy white mane and an unpleasant nail clipping, yet despite this recent trauma he would have preferred to go with the people rather than stay here alone. Sometimes they left on a light or the radio, but night seemed darker and the voices were not familiar. He did not care about international news and local weather.

In his desire to grab the most bags, Paine had forgotten his own until he saw his sister hoisting the unsecured load of his suitcase. The brown plaid exterior trembled to her touch, and he envisioned the trading cards within wobbling around, their sharp corners bending and tearing. The damage would be irreversible. Some of those cards were really valuable, because their production had ceased. When a card was in high demand, they wouldn’t make it anymore. This made it a collector’s item, highly sought after yet vulnerable. Some kids wouldn’t even open their cards, thinking that they would be even more precious with their seals intact. He shrieked at his sister to drop it.

The next series of events would remain ingrained in Elson and a complete blank for her brother. Paine ran across the living room and jumped at her, scratching with his fingers and biting her face. Skin broke and blood trickled in delicate droplets onto her jeans, her favorite jeans with a subtle array of daisies embroidered on the pockets, which she had chosen for the drive and the ultimate arrival at camp to meet the friends she imagined would become pen pals and correspond with her for summers to come, eventually rooming with her in college and having babies at the same times in their lives, spending afternoons on each other’s porches watching their children who would also be friends play in the back yard. In a moment, the possibility of all that vanished, and Elson sprang toward the kitchen. She threw open a drawer and took out the biggest knife she could find, the one her mother used to open watermelons and butternut squash. She chased Paine through every room in the house, circling the lawn twice with murder in mind.

Mrs. Montcreef heard the ruckus after a delay. At the head of the driveway, she saw what her neighbors had been watching from shocked curtains and appalled front steps: her maniac children with weapons, on the grass, wet to spare it from burning. Elson slipped, and the cleaver slid onto the sidewalk just as a pair of aging athletes jogged by. The husband bounded over the steel blade while his wife let out an indiscrete peel of terror. Mrs. Montcreef closed her eyes. As Paine rushed to take up the abandoned knife, Mrs. Montcreef shouted “Stop!” and walked calmly to the slender strip of concrete separating her home from those where rage was not so brazen.

“Inside,” she said to her children, who pleaded to be heard and validate their menacing acts, “now.”

She walked into the garage and quickly put the knife out of reach, as much for their protection as to obliterate the scene which had just occurred. The children yelled and slammed doors, and Mrs. Montcreef remembered for a moment being Jill, herself as a teenager. Events appeared in her head, though her eyes remained open, while shutting each of four doors on the sedan. Jill had shown her father something she knew he wouldn’t like, with the intention of being honest and in the hope of gaining his acceptance, and the plan had backfired. He was enraged, much as her own children had just been, crazed with righteousness and emboldened by a sudden loss of power. He had just discovered Jill to be alien to him and beyond his control. He came toward her, and, knowing her father well, she escaped to the only place she knew she would be safe: outside, where neighbors would hear and see anything he might say or do. He stood behind the screen door, stared at her, and tore a hole in the crisscross, knit plastic.

Mrs. Montcreef left Jill in the garage with the prepared vehicle, gas tank filled early that morning after she’d made up her face. Paine and Elson sat on opposite sides of the living room, pouting in sofa and loveseat. Their mother sat on an ottoman between them, and Monsignor whined in inarticulate confusion. Mrs. Montcreef said, “Be gentle with each other. He’s the only brother you have, and she’s the only sister you have.” They interrupted her with assurances that each wished to be an only child or that the other had been stillborn.

“Listen,” she said.

They sat in silence for perhaps a minute, the only sound Monsignor’s plaintive barking. Mrs. Montcreef saw two women across the street, one watering lifeless roses with an expanse of green rubber hose, talking (Mrs. Montcreef assumed) about the terrible Montcreef children. The women shook their heads sadly, then made resigned faces and nodded. Mrs. Montcreef knew the conversation word for word but pretended she didn’t care about gossip. Elson pointed to the proof on her favorite jeans. She insisted all of her best clothes were packed, not wanting to disclose the work she had taken to make sure her belongings were collected like those at Windsor Castle. Mrs. Montcreef gave her five minutes to change, though she doubted Elson ever would. Paine would take his own bag to the car, and they would be off.

Four hours later, they arrived at camp and saw other children with their mothers. The only men at camp wore counselor shirts with bright yellow sunshines on the left chest. Each single parent family checked in and made their way to a communal cabin housing two or three clans. They selected bunk beds and put their things out on little bedside tables. At orientation in a great outdoor amphitheater, the camp director welcomed everyone and soon excused the children to play an organized, Christian activity and the adults (all women) to gather in the narthex for ice breakers.

Mrs. Montcreef soon discovered she was not herself at present, but Jill again. None of the women went by their surnames. In the first ice breaker, they were asked to think of someone they had known who had been tolerant and loyal to them. Jill was third to answer and named her husband. A gasp came from the group, and Jill understood at once that she was the only widow in the group. “He passed away,” she explained. Mrs. Montcreef recalled the last retreat she had attempted, one especially for widows. Her mother had visited to watched the children while Mrs. Montcreef went in search of comradery to help her children adjust to life without a father. All of the widows were over sixty and concerned with finding a trustworthy handyman and paying bills by themselves.

Out in the forest, the children were instructed in a game called Romans and Christians. Children counted off -- ones were Romans in red jerseys, and twos were Christians in blue. The purpose of the game was for Romans to chase and try to capture Christians, who would then either recant and convert to the Roman side and become chasers, or maintain their beliefs and sit in time out, forfeiting any fun to be had. Elson immediately understood the message and exerted little effort, retreating to the cabin to read an unauthorized biography of James Dean.

Paine, on the other hand, was eager to play and evade arrest, but older boys soon outran him. Three boys surrounding him sweated beneath their uniforms with flushed cheeks.

One said, “Give up. That’s the only way to play. Say you’re a Roman.”

This boy seemed a potential friend, so Paine submitted. His former attackers slapped him on the back and pulled off his blue jersey, trading it for a red one. After the Christians were defeated, the victorious Romans improvised another game before supper in the main hall. It seemed similar in most ways to the first, though without jerseys. Paine asked what the game was, and someone said, “Parents.” Paine lay down on the ground and played his late father.

Sunday, Mrs. Montcreef drove her children home. The neighbor who had looked in on Monsignor asked a quick favor, and Mrs. Montcreef was happy to watch the woman’s three-year-old daughter for a few hours. Perhaps it would endear her again to the neighborhood. Raquel had taken a shine to Paine, the only child near her age. She happily followed him around and did as he did, a dangerous form of flattery. Paine went into his room, as Raquel and Monsignor followed. The shaggy dog was desperate for reunion, despite the aggressive tugs the little girl administered to his backside. Mrs. Montcreef asked her son to be gentle with Raquel and not tease her too much. She was too young to know the difference between play and real.

After their father had died, both Paine and Elson had slept in their parents’ bed, touching some part of their mother’s body, afraid she too might disappear suddenly. One night, Elson declared that she was going to sleep in her own room from then on, if that was alright with her mother. Mrs. Montcreef often awoke with Paine’s legs crossed over hers. In her own bedroom, vacant for once, Mrs. Montcreef disemboweled her luggage and put things back the way they had been. She avoided drawers on the left side of her dresser, which still housed the socks and t-shirts of the late Mr. Montcreef. She had not been able to touch his clothes or move his things. The answering machine message was three years old, his voice giving instructions to do the most obvious thing. At times, he sounded tired. Other times, he sounded bored, but he never sounded dead.

A shriek came from Paine’s bedroom. Mrs. Montcreef raced across the house to reach them, imagining the worst: the little girl had fallen and split open her head! Paine had suddenly gone mad and strangled his loving companion! The dog had tired of constant nipping at his buttocks and snapped at the toddler, biting off a portion of her earlobe! When Mrs. Montcreef finally saw Monsignor writhing and whining on the floor, guarding his hind quarters with an animal glare, she felt relieved. He was just a pet, not a child. Paine confessed at once to lifting the American Eskimo over his head and hurtling him to the carpet. She had, in fact, experienced a premonition.

The veterinarian treated the animal with detached care. It was impossible to be a doctor and not love your patients, but the relationship was formal. The doctor was healer, and the patient was injured. In the vet’s case, further levels of disparity appeared. The doctor was healer and human, and the patient was injured and a pet. They were worthy of being kept and domesticated but were weaker than real animals, removed from the wilderness and coddled with canned beef instead of hunting their prey. The animal world knew pets were pathetic examples of themselves, unfit to return to the woods.

Monsignor became depressed over the next few days, as the family awaited the doctor’s prescription for treatment: an expensive surgery that might not actually cure the fracture, or being put down. Mrs. Montcreef did not share these details with her children. She told them the dog was resting. Monsignor suffered a crisis of spirit, that he was no longer a real animal, perhaps had not been one for some time. He was at the mercy of another. He might become one of those sad, three-legged invalids whose owners still walked them around the block as a matter of fitness. It was terrible to be that dog.

Mrs. Montcreef weighed the options. She had known Monsignor longer than the late Mr. Montcreef, whom the dog had outlived. She knew Monsignor before Elson and Paine. The animal was 15 years old, over 100 human years. Was surgery important? Would Monsignor live so much longer with the procedure? Would he want to? Could Mrs. Montcreef ethically end the life of her pet, her oldest friend, if it meant sparing him suffering or humiliation? She would tell the children that their pet had fallen asleep, the metaphor they heard when their father died. It made little sense to Elson, who began having problems sleeping, walking instead and making pasta for no apparent reason. Once, she set the kitchen on fire. Elson stopped sleep-walking the next night.

Mrs. Montcreef sat down on the couch next to her daughter. Paine sat on the carpet in front of them, his head bent forward over crossed legs. Their eyes were glued to the television screen. She watched their faces, stoic and supple, suspended in space. At commercial, she muted the volume and said, “I want to talk to you about Monsignor, but first I have to ask you something. Who is someone, besides me, that you love?”

Paine howled, “Mon-SEEN-yor!”

“Besides me or the dog,” Mrs. Montcreef looked at Elson, “or your father.”

Elson said, “I love my brother.”

Mrs. Montcreef turned to her son. “What do you think of that, Paine? Who do you love?”

The little boy looked at the bent trading card in his hand, its plastic torn in a jagged U shape. “I love cake.”