Deeply Odd(103)

At that moment, there wasn’t a party anywhere in the world that I couldn’t have brought down in five minutes flat.

Mrs. Fischer drove off the famous Strip, zigzagged from one long, flat street to another, found some hills, and at last pulled into the driveway of a substantial but welcoming house with warm light aglow in all its windows. A friendly couple in their fifties at once came out of the residence to welcome us and to assist with the children, all of whom were escorted inside. No names were offered, and I was not asked for mine, but they greeted me as if we had long known one another—as was true of everyone I would later encounter here.

I sensed by the way that Boo remained faithfully at Verena’s side, he might not be my ghost dog anymore, but might have attached himself to a new companion.

This expansive residence, on two levels, was a place where books were honored, as almost every room contained shelves of them. These people had built a shrine to family and to friendship, with clusters of framed photographs of loved ones on tables and mantels and in wall arrangements. Every space seemed to be designed for celebration, with numerous carefully considered groupings of furniture, cozy nooks, and window seats to accommodate easy conversation. Although the place was clean and neat and tastefully appointed, you felt that you could put your feet up on anything, as you might in your own home.

I can describe what happened in that house over the next few hours, but I cannot explain it. No experience of my life has been so radiant, other than my time with Stormy in our years together, and yet so mysterious.

We were brought into the living room, where three dogs awaited us: a golden retriever, a Bernese mountain dog, and a Bouvier des Flandres, all of which at once began to circulate, like huge stuffed toys come to life, among the children.

On the kitchen island, on the dining-room table, on a side table in the living room were trays of cookies and little cakes, and the children were offered drinks, though most of them at first declined. They were still stressed, if not in some degree of shock. At least four of these knew that their parents had been killed. And the limousine ride here, to an unknown destination, had provided no decompression.

After perhaps ten minutes, nine children joined our group, not all of them the sons and daughters of our hosts, because the nine seemed to range in age from seven to ten. I will not say that they were all beautiful by the standards of our culture, which is obsessed with models and airbrushed celebrities, but they were beautiful to me, fresh-faced and glowing with good health.

The nine were the most socially adept group of kids that I had ever seen. They were neither hesitant nor forward, and certainly not territorial as most kids are, but spread out at once among our seventeen rescues, welcoming them, asking about them, touching them affectionately in that unselfconscious way that childhood friends of some duration can be with one another.

At first the seventeen were awkward, uncertain, confused, but sooner than I would have thought possible, they were drawn out of their shells. The twenty-six of them separated into groups of three and four, always with at least one of these new children included, and they wandered off to corners all over the house.

I approached Mrs. Fischer and said, “What’s all this? What’s happening here?”

“What needs to happen, dear. Just watch. You’ll see.”

“Who are these other children?”

“Watch and see,” she repeated, and pinched my cheek.

I wandered the house, upstairs and down and up again, in a state of wonder as events progressed. Soon our traumatized seventeen were engaged in conversations with the nine and with each other, and now and then I saw tears and trembling and despair that somehow didn’t last. I stood listening to many of these conversations, and they all made sense to me and seemed in fact beautiful at the time, but as soon as I walked away from any one of them, I couldn’t quite recall what had been said.

The three dogs circulated ceaselessly. Often I came upon one of our seventeen clinging almost desperately to the golden retriever or the Bernese or the Bouvier. Later, their anxious looks and pained expressions had given way to smiles, some tentative but nonetheless smiles.

Cookies appeared in small hands, and mugs of hot chocolate or cold milk, glasses of Coca-Cola. Conversations became more animated, sometimes almost intense, and though I eavesdropped everywhere, and understood, I at once seemed to forget, as if the things they said were truths and consolations that only a child’s mind could retain.

For most of those three hours, I felt as if I were in a dream, though every minute of it was as real as any experience of my life. I ate cookies, traveled continuously through the house, and felt at peace as I had not felt in a long time. I knew that whatever might be happening to our seventeen—guidance or therapy, or something utterly different from either—it was a thing of great goodness.