14. Dulcie #2
She got the water started, showing Elizabeth that she was making it nice and warm, but not too hot. Then she washed and Elizabeth rinsed until all their dishes were in the drain rack.
West had a dishwasher, but Elizabeth was having so much fun playing in the sudsy water that Dulcie was glad they had done them by hand. It actually gave her another idea.
“Would you like to give any of your toys a bath now?” she asked.
“My toys?” Elizabeth echoed, chuckling.
“We could get a nice bowl of soapy water, and we could sit on the floor and play with the ones that are okay to get wet,” Dulcie said. “If you want.”
Delphine had always loved that game. The two of them had spent plenty of happy hours sitting under the kitchen table with a bowl of water and a towel, parading their plastic toys through the bath. And they hadn’t had nearly as many of them as Elizabeth did .
“Yes,” Elizabeth said.
“Okay, let’s go get some toys,” Dulcie told her.
They headed back upstairs. Elizabeth had a wall of built-in shelves in her room that were filled with books and toys. Although there was nothing on the floor, the shelves weren’t very neat, and it took a little while to find all the toys that could be washed.
“Do you wish your shelves were organized?” Dulcie asked.
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked.
“Sometimes, it’s nice to know where all your books and toys are,” Dulcie told her. “Especially when you have as many beautiful things as you do.”
“How do we do that?” Elizabeth asked.
“First, we take everything down,” Dulcie told her. “Then we put it all back up again, but this time with all the toys together and the books together and the stuffed animals together.”
“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “I want to do that.”
“Right now, or after lunch?” Dulcie offered.
“Now,” Elizabeth said.
Dulcie watched her carefully start moving her things onto the floor.
“We need music for a job like this,” Dulcie decided.
“Music?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yes,” Dulcie told her. “I think we can also make this a dance party.”
Elizabeth let out a belly laugh, her head falling back with abandon.
Dulcie suddenly felt that maybe she was going to do her job well. And she wasn’t just thinking of the job West had given her, which was simply to keep Elizabeth safe and happy. She was thinking about the job she had given herself, which was to help the serious little girl let her hair down.
By late afternoon Dulcie looked around the house with satisfaction.
They had danced, sung, and laughed the morning away in Elizabeth’s room, reorganizing her shelves. Then they realized that there was no time to give the toys a bath if they wanted to start the crock pot with chicken soup.
Dulcie offered Elizabeth a choice—she could bathe her toys and they could make soup tomorrow, or they could make soup now, and bathe the toys another time.
To Dulcie’s surprise, Elizabeth had handled the decision thoughtfully and with no tears. She chose to make soup, and seemed to be immediately pleased with her decision.
And the day had unfolded happily from there. Now, the soup was almost done, a cake was in the oven, Elizabeth had taken her nap, and she was finally sitting on a towel on the kitchen floor, giving her little plastic toys a bath while Dulcie put away the ingredients from the cake.
When they heard the sound of the front door opening, Dulcie was honestly surprised.
“ Daddy,” Elizabeth called out.
“I finished up early,” West said as he strode into the kitchen. “Hey, what smells so good? ”
“We made soup,” Elizabeth told him. “And we made cake. And I took my nap. And my toys are having a bath .”
“Wow,” West said. “Great job.”
Dulcie smiled and watched him get down on the floor with her.
“This guy isn’t clean yet,” Elizabeth said, picking up a small plastic horse and holding it out to him.
Dulcie held her breath. West was always kind to Elizabeth, but somehow Dulcie just couldn’t picture the big man giving a small plastic horse a bath.
“He isn’t?” West asked Elizabeth.
“No, Daddy,” Elizabeth said very seriously. “His shelf is organized . He needs to be clean.”
“I see,” West said. “Should I give him a bath?”
Elizabeth nodded her head up and down hard.
“All right, then,” West said, before lifting the little horse so that it was eye to eye with him. “Now listen here, horsey. I’m giving you a bath, and I don’t want a lot of hassle about it.”
Elizabeth’s eyes got really big, and Dulcie tried to hide her smile.
“Here we go,” West told the horse, lowering it slowly into the water.
They all watched intently as the horse got partly submerged. Then suddenly West’s eyebrows leapt up as he made the horse jump out of the bowl, making a funny whinnying sound as he did.
“What in the world?” West demanded. “Get back in there, you. No horsing around.”
But the horse galloped away across the towel and hid under Elizabeth’s leg. There was a second of silence and then Elizabeth shrieked with laughter.
“Go back in,” she laughed. “Go in.”
“I think he wants you to give him his bath,” West suggested.
“You go in nicely,” Elizabeth warned the horse, picking him up and talking to him just like her dad had done.
Of course the unruly animal cooperated with his mistress. Dulcie chuckled when Elizabeth praised him for being a good horsey.
West scrambled up and turned to Dulcie.
“It sounds like she had a great day,” he said with a gentle smile. “Thank you for helping her have so much fun. I didn’t expect you to make dinner. I was just going to order out.”
“We made it together,” she told him honestly. “Right, Elizabeth?”
“It’s soup ,” Elizabeth called out to him. “I helped.”
“Should we invite Grandma and Grandpa over to try it?” West offered. “It’s not every day that their granddaughter makes soup for dinner.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“Is that okay with you?” he asked Dulcie.
She smiled and nodded, amazed that he had even asked. This was his house, obviously he could invite over anyone he wanted.
“I’ll just get changed and give them a call,” he told her.
She watched after him for a moment, feeling happy that he was happy.
I could get used to this…