8. Winona
Winona
It's good for a person to be terrorized by a goat.
~ Natasha Pulley
I’m babysitting a goat.
“Jenny!” I shout as she nips at the edge of my shirt, then dips her head and rams into me.
Her short horns hook on the hem. It snags when she rears back.
She shakes and shakes and my shirt tugs left and right.
“You’re a little menace!” I say.
Jenny squints at me with her beady eyes.
“... a cute, wonderful menace.” I put a lilt in my voice in an attempt to subdue her. Do I think she’s cute? When she’s sleeping. Right now, she’s the spawn of Satan with fur and two very solid horns aimed in my direction.
She rams me again.
Jenny: 7, Me: 0.
She knows I don’t love her. And she’s making me pay.
But seriously? Who loves being head-butted this early in the day? If she wanted my admiration, she could take this whole Bruise the Babysitter campaign down a notch.
Jenny suddenly leaps up onto the couch and then takes another leap so she’s perched on the back of the couch like she’s playing King of the Mountain. She makes a maaaaaahhhaaaahhh sound.
Bleating? Braying? Baaing? I don’t know what goats call that guttural shrieking.
I look her in the eyes. “I made more teaching seniors to use their cell phones and not one of them head-butted me.”
She answers me with a, “Maaaaahhhllllahhhhhhaaahhhehehehe.” It’s almost like she’s taunting me.
“Let’s go outside and play with your tire,” I suggest.
I walk to the back door and Jenny joins me in one leap, straight off the back of the couch to my side. It’s impressive.
“Wow,” I tell her.
Maybe flattery will get me somewhere.
Sally, Jenny’s owner, left a bag of feed for me to give Jenny.
I rattle the bag, holding it at arm's length. We stare at each other. She has the eyes of someone who has never lost a negotiation in her life.
She butts me again for good measure.
“Hey!” I say. “That is not the way you’re getting any of this, missy!”
I didn’t sign up for a morning as a punching bag. Maybe I should change the word whatever in my job posting.
Goats are just taller dogs with horns and funky eyeballs.
I can do this.
I open the back door, expecting Jenny to leap and skitter outside. But she’s got her unfocused gaze lasered in on the paper bag in my hand.
“Okay, okay,” I say, opening the bag and sprinkling some into my hand. She rabidly gobbles it up, her little goat-lips brushing in quick pulses across my palm.
“That tickles,” I tell her.
She looks up at me as if to say, You like that? Keep giving me the pellets. Otherwise, I’ve got horns and I know how to use them.
“I know!” I tell her. “You’re a bully. Have you heard of a billy goat? Well, you’re a bully goat.”
Despite my big words, I sprinkle more pellets in my hand and Jenny goes to town.
When the bag is empty, I show her. She sticks her face in and the bag gets momentarily stuck on her nose. For one glorious second I think, I've won!
Jenny takes off running. Full speed. Blind.
Shaking her head violently and darting left and right.
Directly toward the fence. She pivots at the last second as if using radar, running pell-mell toward a bush.
The bag snags on a branch and catches. With one last shake of her head, Jenny sends the bag flying like a projectile, straight in my direction.
It smacks my shin and flops to the ground.
Jenny: 9. Me: 0.
I reluctantly step backward until my legs hit an outdoor porch chair. I plop down into it, never taking my eyes off Jenny. She stares me down, but pivots to butt the tire swing.
Note to self: goats are not pets. Not for me, anyway.
I’m exhausted by the time Sally gets home.
“How’d it go?” Sally asks, her face drawn up in concern.
I don’t have to tell her. She knows.
“We both survived,” I say.
“Oh, Winona. I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t need a sitter,” she says, “But she’s taken to escaping whenever I’m gone. Let’s see. There’s the elementary school, the park and there was that time at the thrift store. What a mess!” She shakes her head.
Sally grabs inside her purse while Jenny stands between us, the picture of feigned innocence.
Sally hands me a twenty and I hold it triumphantly out in front of Jenny.
“See this, Jenny?” I say, waving the bill around a little. "I got my payback."
She side-eyes me and with one chomp, she rips the money out of my hand and gobbles it down.
“Oh my gosh!” Sally shouts. “Jenny!” Her hand flies up to her mouth. “Winona! I’m so sorry!”
A laugh bubbles up and I can’t hold it in. I laugh so hard tears come to my eyes.
Sally apologizes the whole way through the house. All the way to the front porch.
I keep telling her it’s fine.
“I’ll send you a Venmo!” she shouts as I’m shutting the car door. “Jenny can’t eat that!”
I roll my window down and shout back, “I wouldn’t be so sure!”
I back down her driveway, leaving Sally and Jenny to spend a day doing whatever it is you do when you have a menace of a goat living inside your home with you.
I drive straight to Declan’s, wondering if he filled his compression cuff yet. He messaged me to say that the mini-freezer arrived last night. He had someone named Darlene set it up for him.
I was joking when I said “Have your people get you one.” He really does have people. Of course he does. He has an elevator and a TV in his restroom for heaven’s sake.
Unless Darlene is a girlfriend.
No.
If Declan had a girlfriend, she would have been around day and night since his injury. He’s obviously single.
Not that it matters.
It doesn’t.
I do feel a little better knowing someone like Declan is single. Maybe singleness isn’t a sign of missing the mark. Maybe it’s just another path in life—not better or worse than being in a committed relationship. Just … different.
I come to a stop in Declan’s driveway, looking in my back seat at the bags I brought.
Am I going overboard?
Maybe.
But my heart’s in the right place.
I let myself in the front door, shouting, “Hello? It’s me, Winona!”
“In here,” Declan’s deep voice rumbles down the hallway.
“What’s the mood today?” I ask, rounding the corner to find him in his same position, lying on the couch, leg elevated. No cold compression.
The mini-freezer is off in the corner of the room, humming lightly.
“So, you got the freezer, but didn’t use it?”
“I was waiting for you,” Declan says, a not-quite scowl on his face.
Well. At least I know what I'm working with. He's grumpy, not feral. Let’s hope he’s an easier audience than that goat.
“I brought you something,” I say, holding up my bag. “But let me get your compression going first.”
“What did you bring?” he asks, not smiling at all.
“A care kit.”
I don’t know what to call it, so I name it on the spot. It’s a kit of sorts. And I care. So: a care kit.
“A what?”
“A care kit. I put together some things I thought you could use.”
“I’m pretty sure I have everything I need right here.”
“Then you’d be wrong.”
He’s silent. I get the distinct feeling no one tells Declan O’Connell he’s wrong.
“I mean, you’d be right about a lot of things you don’t need. Like who needs that?”
I point to an abstract painting of a football player that’s probably as tall as I am on the far wall.
“My parents had that commissioned the first year I played with the Thunder.”
I study the painting for a beat. Now I see it. It’s him, walking off the field with his helmet in hand, dark hair tousled. Everything’s done in swatches of paint so it’s light and shadows. But the details seem to fill in the longer you stare at it.
I turn back to Declan. “Well … Do you need a fancy closet with a kitchen island in it?”
“To store my clothes?”
“Or heated floors in the bathroom?”
Yes. I found that out yesterday. They are actually heated.
“Comes in handy during the winter.”
I bet they do.
“What about a second kitchen?”
“For parties.”
“A home theater with twelve recliners?”
“For when the guys come over to watch the game.”
Maybe he doesn’t really understand that having everything you could want doesn’t mean you don’t need anything. Even Declan O’Connell has needs.
I blow out a breath. “Well, you need this too.”
“Okay. Show me what you’ve got.”
I drop the bag on the floor. The compression cuff can wait ten more minutes.
“Close your eyes,” I insist.
“What?”
“You heard me. You want your present? Close your eyes.”
I make a lot of noise on purpose while I pull the partitioned wood basket out of the bag.
“Okay. Open.”
He opens his eyes and looks at me first. And he doesn’t look away. He just holds my gaze as if he’s trying to figure me out. I hold his gaze in return. I just stood down a goat. Okay. I lost, but still. Declan’s got nothing on Jenny.
“What is it?” he asks, staring at the box in my hand.
“It’s an organizer for all your whatnots.”
“My whatnots.” His face is already less stern than it was a few minutes ago.
“Yes.” I walk over to him, picking up the remotes, his pack of Kleenex, his phone … and I plop each one into a compartment of the box. Then I set the box on the coffee table within his reach.
“Voila,” I say, waving my hand over the result.
“Thanks,” he says, looking at the box and then up at me.
“Oh, I’m not done. There’s more.”
He looks like he wants to say, “Yippee,” but in the most deadpan tone ever used by man.
Instead, he says, “Okay, bring it on.”
“You know the drill,” I say. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
I turn and pop my hand on my hip. If he knew the morning I’ve had, he would not test me.
“Okay, okay. Closing my eyes.”
I go to the bag.
“I know you can’t move around right now, but you’ll be getting around the house on crutches by late next week. And you know what’s bad about crutches?”
“Don’t tell me you brought bling,” he says, opening his eyes and raising one of his dark, masculine, expressive brows.
I clear my throat. “We could bling out your crutches. But this is better. More practical. Eyes shut.”
He obliges me while I run out of the room shouting over my shoulder, “Stay put!”
“What else am I going to do?” he says with a light chuckle.
I grab his crutches from the laundry room, then I come back to the family room, loop the sling around my body and say, “Open!”
His eyes pop open. I’m already propelling myself around the room. Going faster and faster. This is actually fun. If you put some swing behind it and push off with your toes, you can land four feet or so in front of yourself.
“So,” I say, my breath coming in pants with every push. I sail through the air and land. “You can put things in the sling bag and free up your hands to use the crutches. See?”
I push off again and swing forward into the hallway.
My feet are midair and they slam into Patrick’s abdomen.
“Patrick!” I shout.
The impact stops my momentum and sends me flying in the opposite direction.
I scream. The crutches give way. I’m flailing.
Patrick reaches out, shouting my name, “Winonaaaa!” He grabs my arm and somehow lifts me up as the crutches clatter to the ground. With one swift movement he deposits me on my feet.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was demonstrating how to use this sling.”
Patrick starts laughing. I glance over at the couch. Declan is cracking up. He’s actually wiping a tear out from under his eye and gasping for breath.
“That … was … awesome,” Declan says between bursts of laughter. His voice grows more serious. “You need to be careful, though.”
“You think?” I say, tucking a hair behind my ear.
“Yeah. I don’t want to have to set up a second couch in here.”
It takes me a minute to register what he’s saying. And when I figure it out, my heart clenches just a little. Declan would want to get a couch for me? Here? But why?
I pick the crutches up off the floor, propping them on the wall.
“Well, I think that’s everything …” I say. “Except your cold compression. Let me get to that.”
Declan turns his attention to his brother while I grab the cuff machine and exit stage left into the kitchen.
“What brings you here?” Declan asks Patrick.
“Just checking on you on my break. But I didn’t realize it was the entertainment hour.”
“Don’t knock it,” Declan says.
And I can’t make out what else he says without lingering too close when I have a job to do.
I fill the water and ice and come back into the family room, setting up the machine while the guys talk.
Once the compression is on, I step out into the hallway and lean back against the wall.
Cass is going to die when I tell her about my antics on the crutches.
I can hear her voice now. Only you, Winona. Only you.