Chapter Seven #3
He was growling when they reached him, tail high as a scorpion’s.
Something was amiss. The dog lived in a world of sounds and smells that Miles wasn’t privy to, but Miles knew his normal posture, the way he sniffed the air, gently taking in the world’s affordances.
In contrast, the object of his attention now seemed, by his stance, imminent.
Miles reached into his pocket for some kibble, but Giuseppe didn’t turn his head.
Miles looked again. Nothing, just trees, just bushes.
No climbing porcupine, no hissing marmot.
He had enough time to think back to the formless wraiths, the gravitational disruptions that Wesley had been describing, when one of the bushes rose up from the earth.
The forest seemed to shift in perspective, and something that Miles had been seeing, but hadn’t realized he’d been seeing, stepped toward them and became a man, bow strapped to his backpack.
Stepped toward them again and became a woman.
Became a familiar, pregnant woman. Became Olive’s teacher, Kayleigh Swan.
—
It was not the first time that Miles and Kate had met Miss Kayleigh, just the first in camouflage.
Two weeks ago, they’d gone into their first parent-teacher meeting to find that the woman who their daughter idealized seemed to have no clear idea who Olive was; or, more exactly, she described a child who helped with everything, led her classmates at clean-up, and never tried out the words she had learned from Harper.
Was there another Olive? each wondered, and it was only when the topic turned to art that they were reassured that they were talking about the same little girl.
Frankly, Miss Kayleigh had confided, when it came to art, Olive was mopping the floor with the other children.
She handed them a painting Olive had made of an owl, and then, to their surprise, some other children’s owl paintings, for comparison.
Could they believe it? Kayleigh asked. This was the worst part of her job, pretending work was good when…
this…She pointed to one of the other children’s paintings.
And people asked themselves what was happening to America!
Take that one—she drew out another particularly undeveloped example.
Did that look like an owl to them? Or this one?
She wasn’t even certain this one was a bird, and this one looked like someone had had an accident on a pair of eyes.
How about this one? No beak. No wings. But Olive!
Olive! Miles and Kate were doing something right.
There was a pause, while the parents exchanged glances, uncertain if they were meant to agree with the teacher’s appraisal of the paintings belonging to the other children, some of whom they knew from playdates.
It wasn’t as if Miss Kayleigh was wrong, though, and both Miles and Kate did feel a touch of superiority.
But by then Kayleigh had repeated the word “Olive.” She’d never met an Olive.
Olivia, yes; loads of them. But Olive? Was she named after the vegetable?
Fruit, thought Miles, but he was tired of correcting the world, and really what Kayleigh was asking was where the name had come from.
There were long and short answers to this question.
The long answer: Olive had not been named until two weeks after they had left the hospital, because Miles had wanted to name her Pelageia, which was what Chekhov named his most bighearted peasants, and Kate had wanted to name her Blake after, well, you know, and Miles had said it was his turn because Kate had chosen Wesley, after her father’s younger brother Wesley, a beloved uncle who had died when she was ten.
Kate had argued that honoring a dead uncle shouldn’t count; she wasn’t exactly happy for the privilege; not everyone’s family was blessed with the Krzelewski longevity.
This was true: Miles’s grandfather had lived to 98, and his grandmother 103, and his mother’s side seemed equally indestructible.
But they were at an impasse, so Olive had left the hospital as “Baby Girl,” and Miles had doubled down with Milesian intensity to find a name.
It had to be perfect; with “Krzelewski-Petrosian” hanging off the back, there wasn’t room for error.
And this was at a time when the hip of Northern California had taken baby naming to contrarian peaks.
Fanny, Grizzly, Spider. There was even a “Job” in Wesley’s preschool, pronounced—the beleaguered parents were quick to inform him—not like employment, but, rather, as in “the Book of,” which was hardly better, indeed seemed like it belonged on a list of biblical names not to give your child, up there with “Sodom” or “Gomorrah.” It was a trend, this naming of children with names that needed explanations, and then getting angry when asked to explain it.
But the Internet had revealed that “Job” was not only permitted but not entirely uncommon, having risen to be the 867th most common male name of 2012.
Below “Harold,” but above “Howard.” In fact, the site informed him, “if you focus on the positive qualities of the biblical Job, rather than his torture, the name becomes more usable.”
The short answer was that “Olive” was an Americanization of the surname of Kate’s maternal grandmother, which seemed to reassure Miss Kayleigh, who—they were learning quickly—had acquired, from the Internet and radio, notions about California consistent with people naming their children after vegetables.
But this was a family that valued cohesion, were respectful enough of hunting to wear blaze orange, and tough enough to brave a cold, wet November day.
While mutual recognition passed slowly over Miles and the huntress on the trail, Olive, now arriving at her father’s side, recognized Miss Kayleigh instantly, hurling herself upon her teacher with a hug.
Giuseppe, relieved that his owners had declared the creature friendly, followed suit as if she were his dearest friend.
The family offered the teacher a fig bar, the teacher offered the family rabbit jerky, and, in a model for the divided nation, all parties accepted the respective offerings and sat down for a snack.
Several interesting things happened during the snack.
Like any fan who, upon meeting a worshipped celebrity, suddenly finds, after the shriek, the hug, the selfie, that they are at a loss for what to talk about, Olive had fallen into a worshipful silence, looking back and forth between Mom and teacher, Dad and teacher, expectantly.
Back and forth, twirling bits of Miss Kayleigh’s shrubbery that had decamped into her curls after the hug.
It is natural to assume that four people one loves deeply should have a lot in common, but Miles was finding the face paint distracting, Wesley was picking moss off Giuseppe, Kate was working on the rabbit, and Kayleigh was trying to think of the polite way to ask how this family, who seemed so intelligent in many ways, who had raised a great artist, who owned a working dog bred for mushroom hunting, who respected blaze orange, had missed a dozen “Private Property” signs.
Wesley, out of left field, was the first to speak.
He wondered what Miss Kayleigh was hunting, since the early archery deer season ended on November 12 and today was the 15th.
Miles reflexively closed his eyes, Kate pretended she was distracted by some jerky in her teeth, and Olive looked anxiously between her brother and her teacher. But then a bright-white grin spread across Miss Kayleigh’s dark-green face. Because she wasn’t hunting; she was patrolling.
—