Dreamers of the Day Read Online Free PDF

hair?”
    It was such a comfort, feeling her soapy hands gently rinse away the waxy sweat and stink of illness. That good woman nursed me with motherly tenderness, as though I were her own, but when I asked why my own mother did not come, or why I had not been taken home to Cedar Glen, Mrs. Motta never answered my questions. “You rest now,” she’d say firmly, and then she’d leave me alone to sleep.
    Only when my recovery seemed assured did she hand me the stack of telegrams that had been delivered while I lay ill. Douglas. Lillie. Their boys. Uncle John. Mumma. All of them were gone.
    “I’m sorry, signorina,” Mrs. Motta said, wringing her hands as I read the messages, one after the other. “I’m real sorry.”
    When I laid the flimsy yellow sheets aside, Mrs. Motta handed me a business card. I recognized the name. Mr. James Reichardt was a junior partner in Uncle John’s law firm.
    “He come round here twice, for to see you,” Mrs. Motta told me. “He say dere’s a ’heritance, signorina. And he wanna know, what you wan’ him-a do wit’ dat dog?”
             
    Over the years, Mumma had raised and sold generations of puppies: first collies, then cocker spaniels, and finally dachshunds—all long, benchlike dogs, decreasing in size as her stamina declined.
    “The dachshund is a perfectly engineered dog,” Ernest once observed. “It is precisely long enough for a single standard stroke of the back, but you aren’t paying for any superfluous leg.”
    Perhaps it was the dachshund’s economy of material that appealed to Mumma, but her timing with the breed was unfortunate. She had tried to popularize the long-haired variety, believing its temperament was better, but people preferred the familiar short-haired red. Later, when the war started, no one would buy anything remotely German. By 1918, Mumma was practically giving the pups away. She decided to sell the breeding stock and get out of the business entirely.
    As luck would have it, I was present for the final whelping. The last to emerge was a black-and-tan female with a badly kinked tail and an unattractive blue dapple splattered across her back and face. These were defects that doomed a puppy to a quick end. Mumma kept a bucket of water in the kennel for just that purpose. You may think her harsh, but it is a conscientious breeder’s duty to be critical. Mumma had tried crossing dapples in the past, and the results had sometimes been disastrous. This little female might be healthy enough, but her own offspring could be born eyeless, or earless, or brainless. Mumma had never worked out a way to predict when or why that would happen.
    “No sense exhausting the bitch’s resources on a pup that shouldn’t be bred,” she said briskly.
    “Wait!” I said, and stayed my mother’s hand when she reached for the dapple. “I’ll take her.”
    Mumma stared.
    I dropped my gaze, ashamed of my wayward eye, but I couldn’t stop myself from arguing. “You always say I don’t get enough exercise. Walking a dog will be good for me.”
    Mumma couldn’t dispute the principle, but picked up the puppy anyway. “Well, you don’t want
this
one. You want the sable.”
    All my life, Mumma had told me what I didn’t want. “Oh, you don’t want
those
earrings,” she’d say. “They’ll draw attention to your eyes.” Oh, you don’t want
that
dress. It will make you look like a stick. Oh, you don’t want
eggs
for breakfast. You want oatmeal. It’s better for you in cold weather. Well, I didn’t want oatmeal. I never wanted oatmeal. I hated the stuff, but I choked it down, all winter long, because Mumma put it in front of me and told me that was what I wanted.
    Suddenly, and I cannot tell you why, a determination came over me like I don’t know what! I did not want that puppy’s perfectly lovely red sister or her handsome sable brother. No, I wanted the defective little black-and-tan. I wanted her ferociously, indignantly, unbendingly—blue