— Eleanor asked.
She hadn’t known. That is, she knew he was in his last year and there would be a thesis. But the topic, the advisor, the defense date—none of that she knew. She had never asked.
Daniel explained for three minutes, and Eleanor listened, standing at the window and looking out at the yard, where the May grass beyond the fence was already knee-high. Something about urban green spaces and microclimates, about mapping and coefficients. The words were unfamiliar. She asked him to repeat himself twice, and both times he explained it more simply, without irritation, rephrasing it.
They talked about his thesis for ten minutes. Eleanor thought: I didn’t know the topic. I didn’t know it was hard. I don’t know much of anything about the life of this person I’ve knitted three pairs of socks for this winter without even knowing what size he wears. It was not a reproach to him. It was a question aimed squarely at herself, and she was in no hurry to answer it.
— Grandma, — Daniel said, — send me a picture of the pups. If it’s not too much trouble.
Eleanor looked at the phone in her hand: a flat little rectangle apparently capable of many things, though sending photos had never been one of them in her experience.
— Don’t know how, — she said plainly.
— I’ll walk you through it, — Daniel said. — Okay, so open the camera. It’s the icon that looks like a little camera…
Eleanor took a pencil and a scrap of paper from the table and started writing. Daniel spoke slowly, step by step, stopping now and then to ask, “You see it?” “I see it,” she answered, and kept writing.
— I’ll try, — she said when he finished.
— All right, — Daniel said. — Call if you need help.
“If you need help”—he always said that at the end of every conversation. It was his standard sign-off. Eleanor had heard it many times and let it pass by like any familiar sound. This time she heard it.
She hung up. Gray scratched at the crate with a pointed sort of insistence. Eleanor got up and went to him.
It took three tries to get the picture. The first time she tapped the wrong thing. The second time it came out blurry. The third one worked—too dark, a little crooked, but both pups were in the frame. Gray stared straight into the camera with the expression of a creature who had no time for nonsense. Quiet had turned away and was looking into the corner of the crate at something invisible and private. She sent it using the cheat sheet, word for word, checking each step against her pencil notes.
The reply came a minute later. First an emoji—wide eyes, open mouth. Then three question marks and the word “Seriously?”
Eleanor looked at the screen. The emoji was not exactly part of her native language, but the meaning came through just fine. She tapped the reply field and wrote one word: “Seriously.” Sent it. Then she looked at that word sitting there in the thread in its little gray bubble. It was the first text message she had ever sent Daniel. Maybe the first one she had ever sent in her life.
At three in the morning the alarm went off, and Eleanor went to the kitchen to feed them. Quiet now pushed at the dropper himself, impatient, nearly knocking it from her hand. Eleanor held him on her lap, offered the milk in small amounts, waited. Outside the open window the night garden rustled. In May the darkness is short and warm, and by three there was already light in the east.
She thought about the conversation with Daniel. She had called because of the wolf pups—that was what she had told herself when she dialed that morning. The pups were a reason, a concrete fact, something you could start with. Calling without a reason would have felt strange. Or maybe she simply didn’t know how to call without a reason. Those are not quite the same thing, and Eleanor could not say for sure which one was true. That bothered her. She liked answers. In bookkeeping there is no line marked “apparently.” Things either balance or they don’t.
Quiet stopped eating and dozed off on her lap—warm, solid, heavier than something that size ought to feel. Eleanor didn’t move. She sat in the yellow circle of the lamp, listening to the May garden outside. The last time Daniel had called was in January. Now it was May. Four months, a little more. Eleanor counted again: January, February, March, April, May. Yes. Four. The phone lay on the table. The screen had gone dark. Tomorrow Mike might call. Or he might not. That was possible too. Eleanor had not yet decided what she would say in either case.
The phone vibrated on the edge of the table Friday at 11:30, at the exact moment both of Eleanor’s hands were occupied: left hand holding Quiet, right hand holding the dropper. She glanced at the screen. Mike. She set Quiet back in the crate, wiped her hand on a towel, and answered.
— Mom, — Mike said without preamble. — Daniel says you’ve got wolves.
— Wolf pups, — Eleanor corrected. — Two.
— Mom, do you understand that’s dangerous?
