She could be a mother. She met a white poodle he was still young and he had never had a puppy life because he had not been well. His name was Basket and he looked like one. He was taken to visit Never Sleeps and they were told to be happy together. Never Sleeps was told to play with Basket and teach him how to play. Never Sleeps began, she had to teach catch if you can or tag, and she had to teach him pussy wants a corner and she taught him each one of them.
She taught him tag and even after he played it and much later on when he was dead another Basket he looked just like him went on playing tag. To play tag you have to be able to run forward and back to run around things and to start one way and to go the other way and another dog who is smaller and not so quick has to know how to wait at a corner and go around the other way to make the distance shorter. And sometimes just to see how well tag can be played the bigger quicker dog can even stop to play with a stick or a bone and still get away and not be tagged. That is what it means to play tag and Never Sleeps taught Basket how to play. Then he taught him how to play pussy wants a corner, to play this there have to be trees. Dogs cannot play this in the house they are not allowed to and so they have to have at least four trees if there are three dogs and three trees if there are two dogs to play pussy wants a corner. Never Sleeps preferred tag to pussy wants a corner but Basket rather liked best pussy wants a corner.13
Ida never knew who knew what she said, she never knew what she said because she listened and as she listened well the moon scarcely the moon but still there is a moon.
Very likely hers was the moon.
Ida knew she never had been a little sister or even a little brother. Ida knew.
So scarcely was there an absence when some one died.
Believe it or not some one died.
And he was somebody’s son and Ida began to cry and he was twenty-six and Ida began to cry and Ida was not alone and she began to cry.
Ida had never cried before, but now she began to cry.
Even when Andrew came back from his walk and talked about his walk, Ida began to cry.
It’s funny about crying. Ida knew it was funny about crying, she listened at the radio and they played the national anthem and Ida began to cry. It is funny about crying.
But anyway Ida was sitting and she was there and one by one somebody said Thank you, have you heard of me. And she always had. That was Ida.
Even Andrew had he had heard of them, that was the way he had been led to be ready to take his walk every day because he had heard of every one who came in one after the other one.
And Ida did not cry again.
One day, she saw a star it was an uncommonly large one and when it set it made a cross, she looked and looked and she did not hear Andrew take a walk and that was natural enough she was not there. They had lost her. Ida was gone.
So she sat up and went to bed carefully and she easily told every one that there was more wind in Texas than in San Francisco and nobody believed her. So she said wait and see and they waited.
She came back to life exactly day before yesterday.14 And now listen.
Ida loved three men. One was an officer who was not killed but he might have been, one was a painter who was not in hospital but he might have been one and one was a lawyer who had gone away to Montana and she had never heard from him.
Ida loved each one of them and went to say good-bye to them.
Good-bye, good-bye she said, and she did say good-bye to them.
She wondered if they were there, of course she did not go away. What she really wanted was Andrew, where oh where was Andrew.
Andrew was difficult to suit and so Ida did not suit him. But Ida did sit down beside him.
Ida fell in love with a young man who had an adventure. He came from Kansas City and he knew that he was through. He was twenty years old. His uncle had died of meningitis, so had his father and so had his cousin, his name was Mark and he had a mother but no sisters and he had a wife and sisters-in-law.
Ida looked the other way when they met, she knew Mark would die when he was twenty-six and he did but before that he had said, For them, they like me for them and Ida had answered Just as you say Mark. Ida always bent her head when she saw Mark she was tall and she bent her head when she saw Mark, he was tall and broad and Ida bent her head when she saw him. She knew he would die of meningitis and he did. That was why Ida always bent her head when she saw him.
Why should everybody talk about Ida.
Why not.
Dear Ida.
Part Two
Ida was almost married to Andrew and not anybody could cloud it. It was very important that she was almost married to Andrew. Besides he was Andrew the first. All the others had been others.
Nobody talked about the color of Ida’s hair and they talked about her a lot, nor the color of her eyes.
She was sitting and she dreamed that Andrew was a soldier. She dreamed well not dreamed but just dreamed. The day had been set for their marriage and everything had been ordered. Ida was always careful about ordering, food clothes cars, clothes food cars everything was well chosen and the day was set and then the telephone rang and it said that Andrew was dying, he had not been killed he was only dying, and Ida knew that the food would do for the people who came to the funeral and the car would do to go to the funeral and the clothes would not do dear me no they would not do and all of this was just dreaming. Ida was alive yet and so was Andrew, she had been sitting, he had been walking and he came home and told about his walk and Ida was awake and she was listening and Andrew was Andrew the first, and Ida was Ida and they were almost married and not anybody could cloud anything.
Part Three
Any ball has to look like the moon. Ida just had to know what was going to be happening soon.
They can be young so young they can go in swimming. Ida had been. Not really swimming one was learning and the other was teaching.
This was being young in San Francisco and the baths were called Lurline Baths.15 Ida was young and so was he they were both good both she and he and he was teaching her how to swim, he leaned over and he said kick he was holding her under the chin and he was standing beside her, it was not deep water, and he said kick and she did and he walked along beside her holding her chin, and he said kick and she kicked again and he was standing very close to her and she kicked hard and she kicked him. He let go her he called out Jesus Christ my balls and he went under and she went under, they were neither of them drowned but they might have been.
Strangely enough she never thought about Frank, that was his name, Frank, she could not remember his other name, but once when she smelled wild onion she remembered going under and that neither were drowned.
It is difficult never to have been younger but Ida almost was she almost never had been younger.
Part Four
And now it was suddenly happening, well not suddenly but it was happening, Andrew was almost Andrew the first. It was not sudden.
They always knew what he could do, that is not what he would do but what they had to do to him. Ida knew.
Andrew the first, walked every day and came back to say where he had walked that day. Every day he walked the same day and every day he told Ida where he had walked that day. Yes Ida.
Ida was just as much older as she had been.
Yes Ida.
One day Ida was alone. When she was alone she was lying down and when she was not alone she was lying down. Everybody knew everything about Ida, everybody did. They knew that when she was alone she was lying down and when she was not alone she was lying down.
Everybody knew everything about Ida and by everybody, everybody means everybody.
It might have been exciting that everybody knew everything about Ida and it did not excite Ida it soothed Ida. She was soothed.
For a four.
She shut the door.
They dropped in.
And drank gin.
I’d like a conversation said Ida.
So one of them told
that when his brother was a soldier, it was in summer and he ate an apple off an apple tree a better apple than he had ever eaten before, so he took a slip of the tree and he brought it home and after he put it into the ground where he was and when he took it home he planted it and now every year they had apples off this apple tree.
Another one told how when his cousin was a soldier, he saw a shepherd dog, different from any shepherd dog he had ever seen and as he knew a man who kept sheep, he took the shepherd dog home with him and gave it to the man and now all the shepherd dogs came from the dog his cousin had brought home with him from the war.
Another one was telling that a friend of his had a sister-in-law and the sister-in-law had the smallest and the finest little brown dog he had ever seen, and he asked the sister-in-law what race it was and where she had gotten it. Oh she said a soldier gave it to me for my little girl, he had brought it home with him and he gave it to my little girl and she and he play together, they always play together.
Ida listened to them and she sighed, she was resting, and she said, I like lilies-of-the-valley too do you, and they all said they did, and one of them said, when his sister had been a nurse in a war she always gathered lilies-of-the-valley before they were in flower. Oh yes said Ida.
And so there was a little conversation and they all said they would stay all evening. They said it was never dark when they stayed all evening and Ida sighed and said yes she was resting.
Once upon a time Ida took a train, she did not like trains, and she never took them but once upon a time she took a train. They were fortunate, the train went on running and Andrew was not there. Then it stopped and Ida got out and Andrew still was not there. He was not expected but still he was not there. So Ida went to eat something.
This did happen to Ida.
They asked what she would have to eat and she said she would eat the first and the last that they had and not anything in between. Andrew always ate everything but Ida when she was alone she ate the first and the last of everything, she was not often alone so it was not often that she could eat the first and the last of everything but she did that time and then everybody helped her to leave but not to get on a train again.
She never did get on any train again. Naturally not, she was always there or she was resting. Her life had every minute when it was either this or that and sometimes both, either she was there or she was resting and sometimes it was both.
Her life never began again because it was always there.
And now it was astonishing that it was always there. Yes it was.
Ida
Yes it was.
Part Five
Any friend of Ida’s could be run over by any little thing.
Not Andrew, Andrew was Andrew the first and regular.
Why are sailors, farmers and actors more given to reading and believing signs than other people. It is natural enough for farmers and sailors who are always there where signs are, alone with them but why actors.
Well anyway Ida was not an actress nor a sailor nor a farmer.
Cuckoos magpies crows and swallows are signs.
Nightingales larks robins and orioles are not.
Ida saw her first glow worm. The first of anything is a sign.
Then she saw three of them that was a sign.
Then she saw ten.
Ten are never a sign.
And yet what had she caught.
She had caught and she had taught.
That ten was not a sign.
Andrew was Andrew the first.
He was a sign.
Ida had not known he was a sign, not known he was a sign.
Ida was resting.
Worse than any signs is a family who brings bad luck. Ida had known one, naturally it was a family of women, a family which brings bad luck must be all women.
Ida had known one the kind that if you take a dog with you when you go to see them, the dog goes funny and when it has its puppies its puppies are peculiar.
This family was a mother a daughter and a granddaughter, well they all had the airs and graces of beauties and with reason, well they were. The grandmother had been married to an admiral and then he died and to a general and then he died. Her daughter was married to a doctor but the doctor could not die, he just left, the granddaughter was very young, just as young as sixteen, she married a writer, nobody knows just how not but before very long she cried, every day she cried, and her mother cried and even her grandmother and then she was not married any longer to the writer. Then well she was still young not yet twenty-one and a banker saw her and he said he must marry her, well she couldn’t yet naturally not the writer was still her husband but very soon he would not be, so the banker was all but married to her, well anyway they went out together, the car turned over the banker was dead and she had broken her collar-bone.
Now everybody wanted to know would the men want her more because of all this or would they be scared of her.
Well as it happened it was neither the one nor the other. It often is not.
The men after that just did not pay any attention to her. You might say they did not any of them pay any attention to her even when she was twenty-three or twenty-four. They did not even ask not any of them. What for.
And so anybody could see that they could not bring good luck to any one not even a dog, no not even.
No really bad luck came to Ida from knowing them but after that anyway, it did happen that she never went out to see any one.
She said it was better.
She did not say it was better but it was better. Ida never said anything about anything.
Anyway after that she rested and let them come in, anybody come in. That way no family would come that just would not happen.
So Ida was resting and they came in. Not one by one, they just came in.
That is the way Andrew came he just came in.
He took a walk every afternoon and he always told about what happened on his walk.
He just walked every afternoon.
He liked to hear people tell about good luck and bad luck.
Somebody one afternoon told a whole lot.
Andrew was like that, he was born with his life, why not. And he had it, he walked every afternoon, and he said something every minute of every day, but he did not talk while he was listening. He listened while he was listening but he did not hear unless he asked to have told what they were telling. He liked to hear about good luck and bad luck because it was not real to him, nothing was real to him except a walk every afternoon and to say something every minute of every day.
So he said and what were you saying about good luck and bad luck.
Well it was this.16
The things anybody has to worry about are spiders, cuckoos goldfish and dwarfs.
Yes said Andrew. And he was listening.
Spider at night makes delight.
Spider in the morning makes mourning.
Yes said Andrew.
Well, said the man who was talking, think of a spider talking.
Yes said Andrew.
The spider says
Listen to me I, I am a spider, you must not mistake me for the sky, the sky red at night is a sailor’s delight, the sky red in the morning is a sailor’s warning, you must not mistake me for the sky, I am I, I am a spider and in the morning any morning I bring sadness and mourning and at night if they see me at night I bring them delight, do not mistake me for the sky, not I, do not mistake me for a dog who howls at night and causes no delight, a dog says the bright moonlight makes him go mad with desire to bring sorrow to any one sorrow and sadness, the dog says the night the bright moonlight brings madness and grief, but says the spider I, I am a spider, a big spider or a little spider, it is all alike, a spider green or gray, there is nothing else to say, I am a spider and I know and I always tell everybody so, to see me at night brings them delight, to see me in the morning, brings mourning, and if you see me at night, and I am a sight, because I am dead having dried up by night, even
so dead at night I still cause delight, I dead bring delight to any one who sees me at night, and so every one can sleep tight who has seen me at night.
Andrew was listening and he said it was interesting and said did they know any other superstition.
Yes said the man there is the cuckoo.
Oh yes the cuckoo.
Supposing they could listen to a cuckoo.
I, I am a cuckoo, I am not a clock, because a clock makes time pass and I stop the time by giving mine, and mine is money, and money is honey, and I I bring money, I, I, I. I bring misery and money but never honey, listen to me.
Once I was there, you know everybody, that I I sing in the spring, sweetly, sing, evening and morning and everything.
Listen to me.
If you listen to me, if when you hear me, the first time in the spring time, hear me sing, and you have money a lot of money for you in your pocket when you hear me in the spring, you will be rich all year any year, but if you hear me and you have gone out with no money jingling in your pocket when you hear me singing then you will be poor poor all year, poor.
But sometimes I can do even more.
I knew a case like that, said the man.
Did you said Andrew.
She, well she, she had written a lovely book but nobody took the lovely book nobody paid her money for the lovely book they never gave her money, never never never and she was poor and they needed money oh yes they did she and her lover.
And she sat and she wrote and she longed for money for she had a lover and all she needed was money to live and love, money money money.
So she wrote and she hoped and she wrote and she sighed and she wanted money, money money, for herself and for love for love and for herself, money money money.
And one day somebody was sorry for her and they gave her not much but a little money, he was a nice millionaire the one who gave her a little money, but it was very little money and it was spring and she wanted love and money and she had love and now she wanted money.