The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken (acx book reading txt) 📕

the air mattress a kick. “My actual name. Leonard. You know that. My family calls me Lenny. I hate it.”

“I knew it was your name, but I didn’t know it was your name,” she said.

“I hate it,” he repeated.

She felt wild with various discomforts. “I need to pee.”

They were in a room with three doors: the one they’d come in; the door through which the woman had left; and a door to the outside with windowpanes. The rain seemed to patter at all of them.

“It’s too confusing,” said Jack. “Go outside.”

“Go outside?” She opened the door they’d come through, only to be faced with half a dozen other doors, all closed. She might find a toilet behind any of them, or a sleeping stranger. Already Jack had opened the back door. “Well, I’m having a slash outdoors,” he said.

“Easy for you to say.”

“G’wan,” he said. “G’wan, g’wan, g’wan.”

Could be worse, she told herself. She was wearing tights and a dress, so she took off her coat and her tights and went out in the rain. It was cold, but she was cold—she could hardly get any colder.

“You done with your slash?” she asked.

“Done.”

“Here, give me your hand. Is your entire family here?”

“I imagine.”

“Are they watching me pee in the rain?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Who was that lady?”

“That lady was the bride. Fiona. Did I not say?”

“You did not. Okay. Done.”

Inside Jack found a little lamp to switch on, clamped to the edge of a stepladder. The walls were vivid green, and he looked like a Toulouse-Lautrec lady, lit from underneath, glamorous, sure to die or go blind or mad.

The idea of an air mattress and an electric blanket had sounded like a disaster sandwich to Sadie, but she put on her underpants and took off her wet dress and used it to dry her wet knees, and then, cold to the bones, she slid in. She’d never slept under an electric blanket. It was warm, lulling, and she felt like a little abandoned animal whose mother has died but who yet might be saved by technology. Incubated. That’s how she felt. Maybe she would be electrocuted, and maybe the air mattress would spring a leak and they would sail around the room as it emptied out. For the moment she had never felt anything more exquisite, this warm, buoyant raft heading out to sleep.

Mere hours later she heard the noise of children, and then a barking voice saying, “No, Thomas, no, they’re asleep, no, Pie, come here, you’ll play piano later.” It was sodden daylight. The rain had stopped, but she could hear water dripping off things. Next to her was a paint-splattered upright piano. The electric blanket was cold. The air mattress had lost some air, but they were afloat upon it.

“Ireland,” said Jack.

“Still?” said Sadie.

“Yes, and for days.”

She fell back asleep.

As she woke the next time she could hear voices behind all the doors, left, right, at the head of the bed. She was in her underwear, locked in a secret room surrounded by Jack’s family. By God, she should have passed that tractor, been braver, driven right past Clonmel to the Dingle Peninsula on the other side of the country. Dingle. What a name for a beautiful place. She had never been there, but a high school friend had once sent her a postcard from the beach of Inch.

“Jack,” she said. Jack wasn’t there. He was already out, goddamn him. She said, to herself, in a whisper, “Lenny.”

No curtains at the back. But he’d spread out her dress on the ladder, and it was halfway dry, and she put it on and stood next to the mattress—she had to tick her toes beneath to fit—and listened for his voice. There it was, and the sound of pouring coffee. Or pouring tea. She hoped it was coffee. He was talking to other people. She couldn’t possibly go out there. Perhaps if she went out the other way, she could find her way to the car and her luggage and a toothbrush.

Behind the door was the black-and-white hallway. At the front of the house a barefoot man looked out a window. He turned to her. He wasn’t English—something about the spikiness of his haircut and the severity of his square steel glasses. He had a sandwich in his hand. “Hallo,” he said, and then, in a calm European voice, “Did you mean to leave the car door open?”

“What? No!”

“There is a cat and a dog,” he said. “Inside your car.”

Her shoes were by the door, damp as oysters. She put them on and winced. “A cat and dog,” she said. It had been raining cats and dogs: she believed he spoke metaphorically. But he didn’t. The driver’s-side door was open, and then a Shetland sheepdog jumped out onto the drive. Already a Siamese cat was picking its way along the cobblestone toward the front garden.

“So you see,” said the man, who had followed in his bare feet. He closed the car door for her. “I’m Piet.”

“Sadie,” she said. “Are—is that your dog?”

“Neighbor’s, maybe? I don’t know. Not yours? You didn’t bring us a cat and a dog from America?”

In the daylight she could see that they were at the top of a hill, other hills in front of her in various degrees of fog and sparkle. “Do you think they spent the whole night there?”

Piet nodded. “I like to think so, yes.”

“Like a children’s book,” she said. The embarrassed feeling of having been so exhausted that she’d left the door open in a rainstorm evaporated. Where else would the animals of Clonmel take shelter? It must be a good sign. An odd and happy marriage, after all. But whose sign was it?

Piet ripped his sandwich in two and handed the unbitten portion to her. “Breakfast,” he said. Dizzily, she bit into it. She had been expecting ham, but it was sweet and delicious and crunched under her teeth.

“Strawberry,” said Piet. “Butter, sugar.” He felt his chin. “I suppose I am getting