Mr. and Mrs. Scribendi and the Big Responsibility

Oh at last. We’ve been walking on eggshells here. Mr. Scribendi hasn’t said a word, of course, but his (sharply) pointed silences and Mrs. Scribendi’s allusions to the fiasco in Guppville are all we need.
“Allusions?” you ask. It’s not like Mrs. Scribendi to hold back, as you know, and she’s certainly said enough, but not a word will she add in the small kitchen where confidences are exchanged and explanations given. Interestingly, any “allusion” has been in the presence of Mr. Scribendi, very near the green glow of his banker’s lamp. He closes his eyes for the briefest of moments and continues editing; the neat red pen strokes are executed by a steady hand.
“Well, what does she say?” Of course you want to know, and I’ve been dithering.
“Oh, it’s nice to be surrounded by books again,” she’ll say. “And people who don’t act as if they’re characters in the quirkier ones.” Here she’ll giggle. “When a will is read, you just never know what to expect.” And, “My, a lion’s a BIG responsibility.”
I didn’t tell you about the lion. He’s friendly enough, doesn’t roar (yet) or swat (yet) or disembowel with gleaming fangs (yet). He drapes himself each day about the base of Mrs. Scribendi’s wooden stool and accepts her nylon stocking-footed caresses carelessly. He sleeps, he pants, he drinks noisily in the kitchen, and he eats all the butcher’s daily scraps, again, noisily. The butcher, Jane, has not been told the purpose of the purchase of the scraps. She thinks she knows. (She thinks the Scribendis are not doing well, having misinterpreted a news article about dot coms and auditors. She thinks auditors and editors are the same thing.) She thinks the Scribendis are turning the scraps into a sort of headcheese for economy. She has told others in town, but, as most of her surmising is so dead wrong, no one has paid the story mind. They do wonder a bit amongst themselves, outside the butcher’s shop, about the scraps (they assume this part, the buying of scraps part, of the story is true). No one has guessed a lion.
“No Flying Scribendis anymore when the papa has died,” Mrs. Scribendi offered on the day we met Tawno. She followed it with a meaningful, “Circus folk know what THEY don’t want to look after.”
Tawno is eyeing me. I’ll close here for now…
(August 2002)