Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

began singing, “Old McDonald had a farm, eeyieeyioooo,” again and again. Twice I sang the rest of the song, but she never changed her routine, as if that line were the only one she could remember.
    I didn’t mind Charlotte’s repetitious, tuneless singing. I rather liked it because I knew it meant she was happy, but the noise of construction was getting to me, and I was concerned for Dashiell’s sound sensitivity as well. He wasn’t wearing earmuffs. When we got to Washington Street, it only got worse. A new building was going up on the comer, and the first of the evening’s delivery trucks was leaving the meat district, which ran from Fourteenth Street to about where we were standing, waiting for a chance to cross what the locals called “accelerator alley,” drivers in too much of a rush to consider the needs of pedestrians.
    We headed for Hudson Street, leaving the noise behind us. Dashiell walked slowly, pacing himself to Charlotte, looking up at her with his goofy grin, already best of friends. I wondered if Charlotte, too, thought Lady was back, the way the twins did. Some puli he was, rolling from side to side as he ambled along as if he had nothing better to do, his short white coat revealing every rock-hard muscle, an anatomy lesson in motion.
    On the way back, my hand sweating from Charlotte’s woolen glove, we came around the other way, on Twelfth, crossing the cobblestone street and approaching Harbor View from the south, as I had earlier.
    There was music playing in the dining room. We turned right, toward Venus’s office. I could hear her through the closed door.
    “Can’t you postpone beyond Friday?” A pause. Then “Me, too. Damn scared.”
    When it grew quiet, I knocked.
    “How did it go?”
    “Fine. It got her singing.”
    But Venus didn’t respond. “The service is going to be on Wednesday morning,” she said, speaking about Dietrich’s funeral in a way that Charlotte wouldn’t understand. “Are you free, Rachel? I’d like you to come with me.”
    “I can do that,” I said, wondering what she was going to tell me later at the gym, wishing I knew what was going on here.
    “Let’s go into the dining room for a few minutes. Samuel’s doing a movement class. It’s one of Charlotte’s favorite activities.”
    I raised my eyebrows.
    “Samuel Kagan,” she whispered. “One of Eli’s sons.” Venus locked her office, took Charlotte’s hand, and headed to the opposite side of the lobby. I unhooked Dashiell’s leash, and we followed along behind them, stopping for a minute to look at the two closed doors next to Venus’s office, primitive drawings taped to the middle one, nothing at all on the other.
    The doors to the dining room were open. Venus let go of Charlotte, who went to join the class, a bizarre tableau of movement and stillness in the center of the large room, the tables and chairs all pushed against the walls. The man in the middle of the room could only have been Jackson. His clothes splattered with paint, he stood with his arms aloft as if he were a tree, his green hands the leaves reaching toward the sun. Very dramatic. Around him, the Weissman twins moved their hands in time to the music coming from a portable CD player that sat on one of the tables. And in various states of confusion and disarray, the oddest group of human beings I’d ever seen swayed and moved, some holding hands, some holding stuffed animals, or blankets, one holding a shoe, and now Charlotte, in her shorts and T-shirt, wearing red woolen gloves and white fur earmuffs, twirling around Jackson and singing “Old McDonald Had a Farm” at the top of her lungs.
    But which one was Samuel? I was about to turn and ask Venus when I got my question answered. He was at the far end of the dining room, near the kitchen door, a short guy with a fringe of brown hair sticking out around a major bald spot. He had been gesticulating in such an exaggerated way that I thought he was one of the residents, but when he spotted Venus, he pointed to himself and then toward the kitchen, asking her to watch the class for a minute. When Venus nodded, he disappeared.
    One by one, the kids spotted Dashiell. Some froze, faces expressionless, mouths hanging open, eyes blank. As if sleepwalking, they headed for him. Dashiell’s tail began to stir the air. He sneezed and cocked his head to one side.
    There was an older woman with an aluminum foil crown on her head and a wand in one hand; a Down’s syndrome man,