Christina Bennett has fun with her character Anne attempting to see

By Christina Bennett

Ted kept his gate well tended. Whenever the paint got a little sad looking, he was out there

putting on a new coat. If it was dirty, he had the hose at the ready and a bucket of soapy water. And the plants outside the gate? They were always lovely. They were in a cluster of marine-blue pots of various sizes and shapes, short, tall, square, round. He had some well-chosen perennials in them, such as lavender and bee balm, but he supplemented them seasonally with other things. There were noche buena plants at Christmas time and pink impatiens in the spring.

Ted was a fixture in the neigh-borhood, out tending his plants or washing his gate, his big brown mutt, Buddy, usually lying on the sidewalk watching him. The neighbors never saw Ted’s wife, though. If asked, they would say, “Ted lives in the house with the yellow gate and all the nice plants. With his alleged wife.” They always said “alleged wife” as if it had quotes around it, or sometimes they said “imaginary wife.” Ted talked about his wife occasionally but always in a vague sense. People asked him how she was, knowing he was married. And he’d say, “Pretty good” or “Fine, thanks for asking.”

Anne accepted it as her mission to find out about Ted’s wife. And to meet her. She had lived in the house across the street for 17 years, much longer than Ted. At first, she tried inviting them to neighborhood potlucks or happy hours at her house. She liked to entertain on her spacious flagstone patio, guests clinking wineglasses around the central fountain and admiring her roses. Ted would sometimes come to the party, bringing cheese and crackers if it was a potluck and a bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio. He’d happily talk to folks, mostly about gardening or art galleries or tips for newbies about where to shop and who sold the best papayas. When asked about his wife, he’d simply say that she wasn’t able to come this time.

When repeated invitations failed, Anne tried another tactic. Unlike most of the gringos on her block, Anne spoke decent Spanish. She decided to talk to Ted’s cleaning lady, who she saw go in and out once a week. She started by just saying hello, introducing herself, asking the lady her name and how she was. The cleaning lady was named Ana, which pleased Anne and prompted her to say “tocaya,” pointing out they had the same name. That was always a way to make an instant friend. Finally, Anne asked after Ted and his wife. They were bien, Ana said. When Anne tried more questions about the wife, Ana clammed up, feigning that she couldn’t understand Anne’s Spanish, shaking her head, and excusing herself.

This presented a problem, as Anne prided herself on knowing all of her neighbors. And, more importantly, knowing all of the local gossip. She, Karen, and Virginia had been speculating about Ted’s wife ever since the couple moved in. They saw her on moving day, helping Ted and two other men carry cartons. But as far as Anne knew, that was the last time anyone on the street had seen her. It just wasn’t fair that the woman remain a mystery. Was she an invalid? Agoraphobic? A gringa who was afraid that drug cartels lurked around every corner? Or had Ted killed her and disposed of the body?

After a time, Anne decided on the direct approach. “I’d really love to meet your wife, Ted. We have a ladies group she might like to join.”

“Thanks, but Cindy isn’t much of a joiner,” he said. “Kind of a homebody.” Ted turned back to his plants, Buddy looking up at Anne with curious eyes, thumping his tail. Anne smiled. Cindy! Now she knew the alleged wife’s name. This was progress.

“Well,” Anne said. “Maybe Cindy could come for a coffee some morning. I’ve just learned to make brioche and it’s really turning out well.”

“Sure, I’ll ask her,” he replied, but he didn’t turn back from his plants. “Though the brioche is a no-go. Cindy’s gluten-free.”

Her name AND her food allergies. Anne was getting somewhere. She made her tone extra perky and said, “I do a great gluten -ree almond cake, too. So moist.”

“Yes, yes,” Ted muttered, and she could tell she’d overstayed her welcome there at his gate. Using her cane, she picked her way across the cobblestone lane and opened her own gate, dirty and in need of some touch-up paint.

She would bake the almond cake and bring it over. They’d have to invite her in then. She’d get in that gate one way or another and find out about this alleged wife Cindy, the glutenfree homebody.

Ann enacted her plan the following Saturday, a day that Ted could reliably be found tending his plants. As soon as she spied him and Buddy that morning, she ventured across the street carrying her gluten-free offering on a cheerful red platter.

“Ted,” she called out as she was walking across, carefully watching her feet and her cane. “I’ve brought my almond cake for Cindy.”

Ted turned, hose in hand. The water splashed at her feet, startling her. As she stumbled and tried to catch herself, the platter with the cake fell onto the cobblestones. Anne braced herself with the cane, but the cake was a total loss. Buddy leapt up to devour it.

Ted quickly shut off the hose and shouted, “Oh no! Are you okay?”

Just then, the gate opened a bit and a woman in a brightly colored caftan peered out. “Ted, what happened? I heard a crash.”

A huge smile came to Anne’s face as she walked toward the gate, her hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Anne,” she said. “I was just bringing you a cake.”

Quentin Quo Vadis was an elderly squir-

rel. He wasn’t just an ordinary elderly squirrel. He was an elderly squirrel who was very good at math. At least he used to be good at math.

Nowadays, he could barely remember his own name. Usually, he knew that it started with Q but that was as far as he could go. Forgetting didn’t bother him, though, for often his neighbor Melissa, a large sea cucumber who loved to shop, would hail him from her kitchen window as he left his house, “Quo Vadis,” Melissa would call in her tubular voice, “Where are you going?”

Then she would laugh at some private joke and slam her window without waiting for an answer. Occasionally, she would test his math skills and ask a second question, “What’s pi to two decimal places?”

Quentin knew that Melissa was trying to embarrass him because his memory was failing... and he knew just how to answer without having to remember.

“Is that hair-deprived husband of yours around?” he asked.

“Why yes. Lester’s taking a bath.”

Quentin smiled. Lester was always taking a bath. He was a large, round, bald jellyfish who stayed in the bathtub and liked to croon Croatian Bricklaying Ballads. His voice was not that good so his main talent was making himself larger or smaller by ingesting or expelling wa-

ter—an activity that Quentin felt was mildly gross. “Tell him to adjust himself until he’s exactly one metre in diameter,” Quentin said. “Then put a tape around him. The distance around Lester will be pi.”

“But I want decimal points,” Melissa said.

“May I have a small container of donkey sweat?” Quentin replied.

Melissa looked puzzled. “What’s that got to do with pi?”

“Just count the letters in each word,” Quentin said mysteriously and walked away.

Melissa and her questions were the least of his problems. Some days he couldn’t even remember if the square root of 1 was 1 or -1. Occasionally, he couldn’t remember that √1 meant the square root of 1.

One day he confided all this to his best friend, Henry, a confused giraffe. On even days Henry wondered if he was actually a tall tree who just thought he was a giraffe. On odd days he wondered if he was really a giraffe who sometimes thought he was a tall tree. On top of this, Henry worried that maybe he was just a thought in another mind—someone else’s idea of a tall tree or a giraffe. Then he wondered in whose mind he might be a thought. All this wondering made Henry even more confused, so he sometimes relaxed by humming Hungar-

ian Birdwatching Ballads. But Henry did know about square roots.

“You don’t have to remember,” he told Quentin in a lofty voice. “Just multiply them out. 1 x 1 = 1 and -1 x -1 = 1. Therefore they are both the √1. The same is true for the square root of any number—like 2 x 2 = 4 and -2 x -2 = 4, so the √4 = 2 or -2. You don’t have to remember anything. Just be careful with fake numbers.”

Quentin flicked his tail—more of a slow wave really—and gave a sigh. He knew there was no such thing as fake numbers. Henry probably meant imaginary numbers. Well, he certainly knew the difference between real and imaginary numbers. A real number is any number that can be found on a number line like 2 or zero or -6. An imaginary number is . . . uh-oh, he couldn’t remember.

Now he was in a quandary. (Note to reader: a quandary is not a foundry built in a quarry). What should he do? Then he had an idea. He’d go and talk to his former student Heidi. She never forgot anything.

Heidi was a middle-aged mosquito who spent all her spare time playing tennis. She was often disqualified for riding across court on the ball and puncturing her opponent just as he was about to return her serve... or for leaving the tennis court and sucking all the blood out of some spectator who had made the mistake of cheering for her rival. When not playing tennis she liked to go to karaoke bars where she sometimes yodeled a medley of Moroccan Bartending Ballads.

Heidi was only too glad to take time out. “Thank God you came,” she said bitingly. “I can’t ride the ball anywhere near him or I’ll die from the smell.”

Quentin recognized her opponent, a very fat rabbit with stinky feet known around town as T. Rex. No one knew what the T stood for but the rumor was that it was short for Toxic. T. Rex often supplemented his foot odor and punctuated his on court hops with loud gaseous explosions. He was known as the town’s most odoriferous citizen. To disguise his explosions he sometimes sang

Samoan Barrel Racing Ballads.

T. Rex threw down his racket. “If you stop, I win by default,” he said flatulently.

“Do you remember what an imaginary number is?” Quentin asked Heidi.

“Sure do. An imaginary number is small i.”

“I know you’re small,” said Quentin. “And I also know that you’re not an imaginary number.”

“No, no, not me,” said Heidi. “You know how a normal square root works, right? Like the √9 = 3. Well, you can take the square root of any positive number or zero, but what happens when you try to take the square root of a negative number? A bunch of alarms will go off in your head, and you say, ‘Hey, I can’t take the square root of a negative number! That doesn’t make sense!’ Well, you’d be sort of right... because when you square any positive or negative number, you get a positive number, so thinking backwards you can’t take the square root of a negative.

“But some weird math guys decided they wanted to take the square roots of negative numbers anyway. They made up a new number and called it i. Then they said that √-1 = i. Therefore, i x i = -1. Now, with this new number, you can take the square root of a negative number. For instance, the √-4 is √4 times the √-1, or 2 times i.”

“Thank you,” said Quentin. “You’re just about the smartest mosquito I know. Your smelly friend has hopped off, but I think I see trouble coming.”

Heidi looked up to see a tiny rat heading straight for them. But this wasn’t any tiny rat. This was a tiny rat named Bernie who used to think and act like a police officer. Now he was a police officer who acted like a rat. Between arrests he liked to belt out Bolivian Butt Scratching Ballads.

“I could run you in for practicing bad math,” he told Quentin in a wharfish voice. “Everybody knows you can’t take the square root of -1.

“And you,” he turned to Heidi, “I’ve got a desk full of complaints from tennis players with itchy bites.”

Quentin explained that small i was the square root of -1.

“You just made that up,” Bernie said.

“No, I didn’t. It was invented by a bunch of weird math guys.”

“Then they made it up.”

Quentin nodded. “Maybe they didn’t invent the square root of -1, maybe it was there and they discovered it—but that’s another question.”

Quentin walked away, feeling very good, knowing that small i would exist whether he remembered it or not... OR WOULD IT?

The End Neil McKinnon