The Sixth Sense

by Jessie Haas

  Seeing me in my doorway, her yellow eyes shift, and she utters a muffled sound with her mouth full. Vivian, who sits on a three-legged stool and milks hard white jets into a stainless-steel pail, turns her head.

  “Oh. Good morning.”

  “Good morning.” I like the sound the milk makes going into the pail, the hard hiss and foam. I come out farther. The linoleum is clean and cool to my bare feet, but from door to milking stand lies a trail of hay and goat-buttons. There is a sharp smell of disinfectant in the air.

  “This is Leah,” says Vivian.

  “Hi, Leah.”

  Leah has finished the grain, and given up hope of finding stray oats in the corners of the box. She lifts her head to look at me. Her yellow eyes are clear, with rectangular pupils. She appears to think about me. I go closer.

  “May I pat her?”

  “Yes,” says Vivian.

  I put out my hand, thinking to pat Leah’s neck. But she intercepts the hand and sniffs it thoroughly. It seems only courteous to wait till she is satisfied. I notice that her eyes roll slightly upward, as if in pious contemplation of heaven.

  At last Leah looks away, allowing my hand past to touch her neck. Her hair is coarse. Her neck is lean and stringy.

  The jets of milk come thinner and weaker, until there is nothing. Vivian stands with a grunt and a puff, then takes the pail to the counter. There she pours the milk through a cheesecloth, which is stretched across the top of a pail. She takes off the cloth, drops it into a pan of sudsy water in the sink, and, using a funnel, pours the milk into quart juice bottles. Immediately it goes into the refrigerator, which holds only milk and short brown bottles of injectable medicines. She squirts red-brown iodine into both pails and swirls steaming tap water through them. She takes a fresh cheesecloth and pins it across the top of the straining pail.

  “Would you like coffee now?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  She calls up the stairs. “Pat? We’d take some coffee! And Marcy’s up, so I guess you could start breakfast.”

  “Be right back,” she says to me. She picks up a coffee can from the floor, releases Leah, and is towed out the door. I would like to follow, but I wasn’t asked, and I want to keep my bare feet on the clean section of linoleum.

  Vivian and Leah disappear. There is quiet, then a confused trampling sound. I hear Vivian expostulating, and after a moment she reappears, towed by another goat. Her feet barely seem to touch the earth between enormous strides. The goat’s eyes bulge. Her tongue flips audibly over her lips; thup thup thup! She and Vivian careen through the door, and the goat leaps onto the stand. Vivian dumps the measure of grain rattling into the box and closes the bar on the goat’s neck. She collapses onto her stool with a loud puff.

  “Phew! This is Amy.”

  “Hi, Amy,” I say, and pat her neck. She rolls a bright eye my way but doesn’t stop gobbling for a second.

  Vivian wrings out a yellow throwaway cloth into a little plastic bucket of disinfectant solution and carefully wipes Amy’s huge udder. Then she dries it, reaches for her stainless-steel pail, and begins to milk. Amy pays no attention. I think, watching, how this animal is distorted—all udder. A mouth, a digestive system, exist only to produce milk.

  But if Amy, and Leah before her, are milk factories, they still seem quite different from dairy cows I’ve met. If their udders are man’s, their minds are reserved for themselves.

  I hear steps on the stairs and smell coffee. Pat comes in, carrying three white diner mugs on a metal tray. She nods to me, smiling with her bright, frosty-blue eyes. We decide to go on as if we have been introduced.

  She gives the mugs to Vivian, one at a time. I’m uneasy when the steaming mugs pass beneath Amy’s hairy belly but don’t see anything fall in. Vivian shoots a jet of milk into each and the surface foams, turning pale. She passes the first cup to me.

  The coffee is still nearly too hot, but it’s good—not that I know that much about cappuccino. I see Vivian hurry to finish Amy as the white mug steams beside her on the counter. When she is done, Pat strains the milk while Vivian takes up her mug in reverent haste. She sits peacefully on her stool, leaning against the cabinets. Sun comes in. Milk trickles through the cheesecloth into a pail, a tiny sound like a running brook. Amy’s stomach gurgles.

  She has long since finished her grain but doesn’t appear to mind waiting. Every thirty seconds she checks the box again, tinkling her bell—just in case. Otherwise she looks at us, occasionally uttering a whispered comment: “Meh! Meh!”

  “Two left,” Vivian says at last, nearing the bottom of her mug. “How’s breakfast?”

  “Coming.”

  “How many goats do you have?” I ask.

  “Seven,” says Vivian. “Plus the babies.”

  “Wow!”

  “Come out and see them,” Vivian says, draining her mug and getting up. I get my sneakers and follow.

  Amy’s udder is thin and floppy now. She rushes along with Vivian attached to her collar, then stops suddenly, wrenching Vivian off-balance as she dives her nose into the lawn. I see why. There’s practically no grass left in the goat pens. They look brown and bare.

  The goat pen isn’t like the blue suburban house. There is a barn in three distinct segments, made of three different materials: asphalt shingles, plywood, and old barn boards. The segments escalate in size and squareness.

  There are two fenced areas, one nearly featureless. The other contains two old apple trees, a couple of weathered, flat-roofed doghouses, and several of those giant spools that telephone wire comes on. Four piebald goats with flabby, milked-out udders are standing on them in experimental attitudes.

  Amy is ushered through the gate to join them. Vivian goes into the shed with her grain can, and I go to the gate of the other pen. There, the last two goats are crowding. I want to meet a goat that’s a free agent, before she gets her nose into the grain.

  These goats’ minds are halfway to the grain. Their golden eyes have followed Vivian to the shed. Their hooves rattle and scramble on the gate, which is a pallet on hinges. They pay little attention to my hand as I try to pat them.

  I feel rude. I’m trying to dab little strokes on their Roman noses, without even asking. I stop.

  They appreciate that. The dark gray goat pushes her nose up into my face. It is a bold, surprisingly intimate move. I am shocked and stand still. Her nose is less than an inch from mine. I am tickled by sweet hay-breath and fine whiskers. She puffs gently on my face for several seconds, thinking.

  But now the grain rattles in Vivian’s coffee can, and the goats’ attention is claimed. They jostle for position; their hooves slip and scramble on the pallet.

  Vivian opens the latch, and my goat is the one who slips through. Vivian follows her. She is trotting toward the cellar door, snatching mouthfuls of grass along the way. The remaining goat ignores me. She runs in circles with head high, long ears flying. She bleats in staccato bursts, like machine-gun fire. Hysterical.

  In the other pen, the goats lie or stand on the spools and houses. They watch their hysterical comrade, and they watch the cellar door. Their golden eyes are calm, enigmatic. Occasionally they murmur a comment: “Meh!”

  How haughty they look, the Roman-nosed goats, with their amber eyes and their beards wagging! They are not beautiful, as I’m used to judging it; not like cats. Yet like cats, they give an impression of sage maturity—not the hysterical one but the others, yes. Like a congregation of grandmothers in some old ethnic neighborhood, so knowing of each other’s ways that no words are needed.

  I want to go in and learn the name of the goat who sniffed my face. I hope she’ll do it again.

  Her name is Tony. She’s seven. She has twins every year and gives a gallon of milk at the peak of her lactation.

  That’s not what I want to know.

  I want to know why, as her sweet breath bathes my face, my heart is stilled in peace.

  I follow outside again and watch as she is turned in with the other
s. She goes to sniff another goat—I can’t remember who it is—then hops on the empty stool, turns broadside to the sun, and lies down. She looks at me with her golden eyes as she begins to chew her cud.

  I’m still there when Vivian returns with the last goat. When she’s put it with the others, she goes somewhere in the barn and opens a door. A stream of baby kids pours out into the empty pen.

  The kids are silky, shiny, smooth. Their long ears are soft like rabbits’ ears. They bounce and gambol, square off at each other in wicked duels. They are wonderful. Vivian is proud, and I know she expects ecstasy from me. But after I’ve watched awhile, I feel uneasy and am drawn back to the older goats. They seem more important.

  Vivian stops beside me and spends a few minutes telling me how they’re all related, who is grandmother, who sister and cousin. I don’t care. I look at them. One goat, to whom I was not introduced, gets slowly to her feet, steps down from the roof of her doghouse, and comes to the fence, where she presses her head against Vivian’s palm.

  “Breakfast!” Pat calls through the window, and we go inside. There’s sausage, melon, biscuits, juice, and more coffee. They have a Boston Globe, and we divide the sections. We don’t mean to get to know each other; just have breakfast comfortably.

  I’m brushing my hair when I hear the car. The wide-open ease of my heart begins to tighten a little. I go outside.

  Nancy’s already with the goats. They are less lazy than an hour ago, and several crowd at the fence making Nancy’s acquaintance. She’s laughing as their breath tickles her face. Behind her, my father beams his cat smile at the picture she makes. Already the two of them seem happier. I think briefly of my phone call, but it isn’t time yet.

  “Marcy!” My father’s smile is for me now.

  Nancy turns from the goats and arches her perfect brows. “You look rested,” she says.

  Vivian is coming out. She stops halfway down the marigold walk and calls, “Would you like coffee?”

  Nancy looks at my father, and he looks at his watch. “Yes, we have time,” he says. “Just milk, no sugar.”

  Pat and Vivian both come. Everyone stands near the goat pens, talking. Vivian likes Nancy. People do, once they’ve overcome the initial hostility. Anyone as beautiful as Nancy automatically raises hackles at first. It’s a great tribute to her character that she has so many friends.

  They watch the kids play and talk about goats.

  “They’re the brightest animals,” says Vivian. “And so restful.”

  “Restful?” Nancy asks, watching the kids rear high and crash their heads together. I am listening hard, because I think I know what Vivian’s talking about.

  It seems so incongruous. Goats are capricious, and eat everything. Yet Pat and Vivian are restful people. They have a stillness at the center, which relates to this penful of goats.

  Sadly Vivian is as much at a loss as I. “The Old Ladies,” she says, looking at them on their spools. “I don’t know,” she says. “But I’m a coffee-and-cigarette person, I really am, and I can be a stinker. But the girls make me as peaceful as … I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me.”

  No, I think. No.

  “I’ve always heard,” says Nancy, curling her long beautiful potter’s fingers around her mug, “that a goat will calm a nervous racehorse. Some kind of chemistry …” Vivian’s face lights up with pleasure and comprehension. “I never understood that, either,” says Nancy, and they both laugh.

  But now it’s time to say goodbye, and we are off to Tanglewood, where music and a picnic will be our delights. I’m in my usual backseat spot, with nothing to do but look out the window and think.

  Last night when I called my mother, she seemed both nervous and elated. I didn’t immediately know why. She asked about where I was staying and groaned with me about the six A.M. goat parade.

  Then she asked about our seats for this evening’s concert. Were they good seats? In the middle? Did I know the numbers?

  No, I didn’t. I’d probably never seen the tickets, and my mother should know that. She used to be the one in Nancy’s place, on our Tanglewood week. She knows how it works.

  We are here; parking, walking over the green, dewy grass. My father sees someone that he meets here every year. He stops and introduces Nancy. His rough skin reddens all the way to the tips of his ears. Two years since my mother last came with us. One year she was in Lima. The next was the beginning of Nancy.

  Her short hair would be as bright as poppies in this sun. She’d stir restlessly, like a thoroughbred at the gate, swinging the picnic basket in her hand. She’d say decisively, “Well, come with us, then!” Or she’d look off across this lawn and wave to someone else. When she arrives at this evening’s concert, there will be many to know her and my father, many to wonder.

  While they talk, I drift away to the tent from which Robert J. Lurtsema is broadcasting his radio show. He’s rhapsodizing over the Berkshire hills. I watch keenly. No, he does not now put on the wrong record, but he doesn’t quite catch the first note, so he lifts the needle and starts again. This gives me a homey feeling, a small comfort.

  As it happens, my mother and Nancy have never set eyes on each other.

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” my mother said last night. “Tom asked me—I haven’t been to Tanglewood in two years, and I’m flying out to Milan the next day, so … do you think you’re sitting in the middle somewhere?”

  I think I’ll have a terrible headache tonight. I feel it coming on.

  Later we picnic. Nancy has brought good wine, Brie, chewy French bread, lots of fruit. Friends of my father’s join us—annual friends, whom Nancy has never met. She is quiet. Her face looks smoothly serene, a glaze. I suspect she’s working hard not to seem shamefaced, and I respect her. In a similar situation I imagine I would gabble.

  How will she hold up when she comes face-to-face with my mother?

  My mother will wear one of her radiant silk dresses, and pearls. She’ll be all hotted up with nervous excitement, vibrant enough to make even Nancy feel plain. She’ll overrun them both with a rush of talk in her light, carrying voice. My father will long for her. He’ll ache for Nancy—the Other Woman, identified before a throng of acquaintances. His face will redden, and he’ll be unable to speak. Tanglewood will hurt him like a burn, long after.

  Seeing Nancy, my mother will also feel plain, lightweight, and frenetic. She’ll want to cry.

  I see a kid that I usually meet here. To avoid him, I drift a little apart from my father and Nancy. My father’s so distinctive, he’d be like a lightning rod for anyone trying to spot me.

  Why shouldn’t Nancy have this shock? Look at the shock she’s given us.

  Why shouldn’t my father be humiliated? He’s been unfaithful, careless.

  Why shouldn’t my mother, for that matter, get a shock? She was arrogant. She assumed too much.

  Someone taped the morning concert, and we are hearing it again—the beautiful, silvery music of Mozart, sprightly, orderly music you could almost dance to. I stretch out on the grass and bury my face in my arms. If only things were like that!

  I think it’s unfair for a kid to have to face all these complications growing up. Growing up is hard enough already.

  I think it’s unfair when people shelter me, act like I can’t, or shouldn’t, understand these things. I’m not a fool.

  The thing I hate most is not being able to think a thought straight through and stick to it.

  I hate Nancy! That doesn’t work for two minutes.

  It’s unfair for things to be so complicated! But I know—I know it’s not just my life here.

  They were all fools. Or maybe they were just too innocent for this world.

  I am wounded. I am made strong. I can’t recall one thing without bringing to mind its opposite, and everything in between.

  It makes me quiet, and since my face is downcast, I probably seem sullen. We’re having dinner, in our favorite Tanglewood restaurant. I’m having my favorite food, the
ir incredible beef burgundy, and to my astonishment, it tastes as wonderful as it always has. I spoon it in ravenously, trying to fatten up on this joy.

  I see my father worrying about me, feeling guilty.

  Soon Nancy does too. I should flash them a brilliant smile and start chattering, but I only slurp up the beef burgundy and think my convoluted thoughts. They discuss, when they discuss anything, the evening’s program.

  I do have a minor headache, a combination of too much sun and too much thinking. I could build on it and spend the evening at Vivian’s. But then I won’t know what happens.

  We finish and drive back to Vivian’s so I can change. It’s still quite light out. Past six, though; the goats will have already been milked.

  They’re all in the pen by the barn, where they spend the night. Two particularly piebald creatures press heads together, near the gate. It looks more comfortable than aggressive. I see Tony in one of the barn’s three doorways, chewing her cud.

  “Is there time for me to see the goats a minute?”

  My father checks his watch. “A little time.”

  Vivian has come halfway down the walk. “May I go in with the goats?” I call.

  “Yes. Just close the gate carefully.”

  She keeps coming down the walk, and my father goes politely to talk with her. Nancy hesitates. I am going to the goats.

  They look up calmly, alertly, as I approach the gate. My hand rattles the latch. Long ears lift. They begin to step toward me; I slip through and hastily close the gate. Ears drop. They stop and wait. I go straight to Tony.

  She swallows her cud and lifts her Roman nose to my face—puff, puff, puff. Mildly her golden eyes gaze heavenward.

  She looks down and across the goat yard, where her piebald relatives are pressing heads again. She burps up another cud and chews, a steady, rhythmic grinding. She presses her neck against my thigh. Tony.