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1. An Ordinary Little Girl
Katlyn Zinger was an ordinary little girl. She had a father and mother, like ordinary girls do, and she went to school, like ordinary girls do. She loved to play in her yard and to play with her toys, just like an ordinary girl, and she liked to play with her friends, who were also ordinary little girls. (Except for the friends who were little boys, but they were also very ordinary.)
She had mousy brown hair, which she wore tied up with a blue satin ribbon, and she wore cute little dresses of the sort designed to be worn by ordinary little girls. She had big eyes, as children often do, which were an ordinary shade of blue, and on her feet she wore black loafers with silver buckles and white socks, which clung to her ankles and were decorated with pretty lace of the sort in which ordinary girls take pleasure. These Katlyn wore to school, like other little girls. However, when she was playing at home she preferred to wear sandals, so as not to scratch her shiny buckles or get her pretty white socks dirty. Katlyn didn’t know if this was ordinary or not, but I assure you, dear listener, that all the other little girls were wearing sandals at home too.
Now, an ordinary girl needs an ordinary family, and Katlyn’s family was quite ordinary indeed. Her father was a businessman, and like all ordinary businessmen, he liked to lock himself in his study with his computer and telephone, and he liked to talk with other businessmen who were locked in other studies, which, as a rule, were located halfway across the country or on the far side of the globe. Katlyn’s mother was a writer, and in the fashion of ordinary writers, she wrote novels about extraordinary people who lived in extraordinary places and had extraordinary things happen to them. When asked why she wrote them this way, Mrs. Zinger always told Katlyn that the novels were written for, and enjoyed by, all the ordinary people who secretly wished for something extraordinary to happen to them as well.
Katlyn had assorted other relatives, as children often do, but the only ones she saw on a daily basis were her grandparents. All four lived with her, but not one was as ordinary as she was, but this was to be expected. It’s a well-known fact that people become eccentric as they age, and it’s therefore quite natural for grandparents to develop quirks and crazy obsessions. Knowing this, Katlyn didn’t mind that her grandparents gave themselves nicknames and possessed excessive quantities of their favorite pets.
Now, having a father who was always locked in a study with the disembodied voices of imprisoned businessmen, and having a mother who was always glued to a sofa with her reading glasses on her forehead and her fingers dancing across her keyboard because she was “on a roll,” but NOT having any brothers or sisters to play games with after she’d finished her homework, Katlyn frequently had lots of time on her hands, but not lots of things to fill it with. Whenever this happened, she visited her grandparents.
First Katlyn would visit Grandma Jean and Grandpa Jasper, who were her mother’s parents and lived in the East end of the house. The Eastern Grandparents, as they liked to call themselves, loved cats and were skinny and wrinkled with bright beady eyes and long pointed noses. They liked to tell stories, and did so in such an animated fashion that their noses traced crazy patterns in the air. This made Katlyn feel dizzy and always hypnotized Grandpa Jasper’s favorite cat, Juniper. Their stories, though ordinary in content, varied in length and always ended the same way, with Juniper leaping at one or the other of the wagging appendages. Laughing and grumbling would ensue, and neither Jean nor Jasper would remember what their stories had been about.
Once she’d had her fill of unfinished stories, Katlyn would say goodbye to the Eastern Grandparents, and go to visit Grandma Doris and Grandpa Dan, who were her father’s parents and lived in the West end of the house. Not to be out done by Jean and Jasper, they called themselves the Western Grandparents and were also wrinkly, though not particularly skinny, with big droopy eyes and sagging cheeks that made them resemble Doris’s old Bassett hound, Darrell. Grandma Doris would feed Katlyn milk and cookies and ask how the Eastern Grandparents were doing, (this was her way of asking which nose Juniper had attacked). Then she and Dan would dutifully make up endings for all the interrupted stories the Eastern Grandparents had started. Nothing, in their opinion, was less ordinary and more tasteless than a story that didn’t have an ending.
Once the last ending was told, Katlyn would politely thank the Western Grandparents for finishing the Eastern Grandparents’ stories. Then she’d wash her milk cup and slip away, leaving them to discuss what a nice little girl she was while they placed bets on whose nose Juniper would attack the next day.
Head spinning with adventures, and stomach full of cookies, Katlyn would then spend the rest of each day playing in her most favorite of places: The Yard.
The Yard was not called ‘the yard’ as most yards are called, but, “The Yard.” Every adult that ever saw it and learned its name, which sounds no different than saying ‘the yard’ without capitals, would hence forth, and without either prompting or exception, pronounce it with the most emphatic sense of capitalization that you can imagine.
You see, although Katlyn Zinger was a perfectly ordinary little girl, and although her parents were perfectly ordinary parents and had respectable, ordinary professions, and although her grandparents were relatively ordinary when compared to other elderly eccentrics, there was one thing about the Zinger family that was most certainly NOT ordinary. In fact, it was so not ordinary that you could even call it extraordinary, and from this extraordinary piece of information The Yard sprang into being with all the subtlety of an erupting volcano.
The Zingers were extraordinarily wealthy.
They were not ordinarily wealthy, for there are many ordinary families that are ordinarily wealthy with ordinary massive houses and ordinary expensive cars and ordinary successful businesses. The Zinger family was so incredibly wealthy that they could’ve described themselves as remarkably, fabulously, stupendously, tremendously, amazingly and yes, even extraordinarily, wealthy, and still have been thought modest by all the other wealthy families. They were so well off that when I said Katlyn’s Grandma Jean and Grandpa Jasper lived in the East end of the house and that Grandma Doris and Grandpa Dan lived in the West end of the house, there actually was a West end of the house and there actually was an East end of the house, and Katlyn had to walk ten minutes along corridors lined with beautifully carved doors to reach either one of them.
They were so fabulously well off that when I said the Eastern Grandparents loved cats, it meant that to listen to the beginnings of their stories, Katlyn had to walk past ten minutes of beautifully carved cats peering out at her from ebony knobs, wainscoting, and mahogany door panels. There were paintings of cats hanging on the walls and large ferny vases decorated with jungle cats lining the hallways, and when she finally reached the Eastern Grandparents’ domain, she had to walk through three rooms full of tall shelves and luxurious lounging chairs that dripped with cats. They peered at her from cracks under the sofas and leaned far out over the edges of bookcases to watch her walk by. They even dropped onto her shoulders as she passed under them, purring loudly and shedding profusely, but always polite and mindful of their claws. It was a rare day indeed that she arrived at the Eastern Grandparents’ sitting room with no cats in her arms.
The Zinger family was so amazingly well off that when Katlyn went to see the Western Grandparents to hear the ends of the stories, she had to walk past the ten minutes of carved cats a second time and then past another ten minutes of beautifully carved dogs, (for as I said earlier, the Western Grandparents loved dogs). These peeked out at her from birch handles and trimming and oaken door panels. There were paintings of dogs and tapestries of hounds everywhere, and when Katlyn finally reached the Western Grandparents’ apartment, she was overrun by a sea of dogs, which invariably knocked her down and licked her all over. Upon regaining her feet, Katlyn had to wade through three rooms full of beautiful sofas and easy chairs, each one carefully che
wed and slobbered upon, which were crowded with dogs. These glorified dog beds emptied as soon as she’d waded past, and a parade gathered, sniffing at her heels as the dogs all leapt up to follow Katlyn into the Western Grandparents’ sitting room.
The Zinger family was so wonderfully wealthy that their house, with its massive East, West, and North ends, (Katlyn and her parents lived in the North end), was the size of a sprawling palace. And surrounding this palatial mansion for as far as Katlyn’s eyes could see, was The Yard.
The Yard was green.
The Yard was glorious.
The Yard was the size of a small country.
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