Chapter 24: Dragon Mother

Clara drove us up from Geneva on the twenty-second of December in a rented car with chains on the tires.

She drove at forty kilometers an hour, with both hands on the wheel.

"You can go faster," I said.

"I can. I won't."

A truck full of logs passed us on a bend. Clara made a noise.

"Your daughter," Matthias said from the back seat, where his knees were up by his ears, "is a better driver than you."

"I'm a perfectly good driver."

"You drove me into a hedge in August."

"It jumped out."

Clara laughed so hard she had to pull over.

His brother was waiting at the little station with the old truck and the dog.

The dog looked at Clara, then at me, and decided we were the same thing. He lay down across both our feet at once.

"This one is the small boss," the brother said, pointing at Clara. "My brother told me. You are the big boss. He is nothing. He is the driver."

"I'm the driver," Clara said. "He's in the back."

The brother looked at Matthias with deep satisfaction and said something long in German.

This time Matthias translated it.

"He says finally there is a woman in this family who can manage me."

"Two," said Clara.

By Christmas Eve she could milk a cow.

Badly. Slowly. With her cheek pressed against its side and her eyes shut and the brother saying, "Gentle, gentle, she is not a bank."

She drew all eleven cows in her sketchbook and gave the brother the page.

He put it up in his kitchen, beside a calendar from the feed store, and showed it to everyone who came in.