“What does that mean?”
“‘Oh Jesus, how I adore you.’”
Cleo rocked with laughter.
“Why on earth do you know how to say that?”
“Because my insane mother used to send me to a fundamentalist Christian camp every summer, where they taught us to sing the hymns in sign. That’s the only part I can remember. Ironic for a half Jew, I know.”
“All right,” said Cleo. “Show me again.”
Frank showed her how to spell out the words with his hands. They both looked down at the sugar glider.
“Oh Jesus How I Adore You,” said Cleo. “Welcome to our little family.”
That first night they went to the Petco, which inexplicably stayed open until midnight on weeknights. They left Oh Jesus How I Adore You in her shoebox with a single peanut, which they read she could eat one of a day as a special treat.
“Do you think she’ll be okay without us?” asked Cleo as they walked to the store. She was already taking to her role as anxious mother.
“She’ll be just fine.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “We’ve got to get her some food and a nice big cage to live in.”
Cleo nuzzled her face into his neck. Her nose was running from the cold. The rain had stopped, but an icy wind was barreling down the avenue, buffeting their coats and scarves about them. He’d forgotten his gloves. He put one hand in his pocket and reached the other farther around Cleo, pushing it between the buttons of her fur coat. It nestled against the warm wool of her sweater. She kissed the freezing tip of his ear lobe poking out from beneath his hat.
“I love you, Frankenstein,” she murmured into his ear.
Inside the fluorescent-lit Petco the smell of cat litter and stale fish tanks encircled them. The place was almost completely empty, long vacant aisles stacked with neon chew toys and huge sacks of dry food. Frank loved it here; it was a welcome relief from ordinary life. They looked around and managed to root out one of the Petco staff somewhere near the birdcages.
“Excuse me, do you work here?” Frank asked.
“Work here? I’m the junior manager,” said the Petco junior manager.
He had a long pallid face, made even longer by a waxed and pointed goatee.
“Great,” said Frank. “Which of these, hypothetically, would you say is the best cage for a sugar glider?”
The junior manager inhaled so sharply, the tips of his nostrils blanched.
“I would say none of these are a good cage for a sugar glider,” he said. “Because sugar gliders are illegal in all five boroughs of New York.”
Cleo turned to Frank with a barely suppressed smile. “Well, isn’t it lucky we don’t have one then, darling?”
“Very lucky,” said Frank. “We’d never do anything illegal.”
“Never,” said Cleo. “That’s why we’re speaking—”
“Purely hypothetically,” said Frank.
“Hypothetically or not,” sniffed the Petco junior manager, “it would be against my best interest to recommend anything to house, feed, or entertain a sugar glider to you or anyone else.”
Cleo turned to Frank again.
“She needs to be entertained?” she said.
“I think you’re highly entertaining,” said Frank.
“I could do my Dolly Parton impression?”
“You do a great Dolly. And I’ll juggle.”
“I didn’t know you could juggle.”
“Only very round things.”
“A man of many talents,” said Cleo and kissed him.
The junior manager exhaled loudly.
“Entertainment as in activities,” he said. “Sugar gliders are nocturnal and highly active, so it’s imperative to provide them with hamster wheels, balls, or—”
“You got that?” said Frank.
Cleo nodded.
“Hamster wheel,” she said.
The junior manager touched the tips of his fingers lightly to his lips. “I’ve said too much,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” said Frank. “Why the hell are they illegal?”
“Yeah, who are they hurting?” said Cleo.
“It’s not a question of who they’re hurting,” said the junior manager.
They waited for him to continue but the man only gave them a mysterious and knowing look.
“What’s it a question of, then?” asked Frank.
“Enlighten us,” said Cleo.
“It’s a question of breeding,” said the junior manager. “While technically allowed in New York State, they’re illegal in all five boroughs because of the proximity to eastern gray squirrels. Were a sugar glider to escape and breed with those squirrels, it would create a strain of flying squirrel that could prove, to say the least, unmanageable for city dwellers.”
“Did you hear that, Cley?” said Frank
“Flying squirrels all over the city,” nodded Cleo.
“It could cause an epidemic,” said the junior manager seriously.
“Sounds—” said Frank.
“Wonderful,” said Cleo breathlessly.
The junior manager’s face fell.
“I’m going to have to ask you two to leave here,” he said. “This is a place for law-abiding pet owners only.”
“What about that cage?” said Frank, pointing to one past the manager’s shoulder. “Looks pretty big.”
“Did you hear me?” asked the junior manager.
“Sold!” said Cleo.
Frank pulled her after him toward the cages, both of them laughing like children. Cleo turned back to the Petco junior manager as she galloped along beside Frank.
“You’ve been such a dear,” she called. “Terribly informative. We can’t thank you enough.”
Then she blew him a kiss with her pink-kid-gloved-clad hand and ran, hand in hand with Frank, down the aisle.
The next few days were ones of discovery. They found, for instance, that Oh Jesus How I Adore You loved apples, Gatorade, quinoa, and peach yogurt but no other kinds. They discovered why people generally did not give sign-language names that translated to six words or more to pets, and quickly began to refer to her as simply “Jesus.” They learned that she woke up at around ten at night and stayed awake until ten in the morning, then slept for most of the day. Even with the cage in the living room, they could hear her through the walls trundling around in her wheel all night and occasionally emitting little bleating cries, which, they learned from researching on the internet, meant she wanted attention. They spent a lot of time researching her on the internet, reading aloud their favorite finds to each other.
“Listen to this,” said Cleo. It was Friday night, and for the first time in a long time, they were spending it staying in together. “‘While they bond to everyone in the family, each glider will almost always have a favorite person, usually the person who holds them the most, that will be their primary bond.’”
“Well, that’s not fair,” said Frank. “You’re obviously going to be the favorite because you’re home more.”
“Tough luck.” Cleo laughed. “Perks of being a stay-at-home mum.”
“Hmmph.”
“I read somewhere that she runs the equivalent of a marathon a night in her wheel.”
“No wonder she needs to sleep all day.”
“I think it’s cruel to keep her trapped in her cage every night,” said Cleo. “She should be free.”