Part 2
“I took it out of the bid,” Ruth said. “I thought the covered section was part of the old artwork.”
Celia asked her to leave the cardboard in place. She called another keeper to stay in the gallery while she found a temporary covering the facilities crew could secure on the visitor side. Nobody asked Willa to remain. Boone had his open route to the rest of the habitat, and the small gallery would stay closed while they worked out the replacement.
“Was it on the drawing you sent me?” Celia asked.
Ruth pictured the revised estimate, the line she had removed to bring the number down. “On the first one.”
“And on the last one?”
Ruth shook her head. Celia made a short note on the pad she carried, then asked Ruth to send both versions to Ben. She didn’t raise her voice or ask why Ruth hadn’t known better. Ruth found herself wishing she would.
Willa was putting on her shoe. Boone had risen to follow a female gorilla toward the outside doorway, leaving the burlap folded over the ledge. The girl watched until he disappeared, then opened the flattened carton along one crease.
“Leave that, please,” Ruth said, more sharply than she’d meant to.
Willa’s hand dropped. Ruth told her she had done nothing wrong and promised they would get ice cream on the way home. The offer sounded so familiar that Ruth heard Dana making it to a crying four-year-old after a vaccination, although Willa wasn’t crying and hadn’t asked for anything.
Ben met them at the entrance with two folding chairs. He had been carrying them to a storage room, but set one down for Willa while he and Ruth went over the drawings at the counter. The girl’s feet barely reached the floor; she hooked her heels over the chair’s crossbar and watched grounds workers lift a fallen branch into a cart outside.
“This approval is mine,” Ben said, touching the revised sheet. “I didn’t send the changed detail back through animal care. I saw the lower total.”
“There was still the back room.”
“There still is.” He put the two drawings side by side. “Celia says we’re taking away a place he already uses. I thought your change did the same job for less.”
Ruth had marked the revised materials as equivalent. She’d used that word on hundreds of estimates when she found a cheaper substrate or a cleaner way to mount a sign. Here, she had compared two views from the public floor and decided the clearer one was better.
Ben rubbed a gray pencil mark from his thumb. He had insisted on the turning space by the window after his father started using a wheelchair, and Ruth had liked him for noticing what visitors standing upright could overlook. She had made the mistake of treating that shared concern as agreement about everything else.
“I can cover the whole lower pane,” she said. “Same as it was.”
“Start with Celia. Then show facilities where the new edges go. I don’t want another revision approved by whichever of us happens to be near the printer.”
He would tell the Friday group the gallery might not be ready. The rest of their visit could proceed. Ruth wanted to insist she could fix it before then, but he was already folding the first drawing carefully along its old creases.
In the van, Willa asked whether Boone would get the cardboard after they were finished with it. Ruth said Celia chose what went inside the habitat. It might not be suitable, with the printing and glue and whatever else manufacturers put into cartons.
“I meant would he get to keep the corner.”
Ruth stopped with her hand on the gearshift. “We’re figuring that out.”
They went to the ice cream place, but Willa chose a paper cup instead of the cone Ruth had already ordered for her. She used the little wooden spoon to make a trench down the middle. When Ruth asked about school, the girl described a classmate who kept borrowing her eraser and biting it, and for a few minutes the zoo receded enough for Ruth to laugh.
That evening Willa sat at Ruth’s workbench while Dana finished an errand. There was a low stool especially for her, built from the end of an old shop cabinet. Ruth had saved the drawer handle because Willa liked to hook her feet around it, and the stool was still the first thing the girl pulled out when she arrived.
Ruth laid out scraps of frosted film. She explained how a solid patch could shield part of the ledge without blocking every low view into the room. Willa held two pieces against the kitchen window while Ruth sat on a chair to look through the gap.
“Move the left one over. No, your other left.”
“I know my left.”
“Then half an inch back.”
Willa complied. Ruth could see the top of a flowerpot through the gap, and she smiled at the clean edge. The girl waited with her arms raised until Ruth remembered to tell her she could put the pieces down.
Dana came in carrying a grocery bag. She put a carton of milk in Ruth’s refrigerator without announcing she’d bought it, then watched her daughter make a loose bracelet from a strip of backing paper.
“How was the zoo?”
“You should have seen her,” Ruth said. “That gorilla brought his bedding right up beside her. Everybody was trying to figure him out, and she just sat there.”
Willa looked up. “He was pulling threads.”
“For the longest time.” Ruth turned to Dana. “Celia’s checking some temporary layouts tomorrow after school. I’d like to take her back.”
“Ask her.”
“I am asking.” But Ruth had been looking at her daughter, and Willa was bent over the paper bracelet again.
Ruth could remember Dana at that same bench, pressing price stickers onto the backs of hand-painted holiday signs. She’d been quick and accurate, a wonderful help during the years Ruth couldn’t afford an employee. The old drawer still contained a few rolls of those stickers. Dana never sat at the bench now.
“Would you like to come?” Ruth asked Willa.
“Will I have to hold things?”
“No. You can sit with Boone like today.”
Dana started to say something, then Willa nodded. Ruth described the new room, the visitors who would be able to sit comfortably, the little place her granddaughter had helped them notice. She spoke with more animation than she’d felt over a job in months, and Dana’s face softened a little as she listened.
Then Ruth said, “If he comes over for you again, we’ll know we’ve got it right.”
Willa stopped winding the bracelet. “What if he doesn’t?”
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