The upshot of all this talking was me getting pretty much in love with Emmy. She was beautiful and like a grown person. In the daytime we didn’t let on. Hanging out with her and Maggot, I tried to be normal, but sometimes said things to impress her. Like how the other foster boys thought my cartoons were good. And the football hero Fast Forward that was my friend. She just said something polite, but Maggot chimed in on how awesome this guy was. I’d forgotten Maggot knew him from that time they came to the farm. This got Emmy interested to the extent of saying she’d like to meet this famous Fast Forward.
So we played it cool, and I wondered if the other was real or just some after-hours game she was playing. But then she would let me sit on the couch with her while she was reading, and under the blanket her feet would touch my feet. She’d look up from her book and smile at me and, oh man. Utterly wrecked. Back in the summer she’d announced the one time about us getting married, which was kid shit. Like somebody giving you Monopoly money and saying “Here, go buy a house.” But now all I had to do was think of Emmy, her face or her toothpaste smell, and it would give me these waking-up feelings as regards the guy downstairs. Not kid shit. At night we’d be talking and I’d get obsessed on kissing her, even though not having the nerve. It was her finally that did it. She asked if I wanted to go to second base, which of course I did, except for not knowing exactly where that base was located. I’d heard different things. I said okay, and she took my hand into the neck of her gown and put it on her chest. Nipple and everything, warm and soft. Christ. Now I had a whole new body function to be terrified of doing on accident, from being that mixed up and happy at the same time. But I held it together. I just told her I loved her and that kind of thing. I told her whenever she moved back to Lee County, we could take walks together with Aunt June’s dog Rufus.
After that I had a new brain-Lysol to calm myself down: walking in the woods with Emmy. I’d picture us holding hands, maybe with our own dog. Being grown-ups. It would be so much safer than being a kid.
For Christmas breakfast they invited Mrs. Gummidge, which was the cat lady downstairs where Emmy slept over on Aunt June’s night shifts. Emmy still wasn’t old enough to be on her own in the stranger-danger building overnight, even though graduated from daytime babysitting and Popsicle-stick-type shenanigans. I figured this cat lady wouldn’t get presents either, so we could sit together watching the others, and I wouldn’t have to stay in the shower.
Emmy warned me about Mrs. Gummidge being a sad human being and not to laugh at her, or Aunt June would kill us. I said I was in no position, being star player on the sad-sack team. But listen, this lady was in her own league. We were all, Merry Christmas Mrs. Gummidge! And she’s like, “Well, it might be, I don’t know. I been feeling so poorly.” Aunt June asked how are Cain and Abel, which were her cats, and she said, “Well, they’ve both been at death’s door for a good while. But it’s for the best. If I pass away first, I don’t know who would take them.”
Mrs. Gummidge was a sister of somebody the Peggots knew in Lee County, which was how they knew she was safe and not a stranger. She’d helped keep Emmy ever since they first moved here, so they were used to her, but man alive. She had a downer comment for every occasion. Wasn’t the Christmas tree pretty? Well, she said, a lot of times they started fires. Yes, the weather had been warm, but that meant winter would last longer. She had on these thick brown stockings rolled up under her knees that she had to wear night and day for her varicose veins that hurt her something awful. She had some name for them like compressure hose. I didn’t ask, trust me. It just came up. All through breakfast which was pancakes and bacon, Mrs. Gummidge discussed how she was forlorn in the world and too poorly to be fit company for anybody since Mr. Gummidge passed. Emmy stared at me with her shut mouth pulled wide like a fish, trying not to laugh. I don’t think Aunt June was too far behind her.
But they were all sweet to her. The time came for presents, and surprise, they had some for Mrs. Gummidge and also me. She got a fuzzy pink bathrobe that she said was so pretty she might ought to get buried in it. For me they had things from “Santa” that obviously got new tags put on them last minute, like socks (I wore the same size as Mr. Peg), a Stretch Armstrong, a Bop It, and Pokemon cards I’m sure were for Maggot, and he’d okayed them getting reassigned.
But Aunt June got me something amazing: a set of colored markers for making comics, fine-tip on one end and thick on the other, in more colors than you’d think there would be. Eight entire flesh tones. Also a real book for making comic strips, with the panel dividers printed in. I couldn’t believe my eyes. After Mom died I’d not wanted to draw any more at all, but now I couldn’t wait to run off someplace and get started. I would make one of Aunt June as Wonder Nurse, putting a new heart back inside a boy that had his own torn out.
The last night before we left, Emmy went to pieces. I told her we would see each other all the time whenever they moved to Lee County. But Aunt June had to finish out her hospital contract first, so it wouldn’t be till May. Forever, in other words. It had only been thirty-nine days since Mom and my brother died, and that felt like longer than the years I’d been alive.
I tried to dwell on the happier aspects, like being amazed of how the Peggots gave me presents. I asked her opinion of it being a sign they might want to adopt me. Emmy said I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Too late, my hopes were up. Mrs. Peggot already had said I could stay at their house after we got back until school started up again, rather than go back to Creaky Farm. Which had to mean something.
Emmy though got all mournful, lying on her back with tears running down sideways, which pretty much killed me. She asked would I wait for her and not get another girlfriend in the meantime before May. I told her no worries on that. I used an old-lady voice and said “I’m too forlorn to be fit company, unless I can find me some almost dead cats.” And she laughed, so that was good. We cheered ourselves up then by making fun of Mrs. Gummidge, and got tickled. Which is terrible, but you know. We’re kids. I asked how long ago Mr. Gummidge died.
“No idea,” she said. “We’ve known her forever, and there’s never been any Mr. Gummidge in the picture. I don’t even know what he died of.”
“He probably hung himself,” I said. “With her compressure hose.”
That cracked all of us up. Maggot included. He’d been awake all along.
We were back at the Peggots’ a few days before I got up my nerve, but the time came. The house was quiet. Mr. Peg took Maggot and some cousins to go bowling with their church youth league. They invited me, but I said I didn’t feel like it. After they left, I went downstairs to the kitchen where Mrs. Peggot was cooking her big pot of blackeye peas they always had for New Year’s, for a year of good luck. A Peggot thing. Mom always said she’d never heard of that. But then, look at her luck.
I hung around the kitchen watching Mrs. Peggot put things in her soup. Onions, carrots, a lot more than blackeye peas, plus it had to cook all day and then some. She always put in the big bone from the country ham they ate at Christmas. This year they’d taken the ham to Knoxville for Christmas dinner, then wrapped the bone in foil and brought it back. So that bone had more miles on it than most people I knew. All that, for the luck. Steam rolled out of the pot, fogging up the window and making the kitchen smell amazing. I told her she was the best cook and this was the best house I was ever in. She looked over her shoulder at me, then went back to stirring. I thanked her for the presents she and Mr. Peg gave me for Christmas, that I wasn’t expecting. I’d said thank you at the time, but I wanted to use all my manners before I got to the main question.