Just as she turned to go back to the couch and her TV stories, Izzy spoke up in protest. Marilyn was surprised that the girl hadn’t complained sooner. Complaints were not merely in Izzy’s wheelhouse, her wheelhouse had been more or less constructed from them.
“I’m tired of Legos,” she whined. “I want to do something else.”
“Like what?” the boy asked her.
“Like anything.”
“We could play with your dinosaurs.”
Izzy had a fair collection of molded plastic dinosaurs.
“You can’t play with them,” Izzy whined.
“Why can’t you?”
“Because they’re just plastic,” Izzy whined in that nasal tone that Marilyn found so deeply irritating. “They don’t do anything.”
“You make different characters out of them and act stuff out.”
“That sounds really stupid,” Izzy said.
Still they did not seem aware of Marilyn standing in the doorway observing their play. Or their argument, as the case might be. With children it was often hard to tell the difference, if indeed there was a difference.
“Fine,” Stewie said, though he was clearly exasperated and it was clearly not fine. “What do you want to play?”
Izzy answered without hesitation. “Barbies,” she said.
The boy threw his head back and rolled his eyes expansively. Izzy noticed.
“What’s wrong with Barbies?” she asked, her tone defensive.
“Well, first of all, they’re just like dinosaurs. They’re plastic, and if dinosaurs don’t do anything, then neither do Barbies.”
“Right, but they’re Barbies,” Izzy said. As if the very fact of being what they were sufficiently redeemed them.
“But I’m a boy.”
“So? Boys can play Barbies.”
“Maybe they can, but they don’t want to.”
“Some boys would want to.”
“Well, this boy doesn’t.”
Both children fell silent a moment, as if examining the depth and breadth of their impasse.
Then Stewie said, “You be a Barbie, I’ll be a dinosaur.”
And they dove for their respective toys of choice.
Marilyn smiled inwardly and turned back for the living room.
Before she could even reach the couch, she heard a high scream. She ran back to the den, her heart in her throat. But it was only Izzy voicing the screams of her Barbie as she ran for her life from Stewie’s dinosaur.
She shook her head and turned back to the living room again, where she ran into Sylvia. Almost literally. She had to jump back a step to avoid a collision. It startled her.
“Oh,” she said, letting off that jolt of fear. “It’s you. When did you get home? I didn’t even know you were home.”
“I just got here.” She craned her neck and looked past Marilyn and into the den. “What’s that little egg boy doing here?”
“Playing with Izzy.”
“That doesn’t seem right.”
“What’s wrong about it?”
“He’s so much older than she is. Like, five or six years older.”
“I assure you he’s a lovely young man and it’s perfectly appropriate play.”
“I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. I’m just not sure why he’d want to.”
Marilyn raised her arms and spread them wide. “Who knows why anyone wants anything?”
Sylvia narrowed her eyes and stared in the direction of one of Marilyn’s hands. “Had time to do your nails, I see.”
“The children seemed nicely occupied on their own.”
“That’s convenient.” She turned her gaze to Marilyn’s face, her eyes still narrow and searching. “Don’t you think it’s taking advantage of his good nature?”
“I didn’t ask him to do it. It was his own idea.”
Sylvia sighed. “Whatever. Anyway, I’m home. And it’s time for him to go home now.” Another shriek rang out, and Sylvia turned her attention to the children again. “Why is he chasing her?”
“He’s not chasing her.”
“I’m standing here watching him chase her.”
“His dinosaur is chasing her Barbie.”
“Oh,” Sylvia said. But she sounded less than convinced. “Izzy,” she called sharply.
Both children stopped running and turned their attention to the grown-ups standing in the doorway.
“What?” Izzy said sternly. “We’re playing.”
“Are you okay?”
“I was. Until you messed everything up.”
Sylvia sighed, and turned to Marilyn.
“Tell your little friend to go home now,” she said.
“Are you sure? It’s nice for Izzy to have someone to play games with her. Nice for us, too.”
“I just want dinner. I just want quiet.”
Marilyn opened her mouth to call the boy by name. But she no longer remembered his name. It was frustrating and troubling, because she had been so sure she’d memorized it once and for all.
“Kids!” she said loudly. As though they had never stopped running. As though they were not already frozen in their tracks and listening. “You,” she said, pointing at Izzy. “Time to wash up for dinner. And you. Time to get home for dinner at your own house.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy said.
“He’s polite,” Sylvia half whispered in her ear. “I have to give him that.”
It was a couple of hours after dinner. Marilyn had given Izzy her bath and tucked her into bed, and the girl had blessedly—and unexpectedly—gone to sleep straightaway.
She was sitting on the couch with Sylvia, watching a police drama.
It wasn’t very good.
Sylvia had long since lost interest and was staring at her notebook computer, which she had open on her lap.
Marilyn craned her neck as inconspicuously as possible to see what she was viewing. It appeared to be a selection of blouses.
“What are you doing?” she asked, though she could already see that Sylvia was shopping.
“Shopping,” Sylvia said.
“Is that a clothing company website? Or is that one of those sites where they sell everything?”
“They sell everything.” Sylvia sounded distracted, as though she wished Marilyn would stop talking to her.
“So they have books.”
“Yes. They have books. That’s more or less what they started out to sell.”
“Order something for me, too. Will you?”
Sylvia’s attention broke. She shifted her eyes away from the laptop’s display and frowned into Marilyn’s face. “Why would I order something for you?”
“I’ll pay you back for it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s okay, then, I guess. What do you want?”
“A book.”
“Right. I knew that much.”
“Stuart Little. E. B. White is the author.”
Then she realized that by remembering the name of the book she wanted, she was also remembering the name of the boy.
Sylvia typed that into the website’s search bar.
“Finish your own shopping first,” Marilyn said.
“It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t finding anything anyway. My goodness,” she added as the detail page for the book came up. “That’s a very old book. Did you know how old it was? It says right here on the cover that it’s seventy-five years old. They say it like it’s a good thing. This gold sticker saying ‘celebrating’ seventy-five years. But it doesn’t seem like much cause for celebration to me. It’s just a very old book.”
“That’s a newer edition, though,” Marilyn said, leaning in to better see the computer screen. “See if they have any of the originals.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Just look, please. See if they’re very expensive.”
Sylvia sighed. Her fingers clattered on the keyboard. A moment later Marilyn was staring at a page with an image of a clearly ancient hardcover book. On it, a mouse in some kind of flowing outfit seemed to be tugging on a hanging rope. The title of the text on the book’s detail page read, “By E. B. White Stuart Little Hardcover—May 13, 1905.”
“That’s the one!” she cried out. “That’s what I want. Is it expensive?”
“Hardly. They have used copies as cheap as . . . well, less than seven dollars. No, wait. After they add the tax, it’ll be over seven dollars.”
“That’s fine. What about shipping?”
“I get free shipping on this site. What do you want this old book for, anyway?”
“It’s for the little boy.”
That just sat on the couch with them for a moment. Sylvia did not seem to know what to do with it.