“But if you want to come in,” she added, “you may.”
He perked up at that, and walked past her into the living room.
She watched him walk around touching the edges of everything, as if he had lost his sight. He ran one finger over all the knickknacks, and the tops of picture frames.
“Why isn’t Izzy here?” he asked aimlessly. He sounded distracted. “Where did she go?”
“Her mother left work early and took her to the doctor.”
The boy stopped suddenly. Stopped moving, stopped touching. He gave Marilyn his full attention, his eyes wide with alarm.
“Oh no. What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing. There’s not a darned thing wrong with her. That girl is a classic hypochondriac.” She watched the alarm in his eyes turn to confusion. She explained without his having to ask. “A hypochondriac is a person who’s always thinking they’re sick when they’re not.”
“Like . . . they just make up being sick?”
“More like they keep convincing themselves that they really are.”
“That seems strange,” he said.
And with that he resumed walking and touching.
“I know you were hoping I had that little gift for you.”
Again he froze in place, dropping his arms to his sides.
“Do you?”
“Yes and no. It did come in the mail, what I ordered. But they sent me the wrong thing.”
“Really? That seems strange. Like, you ordered one thing, and they sent you a whole entirely different thing?”
“Not exactly,” she said. She decided to tip him to the fact that it was a book. In case he would find that disappointing. She had begun to worry that her small gift had been built up too big in his mind. “It’s a book I wanted to give you.” She watched his eyes as the word “book” landed. She expected him to look let down. Instead he looked . . . well, almost . . . alarmed. “And they sent me the wrong edition of the right book.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he said.
“I wanted the original one. From the year it was first published. But they sent me a newer one, which is not worth as much, and I just don’t think it’s as nice a gift.”
“Can I see it anyway?”
“I suppose,” she said.
She walked off into the bedroom to get the book.
“I guess I’ll just keep this one for myself,” she said as she carried it out to him. “And give you the nicer one when it comes.”
“That’s very kind of you, ma’am.”
He took the book into his hands when she offered it to him, but hesitantly. As if books might bite, or prove otherwise unpredictable. He held it in his partially healed right hand and ran the fingers of his left hand over the title.
“That’s my name,” he said. “I’d know my name anywhere.”
“I know. That’s why I got it for you.”
He ran his fingers over the illustration of the mouse in the canoe. “So this is that mouse everybody talks about when I tell them my name.”
“Exactly.”
“I see why you would get this for me, then.”
“I thought you’d want to have it, for that reason.”
“He spells his first name different from mine. He spells his last name the same.”
“There’s only one way to spell Little. I thought we could read a chapter at a time, and then discuss it. Especially since we’ll each have a copy.”
His eyes flooded with an emotion she could only imagine labeling relief.
“Oh, good. You can read it to me.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“Oh.”
“I was thinking we’d each read a chapter a day, and then we’d get together and discuss what we read.”
She watched his relief turn to panic.
“Are they very long chapters?” he asked, flipping through the pages.
“No, not very long at all. It’s written for children about your age, so it shouldn’t be longer or more difficult than you can handle.”
“Okay, I should go, then,” he said.
He bustled over to the door in that tight and nervous way of his—arms clamped to his sides, legs flashing in short, quick steps.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want.”
“I just figured I should get started on this. If we’re going to do what you said. Oh, wait. You won’t have a book here at your house if I take this home. Here. I should leave you this one.”
He bustled back before she could argue, and held it out to her. She did not take it.
“No, that’s all right. You take it. Bring it with you when you come tomorrow and I’ll read the chapter while you’re playing with Izzy.”
“Oh,” the boy said. “Okay.”
But he didn’t sound as though he thought it was okay.
On his expressive face—and in his very telling, unguarded eyes—Marilyn saw something that looked downright intimidated. As if he had just agreed to climb Mount Everest and then report back to her to tell her how it had gone.
Chapter Eleven
Different
Stewie
Stewie stood in the open doorway of his brother’s room, the book clutched in his left hand, shifting from foot to foot. He was hoping Theo would notice him without his having to speak up. It felt rude somehow to disturb Theo, who was peering closely at his laptop. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything fun on the internet, either. He was staring at a dense page of text and seemed to be taking notes.
Schoolwork, Stewie figured. Homework.
Stewie should have been doing his own homework. In fact, he had tried. But he couldn’t seem to pry his attention away from the problem of the book he’d been given. Not long enough to make anything work, anyway.
He coughed lightly into his hand to get Theo to realize he was there. It worked.
“Hey, Stewie,” Theo said, without looking away from his laptop screen. “What’s up?”
“I was hoping you could do me a favor.”
Theo made a grumbly noise in his throat. It didn’t sound like the kind of noise a person makes when the answer is yes.
“What kind of favor? And does it have to be right now? I’m kind of stuck working on this report. It’s due tomorrow. And yeah, before you say it, I know. I shouldn’t have put it off till the last minute.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“No,” Theo said. “I guess you weren’t. I guess that’s Stacey’s department. So what did you want?”
“I was hoping you’d read me a chapter of this book.”
Theo looked away from his screen for the first time. Looked right into Stewie’s eyes. Or tried to, anyway. Stewie quickly averted his eyes to hide his shame.
“Read it to you?”
“That’s what I was hoping. Yeah.”
“I’m kind of busy, buddy. Can’t you just read it to yourself?”
“It seems hard,” Stewie said, careful not to meet his brother’s eyes.
Theo sighed deeply.
“All right. Whatever. Bring it over here.”
Stewie felt a great lifting in his chest—a sort of elation caused by the weight of a problem being taken away.
It didn’t last.
“I’m not going to read it to you,” Theo added. “I just want to look at it and see why you think it’s so hard. Do you have to read it for school? They’re supposed to give you things that aren’t too hard for your grade level.”
“No,” Stewie said, handing him the book. “Not for school.”
“Well, why do you need to read it, then, if it’s so hard?”
“Marilyn gave it to me.”
“Oh,” Theo said. “Marilyn.” He didn’t say her name like he thought she was a good thing. Just as Stewie was trying to convince himself he was wrong about that, Theo added, “Why do you like her, anyway?”
Theo wasn’t looking at the cover of the book. He was looking at the side of Stewie’s face. Stewie could see his brother staring in his peripheral vision, so he carefully gazed out the window at the chicken coop in the backyard.
“I don’t know,” Stewie said. “Why not?”
“She’s not really all that nice.”
“Gam wasn’t all that nice.”
“But she was our gam.”
Stewie didn’t answer. Just continued to stare out the window.
A moment later Theo’s gaze shifted away from him. Dropped down to the cover of the book.
“Never mind,” Theo said. “Forget I brought it up. I guess you can like who you want to like. Oh. This is that book people always bring up when you tell them your name.”