He looked around the yard as he spoke. He had made her a perch to flap up to, and a soft stack of packing blankets to break any possible tumble Elsie might have taken. He would have to take all that apart now and put it back in the barn.
It made his stomach sore to think about it.
“I know you’re the best flier around,” he told her, his voice a little stronger now. “It doesn’t matter if anybody else knows.”
But it made him feel ashamed to say it, because it wasn’t entirely true. He felt it shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. He had wanted everyone to see his talented hen. He had wanted to fill to bursting with pride while everyone watched.
But it didn’t matter. He was not going to mistreat his hen for the sake of pride.
“I’m still proud of you,” he said.
But there was no way to slice it that did not feel like a loss. He would simply have to file it away with all the other things—both small and large—that should not have been asking too much from life, but which life had taken from him all the same.
Chapter Twelve
Stress
Marilyn
Marilyn was crossing the living room on her way to the kitchen when a movement outside the window caught her eye.
She stopped dead, frozen in fear, and craned her neck to see. But just that quickly the person—what she’d seen had struck her as about the right size and shape to be a person—was gone.
Would the police creep around the house, looking in windows to see if she was home? It seemed strange. Wouldn’t they just rap on the door?
With an additional jolt to her gut, her mind filled with an image of the door exploding inward, demolished by a battering ram.
But that made no sense, she told herself. There probably was a warrant out for her arrest, but she wasn’t a dangerous criminal. She couldn’t physically hurt them. She was just a frail older woman. Surely they knew that.
Still hearing the pounding of blood in her ears, she hurried to the window, but could see nothing.
She hovered there a moment, trying to decide if she dared go out to investigate.
It was probably only a meter reader. And even if her time had come, and her freedom was over, it was over just as surely if she did not go out. She was only buying herself a very few minutes by waiting until they knocked on the door.
She drew a huge, bracing breath, strode to the door, and threw it wide.
In her peripheral vision she saw a carton of eggs on the doormat.
Her momentum was already carrying her forward onto the stoop. It was too late to stop, so she extended her right leg to step onto the other side of the carton. It came down hard, twisting her knee and ankle slightly. She nearly lost her balance. She windmilled her arms wildly to try to stay upright, and, fortunately, regained her balance. But by the time she did, between the fear and the pain, she found her temper strained.
Knowing now that it was probably only that egg boy, she walked around the side of the house.
He was standing under the kitchen window, looking down at the ground. She could only see the top half of him because of a group of bushes.
“You there!” she barked. Because, embarrassingly, she had forgotten his name again.
He looked over at her.
It was clear by the look on his face that he knew she was mad. Yet he didn’t seem as though he was intimidated by it, as she would have expected. He seemed determined. As if he knew something difficult lay ahead but he had every intention of barging bravely through that danger.
He didn’t answer, so she said more.
“What on earth are you doing skulking around the side of the house?”
“What’s skulking?” he called back.
“It’s what you’re doing now. And it scared me to death to see somebody outside the window.”
“Why?”
“Why? That’s an odd question. Everybody is scared when they see someone skulking outside their windows.”
“Did you think I was a burglar? It’s not night. I think they always come at night. And I’m still not sure about that ‘skulking’ thing. You said it’s what I’m doing right now, but I’m not doing anything right now. I’m just standing here talking to you.”
Marilyn sighed loudly, feeling her patience strain even further. That is, if such a thing were possible.
“Let’s not focus on what exactly you’re doing,” she said. “Instead, tell me why you’re doing it.”
“Just checking,” the boy said.
“For what?”
“To make sure everything’s okay out here.”
“What could possibly go wrong under the kitchen window?”
“I was worried you might’ve left the hose on.”
“I don’t even use that hose,” she said.
“Oh. I didn’t know that.”
They stood awkwardly for a moment.
Marilyn was trying to hold on to her anger because it had a safe, clean feel to it. It seemed to tell her it could keep her well protected, though she suspected that might have been a lie. In any case, it was hard to stay mad at that well-intentioned but pesky child.
“Even if I had left the hose on,” she began, “that’s not really in the category of a disaster.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, ma’am. My gam forgot and left the hose on once. Toward the end, when she was starting to forget things. Then, when she got the water bill, she screamed. Just stood right there by the mailbox and screamed bloody murder. It was so loud the neighbor came running, thinking somebody was robbing her or killing her or something. But it was all about that bill.”
Marilyn felt herself sigh. With the sigh, she gave up and let go of the anger.
“Come in the house at least,” she said.
He dared to walk in her direction then.
“I brought you a carton of eggs,” he said when he was close enough to talk at a normal volume.
“I saw that. I nearly broke my neck trying not to step on them.”
“Oh. Sorry. I figured I’d be back at your door to pick them up again before you came outside.”
“I’m not sure why you brought me more. It hasn’t been a week.”
“They’re free,” he said. “I just brought them for you for free.”
They began to walk, side by side, around to her front door.
“Oh. Well, that’s very kind of you. I guess I can let Sylvia and Izzy have some. Usually I keep them all for myself.”
The front door had been left standing open. Marilyn bent down to pick up the eggs, aware of the volume of Izzy’s cartoon program.
They stepped inside together.
The boy walked straight to the couch, where Izzy sat slumped, watching. He was partly blocking her view of the TV, so she leaned over and craned her neck to see around him.
“Hi, Izzy.”
“Whatever.”
“Want to play something?”
“I’m watching this.”
Marilyn could see the side of the boy’s face. She could watch it fall.
“Come in the kitchen,” she said. “I was just about to make some tea, and we’ll talk about the book.”
He walked with her, looking as though he were marching up to the front of a firing squad. Marilyn had no idea why his face showed so much stress.
She put the eggs away in the refrigerator. He flopped into a chair and rested his elbows on the kitchen table.
“You probably don’t drink tea,” she said. “I could pour you some milk.”
“Gam used to make me tea with honey.”
“Oh. All right. I could do that.”
“But it can’t have any of that . . . what do you call it when it has that stuff in it that makes you jittery?”
“Caffeine.”
“Right. None of that. Stacey does not like it if I have any of that. She says I get too wound up and then it’s hard to be around me.”
“I’ll see if I have anything herbal,” she said.
She dug around in the cupboards for tea, and spread what she found onto the kitchen counter. She filled the whistling kettle with water. Sylvia didn’t have a microwave, because she didn’t believe in them. It seemed silly to Marilyn.
Now and then she glanced over her shoulder at the boy, who still seemed inordinately stressed.
“Did you get your feelings hurt because Izzy was rude to you?”
“No, ma’am. Well . . . maybe a little. Yeah.”
“If it helps any to know, she’s more or less rude to everybody.”
“I’m not sure if that helps or not,” he said.