She set three boxes of herbal tea bags on the table in front of him. Strawberry, chamomile with lemon, and mint. He pointed at the mint.
“Did you read the first chapter?” she asked, turning back to the stove.
“Oh, I’m definitely ready to talk about that, ma’am.”
It struck her as an odd way to phrase his answer. Possibly even evasive. But she wasn’t quite sure how to find a door into her curiosity about that, so she left it alone.
“Did you like it?”
“I thought it was a little weird,” he said.
“How so?”
“Well. Like . . . when two people have a baby, it always turns out to be a baby. It never turns out to be a mouse.”
“In real life. Yes. But this is just a story.”
“I know. It just seemed weird.”
“You have trouble with things like that, don’t you?”
“Things like what?”
“Never mind. It’s too hard to put into words. Tell me what you did like about the chapter.”
“Um . . .”
Then he stalled for a long time.
She looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes looked downright panicky.
“And another thing I thought was weird,” he said after a time, veering in an entirely different direction. His voice sounded breathy with fear. Or with something. She wasn’t quite sure if she was reading his reactions properly. “The part when they made him go down the sink drain.”
“What about it?”
“It didn’t seem very nice.”
“He was the only one in the house small enough to do it.”
“That’s what my brother said. Still, though. Why didn’t they just call a plumber? Didn’t they have plumbers back in those days?”
“Of course they did. But, again, it’s just a story. A ring goes down the drain and the family calls the plumber. That doesn’t make for a very interesting story. Wasn’t there anything you liked about it?”
Another stony, panicky silence.
“I guess I’d have to read it again,” he said.
“You do that. And we’ll talk again tomorrow.”
She fixed their tea without speaking for a few minutes.
She patiently waited for the water to boil and placed honey and sugar on the table, with spoons. She got down little saucers to hold the discarded tea bags when the tea was brewed strong enough.
When she set his tea on the table in front of him, he leaned forward and took a long sniff, his face in the rising steam.
“That smells like mint,” he said. He sounded mildly disappointed.
“Of course it smells like mint. It is mint. Because you chose mint.”
“Oh” was all he said.
“Didn’t you know what you were choosing? I put the boxes in front of you so you could see what your choices were.”
“Yes, ma’am. I guess I just . . . just . . . pointed at something. Like . . . like when you just want it to be a surprise. You know?”
It seemed strange to her, but it wouldn’t click into any boxes in her head, so in time she let it go.
They sipped their tea in silence for the longest time. It wasn’t like the boy to allow long silences to fall, and Marilyn wasn’t sure how to read that.
He spoke up suddenly, startling her.
“I was hoping you could read it to me,” he said, his voice breathy.
“Why would I read it to you? You already read it to yourself.”
“Well. You know. Just because . . . it’s nice. It’s a nice thing when somebody reads a book to you. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” she said. “I like it, too. Maybe I’ll have you read it to me. Did you bring it?”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t think to bring it.” He sounded oddly relieved to have forgotten.
“Well, then how did you think I was going to read it to you?”
“Oh. Duh. I guess I didn’t think of that.”
“Bring it next time. We can read parts of it to each other.”
He nodded vaguely. But he seemed uneasy. And Marilyn had a sense that he likely would not bring it next time, though she could not have clearly articulated why she thought so. It was more a set of feelings about the situation, gathering inside her.
Chapter Thirteen
I Can So
Stewie
Stewie was cleaning out the henhouse when she surprised him by coming over—and coming in. It had been six days since he had gone to see her. Six, exactly. He had been keeping track in his head.
He was sweeping up the dropped bits of straw from the nesting boxes, along with the dried droppings. He had a shovel to sweep it all onto—the way you would use a dustpan—and a wheelbarrow to drop it in, and then he had planned to take it outside and add it to a pile that Stacey had used to use to fertilize her garden. Back when she’d had time for a garden. Nobody talked about the fact that the pile only grew taller now, or that nobody fertilized with it anymore.
Before he could even move it all out into the yard, he looked up and she was there.
She was wearing that same yellow sweatshirt and standing in the open doorway, her shoulder leaned against the frame. He wasn’t ready to talk to her—if he had been, he’d have gone to her house long ago—so he continued to sweep. Or rather, he pretended to sweep. Really there was nothing left that needed sweeping up.
She seemed to know Stewie had seen her there, and she waited quite a while, maybe thinking he would start talking on his own. If so, it was a sign that she didn’t know him nearly as well as she thought she did.
In time she seemed to realize that if she didn’t start a conversation, there would never be one.
“You haven’t come to my house in six days,” she said.
Stewie thought that was interesting, because it seemed to mean that she had been keeping track in her head, too. Almost as though the visits were as important to her as they were to him.
He had to speak then, because he had not been raised to ignore an adult who addressed him directly. It would have been rude.
“I know it,” he said.
“Today would have been my egg day.”
“I know that, too.”
“I figured it was up to you whether you wanted to come around and help me babysit, but I was shocked that you didn’t come sell me eggs. It was my day.”
Stewie sighed deeply, and paused the pretense of sweeping. She was staring at him as he worked, and surely she had seen that there was nothing left to sweep. He leaned on the end of his broom and gazed out the open window to the yard, where the hens scratched and pecked. It seemed to offer him some feeling of solidity to watch them.
“I gave you that extra carton, though,” he said, still looking at the distant hens and not the lady.
“I still thought you’d give me the option to buy a carton on my day. This is my day,” she said again.
She said it stridently, as though it was something Stewie were required by law to do. As though she could repeat that sentence to a judge and he would be shocked at Stewie’s negligence.
But Stewie always reached a point where he regretted owing any responsibility to anyone. And this was one of those times.
They stood in silence for what he guessed might be a minute or more. She wanted something from him. And the more he could feel her wanting it, the more opposed he felt to offering it up.
“Why are there no hens?” she asked after a time.
“They’re out in the yard.”
“I didn’t see them when I came through.”
“The yard is on the other side.”
“Oh.”
She paused for a moment. Opened her mouth. Closed it again. She seemed to be trying to decide about something. But what? Stewie couldn’t imagine.
“I brought you something,” she said, and reached into her purse.
That got Stewie’s attention, and softened his resistance. Because he always liked it when someone brought him something. Who wouldn’t?
But then it was out of her purse and in her hand in the light, and it was another book. The feeling of it sank down into his belly. It was a sensation as though he had swallowed something heavy and dense. He looked away and said nothing.
“This is the one I really wanted to give you. It’s the original one.”
He moved a step or two closer and looked at the cover. It had his name on it, just like the one she had given him. It must have been the same book. He remembered, but only vaguely, that he was supposed to trade her for a better copy when it arrived.