“Marilyn asked you to do that?” Theo sounded almost alarmed.
“No. I said I would. She said she shouldn’t ask it. But I said I could just talk to her and try. I can ask, anyway.”
“And what if she gets upset?”
“I don’t know. Then I guess she just does, then.”
“You should let me go with you.”
“Oh, no. Please, Theo. Don’t. If she got upset with me, that’s not so bad. But I would really hate it if she got upset with you and it was all my fault. Please let me do this on my own. Please?”
“I don’t know, Stewie. I don’t like the feel of it.”
“I promise I’ll be careful.”
“Well. I guess. I guess if you really promise.”
He turned to walk out of Stewie’s room, a slightly involved process.
“Wait,” Stewie said. “Tell me again, please.”
“S-T-O-L-E.”
Stewie pushed the door of the pharmacy halfway open and leaned inside. He stood for a time, watching employees bustle back and forth. Back and forth. From behind the counter to the back room where the drugs were kept. They were serving a line of people standing between velvety ropes. Two older women leaning on canes, and three or four men, one of whom kept nervously glancing at his watch.
Stewie did not see Sylvia. He regretted not having asked Marilyn when she worked, in addition to where.
He stepped back and let the door swing closed.
In that exact moment, he heard her voice.
“What’re you doing here?”
Stewie opened his mouth to say, but she never gave him the chance. Her surprisingly strong hand locked onto his shoulder, spinning him around. It reminded him of the big talons of the raptor birds who fished in the lake.
“Wait, what does your sign say? I stole? You can’t go around telling people that!”
With her hand locked even more tightly around his shoulder, her fingers digging into his flesh, she dragged him around the corner and into the alley.
“Why can’t I?” he said. Bravely, he thought. “It’s true.”
She threw him up against the brick wall of the pharmacy’s south side. He hit his head slightly.
It struck Stewie that he probably would never get that money back, but that this slight roughing up would be a badge of honor for him. It would prove how hard he had tried, and how courageous he had been in his attempt to help Marilyn. He could visit her in jail and tell her what he had gone through for her.
“Because you’ll lose me my job!”
It was an odd kind of shrieky thing, her sentence, shrill and desperate, yet almost in a whisper voice. She clearly did not want anyone inside the pharmacy to hear.
He wondered briefly who was taking care of Izzy, but of course it was not the time, nor his place, to ask.
He heard a little “oof” sound come out of her. A sudden, unexpected release of breath. He looked beyond her face to see that Theo was standing behind her, poking her in the back with one of his crutches.
“Leave my brother alone,” Theo said. “Pick on somebody your own size. It’s one thing to talk to him, or even to let him know you’re mad at him. But you can’t start pushing him around. I won’t have that.”
She turned mostly away from Stewie to face this new threat. Stewie felt a huge breath come out of him. He felt a swelling in his chest, knowing his big brother had come to stand up for him, even though he had told him not to. For a moment it overpowered his embarrassment at having pulled Theo into this mess.
“Your little brother,” she began, sounding hopelessly sputtery, “needs to learn to mind his own business. He’s going to lose me my job.”
“I think if you lose your job for stealing,” Stewie said, “it’s because you stole. Not because somebody told on you.”
His voice sounded brave to his own ears. Much braver than he felt.
She turned back to face him, her face red and livid.
“What do you want?” she said, her voice a deep, threatening hiss.
“I want the money back so I can give it back to Marilyn.”
“I already spent it on a car.”
“You have three days to change your mind about the car. By law they have to give you that.”
“I don’t want to change my mind about it.”
“Well, I don’t want to go away. I want to stand here for the rest of the day with my sign.”
She pulled the sign out of his hands. Roughly. He watched helplessly as she tore it in half down the middle. It wasn’t easy to tear, being corrugated cardboard. But she was angry, and she managed.
She dropped the two halves onto the concrete sidewalk of the alley and stomped on them several times. Stewie watched, wondering what she thought that would do. Nothing really happens to cardboard when you stomp on it. It left a few dirty footprints on part of her name, but not much more.
Theo also merely watched, a puzzled look on his face. After all, she was only assaulting cardboard. Not anyone he cared deeply about.
“I can just stand out front and hold the two pieces together,” Stewie said.
Her eyes alive with rage, she picked up one of the two pieces and tore it again. He watched, realizing that her anger was scary. Not so much that he was scared, but that it was scary. He probably was scared, somewhere inside, but he wasn’t able to feel much of anything in that moment. He was disconnected from the scene, and from himself.
“It didn’t really take me very long to make it,” he said. “And we have lots more boxes at home.”
She moved in closer, her face much redder. Weirdly red. Her eyes looked shiny and wet. There was something jerky about her movements, as if she couldn’t decide whether to move toward him or back up. It took Stewie a minute to notice that Theo was tugging at the back of her shirt to force her to keep her distance.
“Have you ever heard of slander and libel?”
“I’m not really sure,” Stewie said, a bit more aware of his own fear.
“You can sue somebody for saying harmful things about you and getting you fired from your job.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah. Stacey was watching a lawyer show about that a couple months ago. Kind of boring. And I didn’t understand some of it. But I’m pretty sure you have to prove that what the person said wasn’t true.”
He watched the redness drain out of her face. She was still standing close, making him feel pinned to the brick wall. Threateningly close. But she didn’t look or feel threatening anymore. She mostly looked discouraged and tired.
Stewie heard a man’s voice. It startled them both.
“Sylvia?”
He looked in the direction of the voice. They both did.
A tall older man stood at the end of the alley, watching them. He was wearing a white coat, like a doctor, and a name tag. It was too far away for Stewie to see what it said.
“What are you doing out here in the alley?” he asked. “Is there some kind of problem? You were ten minutes late when you first walked up to the door, and I’ve been waiting for you to come in and start your shift.”
His eyes scanned down to the torn cardboard sign. Stewie and Sylvia looked down, too. But she was still standing on the pieces, and there wasn’t much of it that could be read.
“No problem, sir. I’ll be right in.”
“I certainly hope so,” he said.
He stood a minute, frowning at her. Then he spun sharply on his heel and disappeared from their view.
Stewie looked back up at Sylvia’s face. He felt as though he could see her deflate. As if he were watching all the air flow out of a punctured tire.
“I can’t lose this job,” she said. “I have a daughter to support.”
“I know it,” Stewie said.
“What do I have to do to make you go away?”
“I already told you.”
“Yeah,” she said. And sighed deeply. Noisily. “Yeah, I guess you did.”
They walked home together, Stewie purposely matching his brother’s pace.
“Think she’ll really do it?” Stewie asked.
“Not sure,” Theo said. “She might. She seemed really worried about losing her job.”
“Why did you come, Theo? And how did you know where I was going?”
“I followed you. And to keep you safe, dope. That’s the easy part to figure out.”
“But I told you not to.”
“Sorry,” Theo said. “Some things just won’t let you not do them.”
Chapter Twenty