She pointed to a glass door at the end of the corridor that looked out onto the tops of trees, and a set of railed stairs leading down to the yard. Through it Stewie could see the green boughs swaying in the wind.
The three of them walked together down the corridor, toward the outside world, where Stewie sincerely hoped they would not feel free to begin shouting again.
He held the door open for both of the ladies, to be polite.
“Thank you,” Marilyn said.
Her daughter said nothing at all.
They made their way downstairs, where they stood together in the gathering heat of late morning, looking down over the fountain and the pond. Or, at least, that’s where Stewie was looking. Because he wasn’t looking at either of the ladies, he couldn’t say for a fact where their eyes were resting.
For a moment, blessedly, nothing was said.
“Don’t you know how lucky you are?” he asked quietly.
For a moment his comment was met with only silence.
“Which one of us?” the daughter asked, finally.
“Well, both of you, but I meant you.”
“Why am I so lucky?”
“Because you have your mother.”
“I’m not sure that’s as lucky as you think it is.” There was a harshness in her voice. As if nothing satisfied her. As if everything existed for her judgment, and she wasn’t afraid to deliver it. “She’s just about the most infuriating woman on the planet.”
“Probably not,” Stewie said, his eyes still glued to the pond and the ducks. One of them had spread its wings and just held them that way, as if asking the sun to warm them. He could hear the tumbling water of the fountain from where he stood. It comforted him. “I mean, I can’t say for a fact, but there are an awful lot of people on the planet, so probably not. But even if she was. She’s your mother, and you have her.”
“So what? Everybody has a mother.”
“I don’t.”
That shut her up. It was a relief to hear her say nothing.
“Stewie lost his parents when he was just a baby,” Marilyn said quietly.
“Oh,” her daughter said, quieter now herself, and seeming chastened. “Well, that’s too bad. I’m very sorry for your loss. But as far as I knew these past few months, I might have lost my mother, too. We didn’t know if she was alive or dead.”
“Well,” Stewie said, “maybe instead of yelling at her, maybe just tell her you were scared because you thought you’d lost her.”
A long silence.
Then the daughter said, “Okay, I see your point. I suppose you’re right.”
“No, I mean really. You should say it to her.”
For several minutes, nobody said anything. Stewie had begun to figure nobody ever would.
Then Marilyn’s daughter spoke, startling him slightly.
“Mom . . . I’m sorry I’ve been yelling. But we were worried sick about you.”
He heard Marilyn sigh softly.
“Thank you, Betty. I’m sorry I gave you such a fright.”
“Are you?” Betty asked, her voice beginning to harden again. “Are you really?”
“Stop!” Stewie barked. “You can’t keep talking to each other like this. You’re a family. You’re so lucky to have a family. You can’t just waste it.”
In the silence that followed, Stewie heard two soft sighs.
“Yes,” Marilyn said. “I really am sorry. I guess I didn’t realize people cared about me as much as they did.”
Stewie heard the daughter suck in a breath of air, and he knew she was about to shout again. He shot her a warning look, and she seemed to rethink the moment.
“Well, we do,” Betty said at last.
“Then I’m genuinely sorry I worried you.”
“Thank you.”
“There,” Stewie said, “was that really so hard?”
They sat in Marilyn’s room together, after the daughter had gone, not talking. It was quiet, and they both seemed to like it that way.
Marilyn sat perched on the edge of her neatly made bed, her hands folded in her lap. Stewie sat on a hard wooden chair. They both faced the window, seeming content to watch the hot wind swirl the trees around.
Then something caught Stewie’s eye, and he got up and moved closer to the window.
“Ooh,” he breathed, his voice a reverent whisper. “You have baby birds right outside your window!”
“Yes, I saw that.”
“And didn’t it just make you so happy you could barely stand it?”
“I don’t know that I’d go that far. I thought it was a pleasant thing to see.”
He watched their tiny beaked heads wobble on their bodies as they tried to look around. At least, he perceived their flurry of movement as looking around themselves.
“Oh, but for me it’s much more than that,” Stewie said. “It makes it hard to hold still. It makes me want to jump up and down. But I won’t, because they might see me through the glass, and I don’t want to scare them.”
He walked to Marilyn’s bed, turned around to face the window again, and leaned back against the edge of the bed, a respectful distance from her. He folded his hands in front of himself the way her hands were folded.
“I just remembered,” she said. “You were about to leave.”
Stewie jumped upright, his face burning suddenly with shame.
“Oh. You want me to go?”
“No, I’m not saying I want you to go. I’m just remembering that when you ran into Betty in the hall, you were on your way home. Did you need to get back for something?”
“Not really,” he said, daring to lean back against the bed again. “But I can go if you want me to.”
“Stay and talk to me,” she said. “It’s all right.”
A long silence fell. But Stewie thought it felt comfortable.
“Talk about what?” he asked after a time.
“I don’t know. Anything you like.”
“We could do another reading lesson.”
“I don’t have my copy of the book,” she said. “Did you bring yours?”
“No, I didn’t think to bring mine. Where’s yours?”
“It’s in with my belongings that I was forced to leave at Sylvia’s house.”
“Oh. Right. I have all of that. I could bring it back to you now.”
“That would be very nice. Thank you.”
“I’d have to bring it a little at a time, because it’s too much stuff to bring all at once on the bus.”
“However you bring it, I’ll be grateful,” she said. “You’re a very helpful boy. But bring the book first, so we can go back to our reading lessons.”
“Yeah. That would be good. Stacey wants me to have a tutor for reading. And I wanted it to be you.”
“There’s a library here. I could go get a different book.”
She shifted as if to rise, but Stewie stopped her by speaking quickly.
“No,” he said. “I mean . . . no, thank you. I don’t think it should be just any book. I think it should be that book, the one you gave me. Because you gave it to me. And because no other book has a mouse in it with my same name.”
She settled again, and for a time they did not speak.
“I liked what you told Betty,” Marilyn said.
“About not wasting family?”
“Yes, and about having your mother.”
“Did you have your mother for a long time?”
It struck him, as he asked it, that they were talking in a way they had not talked before. As far as he could remember, he had never dared to ask her anything about her life before she’d met him.
“Oh yes,” she said. “She only died a handful of years ago. She was a hundred and three.”
Stewie felt his eyes go wide.
“A hundred and three? Nobody lives that long. Do they?”
“Oh yes. People do. It’s not especially common, but it happens.”
“Did you know how lucky you were all that time?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t. I’m afraid I wasted it. She was a difficult woman. There were some good things to be said for her, but I’m afraid I didn’t clearly focus on them until after she passed. When she was alive, all I could see were her maddening qualities.”
“That’s sad,” he said.
“Yes, it is. I wish I’d known you when she was alive, so you could have given me that wise advice.”
“When did she die?”
He watched her look up and off at an angle, as if the answer were up above her head and to one side.
“Eight years ago,” she said.