“You do?”
“Most of the time I do. I just pretend. Maybe sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m pretending. But most of the time I know it’s not real. But it’s been the only tiny little space that’s been mine this whole time. Since I had to come back. A blessed little piece of privacy. It’s made the whole situation livable for me. And now I’m just so unhappy about this turn of events. I’m not at all sure what I’m going to do, Stewart. It’s really such a problem.”
“You wait here and look at the pond,” Stewie said. “I’ll go talk to the people and see if there’s anything at all I can do.”
He stuck his head over the counter that opened into the administration office. Seeing no one, he set his hands on the counter and jumped up, supporting himself on his arms and leaning his belly against the counter, hoping to see farther into the room.
“What can I do for you, Stewie?” a woman’s voice said.
It was Joni, the woman with the beautiful, lilting accent. Stewie had never known exactly what kind of accent it was, but it always sounded like music to him.
“Where are you, Joni? I hear you but I don’t see you.”
She stuck her head out of a private office in the back and frowned at him, furrowing her forehead. She tended to, when she spoke to him. It was a gesture that suggested that she had better things to do than Stewie. He never took it as an insult, though, because he never got the sense that she intended it that way. It seemed to be the way she approached anything that demanded her attention.
“How ’bout if I come to the counter,” she said, still furrowing, “and then you can stand with your feet on the rug like everybody else.”
“That would be okay.”
He slid down to the carpet. She arrived on the other side of the counter, rested her forearms on it, and leaned toward him until their faces were only a foot or so apart.
“What can I do for you now, Stewie?”
“I want to know how we can get Marilyn into a private room.”
“You want to know how to get who into a private room?”
Stewie rolled his eyes dramatically.
They went through this every time. If someone else was taking care of the counter, Stewie and that other person still went through it. There must have been a memo passed around that read something like “Always challenge Stewie on this particular point.”
“You know who I’m talking about. My adopted grandmother. The only person I ever come to visit. I know you know exactly who I mean, Joni.”
“And her name is . . .”
Stewie sighed deeply.
“Jean Clements.”
“All right. Now we’re getting somewhere. You want to know how you can get a private room for Jean Clements.”
“Right.”
“You can’t. We are all full up.”
Stewie felt his heart sink. He knew it couldn’t be the literal organ of his heart, literally sinking, because he paid attention in science class, especially since it first happened to him, and he knew hearts were attached pretty firmly inside their chests. It sure felt like his heart sinking, though.
“You couldn’t have just told me that in the first place?”
“I’m sorry, Stewie. But we’ve told you before, there is no one named Marilyn Higgenbotham living at this facility. There was, but she is unfortunately deceased. You can call your adopted grandmother by any name you like, but when you come and talk to us, we are talking about Mrs. Jean Clements.”
“Yes, ma’am. If you say so.”
“I say so because it’s the truth. Would you like to be on a waiting list for a private room for Mrs. Clements?”
“Yes, ma’am! That would be great.”
“But you do know that a private room costs quite a bit more, don’t you? The monthly rate would go up a lot. We’d need to know who would be paying for that extra charge. Medicare won’t pay for a private room, and we’ve had precious little success trying to get extra money for her care from her son and daughter.”
“Oh,” Stewie said. And he felt his heart slip a little lower. “How much more a month?”
“I can’t tell you for a fact until a room comes up vacant. Some cost more than others. Some are a little bigger and some have nicer views.”
“Can’t you even give me an idea?”
“The least expensive private room we’ve got would be six hundred dollars a month more than the double room she’s in now.”
Stewie felt his eyes go wide.
He had begun to understand that there were problems other people might have that he couldn’t solve. At least, in his head he’d made a little progress. Dr. Briggs talked to him often about that. But he definitely needed to solve this one. Because the upset he’d absorbed in her room earlier, as the mean words flew back and forth, well . . . he knew he couldn’t live like that for very long. Besides, no matter how many times Dr. Briggs explained that it was not a good way to be, it was still the way Stewie was put together.
“Six hundred dollars?” he repeated, his voice full of awe.
“I know. I’m sorry. Eldercare does not come cheaply. I know this is probably out of the question for you, since you’re . . . you know . . .”
“No. What am I?”
“Like . . . ten.”
“I’m twelve,” Stewie said, pulling himself up as tall as possible.
“I was close.”
“You weren’t close at all! Twelve is much older than ten.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m only saying that I don’t suppose you make that much money by selling your fresh eggs.”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t suppose I do, either.”
He looked for her in the sunporch, but she had left her half-full mug of tea on the carpet and the afghan on the back of her chair and wandered away. Which probably meant she had forgotten all about him.
Part of him was relieved that she wasn’t waiting right there to ask him what he’d managed to accomplish on her behalf. Since the news was not good. Still, he couldn’t avoid telling her indefinitely. He climbed the stairs to her room. He did not vault up them two at a time as he normally did.
Gerald was still sitting on the bench outside her door, still holding his face in his hairy hands.
Stewie walked up to him, stood a few feet away, and spoke.
“I need to ask you something.”
Gerald, who apparently hadn’t known anyone was there, jumped the proverbial mile.
“You scared me,” he said, after dropping his hands and visually considering Stewie for a beat or two.
“Sorry.”
“What do you need to ask me?”
“If you could help pay for a private room for her.”
He watched the man’s face as he asked. Gerald was clearly skeptical.
“Help?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning someone else would do part of it?”
“Right.”
“And who would that someone else be?”
“Well. Kind of . . . me. I could put all my egg money into it. But the egg money isn’t as much as it used to be. Now that the hens are getting older and all. I could get a job.”
“How can you get a job? Aren’t you, like, eleven?”
“I’m twelve!” Stewie said, nearly shouting now. “Why doesn’t anybody get that I’m twelve? Kids my age get jobs. I could mow lawns or something.”
“In the middle of winter.”
“We have a snowblower. I could do people’s driveways. And then later it won’t be winter anymore, and I can mow lawns. I know it’s a lot to ask, because I know you already put out extra to pay back the rest of what she stole.”
“I didn’t pay for any of that.”
“You didn’t? Who did? Betty?”
“Nobody did. They accepted less than the full amount. They’ll probably take the rest as a tax deduction.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Stewie said. “But if you didn’t help then, maybe you could help now.”
“I doubt it. But go ahead and tell me how much extra we would need.”
Stewie could have quoted the minimum figure Joni had given him, but he didn’t want to. It was so much.
“We don’t really know, because we don’t know which room. Because right now they’re all full, and we don’t know which one will be empty first.”