“Wait,” Gerald said. “Let me get this straight. You’re asking me to pay for a private room for my mom, but there are no private rooms.”
“But there will be eventually.”
“So we’re waiting for someone to die.”
That made Stewie uneasy, because it was such a terrible thought. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, trying to vent off that discomfort.
“Not necessarily that.”
“We’re waiting for someone to reverse the aging process and get young again?”
“Maybe someone will take their mother home to live with them.”
Gerald’s voice seemed to harden. But Stewie purposely didn’t look at the man’s face to confirm whether there was any anger there.
“Look. Kid. If people were willing to have their mothers living with them, and the mothers were willing to be there, they would have done that from the start. This place is a last resort. A last stop. People leave here one way, and one way only. In a body bag.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way,” Stewie said. “It’s upsetting.”
“Sorry, kid. It’s the damn truth. And let me lay another truth on you. I don’t have money. My wife took it all in the divorce.”
“All of it? How do you buy food to eat?”
“All right, not all of it. But enough that there’s nothing extra left over. And if I did have a little more, I have lots of stuff I need for myself. My mother is just going to have to adjust to life in a double room. I’m sorry, kid, but that’s just the way things are.”
Stewie sighed, and decided to say nothing more on the subject. Talking to Gerald wasn’t very much fun. It was a lot like talking to Betty. He wondered what it had been like in that household, when they’d all lived together as a family. Then he decided he didn’t want to wonder that anymore.
“I’m sorry you and your wife had to get a divorce,” he said.
It seemed to take Gerald by surprise. He had placed himself in opposition to Stewie, ready and willing to defend himself. Now he had to shift gears to allow Stewie’s caring in. Stewie could see him doing it. It was all right there in front of his eyes. It seemed to make the older man uncomfortable. Stewie was left with the uneasy feeling that Gerald had been more comfortable on the defense.
“Thank you,” Gerald said quietly.
Stewie decided it was best to leave him alone after that exchange.
He stuck his head into his grandmother’s room, but she didn’t notice. She was sitting on her bed, looking out the window. Maybe looking at the bird nest, which was empty now, and dusted with snow. Her roommate was reading a book on her own bed. It struck Stewie as quite a peaceful scene.
He decided to leave well enough alone for the time being.
“Thank you for talking to me,” Stewie said.
He sat in front of the desk, in the main office of Eastbridge, across from that lady. The same lady he’d given the money to on the day he’d brought it back. He couldn’t seem to overcome slouching in his chair. It made him feel small. In that moment, everything did.
He didn’t know the lady’s name, because she hadn’t bothered to tell him. But it was someone he did not see at Eastbridge every day. He got the sense that she was too important to be here often.
“Well,” she said. She cleared her throat in a way Stewie decided had nothing to do with phlegm in her throat. It sounded like something a person would do to make themselves sound weightier and more in control. And that made him feel even smaller. “I had to drive over from the corporate office. But you said it was important.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind, then.”
“I want to ask for a scholarship for . . . Mrs. Clements.”
“A scholarship?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This is not a school.”
“Yes, ma’am. I know it’s not.”
“I think maybe you don’t know what a scholarship is.”
“Maybe I don’t, ma’am. But I’ll bet you know what I mean. When my sister, Stacey, wanted to go to nursing school . . . our parents had died, and she was trying to raise my brother and me on a regular job. The kind that doesn’t pay very much money. So she told the university about how she couldn’t pay what they usually get, and they let her go there anyway.”
He waited, hoping she would speak quickly in return, and then he would know. Instead she made her fingers into those imitation church steeples. Stewie had no idea why grown-ups did that when they were talking to you.
“This is about her wanting a private room.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You realize there are none available.”
“Yes, ma’am. I do know that. But sooner or later one will be.”
“And you’re hoping we’ll give it to her at the double-occupancy rate.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That would be quite impossible, Stewart, and if you think about it, I expect you’ll know why.”
Stewie felt a deep achiness in his belly. He tried to ignore it so he could still talk.
“Because of your bottom line?”
His words seemed to stun her. She actually shook her head a little, as if to help his comment hurry away.
“That seems like a strange thing for a boy your age to say.”
“I’m twelve,” Stewie said quickly.
She hadn’t accused him of being younger. But he’d been getting that a lot lately, and this time he was determined to “head it off at the pass,” as they said in the old black-and-white cowboy films he watched on TV on weekend mornings.
“I’m not sure why you would say that. And if you fully understood what you just said, then you accused me of caring more about money than I do about my residents.”
Stewie opened his mouth to issue some kind of disclaimer. Then he closed it again without speaking. He had no idea what this woman cared about most, so he was not prepared to issue a statement.
“The reason it’s out of the question,” she said, “is because it would be unfair to our other residents. Everyone else with a private room would be paying more. How am I to explain that to them?”
“Maybe they wouldn’t know?” Stewie asked, his voice desperately hopeful.
“I would know,” she said.
Her voice sounded like thunder. Booming and deep, the way someone might sound if they were trying to imitate God bellowing down from above.
Stewie sighed deeply, and as quietly as possible, and knew it was over. And knew that he had lost.
“But she’s not happy,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.
“I’m not convinced that that woman is capable of being happy. I might be wrong to say that to a young person your age.”
“I’m twelve,” Stewie said. Just in case the matter of his age was headed in a bad direction again. Then he realized he had told her that already. “I guess I should go now.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry you can’t help me, too.”
“It just makes me . . . really . . . mad!” Stewie said, raising his voice to a shouting level on the final word.
He was pacing frantically in Dr. Briggs’s office, even though it was hot. Oddly, the same man who wouldn’t use air-conditioning in the summer was happy to overheat the office with a furnace in the winter chill. Or maybe that wasn’t odd. Maybe he just always wanted to be warm.
For several minutes Stewie had been pacing, waiting for the doctor to order him to settle down and return to his seat.
No such order seemed forthcoming.
“That’s interesting,” Dr. Briggs said.
Those two words made Stewie even angrier.
“It’s not interesting!” he shouted. “It’s . . . angry . . . ing. It’s . . . I don’t know the word. It’s mad-making.”
“Infuriating?”
“I don’t even know what that one means.”
“From the word fury. Something that makes you furious.”
Stewie stopped pacing for a split second.
“Is ‘furious’ ‘mad’?”
“Yes, but even more intensely.”
“Then yeah, I guess so.”
He paced a minute longer before he was hit with a worry. He stopped. Turned to face the doctor. Looked into his eyes. The older man seemed oddly unperturbed.
“Not at you, though,” Stewie said. Just to make sure Dr. Briggs knew.
“I didn’t think you meant me. But thank you for clarifying.”
“I don’t know what ‘clarifying’ means.”