“Why do I get better eggs?”
“Because I bring them special for you. Come on. Let’s sit down now.”
He gently took hold of her sleeve, carefully balancing his plate with the other hand, and steered them toward a table, where they settled.
“How do you get eggs that are better than everyone else’s eggs?” she asked. As she spoke, she shook out a folded napkin and draped it on her lap.
“Don’t you remember? I have my own hens. They used to belong to my gam. It’s how I met you.”
For a moment, she simply looked confused.
Then she said, “I thought I had always known you.”
“No,” he said. “Just since last summer. Well. Late spring, really. But if you want to think you always knew me, that’s okay with me. Because it feels like we always knew each other.”
“It does,” she said. “Doesn’t it?”
“You should eat your pancakes,” he said, because she was ignoring them.
She cut into them with the side of her fork, but then seemed to drift away again.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said again.
“All right.”
“It’s about your roommate. I was thinking that . . . maybe it only seems like you don’t like her because you don’t really know her yet. Because you told me once that you didn’t like Marilyn Higgenbotham when you first met her.”
She set her fork down on her plate, carefully.
“Are you sure I said that?”
“Positive.”
“I don’t think I would have said any such thing as that. Marilyn Higgenbotham was a lovely woman.”
“You said you didn’t like her at first. I remember it really well, like you just said it to me today. You said at first it was just awful, having to share your space like that. But then you said after some time you started to really care about her.”
“That doesn’t sound right. Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’d bet my whole life on it.”
“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, then.”
Just then the big tall woman, Marjorie, came through the swinging kitchen door and headed toward their table. She was carrying a small white plate with what looked like two scrambled eggs on it. Stewie knew they were his eggs, because they were a nice bright yellowy-orange. Not pale like the ones you got at the supermarket.
She set them down in front of Marilyn.
“Special for you, Mrs. Clements,” she said.
“Why, thank you . . . ,” Marilyn said, looking up at the woman with a soft look on her face. She seemed to be searching for the woman’s name to finish her sentence. Not finding it, she simply stopped speaking.
Marjorie patted her on the shoulder and moved off toward the kitchen again.
Marilyn took a forkful of eggs and tasted them.
“Mmm,” she said. “They have the best eggs here at Eastbridge. That’s one thing I do like about being here.”
“I bring those eggs specially for you,” Stewie said.
“Now how do you happen to have eggs, Stewart?”
“Never mind. It’s not important. I just wonder if you remember what we were just talking about. Because that was important.”
“Oh. Let me see. That did feel important. And it’s right on the tip of my tongue, too. Oh, I know. We were talking about Marilyn Higgenbotham. She was such a lovely woman.”
“But at first you didn’t think so. At first you hated having a roommate.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“My point was that you think you don’t like having a roommate now. But maybe you just don’t know her yet.”
Marilyn set down her fork again. Her gaze seemed to veer off into the distance, as though trying to chase an answer that was trying to run away.
“I don’t think it’s about the woman in particular,” she said, her eyes still far away. “I think I just don’t like having to share such a small space.”
“But maybe that’s because you’re not used to it yet, and you don’t know her.”
“Well, I don’t know, Stewart. I suppose I’d have to think about that.”
“Right,” Stewie said. “Thank you. Just think about it. Thank you. That’s all I want.”
Then he finished his pancakes. And, because she was only leaving them to get cold, he finished hers, too.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Magical Boy
Stewie
The following Saturday, when he stood in her doorway, she was talking to her roommate in a normal tone. She was sitting on her bed and wearing something yellow and knitted draped over herself. Not a sweater. It was something less fitted, like a small blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
She looked up and saw him almost immediately.
“Oh, Stewart,” she said. “You remember Louise.”
And she pointed to her new roommate, the woman with the huge gray hair. Took her in with an expansive sweep of her arm.
“Sure I do,” he said. “I just didn’t know her name.”
“Louise made this for me. She asked me my favorite color, and I told her it was yellow. And then she crocheted it especially for me. Wasn’t that just the most thoughtful thing for her to do?”
“That was very nice of her,” Stewie said, taking a moment to offer Louise a relieved smile. “What is it?” Then, realizing that had sounded rude, he scrambled to correct his mistake. “It’s very nice. I don’t mean it’s not nice. And I sort of know what it is. It’s a thing to keep you warm. I just haven’t really seen a thing quite like it. It doesn’t exactly have sleeves or anything, and I just wasn’t quite sure what you call one of those.”
“You’ve never seen a shawl?” Marilyn asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
“No, ma’am. I don’t think so. I mean, not that I can remember. It’s nice, though. I like the fringe.”
Stewie heard a slight noise behind him and turned to see one of the Eastbridge employees, a young woman, waiting to get by him to enter the room.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”
And he moved out of her way.
“I need to take Mrs. Clements to physical therapy,” she said.
“Oh. Really? That’s too bad. I just got here to visit her.”
“You can wait thirty minutes, can’t you? Her physical therapy is important.”
“Yes, ma’am. I can wait.”
A new voice entered the conversation. It was the gravelly, deep, damaged-sounding voice of Louise, the new roommate.
“We’ll wait together, honey,” she said to Stewie. She crossed the room to where he stood in the doorway. Slid her arm through his. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you anyway. Get to know you better. We’ll take a walk. Take a walk down the hall with me, honey. We got a lot of catching up to do.”
Louise kept her arm threaded through his as they marched down the hall at a surprisingly brisk pace. She was a small woman. Not much taller than Stewie. But she seemed to have the constitution of a much younger woman. Stewie couldn’t help wondering why she even lived at Eastbridge if she had that kind of health and energy.
“It was nice of you to make something for her,” Stewie said as they passed the nurses’ station—again.
The second floor was a continuous loop in the shape of a rectangle. A person could walk around it forever if they had the time and energy to do so.
“She’s been nice to me,” Louise said in that bullfrog voice. At least, it reminded Stewie of the bullfrogs that lived in the marshes in the shallows of the lake. “I’m trying to encourage that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t know what it was.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. A shawl is an old-fashioned thing. An older woman would know what a shawl was. I wouldn’t expect a young boy your age to know.”
Stewie opened his mouth quickly to say he was twelve. Just in case he was about to lose a year or two in somebody else’s eyes. Again.