“Advice is just either right or wrong,” he said. “It’s not so much about who told it to you.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but never got the chance.
They both looked up to see Marilyn shuffling down the hall in her loose, oversize bedroom slippers, the young Eastbridge employee clutching her elbow as if she might be about to fall off a cliff. She was still wearing the yellow crocheted shawl wrapped around her shoulders in the very warm hall.
“Stewart,” she said when she saw him. “How lovely to see you. I hope you’ll introduce me to your friend.”
“This is your daughter,” he said, his face burning red. “Betty.”
“You’re confused, dear. My daughter Betty is your age. This is a grown woman.”
For a moment, nobody said anything.
Then he heard Betty sigh deeply.
“I came to visit you, Mom,” Betty said. “Let’s go ahead and have a nice visit. Or at least . . . let’s go ahead and have as nice a visit as we can have. Under the circumstances.”
She rose from the bench, brushed off her slacks, and followed her mother into the room.
Stewie continued to sit on the bench in the hall, even though he had been hoping for a nice visit, too. Because he decided that some things are more important than others, and that a woman just discovering her mother was still there was more important than anything he had come to do.
Part Three
Late Spring Again
Chapter Twenty-Five
Please Lay
Stewie
Stewie moved along the row of nesting boxes, gently sliding a hand under each of the newer hens. He kept his eyes closed most of the time, and on each reach he muttered under his breath, barely above a whisper, “Lay.”
Just as he thought not a single one of the young hens had laid an egg in the night, his hand touched one smooth treasure.
He slid it out from under the new bird.
“Helen!” he said, probably too loud for a henhouse voice. “You laid an egg! You’re the first of the new girls to lay an egg! You’re a star!”
It was an expression he had picked up from his English teacher, who was increasingly enthusiastic about his reading-level progress.
The young hen seemed concerned by his excitement.
He slipped her egg carefully into the basket with those of the older, more veteran birds. That is, the ones who hadn’t already stopped laying for good.
He scanned the basket. His eyes told him there were just a few more than two dozen eggs. Barely more than he had hoped to have for his own family.
He sighed and carried them into the house.
Stacey was in the kitchen, scrambling the last of yesterday’s eggs.
“Any luck?” she asked. She looked into his basket and frowned. “Hmm. Not exactly a windfall. How many of those are from the new girls?”
“One,” Stewie said. He could hear the absolute devastation in his own voice.
“How old are they supposed to be again, when they start to lay?”
“Guy at the feed store said eighteen weeks.”
“And that’s what they are, right?”
“No. They’re nineteen weeks. Couple days past, actually.”
“Well, it’s not the same for every bird,” she said. “And there are other factors, like the season or the stress of the new place.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Stewie said. “I know all that.” Then, realizing he might have sounded rude, he added, “No offense.”
“None taken. Go and get your brother and tell him breakfast’s ready, okay?”
“Okay.”
He set the basket of eggs on the counter and started down the hall toward Theo’s room, but she was still talking to him.
“You going out to Eastbridge after school?”
“I was going to, yeah.”
“If you’re not home in time to eat, I’ll hold your dinner in a warm oven.”
“I should be home. I don’t have to do my egg route first, because there’s nothing to sell.”
“Oh. True. I’m sorry, Stewie. They’ll lay. I’m sure they will. They just need a little more time.”
“I guess,” he said.
He stuck his head into Theo’s room. The door was standing open, and Theo was sitting on the bed, struggling his way into a purple T-shirt.
“Breakfast,” Stewie said.
It took another minute for Theo’s shaggy head to pop out through the neck hole.
“Did they lay?” he asked immediately.
“Not really. One did.”
“Oh. Sorry, Stewie. That’s too bad. They will, though. They just need a little more time.”
Stewie found himself wishing he felt as sure as they both sounded. Then again, maybe they weren’t sure, either. People did that all the time, he noticed. Somebody was always trying to convince you of something when they were barely sure about the thing themselves.
He looked for Marilyn first in the activities room, because it was sing-along time.
Sing-along was a daily event at Eastbridge, with that nice lady, Janet, playing the piano, and the words of the song projected onto a screen in big letters that most of the residents could read. Usually more than half the residents packed into the activities room for sing-along.
He leaned in the open doorway and scanned the faces carefully, but Marilyn was not there.
He tried to duck out again, but it didn’t work. He was spotted immediately.
The piano music stopped, and the remaining voices trailed away.
“Stewie!” Janet called, her voice a delighted shriek. “Look, everybody. Stewie’s here!”
That set up a chorus of “Hi, Stewie!” from the crowd. One person said, “Good morning, Stewie,” even though it was afternoon, and one older man said, “Who’s Stewie?” even though it was a resident who had met Stewie many times.
“Hi, everybody,” he said, waving awkwardly. “Well. I don’t want to interrupt sing-along. I need to go find my grandmother.”
“You can visit us, too, Stewie,” a woman in the front row said. It was Mrs. Baker, a nice old lady in a wheelchair who didn’t have much vision left. “We always like to see you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Baker,” he said, still mortified to have interrupted the singing. “But I need to put my grandmother first. I hope you understand. Maybe I’ll come see you later.”
“But we won’t all be together later,” she said.
The light in the activities room was blazing fluorescent, and it made Stewie wince and blink. It was warm in there—it was warm everywhere inside Eastbridge—and he could feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck under his collar.
“I’ll come to your room and say hi, Mrs. Baker.”
But of course the minute that was out of his mouth, he realized his mistake. Because Mr. Watkins loudly asked for a visit, too. And Miss Jenna. And Mrs. Balkerian.
“Whew,” Stewie said, trying to get it in before anyone else could pipe up. “I hope I can remember all that.”
He would be late getting home. But that was pretty okay, he figured, because Stacey would keep his dinner warm before going off to work her night shift. Or he could eat dinner here, in the cafeteria with the residents. Everybody was always inviting him to. It even flitted through his mind that he could eat dinner both places. He was, after all, a growing boy, and the prospect of too much food did not have a place on his worry list.
“Did you bring us any eggs, Stewie?” a voice asked from the crowd.
It was a voice he didn’t recognize. Or at least he wasn’t sure it sounded familiar. It rang out just as he was hoping to get away so he could stop feeling guilty about interrupting sing-along.
“No, I don’t have enough right now,” he said. “I’m sorry. The new girls haven’t started laying yet. I’m worried about them,” he added. It made his face flame red because he hadn’t meant to share worries out loud. Worries were something you kept to yourself, he figured. You were supposed to hold them tightly to your chest, like a poker hand in those old western movies. “They might start laying any minute, though. They’re supposed to. But even if they do, they’d have to lay an awful lot for me to bring all the eggs Eastbridge uses. And even if I could, I already asked and they don’t want to pay that much for them. They want to buy the eggs that aren’t very expensive.”