“We had a plan,” Joni’s lyrical accent said. “We’ve been waiting to tell you our plan.”
He spun around to see her standing in the hall behind him.
“A plan? What kind of plan?”
“We put together ten residents who want the better eggs enough to pay for them. And they were going to chip in to make up the difference in cost.”
“Oh,” Stewie said.
He looked back at the crowd seated in the activities room. No one was singing. Janet hadn’t gone back to playing the piano. They were all just waiting. Staring at him. Waiting for him to say something about hens and eggs.
“Well,” he said, his voice a little shaky. “I guess all that’s holding us back now is getting the new hens laying. Whew. That’s a lot of pressure.”
“What did the boy just say?” a woman’s voice called out loudly.
Then Mr. Peterson shouted out, “It’s no pressure on you, Stewie. We’re not asking you to lay them yourself.”
And of course everybody laughed.
But it was pressure on him, whether they knew it or not. Almost as much as if he really did have to lay them himself. Impossible as that would be to do, it almost sounded like a relief to him, compared to being responsible for what his new girls did or did not accomplish.
“I have to go,” he said. “But I’ll come visit all the people that asked me to.”
“Me too,” a woman’s voice said.
But Stewie had already scrambled out of the room and was able to pretend he hadn’t heard in time.
No offense to the woman, who was undoubtedly a nice person, but he was already overcommitted and he knew it.
“She is not having a good day,” Louise said when she saw Stewie leaning in the doorway.
He looked at Marilyn for a long time.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her back oddly straight, staring out the window. But there was nothing out the window. They were on the second floor, after all. The trees barely moved. The nest had long since been brought down by the storms of the previous winter, and no new family had decided to build outside Marilyn and Louise’s window.
“Marilyn?” he said.
She did not look around. She did not offer any indication that she had heard.
He walked around until he was more or less between her and the window. Not blocking her view or forcing her to look at him, but in her field of vision.
“Marilyn?” he said again.
Still no response.
He looked over at Louise, who was giving him the pity look. Stewie still hated the pity look. It seemed there were just some things he would never get used to.
“Do you think she hears me?” he asked Louise.
“I don’t know, child,” Louise said. “They say it’s nice to talk to people in a coma, though. Even if you think they can’t hear you. I guess the doctors have some kind of idea that, deep down, on some level or another, maybe they do hear. I don’t know what she’s got going on right now, but I don’t suppose it’s as bad as a coma. Do you?”
“I have no idea,” Stewie said. “But I guess it can’t hurt to try.”
He sat on the edge of her bed, next to her but a respectful distance away. He still always stayed a respectful distance away. If she wanted to reach out to him—put a hand on his shoulder or pat his head—that was always welcome. But, except for that one time he had been bold enough to take her hand, she had never let him into her life to such a degree that he felt physical closeness was his decision to make.
“Okay,” he said. “Then I’ll think of something to talk to you about.” He had only one thing on his mind, so it wasn’t hard to know where to start. “The new hens still won’t lay. Well. One did. One egg. I think about it all the time now. It’s all I can think about. It makes me really nervous, I guess because I can’t control it. And all my regular customers in Lake View want me to bring eggs, but I don’t really have them, and now all my friends here at Eastbridge want me bringing the Eastbridge eggs, and I don’t have those, either. But here’s the thing . . . those new hens could lay their heads off like no hens ever laid before, but I still wouldn’t have enough to do both. I guess I could buy even more new chicks, but I can’t even get eggs out of the ones I already bought. And I got pretty much no egg money now, so I don’t know how I’m supposed to buy them anyway. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s nice that everybody here knows me and likes me and wants better eggs. I mean, that’s great and all. I just don’t have them, so that makes it hard.”
He stopped talking suddenly and shot a glance over at Louise, who was the only person he was certain was listening. She still had a little bit of the pity look on her face, but also a look like she thought it was good what he was doing. She offered him a little smile that he figured was meant to be supportive.
“But I don’t know if you want to hear about hens and eggs,” he said to Marilyn, who still gave no indication that she was aware of his presence.
His eyes drifted around the room, landing on the Stuart Little book on her bedside table. It was her copy, the old one with the mouse wearing what looked like a dress.
“I know!” he said. It came out too loud, and he was afraid it would startle her. But she still gave no indication that she heard. “I’ll read to you! Everybody likes to be read to.”
He jumped up and grabbed the book off the bedside table.
Settling on the bed again, he opened to the first chapter, and read every word. Read all of chapter one from beginning to end.
At the end of the chapter he closed the cover of the book, almost reverently.
Marilyn still gave no indication that she had heard, or even that she knew Stewie was there with her.
“You’re a very good reader now,” Louise said.
“Better,” he said, feeling sheepish. “I don’t know about very good. I have a confession to make. I’ve read that first chapter so many times I sort of know it by heart. I mean, I really was reading. Honest. But there’s not a single word in that book I don’t know, except maybe that stuff about who published it and all, before the story even starts. I could probably leave the book closed and close my eyes, too, and still have it come out just the same. But it was real reading, though. I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.”
“I never doubted you,” she said.
“Well . . .”
He stalled on that word. Looked over at Marilyn again. She was still gazing out the window as though her thoughts were a million miles away.
For a split second Stewie wondered if she was asleep with her eyes open. Stewie used to sleep with his eyes open when he was little, according to Gam. But not sitting straight up and holding good posture, he didn’t. So it didn’t make sense to him to think that’s what was happening.
It made him feel bad to think maybe he should give up on their visit and go. He could feel it like a slight queasiness in his belly.
“I guess I should visit a few more people before I go home. Since they asked me to.”
“Who asked you to go visit them?” Louise asked.
Stewie rolled his eyes grandly.
“Everybody! I might never get home for dinner.”
“If you’re hungry, you can eat dinner here. You know no one’ll mind.”
“I just might do that,” he said. He stood and straightened out his khaki slacks, even though they didn’t need much straightening. “And if my sister has dinner warm in the oven for me when I get home, I might just eat dinner there, too.”
“Why not? You’re a growing boy.”
“That’s exactly what I thought! In just those words and everything.”
“Great minds think alike,” she said.
Stewie thought it was a wonderful thing for her to say, because his gam had used to say the same thing. Often. And, because of that, he even had a pretty good idea that he knew what it meant.
He tucked himself into bed at a little after nine.