They were sitting on the edge of Marilyn’s bed, the way he and Marilyn so often had, looking out the window. The leaves had gone red and gold for autumn, and a warm wind rustled them around. Here and there it would shake loose three or four leaves at once, and they would swirl in the breeze before falling out of Stewie’s view.
Looking back, Stewie would be clearer on the fact that, at the beginning of this talk with Louise, he already knew everything there was to know. Some part of him, at least. At some level. In the moment his mind was something like a fortress. It was a place to hunker down inside high walls and guard against anything that might attempt to breach them.
Meanwhile he wasn’t answering.
“You do know that, right, Stewie? I think you do. Because I remember you told me you lost two of your gam’s original hens, and how sad it made you feel.”
“I know everybody and everything dies. But I don’t understand why it has to be that way. I mean . . . I talk to Dr. Briggs about it. All the time. And he sort of told me why, so it’s not really that I don’t know why, it’s that I wish it didn’t have to be that way and I think it totally sucks.”
“Nobody really likes it,” she said. “But it’s the way it is.”
“Dr. Briggs says things like that all the time.”
“Great minds think alike,” she said again.
She smiled slightly, and sadly. Stewie did not smile.
He turned around and looked at the bed behind him, and wondered where Marilyn was. He had come all this way to visit her, and she wasn’t here.
Then it all came together in Stewie’s head, and he knew. Except, in a way, he had already known. But in that instant every part of him knew. The walls had been breached, and there was no saving the fortress.
“She died?” He could hear the effort not to cry in his voice. He could hear the way the inner sobs, the ones he would not allow, bent the words around all the same.
“Yes, child. I’m so sorry for your loss. I know you loved her. We all know that.”
“Why did she die? That doesn’t make sense.”
“She was old, honey.”
“But sometimes old people live longer than that. And you don’t die from not remembering things. Do you?”
“I don’t know, darling. I don’t think they know the cause yet. Might have been her heart, but it’s too soon to say. But she went peacefully in her sleep, and that’s all any of us really wants. She’s in a better place.”
Stewie found himself on his feet, facing her. Which felt odd, because he had no memory of standing up. He felt now as though he were walking through a dark, heavy dream, with pieces missing.
“You shouldn’t say that! That’s a terrible thing to say!”
He could hear himself raising his voice. He could feel his hands balling up into tight fists, and his fingernails digging into his palms.
“What? That she’s in a better place?”
“Yes. That. Don’t say that. I’m not there with her. Are you saying it’s better for her to be somewhere away from me? Like she’s better off without me?”
“No, darling, I didn’t mean it that way at all. I’m sorry.”
She reached out to touch him on the shoulder, but he darted out from under her hand.
“Well, how did you mean it, then? Why did you say it?”
“I just mean that when we get old, we’re in pain, and everything gets harder. And maybe at a certain point this is better.”
“But how do you know it’s better?” Stewie’s voice had risen to a tight screech now, and he pumped his white-knuckled fists up and down just to have some way to move. Some way to release the energy balled up in his gut. Otherwise it felt as though it would electrocute him. “You’ve never been dead. So you don’t know if it’s better. So why do you say it’s better?”
He was shouting now, and he half expected someone from the Eastbridge staff to come in and shush him. He felt himself braced against that, because he hated to break the rules. But no one came in.
“I guess,” Louise said, “we just all want to believe it’s better.”
“That’s not a very good answer,” he said. Shouted, actually. He felt bad yelling at her, but he couldn’t seem to control himself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess you’re right. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m sorry you had to lose someone again, after everyone you’ve lost already. But the offer still stands. If you ever want to adopt another grandmother, I’m available for adoption.”
“I have to go,” Stewie said.
He purposely didn’t look at her face as he ran out of the room, because he might have been hurting her feelings, and, if so, he didn’t want to have to see that with his own eyes.
Stewie sprinted past the bus stop because of the possibility that someone from Eastbridge would have followed him, and would want to talk to him some more. Stewie was plain done with talking, and even more tired of listening to other people talk at him.
His chest began to ache and burn with the exertion. His lungs felt as though they might be about to catch fire, or maybe even as though they already had. Still, he kept running.
He ran all the way to the next bus stop. The second closest to Eastbridge. He leaned forward at the waist, braced his hands on his bare knees, and panted, and panted, and panted. And tried desperately to catch his breath.
When he looked up, the bus was there.
“You okay?” the bus driver asked when he got on.
It was Hank. One of his two favorites.
He dropped his change into the fare box. He didn’t answer the question. Just took the seat directly behind Hank, where it would be harder for the driver to see him, in case he couldn’t stop himself from crying. Then he remembered that Hank had a big, wide mirror to see all the passengers, but there was nothing Stewie could do about that.
It was a Sunday morning, still fairly early. Nobody had to work, so nobody was riding the bus except him. If he had stayed for a nice long visit with Marilyn, there would have been lots of people, mostly in their good Sunday clothes, taking the bus to church. But it was too early for that.
He rode most of the way back to Lake View in silence.
Two people got on and then got off again. But Stewie didn’t know them, so they paid no attention to him and didn’t ask him any questions. And that was good.
He got off one stop early. By the lake. Marilyn’s old neighborhood, near the house where he had first met her.
Before Hank pulled the lever to open the rear door for him, he met Stewie’s eyes in the big, wide rearview mirror. Stewie looked away again as fast as he could.
“You sure you’re okay, Stewie?” the driver asked.
“I’m fine,” he said, shifting from foot to foot. Wishing Hank would just open the door.
“This’s not your stop, though.”
“I want to walk the rest of the way.”
Hank opened the door. It made that sighing sound that bus doors make when they open.
Stewie ran again.
And ran. And ran. And ran.
In time he found a spot at the very edge of the lake, as close as he could get to the water and still be on the part of the bank that was reasonably dry, not soupy with mud. There was a big hollow log—a tree that had fallen on its side and was now only a shell of its former grandeur. But Stewie did not go inside it to hide, because he was afraid of spiders. Especially if one of them was a black widow or a brown recluse, both of which were possible around those parts.
Instead he hid on the ground on the other side of the fallen tree, in a dense understory, its floor composed mostly of ivy.
From there he could see the house. Not his house, but the house where Marilyn had lived when he first met her. The one whose door she used to open when he came around on her egg-buying day. He should think of it as Sylvia’s house, he supposed, but he had no idea if she still lived there after all this time.
He saw no movement. No indication that anyone was home.
He stared at the house for a few minutes, and then the tears caught up, and he couldn’t have stopped them if he tried. But anyway, he had no reason to try. There was no one around to see.