“Well, that’s a relief.”
“I was just thinking . . . what’s the difference, really? Thirteen grandkids, or fourteen. I’d hardly notice the difference.”
“You’re about to have another one?”
“I meant you.”
They had arrived at the office by the time she said it, and Boris let them in and handed Marjorie the checkbook. For a time, there was too much going on for Stewie to say what he thought about that. If he even knew.
She wrote out his name, and the amount, and signed it, and had Boris sign it. The checks had two signature lines, which Stewie had never seen before. It made them seem unusually official, and he found it slightly exciting.
“Here you go,” she said.
He folded the check carefully and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
Then he took her hand again and they walked back toward the kitchen.
“What do you think of my idea?” Marjorie asked. “Six or seven of the ones I’ve already got are your age, or pretty close to it. You could come over to the house for family dinners, and maybe you all would get along.”
“You’re actually the second grandmother to adopt me just since I got here today,” he said. “And I’ve only been here for, like, ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Good.”
“You don’t think it’s too many grandmothers?”
“How can it be too many? Most people start out with four grandparents.”
“You don’t think it’s selfish to take two? Oh, wait, it’s not two. It’s three! Because Louise has been offering for a really long time.”
“Here’s what I think. Here’s what I say. I say take what you can get in this life, Stewie. For a long time you had to get by on very little, so take what you can get.”
“Okay, then,” Stewie said. “All right. Then I guess I say yes.”
He ran into Mrs. Wilson on his way to the stairs. On his way up to see Louise and arrange his third adoption of the day. Mrs. Wilson was sitting in the long hall in her wheelchair, looking in both directions as if about to cross a busy highway.
“Oh, Stewart,” she said when she spotted him. “Thank goodness. I thought maybe I’d missed you. I’ve been asking everybody if they’d seen you. I was afraid you were already gone. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” he said. “I guess so.”
“Miss Jenna and I have something of a proposal for you. Give me a push, will you, and we’ll see where she’s gotten off to.”
Stewie walked around behind her wheelchair and gave it a good push, but nothing happened. It refused to be pushed, and he nearly slammed right into the back of it.
“Oh, oh, wait, Stewart. I’m sorry. I have to take the brake off. I guess I forgot to take the brake off.”
“Which way?” he asked when he could see she had released the brake.
“This way,” she said, and pointed with one spotted hand. “I think she’s in the activities room. At least, that’s where I saw her last.”
He pushed her down the empty hall, looking at the back of her head—at the way little tufts of her snow-white hair jutted out of its braid. He knew he was supposed to think of it as messy, but somehow it was beautiful to him, though he could never have explained how or why.
“I don’t really know what a proposal is,” he said as he pushed.
“Well, you will in a minute or two,” she said.
They found Miss Jenna in the activities room, just as Mrs. Wilson predicted they would. There did not seem to be any activities going on. It must have been in between programs, time-wise. Miss Jenna was only sitting in a chair, talking to Mr. Watkins and Mr. Peterson. They all three looked up and said, “Stewie!” at almost exactly the same time.
“Oh, good, you found him,” Miss Jenna said. “We were afraid he’d dropped the eggs and gone home.”
“I never drop the eggs,” Stewie said. “That’s the worst thing you can do if you sell eggs. That’s the first thing I learned not to do, and I never once forgot it.”
Miss Jenna was on her feet now, moving in their direction as she spoke.
“I didn’t mean drop them as in drop them on the floor. I meant drop them off.”
“Oh,” Stewie said. “Sorry. I guess I’m a little sensitive about the idea of dropping eggs.”
“Let’s go talk in the corner,” Miss Jenna said. “Because it’s a bit embarrassing what we have to say.”
He wheeled Mrs. Wilson to the corner of the room, helped her put the wheelchair brake on, then stood with his back in the corner. He felt equal parts eagerness and dread, waiting to hear.
“So what’s a proposal?” Stewie asked.
“It’s just a general term,” Miss Jenna said, “for anytime someone is proposing something to you. Anyway, this is what Emma and I are proposing . . .”
“Wait. Who’s Emma?”
“I’m Emma,” Mrs. Wilson said.
“Oh. Sorry, Mrs. Wilson. I just always call you Mrs. Wilson.”
“Don’t apologize, dear. You’re very polite and that’s nothing to feel bad about. Here’s where we’re going with this, Stewie.” She paused briefly to look up at her friend. “Do you mind, Jenna?”
“Not at all,” Miss Jenna said.
“Jenna and I have grandchildren. Quite a few between the two of us, but they never come to visit. Never. That’s the part that we find a little embarrassing. Not that we think people haven’t noticed anyway, but still. Our children come out on birthdays or major holidays, but less than they used to and not for all that long, and the grandchildren always seem to have something better to do than come along for the visit. It’s really quite lonely, especially when you have to watch the other residents getting visitors while you never do.”
After having said all that, Mrs. Wilson seemed to run into a wall of her own sadness and just stall there. Miss Jenna picked up the thread of the conversation and ran with it.
“And all this time you were so faithful and so dedicated about visiting Jean Clements, which we found a bit curious, since we were of a mind that there were kinder and nicer people in the world. I really don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, and I hope I haven’t offended you, Stewie. I’m sure she had her good qualities.”
“It’s okay, I guess. I sort of know what you mean. She was like my real grandmother was, so I guess I was just used to it. What’s the proposal?”
“If you’re fresh out of grandmothers, we were thinking of offering ourselves.”
“Oh,” Stewie said. He just stood a moment, his back to the wall, feeling his own surprise. It didn’t make sense that he should have been surprised, given how all of the morning’s conversations had gone, but maybe it was simply unlike him to assume that everybody wanted to adopt him, no matter how many times it happened. “Well, I’m not exactly fresh out. Both Joni and Marjorie offered to adopt me this morning. And Louise has been offering for a long time. I was just about to go upstairs and tell her I say yes to that.”
“It’s up to you,” Mrs. Wilson said, still sounding sad. “We’re here if you need us. That’s mostly the point we wanted to make.”
“I don’t know,” Stewie said. He was thinking out loud, which might have been rude. “Am I allowed to have five grandmothers?”
“Allowed by whom?” Miss Jenna asked. “Who’s going to stop you?”
“I don’t know. I guess . . . I don’t know. But still, I mean . . . five grandmothers!”
He said the last two words much more loudly than he had intended, and Mr. Watkins and Mr. Peterson overheard him, and immediately rose and started moving in their direction. Mr. Watkins walked with a cane, Mr. Peterson with a walker. Still, they made good time.
“What’s this I hear about five grandmothers?” Mr. Watkins called when he had reached about the halfway point.
Stewie’s heart fell.
“See? I knew it. It’s too much. It’s too many grandmothers.”
“I’ll say it’s too many grandmothers,” Mr. Watkins said, stopping in front of Stewie and leaning both palms on his cane. “How do you have five grandmothers and no grandfathers? Doesn’t that seem a little unbalanced to you?”