“Not exactly,” he said.
That seemed curious.
“What do you mean, not exactly? I don’t really know what that means. He strikes me as a boy quite dedicated to his egg route.”
The boy smiled. It was a broad grin, toothy, and with an infectious quality.
“Oh, Stewie is all of that and then some, ma’am.”
She made a mental effort to retain the name this time. Stewie, she repeated in her head. Stewie. Stewie. Stewie.
“I’m guessing it must be something pretty major, if it has you out doing his route for him.”
She watched his eyes. His gaze seemed to cut down toward the pavement, and his forehead furrowed just a bit.
“It’s major to him,” the boy said after a pause. “I don’t know if it would seem major to anybody else.”
Marilyn felt her patience straining. Though, truthfully, she was not at all sure why she felt so concerned about any of it.
“You’re talking in riddles. What’s going on with . . .” But the name was gone again. “. . . your brother?”
“One of the hens is sick. She’s old. We think she’s dying.”
“Oh. Well. That’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear it, but I guess you’re right. I’m not sure why that would be something that would keep him away from his route. He seems to love it so.”
“You’d just have to know Stewie.”
Stewie, she repeated in her head. Stewie. Stewie. Stewie.
The young man looked more than ready to walk away from her, and from the conversation, but he was polite enough to stay and answer her questions if she wanted him to.
At least the boys in that house were well raised, she thought. The way people used to raise their children in my day.
You didn’t see that much anymore.
“I’ll bite,” she said. “Tell me what I don’t know about Stewie.”
“I’m not really sure if it’s something you can tell, ma’am. It’s not like a story. It’s just something you’d understand if you knew him better. He’s just very . . . I guess intense would be a good word. He just feels everything real strongly. Takes things hard.”
“I see.” But she wasn’t at all sure she did see. “When does he go back to selling the eggs himself? He’s bound to get over this eventually.”
“Not really, ma’am. I doubt he’ll ever get over losing the first of Gam’s original hens. He still hasn’t nearly gotten over losing Gam, and that might be part of the problem here. But he can grieve a loss and deliver eggs at the same time. It’s not that. It’s that the hen is alive, but it seems like she doesn’t have a lot of time. And Stewie doesn’t want her to die all alone. Now he won’t leave her side. After . . . you know, after that situation wraps up . . . I expect he’ll go back to living his life no matter how he feels.”
Marilyn tried to process that assessment in her mind, but it wouldn’t add up to anything that made sense.
“That’s ridiculous. He can’t just stay with a hen every minute. What about school?”
The boy shifted his gaze down to the broken pavement again.
“He hasn’t been going.”
“Well, that’s just silly. And wrong! A boy his age has to go to school. Why, there’s an actual law to that effect. Isn’t there? There must be someone in that house who can insist he go to school.”
Marilyn could feel a sense that she was overstepping her boundaries. Inserting her opinion where it might have had no business going. But she felt so strongly about the subject that she did not feel inclined to stop.
“There’s our sister. And she tried. But again, ma’am, you just have to know Stewie. You can insist all you want, but he’s not leaving that hen’s side. We did get his schoolwork from his teachers and we brought it home, and he’s been doing it in his room or in the henhouse.”
“Don’t tell me the hen is allowed in his room!”
“Okay, ma’am. If you don’t want to know, I won’t tell you.”
That should have been enough to satisfy her on the subject. Or so a voice in her head told her. He was keeping up with his schoolwork. What more did she need to hear? But it still left her feeling irritated. Regardless, she decided to go no further down that conversational road.
“Give your brother a message for me, please. Tell him I said thank you for making sure I got fresh eggs this week. I did want them. But I was worried that he wouldn’t want to come back. I was a little . . . well. I’m not quite sure how to say it. If I had it to do over again, I might speak to him a bit more kindly.”
She had been glancing up at the rattling leaves as she spoke. Possibly because it wasn’t the easiest confession in the world to make. When she stole a glance down at the boy, he had an odd, knowing look on his face. Which was not at all what Marilyn had expected.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked him.
“Oh, nothing. Just something I was thinking. Just, my sister and me . . . Well, I was just saying to her the other day . . . what am I trying to say here? We think maybe that’s why he likes you so much.”
Marilyn felt bowled off her feet in a way that felt unfamiliar. And unwelcome.
“He likes me? Why does he like me? I haven’t been all that kind to him. As I was just saying.”
“Here’s the thing, though. That’s just how our gam was. Not all that kind. I’m not saying she was mean. She wasn’t a bad person at all. Just, whatever she was thinking, she’d just level you with it. She didn’t waste any time trying to think of the nicest way to say a thing. She’d just spit it out. He’s used to that. And he misses her, even though he won’t say so. But I might’ve mentioned that already.”
“Oh,” Marilyn said.
Then she could not think what to say next. The conversation had taken a very odd turn, and she had not quite caught up to how she should feel about it. For that reason, she said nothing more.
The boy had apparently grown impatient, and he began to walk off again.
“I’ll give Stewie your message,” he said over his shoulder.
“Wait. Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe he’ll like me better if I’m not sorry.” She was half kidding, but she didn’t much like the joke once she heard it outside her head.
The boy stopped walking. Turned back. It was hard for him to turn around completely, though, because of that hook attaching the wagon handle to his belt.
“What do you want me to tell him, then?”
“Tell him my name is Marilyn. He asked me my name last time he was here, and I wouldn’t tell him. Which was rude.”
“Okay, will do. I’ll tell him your name is Marilyn and you specifically wanted him to know it. He’ll like that.”
“And your name is?”
“I’m Theo,” he said.
He turned and pulled the wagon away. And she stood in the dappled shade and watched him go.
Stewie and Theo, Marilyn repeated in her head. The boys’ names are Stewie and Theo. Stewie and Theo. Stewie and Theo. Stewie and Theo.
Then she realized it was probably an unnecessary risk to stand outdoors in plain view for so long. She carried the eggs back up the stairs and into the kitchen, where she stashed them in the refrigerator.
She sat back down on the couch and picked up her magazine, pleased because she had memorized the boys’ names. That proved that her children were exaggerating when they criticized her memory. Didn’t it?
The boys’ names are . . .
But the boys’ names were gone.
Chapter Five
We’re All Tired
Stewie
Stacey came into his room after dinner, at about seven o’clock in the evening.
He was curled on his bedroom rug, wrapped around the small cardboard carton that contained the ailing Mabel. He had fixed it up with newspaper on the bottom, which made it easy to keep it—and his room—clean.
She sat down behind him on the floor and put one warm hand on his shoulder. Stewie wished she would go away, because he could feel her energy. She had that “I’m going to gently argue with what you’re doing” energy.
“We need to talk,” she said. It was the bad pity voice, only it was getting worse.
“What about?”
“About what we’ll do if this goes on a lot longer.”
“It won’t.”