She met me at the door with the egg in her hand. I hadn’t prepared for that eventuality, and for a moment I was sure I was thwarted. I was so disappointed that, I am embarrassed to say, I wanted to weep. I took the egg and thanked her. I shuffled myself in a half circle, pivoting on my cane, and then I happened to look down at the concrete porch and before I could even register the idea it gave me I’d already dropped the egg. “Oh no!” I said. I stared at the egg—its gooey splatter—because I was afraid if I looked up I wouldn’t look sufficiently sheepish. And she’d know.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Jennifer said, her voice motherly with irritation and forgiveness. “I’ve got more.”
“I’m so clumsy,” I said. “My father always said I was clumsy. He used to make me sit down and grip the sides of my chair so I couldn’t fall down or break anything.” This is true, but I have no idea why I told her, or why my voice cracked like that when I did. Perhaps it was this pathetic little moment that compelled her to invite me in.
It’s strange how the petty continues to upset you, even after you’ve been to war. The funny look someone gives you, the invitation you didn’t get, the long line at the post office—these things don’t cease to affect. A human mind is not a still pond into which the world drops an occasional stone. It’s an ocean—waves and currents, the big and the small so mixed together it’s hard to say which is which. You’re so clumsy. I can talk about gut-shot soldiers without crying, but I told Jennifer that story and tears sprang to my eyes.
Her house was a mess. It is my nature to pass judgment on a messy home, as it is, for good or ill, my nature to pass judgment on everything. But even a less critical person than I might have been taken aback at the sight of that living room. She escorted me to a chair and left me in it while she went to fetch a paper towel to wipe off the egg that had splashed on my ankle and my shoe. So I was able to study the chaos at my leisure. Let it suffice to say that that child has a great many toys.
It’s a strange little house, like a toy itself, built with haphazard creativity from more than one set. There are only three rooms on the first floor, a doll-size kitchen, a bathroom, an enormous living room. Why make that room so large, the kitchen so minuscule? And then put a huge stone fireplace in the center of it, and an open spiral staircase behind that? I wonder that Jennifer doesn’t worry the boy will fall through the slats on the stairs and crack his head on the stone. Upstairs is a loft. You can see a couch and a TV there, and then what look like bedroom doors on either side of the open space. There’s a deck off the back of the first floor, which I knew, but I’d never seen it from this side. The wall going out to it is all glass, with doors, and through those doors I could see the trees and the pond, and beyond that my own house. From this distance it wasn’t pretty. No visible windows, and the roof is low, all the colors dark as mud. I had the fanciful notion that it was hunkered down there at the edge of the trees like a hunter wearing camouflage.
The little boy was watching me from the loft. The moment I realized it, he shouted, “Mom!” My Lord, it was loud. I felt like someone had clanged cymbals by my ear.
Jennifer emerged with rags, one damp, one dry. “What, Milo?” she called up. Rather pleasantly, for someone who’d just been shouted at.
“Who is that?” he demanded.
“Her name is Ms. Riley,” Jennifer said. “She lives across the pond.”
“Ms. Riley?” he repeated suspiciously.
“Come down and say hello,” his mother said. She knelt in front of me and began to wipe the egg off my shoe with the briskly dutiful air of a paid caretaker. Frankly, it embarrassed me.
“I can do that,” I said.
“I’m done.” She pulled herself up to her feet. The movement looked effortful, but still it was more than I could have managed. I bet she imagines she’s getting old.
The child had somehow appeared behind her. I’d been too flustered by Jennifer at my feet to hear him clatter down the stairs. I thought he might hide behind her and peek out at me, as I’ve known small children to do, but he’s a bold little thing. He came right up close and studied me.
“Hi, Milo,” I said.
“Hi,” he said. Then he looked at his mother. “I didn’t know she’d be so old!” He said this cheerfully. No insult implied.
So I laughed, at the comment, at the look of embarrassment on Jennifer’s face. “Your mother should have warned you,” I said.
“Milo,” Jennifer reproved him, but he looked at her with incomprehension and said, “What?” Then suddenly he cried out, “Zoom!” and dashed in a circle from living room to kitchen to living room and then back up the stairs. This time I heard the clatter.
“Sorry,” Jennifer said, dropping into the chair next to mine. The rags she let fall to the floor. I wondered how long they’d stay there.
“He speaks only the truth,” I said. “It’s a wonder he’s not terrified of me.”
“There’s no reason he should be,” she said forcefully.