“Nora’s a whiz at organizing storage space,” Stem said.
“Yes, I’m sure she is, but—”
“Hey, everybody,” Denny said, walking into the kitchen.
He was wearing paint-stained khakis and a String Cheese Incident T-shirt, and his hair was very shaggy, fringing the tops of his ears. (As a rule, the men in the family were fanatic about keeping their hair short.) He seemed healthy, though, and cheerful. Abby said, “Oh, sweetheart! It’s so good to see you!” and she rose to hug him. He returned her hug briefly and then bent to pet Brenda, who had struggled to her feet and shambled over to nuzzle him. Stem lifted one hand from where he sat, and Nora smiled and said, “Hello, Denny.”
“Any breakfast left?”
“There’s plenty,” Abby said. Nora stood up again to fetch the coffeepot.
“Where’re the kids?” Denny asked when he was seated.
“In the sunroom,” Abby said. “I hope they didn’t wake you.”
“Never heard a thing.”
“How was your trip?”
“Not too bad.” He helped himself to the eggs.
“You could have waited till this morning, you know. The train’s empty on Sunday mornings.”
“It was empty last night,” he said.
Stem asked, “You still working with those kitchen people?”
“Naw, I quit that job.”
“So what are you doing now?”
“I’m here now,” Denny said, and he sent Stem a level gaze.
Nora said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get the boys ready for church.”
Denny transferred his gaze to her for a moment, and then he picked up his fork and started eating.
The little boys were thrilled to hear that Denny was awake. They swarmed back into the kitchen and climbed all over him and pelted him with questions and demands—had he brought his baseball glove? would he take them down to the creek?—while Heidi barked and jittered around them and tried to insert herself into their midst. Denny shrugged them away good-naturedly and promised they’d do something later, and then Nora herded them upstairs, Stem following close behind with Sammy on his back, and Red went off to the sunroom with the morning paper.
That left just Abby and Denny. As soon as they were alone, she poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down again. “Dennis,” she said.
“Oh-oh.”
“What?”
“Gotta watch out if you’re calling me ‘Dennis,’ ” he said. He spooned some jam onto his plate.
“Denny, I know what Jeannie must have told you. How I’m so dithery nowadays I need a keeper.”
“She didn’t say that.”
“Well, whatever she said, I just want to explain my side of it.”
He cocked his head.
“This thing that got them all worried,” she said, “I mean the reason Stem and Nora thought they should move in with us: it wasn’t the way it sounds. I didn’t … wander off and get lost like some mental defective or something. What happened was, it was the night of that terrible storm, the one they’re calling a ‘derecho,’ remember that? Oh, Lord, ‘derecho,’ ‘El Ni?o’… all these words we throw around these days. Tell me that’s not global warming! But anyhow, this storm knocked over one of the Ellises’ giant trees, right on the line between our two properties. That’s not to mention the hundreds of other trees, as well as shutting down half the city’s electrical power, including ours.”
“Bummer,” Denny said. He bit into his toast.
“You should have seen that tree, Denny. It looked like a huge stalk of broccoli lying on its side, only with roots. And the hole it left! A hole as deep as a basement. You can understand why a person would be curious about it.”
“What are you saying: you went out to look at the hole?”
“Well, probably.”
“Probably?”
“I mean, yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what I did.”
“Mom. It was a storm the strength of a hurricane. You must remember if you went out in it.”
“I do remember. I mean, I remember I was out in it; I just don’t remember going out. See, sometimes my mind skips across a few minutes, like a needle on a record. I’ll be doing something ordinary, but then all at once it’s later, you know? Maybe five or ten minutes later; I’m not sure. And there’s a completely empty gap between the last minute and the current minute. It’s not like when you phase out doing some routine chore but you’re still aware that time has passed. This is more like … waking after surgery.”
“That sounds like a mini stroke or something,” Denny said. “Or maybe a seizure.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Have you mentioned it to a doctor?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But it could be there’s some easy fix.”
“No fix I’d want at my age,” Abby said. “And besides, it doesn’t happen very often. Not often at all.”