He stood over the three of them, feeling too large for an event so delicate; Claudia, sensing his discomfort, tugged the sleeve of his sweatshirt and urged him downward. Edith’s sobs had paused but her shaking continued, and Paulie, in a gesture Edward could recognize as noble, continued to wipe at her face with his sleeve.
Thomas and Adeleine came last, floated down the stairs clasping hands, still groggy from the rich sleep of people new to sharing a bed. Dressed in cotton pajama sets in different shades of blue and blinking rhythmically, they appeared somehow synthetic, like projections of slides or photorealist paintings. From where they sat above her, Thomas made circles on Edith’s back with the palm of his hand, and Adeleine began to braid the scant fluff of white hair behind her ears. Edward wondered when everyone had agreed upon such silence, and with a jerk like a quarter horse outside a bodega suddenly brought to motion, he narrowed his eyes and put a hand on the very tip of Edith’s left foot. Edith’s body continued to buck, though in incrementally smaller movements, and Paulie began to speak. He tried to whisper, to suit the hush of shame they all felt at their inability to reach her, but delicacy of volume was a skill he had never mastered.
“I think we all need to give our friend Edith something she can take back to bed with her,” he said. “We are all going to say one thing we like about Edith. I’ll start. I like how she lets these monster sounds out. Okay, Eddy, you go.”
Edward had closed his eyes in the hope of disappearing, or encouraging Paulie’s swift span of attention to move past him. His sweating feet caught the low light and glistened.
“Maybe you should hold my moon for help.”
Edward opened his eyes and saw the glowing thing coming quickly, almost violently, towards his face. He received it as though it were covered in mold and held it with four tensed fingertips. “Oh god. Okay. One thing I like about Edith is that . . . is that she hasn’t raised the rent in fourteen years.”
Claudia gave a swift but robust pinch of Edward’s ear and began. As she spoke, she focused her gaze on her brother. “I like how Edith appreciates all different kinds of people.”
“I like the way Edith respects time,” said Adeleine. “And also privacy.”
Paulie nodded with violent enthusiasm, sending a bounce through his hair. Thomas fixed his vision on Edward’s awkward cradling of the lamp.
“The more I know of Edith, the more I like,” he said, and bent and kissed the wilted skin of her cheek, which blanched, then tensed. Her closed eyes opened and she looked repeatedly from one face to another, blinking like a late-night traveler under the fluorescent lights of a gas station. “I’m so glad,” Edith said, “you could make it.” She brought up her hand and rotated it with some wonder. “It’s so nice of you to come.”
PAULIE REMEMBERED it like this: He was the only one not mad at his mother for leaving. He was the only one who told any good stories about where she was and why the phones there didn’t work. He missed her too but it bothered him how his father and Claudia just sat around on the couch. It bored him terribly. Paulie didn’t hate many things but he could say he did not like laziness and they just lay there. He was no good at doing all the kinds of housey things his mother had always done in her apron colored like the Fourth of July, and for a month Seymour and Claudia didn’t bother. He had always liked the phrase “dust bunnies” until he started to see them around all the time. A trail of ants moved up a cupboard and became an angry parade on the counter.