The conversation had happened again. Paulie had shut himself in his bedroom, turned on the light shaped like the moon and insisted, uncharacteristically, on wallowing in his poor temper. He had fallen asleep in his clothes, slept through Claudia leaving for work in the morning, and woken up with a mood that moved like an injured bee, frantically, from wall to wall.
Paulie thought he might go see Edward, either lie on his couch and ask him questions about what he was writing or convince him to go somewhere with plenty of color and sound, a loud movie or fast train, but when he knocked, no one answered. He sat down on the landing, not yet ready to return to his apartment, and tried to think up a story he liked about staircases. When he heard Edith’s door open, he brightened. He called her name too loud and stood waving like a traffic guard, trying to direct her eyes to his voice.
She turned and blinked steadily for most of a minute.
“How is today looking?” he asked. Running her fingers over the peach costume jewels that ringed her neck, Edith squinted up at him. Her face reacted as though to some improbability, a lynx strolling through a bank or a waterfall tumbling out a third-story window.
Her eyes welled. She had gotten dressed, put on makeup, left her apartment with a purpose, but now it was gone. Paulie watched her slow crumple and felt an immediate sense of guilt. How had his cheerful intentions betrayed him in their brief trip from his mouth to her ears? Shoelaces flying, he rushed down to meet her.
Most people he knew, even Claudia, tried to smother any complicated emotions in his presence, and so he found himself in some way honored when Edith didn’t try to conceal her crying. The tears drove tracks on her face, snatched up the beige powder from her eyelids and moved it through the unblended pinks and reds.
“Did staying inside with all your things start to feel bad?”
Paulie knew you should ask someone before you touched them, but he didn’t, this time, before he cradled her. The swollen pads of her fingers groped at the back of his neck as he lifted her half an inch, and her body’s weight left the floor in small increments as his frame received it. When she kept shaking, Paulie searched his body for a solution, then started to lead her towards her door, which remained open, as though she hadn’t been sure she had everything she needed.
Paulie escorted her in, mentally reviewing a list of the ways Claudia comforted him, tried to remember how his mother had spoken when he was sick. He placed Edith on the couch, crouched and kissed each of her cheeks, then her eyelids. Then an idea came to him, and he bounced on his knees. “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Upstairs, Paulie handled the Nesquik as though it were holy. To stop it from trembling, his left hand held his right wrist, which grasped the spoon and stirred. He could smell the froth of the cocoa on his way down the stairs, and he ached with wanting it for himself.
“Chocolate milk!” he announced, near her again, on the dining room chair next to hers. She appraised his offering as if it were an idling, unfamiliar car, so he said, more softly, “For drinking.” Finally, he brought the glass to her lips and she pushed out her tongue, touched the milky surface.
“Drink it like a dog!” encouraged Paulie. “I don’t care! It probably tastes better that way.” It did—he could tell by the way her breathing had changed. He sat beside Edith and moved his hands in what he hoped were perfect circles on her shoulders.
“What now?” He was unsure how long consolation should last. “I have another idea!” He turned so that their knees met in two neat points and put his hands up in a gesture that could have meant stop. Edith regarded him warily, but then the song he sang,
Three, six, nine
The goose drank wine
and the way he pushed his hands forward to meet hers, his right to her left, then both of his on both of hers, then his left to her right,
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line
called her back.
The line broke
The monkey got choked
Jenny, as a shy little girl in a linen jumper on the stoop, had loved this song, the elaborate hand-clapping pattern, how Edith had trusted her daughter’s small palms to meet her larger ones, how her mother’s voice bounced, carried all the animals to the safe homes the story kept for them—
And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat
Clap, clap
The song stayed with her, and later that afternoon, as she crossed into the kitchen to put on the kettle, she was mouthing the words to herself, thinking of the mother she’d been in her best moments, when her right foot moved into the cocoa-colored puddle Paulie had left behind. As her legs flew out in front of her, she pictured the tufts of down and fur, the oars pumping skyward.