“Dammit, Abby—”
“Don’t you curse at me, Red Whitshank! I need this! I have to do this! I cannot see that little stem of a neck and let him go on alone in this world. I can’t! I’d rather die!”
Mandy and Jeannie and Denny were standing in the kitchen doorway. At the same moment, both Red and Abby became aware of that. None of the three had dressed yet, and all of them wore the same wide-eyed look of alarm.
Then a soft, padding sound came from behind them, and when the children turned, Douglas walked up to stand at their center.
“I wet the bed,” he told Abby.
They didn’t adopt him. They didn’t notify Social Services. They didn’t even make an announcement to their friends. Everything went on as before, and Douglas went on being Douglas O’Brian—although, since Abby developed a habit of calling him “my little stem,” he did acquire a nickname. And sometimes the neighbors referred to him as Stem Whitshank, but that was just absentmindedness.
Outsiders had the impression that he was only staying till his mother got her affairs sorted out. (Or was it some other relative? Stories differed.) But most people, after a while, just assumed he was one of the family.
In a matter of weeks he took to calling Red and Abby “Dad” and “Mom,” but not because they told him to. He was merely echoing the other children, in the same way that he echoed Abby and addressed even grown-ups as “sweetheart,” till he got old enough to know better.
He grew more talkative, though so gradually that nobody could recall what specific day he became a normal, chattery youngster. He wore clothes that fit him, and he slept in a room of his own. It had once been Jeannie’s room, but they moved Jeannie in with Mandy because Stem certainly couldn’t continue sharing with Denny. Denny was sort of prickly about Stem. It all worked out, though. Mandy more or less put up with Jeannie’s presence, and Jeannie was thrilled to be living in a teenager’s room with cosmetics crowding the bureau top.
Above Stem’s bed hung a framed black-and-white photo of Lonesome holding a Budweiser, snapped by one of Red’s workmen the day they finished a building project. Abby believed very strongly that Stem should be encouraged to cherish his memories of his father. Of his mother too, if he’d had any memories, but he didn’t seem to. The reason his mother had gone away was, she was unhappy, Abby always told him. It wasn’t that she hadn’t loved him. She loved him very much, as he would see if she ever came back. And Abby showed him the page in the phone book where his own name was listed year after year, “O’Brian Douglas A,” along with the Whitshanks’ number so his mother could easily find him. Stem listened to all this closely, but he said nothing. And in time it seemed he lost his memories of even his father, because when Abby asked Stem on his tenth birthday whether he ever thought about him, he said, “I maybe remember his voice.”
“His voice!” Abby said. “Saying what?”
“I think he used to sing me a song when I was going to sleep. Or some guy did.”
“Oh, Stem, how nice. A lullaby?”
“No, it was about a goat.”
“Oh. And nothing else? No recollection of his face? Or something you two did together?”
“I guess not,” Stem said, without sounding too concerned about it.
He was an old soul, Abby told people. He was the kind of person who adapted and moved on, evidently.
He went through school without a fuss, earning only average grades but fulfilling all his assignments. You could imagine him as the butt of school bullies, since he was small for his age in the early years, but actually he did fine. It may have been his friendly expression, or his general unflappability, or his tendency to assume the best in people. At any rate, he got along. He graduated from high school and went straight into Whitshank Construction, where he’d been working part-time ever since he was old enough; he said he didn’t see the need for college. He married the only girl he had ever shown any real interest in, had his children one-two-three, seemed never to look around and wonder if he might be better off someplace else. In this last respect, he was the one most like Red. Even his walk was Red’s—loping, leading with his forehead—and his lanky frame, though not his coloring. You could say that he looked like a Whitshank who’d been left out to bleach in the open too long: hair not black but light brown, eyes not sapphire but light blue. Faded, but still a Whitshank.
More of a Whitshank than Denny was, Denny had remarked when he heard that Stem had joined the firm.
Although once, back when Denny was a teenager still living at home, he’d asked Abby, “What’s this kid doing here? What did you think you were up to? Did you ever consider asking our permission?”
“Permission!” Abby said. “He’s your brother!”
Denny said, “He is not my brother. He is not remotely related to me, and for you to tell me he is is like … like those pretend-to-be liberals who claim they never notice whether a person is black or white. Don’t they have eyes? Don’t you? Were you so keen on doing good in the outside world that you didn’t stop to wonder if this would be good for us?”
Abby just said, “Oh, Denny.”
Oh, Denny.
4
ON SUNDAY MORNING the study door was closed—Denny’s door—and everyone tried to keep the little boys from making too much noise. “Go play in the sunroom,” Nora told them when they’d finished breakfast. “Quietly, though. Don’t wake your uncle.” But even on their best behavior, exaggeratedly tiptoeing as they left the kitchen, they seemed to radiate disruption. They jostled and elbowed and poked one another and tripped over their own pajama cuffs, while Heidi ran frenzied circles around them. On the floor in the corner, Brenda raised her head to watch them leave and then groaned and settled her chin on her paws again.
Red was sleeping late too, so the others had no way of knowing how things had gone at the train station. “I tried to stay awake till the two of them got home,” Abby said, “but I must have nodded off. I can’t seem to read in bed anymore! I should have sat up for them downstairs. Another cup of coffee, Nora?”
“I can do that, Mother Whitshank. You sit still.”
It was going to be a while, evidently, before the two women settled just who was in charge of what. This morning Abby had put out toast and cereal as usual, and then Nora had come down and scrambled an entire carton of eggs without so much as a by-your-leave.
Stem was in his pajamas and Abby in her bathrobe, but Nora wore one of her dresses, white cotton with navy sprigs, and sandals that showed her smooth, tanned feet. For breakfast she had eaten more than all the rest of them put together, but so slowly and so gracefully that it seemed she hardly ate at all.
“I was thinking,” Abby said, “we might invite the girls and their families to lunch. I know they’ll want to see Denny.”
“Could we make it a late lunch?” Nora asked. “The children and I have church.”
“Oh, certainly. Yes, we could start at … one o’clock, would you say? I believe I’ll do a rolled roast.”
“If you put the roast in the oven for me,” Nora said, “I can see to the rest of the meal when I get back.”
“Well, I’m still able to manage a simple family meal, Nora.”
“Yes, of course,” Nora said serenely.
Stem said, “I’ll pick up whatever you need in the way of groceries.”
“Oh, Dad can do that,” Abby told him.
“Mom. That’s what I’m here for.”
“Well … but go to Eddie’s, then, where you can charge it to our account.”
“Mom.”
Luckily for Abby, Red walked in at that moment. (Abby disliked money discussions.) He was wearing his ratty old bathrobe and his mules that made a whisk-broom sound, and he was carrying his Fred Flintstone glass that he used for his nighttime water. “Morning, all,” he said.
“Well, hi!” Abby said, sliding her chair back, but Nora was already up and fetching the coffeepot. “Did Denny get in all right?” Abby asked.
“Yep,” Red said, si
tting down.
Stem said, “Train on schedule?”
Either Red didn’t hear him or he felt the question wasn’t worth answering. He reached for the platter of scrambled eggs.
“There’s toast,” Abby told him. “Whole wheat.”
He dished out a large pile of eggs and passed the platter to Nora, who took another helping.
“If I have to see that statue one more dad-blamed time,” he said, “I’m going to hire myself a wrecking ball. It’s embarrassing! Other cities’ train stations have fountains, or hunks of metal or something. We have a giant tin Frankenstein with a heart that pulses pink and blue.”
“How was Denny?” Abby asked him.
“Fine, as far as I could tell.” He peered into the cream pitcher. “Is there more cream?”
Nora rose and went to the fridge.
“All we talked about was the Orioles,” he said, giving in at last to his audience. “Neither one of us believes they can keep this up till postseason.”
“Oh.”
“He brought three bags with him.”
“Three!”
“I asked him,” Red said, stirring his coffee. “I asked why so much luggage, and he said it was summer clothes and winter clothes.”
“Winter!”
“Winter took most of the room, he said. Thicker material.”
“How’d he carry all that?” Stem asked.
“Boarding, he used a redcap, he told me. But getting off again … Have you tried finding a redcap in Baltimore? After midnight? He managed okay, though. If I’d known, I would have parked the car and come inside the station.”
“Winter clothes!” Abby said to herself in a trailing voice.
“Good eggs,” Red told her.
“Oh, Nora made those.”
“Good eggs, Nora.”
“Thank you.”
“I guess I should empty the study closet,” Abby said. “But already I’ve had to find space for the things from the bunk-room closet, and the one in Stem and Nora’s room.” She was looking a little panicked.
“Relax,” Red told her, without looking up from his eggs.
“I hate it when you tell me to relax!”
Nora said, “I can empty that closet.”
“You wouldn’t know where to put things.”
“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 Niño’… 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.”
“So, okay, you’re telling me you just found yourself out in a rainstorm, looking down into a hole.”
“Well, it wasn’t a rainstorm anymore. The rain had stopped. But otherwise, yes, that’s it exactly. And I was in my nightgown and slippers, and I didn’t have my house key. Well, why should I? Usually, that lock is set on manual. Oh, I despise an automatic lock! It must have been your father’s doing; he’s always going around fiddling with things. And then naturally he couldn’t hear me when I called; he was sound asleep by then, and you can see how deaf he’s grown. I called, I knocked … I couldn’t ring the doorbell, of course, because the power was out, and anyhow he doesn’t hear the doorbell most of the time. I even tried throwing pebbles at our bedroom windows, but that doesn’t work as wel
l in real life as it does in books. So finally I thought, well, I would just settle in the hammock and wait till morning. It wasn’t so bad, really. It was kind of nice. All the lights were out, the streetlights and people’s house lights, and the only sounds were the leaves dripping and the tree frogs peeping. I curled up in the hammock and went to sleep, and in the morning when I woke it was still too early for your dad to be up, so I figured I’d walk down the block a ways to see the damage. The whole neighborhood was a disaster zone, Denny! Enormous trunks and branches lying clear across the street, electrical lines draped everywhere, a car smushed in front of the Browns’ place … And that’s when Sax Brown saw me, when I went to check the smushed car to make sure nobody was trapped inside. Oh, I know what it must have looked like: I was half a block from home in a nightgown with a muddy hem. Not very confidence-inspiring!” And she gave a little laugh.
Denny said, “Okay …”
“But it’s no reason to call in the nursemaids.”
“No, it doesn’t sound like it,” Denny said.
“Oh, good.”
“It sounds more like, say, a confluence of circumstances outside of your control. I can certainly relate to that.”
“So you agree that none of you needs to be here,” Abby said. “Not that I don’t love having you, of course, each and every one of you. But I certainly don’t need you.”
“Why didn’t you tell Stem all this?”
“Stem? Well, I did. I tried to. I tried to tell everyone.”
“Why don’t you ask him to leave? Why ask me and not him?”
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m not asking you to leave. I hope you’ll stay as long as you like. I’m just saying I don’t need a babysitter. You understand that. Stem just … doesn’t. He’s more on your father’s wavelength, you know? He and Dad put their heads together sometimes and develop these notions, you know what I mean?”