Mrs. Gash turned back to us. “You were playing with Jamie earlier, weren’t you, Maren?”
I shrugged, keeping my eyes on her shoes. How could I look her in the face? I was very close to tears again, and Mrs. Gash made the assumption that saved me.
“You poor thing! I just know he said something to upset her. He’s a good boy, but he does have a tendency to alienate other children. A little too smart for his own good, if you know what I mean, Janelle. No harm done, I’m sure.”
Mama wasn’t listening to a word Mrs. Gash was saying, and Mr. Gash was saying his goodbyes to someone else now. She clutched my hand so hard I gasped, and she took a step backward toward the front door, the wheels turning in her head all the while. She was calculating how long it would take us to pack and leave, tallying up a new list of disappointments. Come Monday there’d be no talk of a promotion—she’d never see any of these people again—and I felt her anger coursing down her arm, through her hand and into mine.
Mrs. Gash folded her arms tight across her chest and looked over her shoulder. “He’s probably out back with his telescope. I’d better go and look for him.”
“Thank you for a lovely party,” my mother murmured.
Jamie’s mother was already heading down the hallway toward the back door. “Thank you for coming, and drive safely,” she called as my mother turned the knob and pulled me out of the house. I wished so hard that I could undo it, that Mrs. Gash would find her son on the tire swing in the backyard, sulking because I wouldn’t pull down my underpants.
We drove home in silence, ten miles above the speed limit the whole way. Mama glanced over when I took Jamie’s eyeglasses out of my pocket and turned them over in my hands. She never said a word. I’d finished my homework before the party, but I never turned it in.
* * *
That night I learned there are two kinds of hunger. The first I can satisfy with cheeseburgers and chocolate milk, but there’s a second part of me, biding its time. It can go on like that for months, maybe even years, but sooner or later I’ll give in to it. It’s like there’s a great big hole inside me, and once it takes his shape he’s the only thing that can fill it.
3
I couldn’t face standing in that coffee shop waiting like an idiot for someone to leave me his seat. With burning cheeks I hurried out of the diner and kept walking.
A few blocks later I came to an Acme. I felt a little funny with my rucksack on my back but I went in anyway. I walked through the produce section, picked up an apple, circled around, and put it back. I turned the corner into the canned goods aisle and saw an elderly lady hurrying after a can rolling away along the shiny white linoleum. I picked it up and handed it to her.
The old lady beamed at me through pearly-pink cat-eye reading glasses. She was dressed in a pale green jacket with a red silk rose pinned to the lapel, a gray tweed skirt, and leather oxford shoes, as if going to the grocery store were a proper outing. “Thank you ever so much.” She handed the tin back to me. “Can you read that for me, dear? These eyeglasses are useless, I really must get myself a new pair.”
“Fresh Pear Halves in White Grape Juice,” I told her.
“Oh good, that’s the kind I want.” She placed the tin in her cart. “Thank you.”
I was about to wish her a nice day when she asked, “Are you on your own, dear?”
I nodded.
“Doing the food shopping for your mother? How nice.” I didn’t know how to answer that, and I guess that’s when she decided to adopt me. “I could use some help bringing my groceries home. I take the bus, you see, because I never learned how to drive. Have you gotten your license yet?”
I shook my head.
“My husband always drove me wherever I needed to go.” As she spoke I looked over the contents of her cart: two red onions, kidney beans, a carton of eggs, orange juice, buttermilk, a package of bacon, four tins of cat food, and the pears. “Would you like some extra pocket money?” she asked. “Only if you don’t have too many of your own bags to carry and you aren’t too busy.”
I would have helped her for nothing. “I’d be glad to.”
“That’s splendid. What’s your name, dear?”
“Maren.”
Her hand was cold, but her grip was firm. “Maren! What a lovely name. Mine is Lydia Harmon.”
After she paid for her groceries we went outside and waited at the bus stop. It occurred to me that she might live near my grandparents, and I hoped she didn’t. Mrs. Harmon sat on the bench beside a mother with too many kids to keep track of. The children laughed and hit each other, kicking at stones, while the woman just sat smoking a cigarette and staring through the pavement. Mrs. Harmon, oblivious, smiled up at me and asked if I was hungry.
When the bus came Mrs. Harmon paid my fare. As we pulled away from the curb I caught sight of an old brick building with EDGARTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY etched in stone above the doorway. I watched a boy, nine or ten, hold the front door open for an old woman as she went in.
To my relief, we seemed to be going in the opposite direction of my grandparents’ house. A block or two later I caught sight of someone else on the sidewalk—an older man, though not as old as Mrs. Harmon, in a red plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves who didn’t seem to be going anywhere or looking at anything. As the bus began to pass he gazed up at the windows, scanning the passengers’ faces as if he were looking for someone. When he saw me, he smiled as if I were the person he’d been searching for. In that instant I noticed that the top half of one ear was gone, slashed on a diagonal. It made him look like an alley cat. I turned in my seat as we passed. He was still looking at me, smiling faintly, and he lifted his hand as the bus turned a corner.
“See someone you know, dear?” asked Mrs. Harmon.
“No. Just somebody who seemed to know me.”
“Oh,” she replied. “Isn’t it funny when that happens?”
Ten years ago Mrs. Harmon’s house would have been beautifully kept, but now the paint on the shutters was peeling slightly and the grass had grown high between the slats of the white picket fence. Still, it was a nice little house, white with cornflower-blue trim and a cheerful red door. The living room was bright and cozy—there were rows of records and hardback books in glass-fronted cases, and pictures of far-off places, the Grand Canyon and the Taj Mahal, and real sunflowers in a glass vase on an end table. I heard the clock on the mantelpiece before I saw it.
A cat with a mane, like a tiny white lion, jumped off a cushioned stool in front of the fireplace and marched across the carpet toward the kitchen. Mrs. Harmon laid her grocery bags on a chair by the door and bent down to pet him as he passed. “How’s my Puss, eh?” Then she picked up the bags again and followed the cat into the kitchen. “He knows it’s time to eat. He can hear the clinking of the tins in the bag.” She laughed. “And what would you like for breakfast, dear? I have eggs, and bacon, and maybe even a hash brown or two.…”
Perfect. This was so perfect. “That would be wonderful, thank you, Mrs. Harmon.” I stashed my rucksack behind an armchair and followed her into the kitchen with the rest of the groceries. Everything was just what I pictured a real home to have: photos of laughing children on the refrigerator, quilted calico place mats around the table, stained-glass suncatchers in the windows—a frog, a sailboat, a four-leaf clover. Above the light switch a painted angel carried a banner that read BLESS THIS HOUSE AND EVERYONE IN IT. We’d never had things like this anyplace we’d lived. The room smelled like cinnamon.
After opening a few cabinets I figured out where the groceries should go. The fridge was pretty well stocked for one person, and I could see by the big glass jars of flour and sugar on the counter that Mrs. Harmon loved to bake. There was a cake, I couldn’t tell what kind, in a clear Tupperware box next to a bowl of apples and bananas.
She shrugged out of her jacket and traded it for a red gingham apron hanging on a hook beside the refrigerator. “The electric can opener is the greatest invention of the twentieth centur
y,” she said as she used it to open a tin of cat food. “When you get to be as old as I am you’ll see why.”
Puss (was that really his name? It was like calling myself “Girl”) waited by a stainless steel bowl on the floor by the window, swishing his tail, as Mrs. Harmon came over and dished out the cat food with a fork. “Now for our breakfast.” She took out a frying pan and pointed to the sofa in the living room. “Make yourself at home, Maren. Can I get you something to drink? Orange juice?”
“Orange juice would be great, thanks.” I sat down and ran my hand over a blue and red zigzag afghan draped over the back of the sofa. We’d never had throw blankets at home—if we got cold we’d just take the comforters off our beds. Throw blankets, like place mats or window ornaments, were not necessary.
I turned to look at the pictures on the end table as Mrs. Harmon shook her new carton of orange juice, opened it, and filled a pair of glasses. Her wedding portrait was watercolored, so that her cheeks were pink like cotton candy and the garden around her and her husband glowed like the Emerald City. Sometimes people change so much you can’t see them in their younger selves, but Mrs. Harmon wasn’t that different. They looked like they could’ve been movie stars. The photograph had brown matting, and in gold script at the bottom I read:
MR. AND MRS. DOUGLAS HARMON
JUNE 2, 1933
“Your husband was very handsome,” I said as she handed me the glass.
“Thank you, dear. We were married fifty-two years.” She sighed. “Dear Dougie. I’ll be joining him soon enough.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” I said automatically.
She shrugged and went back to the kitchen, lighting the burner and dropping a big dollop of butter into the frying pan. “Can you guess how old I am, Maren?”
“I’m no good at guessing people’s ages.”
“You’ll get better at it as you get older. I’m eighty-eight and a half.”
She was older than she looked. “I hope I’m like you when I’m eighty-eight and a half.”
“Why, thank you, dear! If there’s a nicer compliment I can’t think of it.” I looked around the room as Mrs. Harmon let the frozen hash browns cook with the bacon. We lapsed into an easy silence. I found it comforting, the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. “It doesn’t bother you, does it?” she asked.
“What?”
“The clock. My niece says it ticks so loudly she can’t hear herself think.” She put her hand on her hip as she transferred the hash browns and bacon to a spare plate and started on the eggs. “I find it reassuring, myself. After all, the passage of time is the only thing we can be sure of in this world.” Mrs. Harmon dropped two slices of bread in the toaster, took the eggs off the stove, and arranged our plates.
It was the best breakfast I’d ever tasted. You can’t feel entirely hopeless with a warm meal in your belly—a warm, honest meal—and being with Mrs. Harmon was even better. She made me forget, for a little while at least, that I didn’t have a place to go home to anymore. Mrs. Harmon smiled at me as she sipped her orange juice, and it hit me then: She trusted me.
I took our plates to the sink and washed them along with the frying pan, and with a murmur of thanks she laid herself down on the sofa and pulled the red and blue afghan over her. The white cat hopped up and settled itself on her tummy. “Ah, Puss,” she said, and rubbed him behind the ears.
I sat in the armchair by the door and noticed on the table beside it a white wicker basket brimming with balls of yarn in sherbet colors, raspberry and peach and baby blue. “Do you knit?” Mrs. Harmon asked, and I shook my head. “I have bags and bags of wool, but I’ll never be able to use it all. I can’t do much needlework these days—my arthritis prevents it.”
“Maybe you could teach me. I mean, if it wouldn’t hurt your hands too much.” I’d never thought of learning how to knit before, but now out of nowhere I wanted to very much. I wanted to knit myself a sweater I could hide inside.
“I’d love to, dear. I’ll just have a little rest first.” In my mind I was already knitting a hood like the Grim Reaper’s. I would wear it up so no one could see my face.
“You look tired yourself, Maren. Why don’t you take a nap in the spare room?” Every time I hear the words “spare room” I think of Narnia. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom, where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe …
“No one has come to stay with me for ages,” Mrs. Harmon was saying. “I think spare rooms ought to be used as much as possible, don’t you? It’s the first door on the right past the kitchen. Then when you wake up, we’ll have tea and cake. I baked a carrot cake yesterday. And I’ll teach you how to knit, and when you go home I’ll give you a bag of yarn to take with you. Won’t that be nice?”
After a night in an abandoned Cadillac, it sounded like a dream.
I watched her eyelids grow heavy. “Have a nice rest, Maren.”
“You too, Mrs. Harmon.”
Then she startled herself awake with a thought. “Oh! Perhaps you should call your mother?”
I shook my head. “She’s not expecting me back until later.” I didn’t like lying to her, but maybe it wasn’t as much of a lie if you wished it were true.
“Ah. Good.” Mrs. Harmon closed her eyes, and I went down the hall and opened the door on the right. It was the fanciest bed I’d ever seen, with a dark mahogany headboard carved with laughing cherubs—too old, too strange, and much too marvelous for an ordinary house like this—and a pinwheel quilt in yellow and blue. A big chest of drawers with a mirror on top stood at the far wall, and there was a chair in the corner with a red velvet cushion. It was the nicest Spare Oom there ever was.
On the night table I found an antique sculpture, a sphinx cast in bronze with wings outspread. I picked it up—it was much heavier than I expected, and covered in soft emerald-green felt on the bottom—and when I read the inscription I realized it was a trophy:
THE LUCRETIAN CUP IS HEREBY PRESENTED
TO DOUGLAS HARMON, WITH GREAT ESTEEM
AND ADMIRATION FOR HIS OUTSTANDING ESSAY ON
THE NATURE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS.
THE CLASSICAL SOCIETY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, JUNE 1930
It was a proper prize, not one of those cheap-looking knickknacks my classmates would get for winning a softball championship. I ran my fingers over the sphinx, over her paws and her wings and her face, proud and remote. She made me want to strive for something, to earn something beautiful I could hold on to for the rest of my life.
I put the trophy back on the table and turned down the bedclothes, peeled off my dirty socks, and slid between the snowy covers. The pillow was cool on my cheek. I understood now why the smell of laundry soap was so comforting: Things couldn’t be too hopeless if somebody was still bothering to wash the sheets.
* * *
I slept, and when I woke up I stretched like a cat. The house was still. I went into the living room and knelt beside the sofa. “Mrs. Harmon?” I don’t know why I kept calling her name. As soon as I touched her hand I knew she was dead.
I’d never seen a dead person before—well, you know what I mean. A funny feeling went through the fingers I’d touched her with and spread up my arm and all through the rest of me, and even though I was kneeling by the sofa the floor seemed to fall away beneath my feet.
I shook myself and stood up. The white cat was curled up on his cushioned stool by the fireplace as if nothing had changed. He lifted his head and looked at me, then closed his eyes and rubbed the side of his face against his paw—as if to say, So what?
No more Fancy Feast for you, that’s what. I went back to the sofa and tugged the afghan up to Mrs. Harmon’s chin, as if I could warm her up. Again I caught sight of the knitting basket, and I took a couple of balls and a set of wooden needles and slipped them into my rucksack. “Thanks, Mrs. Harmon,” I whispered.
Then I wandered through the rooms of the tidy little house, looking at old pictures and fin
gering all her handiwork—the doilies along the center of the dining-room table; the pearl-buttoned cardigan draped over the back of a chair, as if it were resting on somebody’s shoulders; the embroidered proverb, A MERRY HEART DOETH GOOD LIKE A MEDICINE, above the light switch in her bedroom—without really seeing any of it. I went back into the Spare Oom and got into bed, only because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t leave her like that, but I didn’t know who to call, and even if I did I wouldn’t have known how to explain my being here. Someone was bound to think I’d done something wrong.
I decided to go back to sleep and pretend for a while like none of it had happened. I didn’t know what else to do.
No cake—no knitting lesson—and no one left to trust me.
* * *
There was a noise in another part of the house, and that’s what woke me the second time. It must have been early evening. I sat still in the bed, straining my ears, and in a few seconds I heard it again. There was somebody here—somebody still living.
I opened the door and it drifted down the hallway, the sourness of a meal that should have only been tasted once. I smelled blood too, but it wasn’t quite the odor I knew. Maybe a dead person’s blood doesn’t smell or taste the same.
There was a figure framed in the darkened hallway, kneeling over the sofa. It was the old man I’d spotted from the bus. I could see his missing ear. His head was burrowed deep into Mrs. Harmon’s belly—there were shreds of her blouse on the carpet—and her arm fell across his back, stiff as a plank, as he plunged into her nose-first. Mrs. Harmon’s head was gone, but there were thick locks of silver hair across the arm of the sofa.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. How could I scream, when it was all so familiar to me?
If he knew I was there he gave no sign of it, nor did he seem the slightest bit agitated. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he wasn’t sorry. He chomped and chewed and swallowed calmly, methodically even. Is that what I look like when I do it? Do I make those horrible noises?
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