He continued down the road past the shacks, alongside the water, across a gravel parking lot. What he was looking for was a vacation cottage, perhaps one of those shingled A-frame things that he had often seen advertised in the resort section of the Baltimore Sun. Instead he found a tipsy gray shanty with cinderblocks for a doorstep. Not here, surely. He moved around it, hoping for something more suitable just beyond. On the other side, standing on a wooden crate beneath a window, he found Mary. She was humming a cheerful, meandering tune and rolling up a sheet of newspaper. The wind whipped her skirt around her knees, and in spite of the cold she wore no sweater. While he watched she laid the tube of newspaper along the lower crevice of the windowframe, reached down to her feet for a wheel of masking tape, and taped the tube in place. Then she bent for another sheet of newspaper, which was anchored beneath her foot. As she straightened she caught sight of Jeremy. She stopped humming. He thought her face grew pale, but her voice was perfectly calm. “Hello, Jeremy,” she said.
“Hello.”
He shifted his weight to the other foot.
“Well!” she said finally. “Have you come for a visit?”
“Yes, I — no. I thought—”
His awkwardness made him feel overheated. From one pocket he pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead, and while he was doing that she stepped down off the crate and came over to him. “Jeremy?” she said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“How’d you get here?”
“By bus, and then I walked,” he said.
“Walked! You poor soul!”
She laid a hand on his arm. “Really, it was nothing,” he told her. “I’m not at all tired.” Then he was sorry he said it, because she let go of him and moved away again. He felt he had lost some opportunity that he had noticed only too late. Where her hand had rested, his arm seemed to have become more sensitive. He concentrated on it, re-creating the pressure of her fingers, wishing that his arm possessed some sort of magnetic power. All he saw of her now was her back, the springy tendrils of hair escaping from her bun and her skirt whipping and flattening in the wind. “You’ll want to see the children I guess,” she called back.
“Why, yes, I—”
She led the way to the front of the house. He still couldn’t believe that she would live in such a place. The cinderblocks made a gritty sound beneath his feet, the doorknob was a globe of solid rust and a bald patch in the linoleum nearly tripped him as he entered. At first all he could see was layers of diapers hanging up and down the length of the room. “Sorry,” said Mary, “we’ve had a rainy spell lately, I had to hang them inside.” She went ahead of him, parting diapers. He felt like a blind man. It was impossible to tell what kind of room he was in. He smelled laundry detergent and cold, stale air. He heard the children’s voices but could see no sign of them. “Seven of hearts,” one said. “Eight.” “Nine, ten.” “Jack? Anyone got the pack?” “Children, Jeremy’s here,” Mary said. Then they broke the last diaper barrier and stood in a doorway, looking into a tiny bedroom. The four oldest girls were playing cards on a caved-in double bed. Edward sat beside them stirring up a deck of cards of his own, and over by the window stood Rachel — could that be Rachel? standing? — holding onto the sill and turning to smile up at him, wearing unfamiliar pink overalls and showing several teeth that he had never seen before. “Jeremy!” Darcy said. They piled off the bed and came to hug him. He felt a tangle of arms around his chest, another pair around his knees. Everywhere he reached out, he touched heads of hair so soft it seemed his fingers might have imagined them. “What are you doing here?” they asked him. “Did you come to stay?” “Did you miss us?” He was amazed that they were so glad to see him. After all, they might have forgotten him, or never even noticed his absence. “Well, now,” he kept saying. “Goodness. Well, now!”
“How come you’re wearing my backpack?” Abbie asked.
“Oh, I hope you don’t mind, I borrowed it to carry my supplies.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“Also some gifts, I believe,” he said. “Let me see, here.” He hunched his way out of the backpack and set it on the bed. From between his two sandwiches he pulled the surprise balls, and then took forever trying to break into the plastic wrappings. In the end he had to chew through them with his teeth in order to start a rip. He distributed the balls in a great hurry, one to each child, one even to Rachel. “Open them,” he said. “Go on. They’re surprises, no one knows what’s in them.” He was so anxious for the gifts to turn out all right that the children’s fumbling fingers strained his nerves. He reached into the backpack for one of the sandwiches, unwrapped it and took great tearing bites of it, chewing steadily as he watched the long ribbons of white crêpe paper unwinding onto the floor.
The first to find anything was Pippi. A little ping sounded at her feet. “Oh!” she said, and bent and picked up a flat tin whistle the size of a postage stamp. She turned it over several times. “It’s a whistle,” she said finally. She blew on it, but the sound that came out was whispery and toneless. She turned it over again. “Never mind,” said Jeremy, “go on unwrapping. I’m sure there’s more.” He took another bite of his sandwich. He looked over at Darcy, who had just found her surprise — another whistle. Everyone had whistles. Some had one, some two or three. The only difference between them was the colors. The gifts’ round shape was formed by a cardboard center, something like the core of a ball of string. The centers fell to the floor and rolled around with hollow sounds. Crêpe paper ribbons rose like mounds of spaghetti around everyone’s feet. One by one the children lifted the whistles to their lips, blew them, lowered them, and looked at Jeremy. They seemed not so much disappointed as puzzled. Their faces were courteous and watchful, as if they were waiting for some explanation. When Rachel cried out, holding up her own ball, which was still unopened but damp where she had chewed it, Mary said, “Here, Rachel, I’ll help,” and those faces swung toward Rachel all at the same second, as if they thought she might provide what they were waiting for. While Mary unwound the ball Rachel reached out with both hands, catching tails of crêpe paper. At the very end two whistles fell to the floor — one yellow, one blue. She crowed and stooped to pick them up, but Mary was too quick for her. “No, honey,” she said. “You might swallow them.” Over her shoulder she called, “Darcy, find her something. Hand her my keys, will you?” But the keys were no good. Rachel threw them away and started crying, still straining toward the whistles in her mother’s hand. “Rachel, they’ll hurt you,” Mary told her. Then she said to Jeremy, “I’ll just save them till later, shall I?”
“Oh. Surely,” he said.
“As soon as she’s old enough I’ll give them to her. I know she’ll love them.”
Never mind, the last thing I need is tact, he wanted to tell her. I know they don’t care for whistles. And I know it doesn’t matter all that much anyway; I’m not a child, after all. But there was no way to say it out loud without bringing on more tact — reassurance, protestations. “J think these gifts are lovely,” Mary said. “Aren’t they, children? Wasn’t it nice of Jeremy to bring them?”
Murmurs rose up too quickly, on cue. “Thank you, Jeremy.” “Golly, these sure are nice, Jeremy.”