Just inside the entrance was the door to the bedroom. It was the door we would not open—by its position in the apartment, the room would be windowless, dark and airless—so when we saw upon entering that the door was cracked, Ronnie said, Oh. And I echoed her Oh. And Mary, who might have still been downstairs with Grandma’s fingers in her hair, said nothing. I felt the same mix of fear and excitement as when we played hide-and-seek with our cousins and I would sit squatting in the back of a closet or behind a chair, crawling into some space not meant for human bodies. That tingling feeling of simultaneously wanting to giggle and needing to pee. Like before a thunderstorm when you say, It’s going to rain, and two beats later it does, and you don’t know whether it was your own premonition or just a couple of early drops falling on your arms, because we passed the open bedroom door—that tingling still alive up and down my back—and rolled into the living room, where we saw the man sitting on the couch.
Ronnie stopped her car and sat up on her haunches, and I, just behind her, stopped and sat up. Mary, who might not have followed us up, who might have followed us up and then left once entering the room and seeing the man, whispered, Who’s that?
The man wore a three-piece suit and a white collared shirt. We were close enough to see that his shoes were not new, but still clean, well-kept, buffed to a Sunday shine. People did not dress this way in Wilmington. It was mostly farmers in blue jeans or women in stretch pants with the cuffs stuffed into their shoes. The only people who wore suits were the town’s two lawyers on Water Street and Mr. Reeves, who owned the funeral home behind the diner. Even so, the man did not look like any other man we knew. He did not have the large, bony nose of my father or his sandy blond hair or short stature. He did not have my father’s casual, sloppy way of sitting, and he did not have my father’s extra beer flesh around his middle or his sleepy blue eyes.
Instead, the man was tall and slender, with a head of thick, wiry hair that might have been brown or black, his eyes no color I could name.
Um, excuse me, Ronnie said. She used her adult voice with her nose up, hands folded in her lap.
Moving only his head, the man looked down to regard us, his face the gray of a stone worn smooth by water.
Girls, he said. As though he were about to address us. Girls … Or with merely a sense of recognition, as though we were a pack of gazelles and he a man viewing us through a lens, pointing a long, thin finger out: I see … girls. Just there . And he said, Girls, not Girl, which is how I know that I was not alone that day, probably never alone in that room, despite my wont to blot out Mary and Ronnie and even the man himself from any of these memories.
What have you girls got there? the man asked, nodding down to the floor.
I looked to see what was in my hand.
Cars, Mary or I said, while Ronnie shot me or her or us a reproachful look.
Excuse me, who are you? Ronnie asked. She had her sassy mouth on, but was still trying to be kind, as though the man were one of the rich neighbor kids who wouldn’t play with us.
I’m the man of the house. He opened his arms, like Moses parting the Red Sea.
Ronnie raised an eyebrow.
I’m a friend of Mrs. Bullock’s, he said.
Mrs. Bullock was our great-grandmother. And she did not have any friends. Even then we knew she didn’t have friends. We knew that sometimes the children from down the road brought her tomatoes from their garden and that sometimes on the mail lady’s day off, she would stop by with her kids and visit and make tea for all of them, while my grandmother would tell her about the three of us and my cousins and Bo and Hope and Marlena on Days of Our Lives, all in the same breath like those characters were real and were hers and were part of her life.
Now, girls, you should be playing with dolls, not these cars. Where’d you get those?
Great-Grandma, I said.
Great- Grandma?
Mrs. Bullock, I said.
He nodded slowly, looking from Ronnie to me then beyond us to Mary or the carpet where she might have once been. Looking back to me, he said, Might I see one of those cars? He leaned down, opening his hand.
In one memory, I never get any closer than this, than placing the tiny blue shell of a tin car in his palm. The man was nowhere close to my great-grandma’s age, yet his skin had the same watery translucence, skin that I knew would be soft and loose upon touching it. I placed the car in his palm. I placed the car tire-side down, as if it might drive up his wrist then forearm then shoulder and into his ear. His fingers closed around it.
Woo-ee, the man whistled, holding it up. That’s a real beaut’. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a fine automobile. Such a fine, tasty-looking car.
Tast y? Ronnie said.
The man put the car in his mouth. He clamped his lips down and made his mouth big with chewing. He chewed and chewed and then swallowed, making it disappear.
Ahh, the man said. Thank you, my dear. He smiled at me, showing his teeth then clicking his jaw.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Ronnie shook her head at me. He didn’t really eat it, she said.
I certainly did, he said, showing us his palms. A man’s gotta eat. Especially in these hard times. So, so hungry. He rubbed his stomach.
I thought about the tin of saltines in the pantry downstairs. I thought about the way Grandma overfed us, but how we ate and ate. The desperate zeal from never having enough. Chicken fingers, macaroni and cheese, bananas, ice-cream bars, sliced peaches with sugar sprinkled on top. One thing after another. Then mints and gum and tea after it was all over, as though we were adult guests and not children, not little bodies with little mouths and stomachs to fill.
Grandma has some snacks, I said.
No. No, Ronnie said, turning to me. Mom had recently become miserly, overly careful with food, and Ronnie had followed suit, tinfoiling anything beyond a spoonful that she hadn’t finished.
We don’t even know if he’s Grandma’s friend.
He’s hungry, and Grandma barely eats anything.
Just because you don’t see her eat doesn’t mean she doesn’t.
I sighed.
Girls, he said again, girls. This time a reproach, this time a preface, an open, hanging sigh. Girls, the man said, I’ve got an itch.
Instinctively, I scratched the back of my neck.
I’m just itching.
So, scratch yourself, Ronnie said.
It’s no good, he shrugged. I itch all over. I scratch one place, and it starts an itch somewhere else. It never ends.
That sucks, Ronnie said.
Ronnie , I hissed, poking her side. We weren’t supposed to say suck.
Ronnie? he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Veronica, she corrected.
Veronica , he said, and, looking in my direction, asked, And who might we be?