“That you, Ben Joe?” his mother called.
“Yup.”
“Come on into the living room and say hello, why don’t you?”
“I can’t,” Ben Joe said.
He stopped on the stairs, hearing his mother’s footsteps in the hallway, and turned to look down at her.
“Why can’t you?” she said.
“I just can’t. I just can’t. I can’t be bothered with that right now.”
“You can’t be—”
He climbed the rest of the stairs at a steady, slow pace. His tie trailed by one hand. It wasn’t until he was in the upstairs hallway that he let the actual picture of the couple on the porch come back to him, and then all he did was stop and stare tiredly at the wallpaper. After a minute he turned and started doggedly down the hall toward his room.
11
“Ben Joe,” Gram said, “a promise is a promise. If you didn’t want to see Jamie Dower you shouldn’t have told me he was here.”
Ben Joe pushed a rubbery piece of scrambled egg around his plate.
“You hear me, Ben Joe?”
“Yes’m.”
“Well, you going to take me there or aren’t you?”
“All I’m doing is being honest about it,” he said. “I just honestly don’t feel like going to the home, Gram. Never have liked going. That time I went to see Mrs. Gray with you I couldn’t get it out of my mind again.”
His grandmother poured him a second cup of coffee and then slammed the pot back on the stove. “Liking’s got nothing to do with it,” she said. “What’s the matter with it, anyway? No, I don’t enjoy thinking of my friends in an old folks’ home, but this I will say: homes are a lot more cheerful nowadays. They don’t depress the tar out of you.”
“I don’t care if they depress me. I just get confused in homes. I walk out of there all confused and I never can tell what time it is.”
“What difference is the time of day? What difference does it make?”
“Well, the time of day doesn’t make any difference, Gram. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“You.” She flounced into the chair opposite him and began pulling out her three bobby pins. “Now, it’s got to be this morning that we go, Ben Joe, because I got to take Tessie to her drawing lesson this afternoon. Your mother’s too busy. Busy.” She jabbed one of the bobby pins back in.
“What you need me along for? To go to the home, I mean. What good’ll I do? You tell me a good reason, I’ll be glad to come.”
“I just want someone with me. Besides.”
“What.”
“Besides, I want you to remember how I tagged around after Jamie Dower when I was little. Then you’ll see how it might seem a little forward for me to be going there alone today.”
“I don’t see why,” Ben Joe said. “You’re seventy-eight years old now, Gram.”
“That’s not too old to do things ladylike.”
“All right, I’ll go.” He knew it was no use arguing; he shrugged resignedly and speared another piece of egg.
“You promise?”
“I promise. Give me a minute to finish my breakfast.”
“Well, do you think I look all right?”
He looked at her carefully for the first time that morning. She was wearing a huge black turtle-neck sweater, knitted in haste, and a wrap-around denim skirt, and on her feet were the usual black gym shoes. But there were a few small changes that he hadn’t noticed: her face looked feverish with its dabs of rouge and the careful line of orange lipstick that ordinarily she never wore; and next to the worn little wedding band on her finger was a huge diamond engagement ring that was used only for church-going.
“You look fine,” he said.
“I bet he won’t recognize me.”
“I bet he won’t.”
“Last time he saw me I was a little roly-poly fat girl with lollypop juice down my front. I bet he won’t know what name to call me by, even.”
“No, I bet he won’t.”
“Come on, Ben Joe.”
He gulped down the last of his coffee and stood up. “Where are the keys?” he asked.
“On the wall, where they belong. Put your dishes in the sink, now. Jenny was raising the roosters about how you don’t do your share of picking up around here.”
“Oh, pick up, pick up.” He stacked the dishes helter-skelter in the sink and then knelt to tie his shoe. “Joanne never picks up. I had to scrape pablum off the damn toaster this morning.”
“That was Jane that fed Carol. Joanne’s still in bed.”
“No wonder,” he said.
“No wonder what?”
“No wonder she’s still in bed. Get your coat, Gram.”
“I’ve got it right here.” She picked up one of his father’s old lab coats from the back of a chair and began putting it on. It came down almost to the top of her gym shoes, but she looked at it proudly and stuck her hands in the pockets.
“You going to be warm enough in that?” he asked.
“Course I am.”
“Well, it’s your lookout.”
He followed her across the living room, which was still cluttered with all the things the family had been doing the night before. His heel crushed something; it was the flatiron from the Monopoly set. He scraped it off his shoe and kept going.
Outside it was bright and still. The wind was gone but it was still cold, and in shady places there was something that was either very heavy frost or light patches of snow. He turned on the windshield wipers in the car to get rid of the thin covering of frost.
“Now, I want you to be very polite to Jamie,” his grandmother said.
“Am I ever not polite?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes. Or at least, absent-minded. So you watch it, Ben Joe. Jamie Dower is older even than I am. I used to think maybe someday he’d save my life.”
“How would he do that?”
“Oh you know. Pull me out of the water or something. I’m just saying that to show how much older he is. Old enough to be kind of looked up to and admired, so’s the only way he’d really notice me would be for me to die or something.”
“All right,” Ben Joe said. “I’ll be polite.”
She settled back, satisfied. But when they had pulled out into the street and were drawing closer to the home, the anxious expression came back to her face and she crossed her legs and began picking at the white rubber circle at the ankle of her gym shoes, a sure sign she was worrying.
“Maybe I should’ve brought him something,” she said.
“I thought you were going to.”
“No. No, ordinarily I would, would have brought something to pretty up his room or tempt his appetite. But Jamie never liked that kind of thing. When I was little I would walk to his house every day and bring him my dessert from lunchtime, but he never wanted it.”
“Well, that was nearly seventy years ago. You want to stop at a florist’s?”
“No thank you, Ben Joe.”
She settled back again, still frowning. When they drew up in front of the home, which looked like just a larger sort of yellow brick family house, she remained in her seat and looked at it through the window pane without changing her expression or giving any sign that she was about to go in.
“Would you rather not go?” Ben Joe asked gently. “I could bring you back another time, if you want.”
“No, no. I was just thinking, oughtn’t to ever put brownish curtains in a yellow house. It’s ugly.” She swung her door open and got out, grunting a little as her feet hit the ground. “Don’t know what they could have been thinking of,” she said.