“Who the heck are you?” the old woman said out loud. “Look at those bazooms,” she added to Clive Sr., on the TV, who smiled back at her appreciatively, though he was facing the wrong direction to see. “You too, Ed. Take a gander at those,” she instructed Driver Ed.
Before closing the car door, the young woman leaned back inside. At first, she appeared to be looking for something on the seat, but then Miss Beryl saw a small head move inside the vehicle on the passenger side of the front seat.
When the young woman started across the snowy terrace and up the walk toward the porch, the car door opened and a very small child clambered out. Apparently, the young woman (the child’s mother?) heard the door open, because she spun and almost flew back to the curb, shoving the child back inside roughly, punching the door lock down and slamming the door shut. Even from inside, Miss Beryl could hear the young woman shouting. “Sit, goddamn it!” she was instructing the child. “I’m coming right back. You hear me? Just sit in the goddamn car and look at your goddamn magazine. You hear me? If you get out of this car again, I’m going to knock your block off, you hear?”
“Someone ought to knock your block off,” Miss Beryl said as the young woman turned on her heel and started back across the terrace. She wasn’t quite to the porch when the door opened again, and the child climbed back out. This time the young woman stayed where she was, looked up into the web of black elm branches as if some answer, in the form of a chattering squirrel perhaps, might be offering advice. “You could close the goddamn door, at least,” she yelled at the child, who had begun to follow and now stopped. Miss Beryl couldn’t tell if the child was a boy or a girl, but whichever it was turned, put a small shoulder to the heavy door and pushed. When the door swung shut, the child lost its footing and slipped to its knees. Again the young woman looked to the sky for answers. “Come on, then, if you’re coming,” she shouted, and the child, wet kneed now but surprisingly dry eyed, did as it was told. There was something frighteningly robotlike about the child’s movements, and Miss Beryl was reminded of a movie she’d started to watch on television years ago about zombie children, a movie she’d quickly turned off.
“What’s wrong with that child?” she asked Clive Sr. as she moved from the front to the side window so she could watch the young woman and the child climb the porch steps. It was a little girl, Miss Beryl decided, and all she was wearing from the waist up was a thin T-shirt.
When Miss Beryl heard the outside door grunt open, she opened the door to her own flat to confront the young woman, who apparently intended to head upstairs to Sully’s apartment. “Move it, Birdbrain,” she said, apparently to the child, though she was looking directly at Miss Beryl when she spoke.
“May I help you?” Miss Beryl said, not particularly trying to convey any real desire to be helpful.
“He up there?” the young woman wanted to know. Up close, she looked vaguely familiar, like she might once have been one of Miss Beryl’s eighth-graders.
“Who?” Miss Beryl said. Sully had few visitors, and Miss Beryl knew most of them by sight, if not by name.
“The guy who lives up there,” said the young woman with undisguised irritation.
“He’s not in,” Miss Beryi said.
“Good,” said the young woman. “Something was bound to go right today if I waited long enough.”
Miss Beryl paid no attention to this. She was looking at the child, who stood motionless at her mother’s side, staring at Miss Beryl. Or she would have been staring, if something hadn’t been wrong with one of her eyes, which looked off at a tragic angle, at nothing at all. Miss Beryl felt her heart quake but was only able to say, “This child should be wearing a coat. She’s shivering.”
“Yeah, well, I told her to stay in the car,” the young woman said, “so whose fault is it?”
“Yours,” Miss Beryl said without hesitation.
“Right, mine,” the young woman said, as if she’d heard this before. “Listen. Do me a megafavor and mind your own business, okay?”
The sheer outrageousness of this suggestion left Miss Beryl momentarily speechless. She hadn’t been sassed since she retired from teaching, and she’d forgotten what she used to do about it. The moment of stunned silence was apparently enough for the young woman to reconsider her tactics.
“listen,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “Don’t mind me, okay? Everything is mega-screwed up right now. I don’t usually yell at old ladies.”
Just children, Miss Beryl almost said, but held her tongue. That was how she’d always handled sassing, she remembered. She’d said nothing and glared at the miscreant until it dawned on him or her that a serious mistake had been made and that Miss Beryl hadn’t been the one who’d made it.
“It’s just Birdbrain here,” she explained. “I’d like to give her to you for about an hour, just for laughs.”
They were both studying the silent child now. The little girl, for her part, might as well have been standing all alone in the hallway for all the sense she conveyed of being in the proximity of other human beings.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Miss Beryl said, and hoped that she wasn’t glowering at the child as she had been at her mother. She’d more than once been accused of frightening small children, though no one had ever explained to her precisely what she was doing to frighten them.
“That’s a good idea,” the young woman said. “Make friends with this nice old lady while Mommy makes a phone call.” Then, to Miss Beryl, “He got a phone up there?”
“Use mine,” Miss Beryl said, still not sure she should be allowing the young woman into her tenant’s flat. Not that Sully probably would have minded or had any cause to object, since he never locked up when he left.
“Suit yourself,” the young woman said, slipping her shoes off. “I wasn’t planning on stealing anything. Take your shoes off, Birdbrain. We’re going in here for a minute, I guess.”
The child was wearing cheap blue canvas tennis shoes, and Miss Beryl could tell that they were wet, as were the child’s socks.
“Don’t touch nothing in here,” the young woman warned the child. “These aren’t our things, and Mommy doesn’t have money to pay for what you bust.”
Miss Beryl showed the young woman where the telephone was in the front room. The young woman picked up the receiver and looked at Miss Beryl. “Thanks,” she said. “Been awhile since I’ve seen one of these,” she added in reference to its rotary dial. In fact, the phone did go back about thirty years. “Regular museum you got in here,” she said, looking around the room.
Before Miss Beryl could respond to this observation, the young woman was talking into the phone. “Ma. He there yet?” A brief pause. “No, I’m at the old lady’s downstairs. I don’t think she’s too thrilled about us going up there.”
Miss Beryl could hear the tinny voice of whoever she was talking to, but not clearly enough to make out any words. She still couldn’t take her eyes off the child, who stood patiently at her mother’s side, facing Miss Beryl. The child’s good eye was taking her in, Miss Beryl decided.
“The more I think about it, the more I doubt he’s even coming, Ma. He’s just pulling your chain. How the hell should I know? He probably guessed. He’s probably threatening everybody. That’s the way he does things. Threaten everybody. That way you’re sure. You want to know how I know? Because if he was coming here like he said, he’d have to give up a day of deer hunting. No, he won’t. You don’t know him like I do. Besides, if he was coming, he wouldn’t call to warn us, he’d just be here.” Another pause. “No, you’re wrong. He’s out in the woods, is where he is. He’s out there laughing at you for believing him. Believe me, he’s out in the middle of the woods. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll get lost and freeze to death out there. That’d be a break, huh?”