Part 11 (1/2)
She hadn't been just a once-through reader either. Brothers Karamazov, Mill on the Floss, Wings of the Dove, Magic Mountain Brothers Karamazov, Mill on the Floss, Wings of the Dove, Magic Mountain, over and over again. She would pick one up, thinking that she would just read that special bit-and find herself unable to stop until the whole thing was redigested. She read modern fiction too. Always fiction. She hated to hear the word ”escape” used about fiction. She might have argued, not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape. But this was too important to argue about.
And now, most strangely, all that was gone. Not just with Rich's death but with her own immersion in illness. Then she had thought the change was temporary and the magic would reappear once she was off certain drugs and exhausting treatments.
Apparently not.
Sometimes she tried to explain why, to an imaginary inquisitor.
”I got too busy.”
”So everybody says. Doing what?”
”Too busy paying attention.”
”To what?”
”I mean thinking.”
”What about?”
”Never mind.”
One morning after sitting for a while she decided that it was a very hot day. She should get up and turn on the fans. Or she could, with more environmental responsibility, try opening the front and back doors and let the breeze, if there was any, blow through the screen and through the house.
She unlocked the front door first. And even before she had allowed half an inch of morning light to show itself, she was aware of a dark stripe cutting that light off.
There was a young man standing outside the screen door, which was hooked.
”Didn't mean to startle you,” he said. ”I was looking for a doorbell or something. I gave a little knock on the frame here, but I guess you didn't hear me.”
”Sorry,” she said.
”I'm supposed to look at your fuse box. If you could tell me where it is.”
She stepped aside to let him in. She took a moment to remember.
”Yes. In the cellar,” she said. ”I'll turn the light on. You'll see it.”
He shut the door behind him and bent to take off his shoes.
”That's all right,” she said. ”It's not as if it's raining.”
”Might as well, though. I make it a habit. Could leave you dust tracks insteada mud.”
She went into the kitchen, not able to sit down again until he left the house.
She opened the door for him as he came up the steps.
”Okay?” she said. ”You found it okay?”
”Fine.”
She was leading him towards the front door, then realized there were no steps behind her. She turned and saw him standing in the kitchen.
”You don't happen to have anything you could fix up for me to eat, do you?”
There was a change in his voice-a crack in it, a rising pitch, that made her think of a television comedian doing a rural whine. Under the kitchen skylight she saw that he wasn't so young. When she opened the door she had just been aware of a skinny body, a face dark against the morning glare. The body, as she saw it now, was certainly skinny, but more wasted than boyish, affecting a genial slouch. His face was long and rubbery, with prominent light blue eyes. A jokey look, but a persistence, as if he generally got his way.
”See, I happen to be a diabetic,” he said. ”I don't know if you know any diabetics, but the fact is when you get hungry you got to eat, otherwise your system all goes weird. I should have ate before I came in here, but I let myself get in a hurry. You don't mind if I sit down?”
He was already sitting down at the kitchen table.
”You got any coffee?”
”I have tea. Herbal tea, if you'd like that.”
”Sure. Sure.”
She measured tea into a cup, plugged in the kettle, and opened the refrigerator.
”I don't have much on hand,” she said. ”I have some eggs. Sometimes I scramble an egg and put ketchup on it. Would you like that? I have some English m.u.f.fins I could toast.”
”English, Irish, Yukoranian, I don't care.”
She cracked a couple of eggs into the pan, broke up the yolks, and stirred them all together with a cooking fork, then sliced a m.u.f.fin and put it into the toaster. She got a plate from the cupboard, set it down in front of him. Then a knife and fork from the cutlery drawer.
”Pretty plate,” he said, holding it up as if to see his face in it. Just as she turned her attention to the eggs she heard it smash on the floor.
”Oh mercy me,” he said in a new voice, a squeaky and definitely nasty voice. ”Look what I gone and done now.”
”It's all right,” she said, knowing now that nothing was.
”Musta slipped through my fingers.”
She got down another plate, set it on the counter until she was ready to put the toasted m.u.f.fin halves and then eggs smeared with ketchup on top of it.
He had stooped down, meanwhile, to gather up the pieces of broken china. He held up one piece that had broken so that it had a sharp point to it. As she set his meal down on the table he sc.r.a.ped the point lightly down his bare forearm. Tiny beads of blood appeared, at first separate, then joining to form a string.
”It's okay,” he said. ”It's just a joke. I know how to do it for a joke. If I'd of wanted to be serious we wouldn't of needed no ketchup, eh?”
There were still some pieces on the floor that he had missed. She turned away, thinking to get the broom, which was in a closet near the back door. He caught her arm in a flash.
”You sit down. You sit right here while I'm eating.” He lifted the bloodied arm to show it to her again. Then he made an egg-burger out of the m.u.f.fin and the eggs and ate it in a very few bites. He chewed with his mouth open. The kettle was boiling. ”Tea bag in the cup?” he said.
”Yes. It's loose tea actually.”
”Don't you move. I don't want you near that kettle, do I?”
He poured boiling water into the cup.
”Looks like hay. Is that all you got?”