French Braid(68)

“Oh, well,” Eddie said. “Maybe he just doesn’t like us; ever thought of that?”

“Not like us!” She looked thunderstruck.

“So, were you serious about your hatchback?” he asked. “Not to put you to any trouble, but—”

“Absolutely,” Lily said, and then she wiped her palms on the seat of her jeans in a businesslike way and stepped forward to seize one end of the recliner.

“Oh, I didn’t mean right this minute,” Eddie told her.

“What better time?” she asked. “I’m only going to get busier from here on out.”

So he gave up and bent to lift the other end.



* * *



—

He knew he shouldn’t text while driving. He contemplated pulling over to the side of the road for a moment—“Bringing aunt home want to warn you” was all he would need to say—but then Lily might get to the house before he did. So he kept going. If Claude saw them coming, he figured, or heard them (if Eddie spoke extra loudly as they entered), he would know enough to duck out of sight; no problem.

But would he duck out of sight?

Sometimes Eddie wondered if Claude fully understood Eddie’s situation. It was easy for Claude, after all. He had parents who’d always accepted him just the way he was. Well, and he had known who he was; that was another difference. Eddie, on the other hand…Eddie had been sort of clueless, up until eighth grade. Eighth grade was when he developed a crush on Karen Small, the most popular girl in his class. (And therefore unattainable, he saw now. No danger of her reciprocating.) But Karen was going steady with Jem Buford, and so Eddie had closely studied Jem Buford in order to learn what was so great about him. He took note of Jem’s lopsided smile, and the single quirky cowlick standing up on the crown of his head, and his habit of keeping a fountain pen cartridge jutting from between his teeth like an unlit cigarette. And finally…Wait, Eddie had thought, is it Jem I have a crush on?

He turned onto his own street and glanced down the block. By some miracle, there was a parking space free directly in front of his house. He pulled up next to it and checked his rearview mirror. Above the row of cartons looming in his backseat he could just make out Lily’s Toyota slowing to a stop behind him. He shifted to neutral and got out to speak with her, and Lily rolled down her window as he approached and looked up at him expectantly.

“You take this space here,” he told her, “and I’ll look for something up ahead.”

“Okay,” she said, and she closed her window again while he returned to his car.

But up ahead he found nothing—not in his own block or in the next one. He had to turn down a side street, where he parked clumsily and too far from the curb because he was in such a rush to get back to the house. By that time, he’d kept Lily waiting so long that he didn’t even bother unloading a couple of cartons to take with him before he hurried to meet her.

She was no longer in her car, though. The driver’s seat was empty. And when he peered through the rear window he found that the recliner was gone.

He glanced up at his front porch and saw the inner door standing open. He climbed the steps two at a time, already calling “Hello?” as he entered.

Lily was in the living room. She was shoving the recliner a few inches right, a few inches left as she positioned it in a corner. And Claude was dragging away the rocking chair that had stood in that corner till now.

“Oh,” Eddie said. “Well, hi, Claude! How are you?”

“What do you think?” Lily asked, straightening up and brushing her palms off. “Is this the right place for it?”

“Sure! It’s great! Aunt Lily, this is Claude Evers. Claude, this is—”

“Oh, yes, we two are bosom buddies,” Lily said. “We’ve just lugged a recliner up an entire set of porch steps together.” She laughed and turned to Claude. “You’ve got dust all across your front,” she told him. “I guess my housekeeping’s showing.”

“That might actually be from the rocker,” Claude said. He looked ruefully down at his T-shirt.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to park,” Eddie told Lily.

“That’s quite all right!” she said, and she picked up her purse from the seat of the recliner and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Okay, buddy, I’m off. I’ll call to say goodbye before I leave for good, though. It won’t be for another week or so.”

“Okay…well…thanks again for all the stuff, Aunt Lily. And for lunch.”

“My pleasure!” she said. “Thank you for that lovely wine.” She trilled her fingers at Claude. “Bye, Claude.”

“Bye, Lily. Nice meeting you.”

Eddie walked her to the front door, and he stood watching till she got into her car. Then he returned to the living room. “What happened?” he asked Claude.

“What do you mean, what happened?” Claude said. He had hold of the rocking chair again and was sliding it toward the stairs.

“How come you two ran into each other?” Eddie asked.

“She just told you how. I look out the front window; I see this woman trying to haul this huge recliner out of her car; what am I supposed to do? You can’t expect me to let her struggle with it on her own.”