Pew(42)

See now, here we go, Dr. Corbin whispered to me, then shouted, Oh, and how’s he doing?
Just needs a place for the night—
Oh, does he?
I said I’d ask you.
Suppose it’s all right. We’ve got the other couch if Pew don’t mind.
I nodded. Pew don’t mind, Dr. Corbin called out. Suppose it’s all right then.
He’s my nephew, Binnie said as she came back into the living room with a pile of folded sheets and quilts. And from time to time my sister sends him out. They have these disagreements. He’s had trouble finding work.
More like keeping it, Dr. Corbin said. Binnie sent her eyes at him in a tiny, quick way, then aimed them back at her task of laying blankets and sheets on the couch. You can’t say it ain’t true.
He’s a good young man.
Ain’t so young anymore.
He’s young on the inside. Binnie’s tone shifted, her eyes heavier. He has a young heart.
Yes. Yes, he does.
I lay on one of the couches and covered myself with the blankets.
You’re just going to sleep in your clothes like that, Dr. Corbin said, are you?
I looked up at him to say yes without saying yes. He smiled. Makes getting up a little faster, don’t it?
A while later, Dr. Corbin was gone and only Binnie was there, standing by the front window, waiting until Randall came in wearing a plaid pajama set and dirty slippers.
I thank you, Aunt Binnie, I do thank you.
No need to thank me. You have a roommate this time. Did you hear?
That’s what I heard.
This is Randall, Binnie said, announcing him to the room.
Nice to meet you, Randall said, a hand extended toward me. I slipped my arm from the quilts and took his hand, was shaken by it.
Now you let Pew sleep, you hear? Don’t go talking all night like you do. Everyone needs a good night’s sleep, you know. And Pew’s going to the festival.
Oh, is that right?
Yessir, now you get to sleep.
All right, now, all right, Randall said, pulling the quilt up to his chin as Binnie left us, turning out the lights as she went. I lay in the dark silence awhile, aware of another body, a stranger’s body, in the room with me, a comfort both far off and nearby. I could not hear him breathing but I knew he was. The air in the room moved differently from how it had when I slept in that attic room.
The way I see it, some people just live slower than others is all. His voice cut through the dark and silent room. Mama says I’ve reached an age that I have to do this thing or that thing and I don’t want to do either and she said it’s a problem. I don’t think so but she does think so. She said she can’t stand to have me at home another minute. I think her mood might change. She misses me when I’m not there, that’s what she says anyway, so I come over here sometimes, then I go back. Her own son still at home and it makes her sad is what she said. I’m only thirty-five, I said, and she said, Only thirty-five! I don’t see it as that old. I think I live slower. I think I might live to two hundred. People used to and I think I might start it again.
Randall, Binnie’s voice called from the bedroom. Now quit it, will you? Pew ain’t trying to talk to you. Everybody needs to sleep right about now so get to it.
Yes, ma’am, he said, reverent and quiet. The bedroom door shut. The house became still and more still and stiller still.
Can I ask you something? he whispered after some time had passed.
Yes, I whispered back.
How old are you?
I can’t remember.
It’s better that way—his voice was getting lost and sleepy—it’s better you don’t ever know. You could live a long life that way. You could probably grow up slower if you don’t know. You know, I do a lot with my time, I really do. I spend a lot of time thinking about things. Like how if you look at a word for long enough or if you say the same word over and over, it starts to sound crazy, or it starts to not even sound like a word or not even look like a word. I spend a lot of time thinking about that.
An appliance in the kitchen began to buzz.
It’s making ice. Aunt Binnie got her one of those kinds of freezers that makes the ice. It used to scare me when I slept over but I know it now. It can’t scare you if you know it’s going to happen. But then there’s all kinds of things we don’t know that are going to happen. And so it’s scary sometimes, I think it is, scary to have to go around out there. They told me you don’t live anywhere and I find it hard to believe. I don’t know how a person could do that. It’s confusing. It’s that feeling, that feeling of staring at a word for so long it’s not a word anymore. I don’t ever want my mother to go away.
He was silent for a long time.
Nobody’s mother should ever not be there, but my mother told me all mothers eventually are not there. I can’t understand it. I don’t even want to.
We slept.



SATURDAY




I WOKE WHEN the house was still dark and silent, a morning sky just beginning to brighten at the windows. Randall was gone. The quilts and sheets he’d slept on were folded neatly, stacked at the edge of the couch. I went to the front porch and watched clouds that never made good on the threat of rain. Light was beginning to flicker through when Binnie came out with her hair held back in a pale yellow cloth. She set a cup of coffee down beside me, wordless, and went back inside. Sometime later Dr. Corbin brought out to me the brown paper sack that Hilda had given him and emptied it on the table. A dress, a pair of pants, a pair of stockings, two thin shirts (each of them missing buttons), two pairs of clean socks, and a thick white bathrobe.