The Night Visitors(12)

There’s also quite the assortment of pharmaceuticals. Ambien and Valium on the night table, and when I open the drawer—why, hello!—OxyContin. I wonder what ache those are for. I open the Oxy, tip out two tablets, and slip them in my pocket. As I put the bottle back I notice the framed picture. It’s of a boy, about the same age as Oren, but with a terrible eighties haircut. Her son? Or the brother she mentioned earlier?

I help myself to a Valium and open more drawers, looking for something I could pawn. All I find is sad old-lady underwear, flannel nightgowns, turtlenecks and long johns from L.L.Bean and Lands’ End. The only jewelry is cheap ethnic crap. The frame is silver, but I haven’t sunk so low as to steal some kid’s picture from a nightstand.

I walk back to the bathroom and wash down the Valium with a handful of water from the tap. Back in the hallway I open a few closed doors. There’s a door at the end of the hallway that has been boarded over, which is creepy. In one of the group homes I lived in the older girls told a story about a foster mother who would lock kids up in the attic. She told Social Services that the kids ran away and boarded up the attic. When she moved out and a new family moved in they broke into the attic and found a mound of bones. The worst thing was that some of the bones had teeth marks on them that were too big to be made by mice. The story went that even after the bones were taken away the new family could hear knocking coming from the attic—those starving children banging on the floor for someone to let them out. Of course, then one of the girls would secretly make a big banging noise and all the little kids would jump.

The next door is a closet filled with moldy-smelling linens, and then a bedroom. This one is a child’s room—a boy’s room with a single bed, neatly made with a patchwork quilt and old-school Star Wars sheets. A bookcase filled with books about dogs and horses and Greek myths and astronomy. A mobile of the solar system, obviously handmade. There are plastic Day-Glo stars on the ceiling and a poster of the first Star Wars movie tacked to the wall. It could be Oren’s room at home except that there’s no computer, no video games, no sign that the boy who lived here once ever lived past the 1980s.

Which is even creepier than the boarded-over door.

What’s even more creepy, though, is that of all the rooms I’ve been in so far, this one is by far the cleanest. Someone dusts it regularly.

OREN IS SITTING at the kitchen table in his newly washed Star Wars sweatshirt. When I walk in he looks up and breaks into a smile that cracks open my heart—or maybe it’s the Valium kicking in.

“Mattie said I could go sledding after you came down. She’s got a sled and there’s a big hill where kids go. Can I?”

“Give your mom a chance to have her breakfast, kid,” Mattie says, turning to look at me. In the morning light her face looks older than it did last night but also somehow prettier. Her silver hair catches the light and sparkles like tinsel, and her eyes look lavender against all the white snow out the window. “There’s coffee,” she tells me, nudging a chair out and pointing her chin at a Mr. Coffee on the counter.

“I’ll get it!” Oren says, popping out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box. “Mattie made banana muffins too, with chocolate chips.”

We’ll both have diabetes if we stay here too long. But I smile back at Oren and take the muffin and coffee. He pours the milk in for me just the way I like it, makes a big deal of taking a muffin out of a basket and putting it on a china plate, sits back down for three seconds and pops back up to get me a napkin. He’s wound up on sugar and nerves, trying so hard to please it sets my teeth on edge. Mattie sees it too.

“Kid,” she says, “how are you with a shovel?”

Oren squints at her and says, “Depends on what kind of shovel.” Like he’s had experience with a multitude.

“A snow shovel. We got a foot last night and the Weather Channel says there’s an even bigger storm on the way. The front path to the driveway and the one to the barn need digging out and my back just isn’t up to it this morning. It would be a great help to me”—she looks at me—“if it’s okay with your mom.”

“I can do it, Alice,” Oren says. “I’ve done our sidewalk in—”

“As long as you stay away from the road,” I say, sneaking a look to see what Mattie’s made of that Alice. “We should do something to pay back this nice lady for all she’s done for us.”

Mattie’s face pinches like something pains her. I’ve stolen a little bit of her charity high. But then she nods and braces her hands on the table. “That’s settled then,” she says. I see her wince as she gets to her feet, and her first few steps across the kitchen are bow-legged and stiff. She’s not kidding about her back. I feel a twinge of guilt for stealing her Oxy but then I remind myself that we’ve all got our pains.

Mattie picks up a newspaper from the counter and tosses it onto the table in front of me. “Help yourself to more coffee, Alice,” she says. “I’ll be back once I get Oren kitted out.”

I take a sip of coffee and listen to them in the front hall. These’ll fit . . . Here, you’d better put on an extra pair of socks . . . Take this fleece . . . Try these boots . . . She must have a whole assortment of boys’ clothes, which I find a little creepy. Maybe it’s just that she collects donations, but still, all the force-feeding us baked goods and giving us new clothes—and that boarded-over door upstairs—make me feel uneasy. Best we move on as soon as we can.