“There’s Mama’s stool,” Eve said helpfully. “She always needs it to get things down from the closet shelf.”
I was at least six inches taller than Meredith Osborn had been, and I could easily reach the shelf. But if I wanted to look at what was behind the sheets, the stool would be handy.
I stepped up, lifted the set of sheets, and scanned the contents of the closet shelf. Another blanket for the bed, a box marked “Shoe Polish,” a cheap metal box for files and important papers. Then, under a pile of purses, I spotted a box marked “Eve.” After I’d snapped the clean sheets on the bed, I sent Eve out of the room to fetch a dustcloth and the furniture polish.
I lifted down the box and opened it. I had to clench my teeth to make myself examine its contents. My sense of invasion was overwhelming.
In the box were faded “Welcome, Baby” cards, the kind family and friends send a couple when they have a child. I quickly riffled through them. They were only what they seemed. Also in the box was a little rattle and a baby outfit. It was soft knit, yellow, with little green giraffes scattered over it, the usual snap crotch and long sleeves. It had been folded carefully. Eve’s coming home from the hospital outfit, maybe. But Eve had been born at home, I remembered. Well, then, Meredith’s favorite of all Eve’s baby clothes. My mother had some of mine and Varena’s still packed away in our attic.
I closed the box and popped it back into position. By the time Eve returned, I had the flowered bedspread smoothed flat and taut across the bed and the blanket folded at the foot.
Together, we polished and dusted. Eve naturally didn’t do things the most efficient way, since she was a grieving eight-year-old child. I am rigid about the way I like housework done and not used to working with anyone, but I managed it.
I’d had a pang of worry about Eve handling her mother’s belongings, but Eve seemed to do that so matter-of- factly that I wondered if she didn’t yet comprehend that her mother would not be returning.
In the course of cleaning that room I made sure I examined every nook and cranny. Short of going through the chest of drawers and the drawers in the night tables, I saw what there was to see in that bedroom: under the bed, the corners of the closet, the backs and bottoms of almost every single piece of furniture. Later, when I began to put the laundry away, I even caught glimpses of what was in the drawers. Just the usual stuff, as far as I could tell.
One drawer of the little desk in the corner was stacked with medical bills related to Meredith’s pregnancy. At a glance, it had been a difficult one. I hoped the furniture store had a group policy.
“Shake the can, Eve,” I reminded her, and she shook the yellow aerosol can of furniture polish. “Now, spray.”
She carefully sent a stream of polish onto the bare top of the desk. I swabbed with a cloth, over and over, then put the letter rack, mug full of pens and pencils, and box containing stamps and return address labels back in their former positions. When Eve excused herself to use the bathroom, I gritted my teeth and did something that disgusted me: I picked up Meredith Osborn’s hairbrush, which could reasonably be assumed to have her fingerprints on it, wrapped it in a discarded plastic cleaner’s bag, and stepped through to the kitchen and shoved it in my purse.
I was back in the Osborns’ bedroom, tamping the stack of papers so the edges were square and neat, when Eve came back.
“Those are Mama’s bills,” she said importantly. “We always pay our bills.”
“Of course.” I gathered the cleaning things and handed some of them to Eve. “We’ve finished here.”
As we began to work on Eve’s room, I could tell that the little girl was getting bored, after the novelty of helping me work wore thin.
“Where’d you eat last night?” I asked casually.
“We went to the restaurant,” she said. “I got a milkshake. Jane slept the whole time. It was great.”
“Your dad was with you,” I observed.
“Yeah, he wanted to give Mama a night off,” Eve said approvingly. Then the ending of that night off hit her in the face, and I saw her pleasure in the little memory of the milkshake crumple. I could not ask her any more questions about last night.
“Why don’t you find your last school memory book and show me who your friends are?” I suggested, as I got her clean sheets out of her little closet and began to remake her single bed.
“Oh, sure!” Eve said enthusiastically. She began to rummage through the low bookcase that was filled with children’s books and knickknacks. Nothing in the bookcase seemed to be in any particular order, and I wasn’t too surprised when Eve told me she couldn’t come up with her most recent memory book. She fetched one from two years ago instead and had an excellent time telling me the name of every child in every picture. I was required only to smile and nod, and every now and then I said, “Really?” As casually as I could manage it, I went through the books in the bookcase myself. The past year’s memory book wasn’t there.
Eve relaxed perceptibly as she looked at the pictures of her friends and acquaintances.
“Did you go to the doctor last week, Eve?” I asked casually.
“Why do you want to know that?” she asked.
I was floored. It hadn’t occurred to me that a child would ask me why I wanted to know.
“I just wondered what doctor you went to.”
“Doctor LeMay.” Her brown eyes looked huge as she thought about her answer. “He’s dead, too,” she said wearily, as if the whole world was dying around her. To Eve, it must have felt so.
I could not think of a natural, painless way to ask again, and I just couldn’t put the girl through any more grief. To my surprise, Eve volunteered, “Mama went with me.”
“She did?” I tried to keep my voice as noncommittal as possible.
“Yep. She liked Dr. LeMay, Miss Binnie, too.”
I nodded, lifting a stack of coloring books and shaking them into an orderly rectangle.
“It hurt, but it was over before too long,” Eve said, obviously quoting someone.
“What was over?” I asked.
“They took my blood,” Eve said importantly.
“Yuck.”
“Yeah, it hurt,” said the girl, shaking her head just like a middle-aged woman, philosophically. “But some things hurt, and you just gotta handle it.”
I nodded. This was a lot of stoical philosophy from a third grader.
“I was losing weight, and my mama thought something might be wrong,” Eve explained.
“So, what was wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Eve looked down at her feet. “She never said.”
I nodded as if that were quite usual. But what Eve had told me worried me, worried me badly. What if something really was wrong physically with the child? Surely her father knew about it, about the visit and the blood test? What if Eve were anemic or had some worse disease?
She looked healthy enough to me, but I was certainly willing to concede that I was hardly a competent judge. Eve was thin and pale, yes, but not abnormally so. Her hair shone and her teeth looked sound and clean, she smelled good and she stood like she was comfortable, and she was able to meet my eyes: The absence of any of these conditions is reason to worry, their presence reassuring. So why wasn’t I relaxing?
We moved on to the baby’s room, Eve shadowing my every step. From time to time the doorbell rang, and I would hear Emory drift through the house to answer it, but the callers never stayed long. Faced with Emory’s naked grief, it would be hard to stand and chat.
After I’d finished the baby’s room and the bathroom, I entered the kitchen to find that food was accumulating faster than Emory could store it. He was standing there with a plastic bowl in his hands, a bowl wrapped in the rose-colored plastic wrap that was so popular locally. I opened the refrigerator and evaluated the situation.
“Hmmm,” I said. I began removing everything. Emory put the bowl down and helped. All the little odds and ends of leftovers went into the garbage, the dishes they’d been in went in the sink, and I wiped down the bottom shelf where there’d been a little spillage.
“Do you have a list?” I asked Emory.
He seemed to come out of his trance. “A list?” he asked, as if he’d never heard the word.
“You need to keep a list of who brings what food in what dish. Do you have a piece of paper handy?” That sister of Emory’s needed to get here fast.
