“Sorry.”
She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out on the cracked wood of the doorway. She flicked the butt up and over the railing. She leaned over and ruffled my hair, and I smelled her, smoke and dying flowers. “Don’t look so mopey,” she said with a half smile. “It’s never as bad as you think it is.”
She left me alone and shut the door as I thought, No. It can get worse. Much worse.
I looked down at my Star Wars watch. Bear would be home in two hours and twenty-six minutes. He didn’t have to work tonight, so maybe we could go out and do something, just me and him. Then I’d ask him if I could go with him again. By then, I’d surely think of something. He was my brother, after all. He wouldn’t leave me here. He just wouldn’t.
Feeling better, I started reading again about Aslan and Narnia.
Only a short while later, I met her.
A car pulled into the cracked parking lot, one bigger than any car I’d ever seen before. It was loud and brown and exhaust spewed from the tailpipe. It parked in a space near the stairs and shuddered as it died.
The front door swung open, so loud it sounded as if it were breaking. I couldn’t see who got out of the vehicle since stairs blocked the way. The front door slammed shut and then the rear door opened.
I went back to my book. It was none of my business.
I’d only read another paragraph or so when I heard huffing on the stairs, and a voice said, “C’mon, old girl. You’re not that old yet. Get your ass up these stairs.”
And she did. I first saw her gray-white hair. Then her elderly face, scrunched up in concentration. A box in her arms. A large purse over her small shoulder. She reached the landing and teetered for a moment, and I was sure she was about to tumble head over heels down the stairs. I put the book down and rushed toward her. I took the box from her arms and almost dropped it myself. It was heavy. I was only five, after all. Just a little guy, really.
“Why, thank you, young man!” she said as if volume wasn’t a concern. “For a moment there, I was pretty sure I was about to follow my Joseph, God love him. Life is supposed to flash before your eyes, I’ve heard, but all I could think about was how the firefighters would have come out here to move my body and seen I was wearing the ugliest pair of underwear I own. Unbefitting a lady, they are. Can you just imagine the embarrassment that would have caused me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said because I was unsure of what else to say.
“Ma’am,” she snorted. “Ma’am. How polite you are. That just won’t do. My name is Theresa Jean Paquinn, and you may call me Mrs. Paquinn.”
“Yes, Mrs. Paquinn.”
“Now, boy, the next step would be for you to tell me your name.”
I thought for a fleeting moment about how I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but surely they didn’t mean her? She was an old lady! What harm could she do?
“Tyson,” I told her. “Tyson McKenna. But everyone calls me Kid.”
“What a handsome name! Tyson. I do like that. Why aren’t you in school?”
I was starting to sweat because the box was heavy, but she was nice, so I thought I should answer her question. “I only go in the mornings. Next year, I’ll go all day. Like my brother. He’s about to graduate.” And take me with him.
She smiled at me. “You’re well-spoken for being so young.”
“I like to read,” I said by way of explanation.
“Do you? I do too. There’s nothing more wonderful, I should think, aside from meeting new people.”
“Heavy,” I gasped.
She laughed. For the first time, I heard her laugh, and I thought it possibly the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard. “Forgive me,” she said. “Here I am blathering away like we’ve got all the time in the world.” She set her purse on the floor and took the box from me. “Be a dear, would you? The keys are in my purse, and one of them unlocks the door to my new abode that undoubtedly will put all my past dwellings to shame.”
“My brother says this place is a hole,” I told her as I looked for her keys. I found them, buried under packages of tissues and hard candies and what I was pretty sure was a switchblade.
“And it probably is,” she said. “Your brother sounds very smart.”
“Sometimes.” I pulled the keys out. “Where to?”
“That one,” she said, pointing the box toward a door.
That delighted me. “You’re going to live there? I live next door.”