“Hello, young man,” Mr. Danker says. He reaches out to shake Justin’s hand. “And hello, Danielle.”
It feels good to have my days as “Young Lady” behind me.
“We’ll go into my office, Justin,” Mr. Danker says.
I have never seen the inside of Mr. Danker’s office.
“And Danielle, Clarice is in the kitchen.”
It looks like I won’t be seeing the inside of his office today, either.
Mrs. Danker doesn’t even say hello, or my name; she just reaches for my hands, and brings me to the living room.
“I’m glad you came,” she says finally, once we’re seated.
Whereupon I burst into tears, which is not what I had in mind at all. Mrs. Danker moves over to where I am on the sofa and puts her arm around me. That she should be comforting me is more than pathetic.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Whereupon she bursts into tears, and we cry together for a while.
“Tissues,” she says, getting up to run to the kitchen. She brings back a box of them. We blow our noses in unison.
It’s December 14. In three days, Humphrey would have had his sixth birthday. I can feel that fact pressing down on us as Mrs. Danker and I sit there in the grown-up room.
“We practiced,” I say.
She gives me a questioning look.
“We practiced five months ahead of time for December seventeenth, so that if he got disappointing presents, he would still be able to say a nice thank-you. He was so funny about it. But serious at the same time.”
“He did love his presents,” Mrs. Danker says. “He did love his birthday.”
“I wondered whether he felt shortchanged because his birthday was so near Christmas and he didn’t get a whole month just for himself.”
Mrs. Danker shakes her head. “I think he considered Christmas really just a continuation of his birthday.” She laughs. “Just the whole world celebrating him.”
I can see that. I can see Humphrey enjoying the extravagance of that thought, but also knowing, in his heart and mind, that it was fantasy.
“I know,” Mrs. Danker says.
“I’m so sorry about Humphrey. And I’m so sorry about you, and the cancer, and Humphrey.”
She tilts her head in an inquiring way.
“You had to have cancer for nothing,” I blurt out. I hear how stupid that sounds, so I try to fix it. “I don’t mean that people have cancer for something. Just …”
I’m in some kind of verbal corner.
“Where did you—? Oh. That Doris Raskin,” Mrs. Danker says. She rolls her eyes. “I know she means well.” I find some people use this expression when they’re holding their noses about someone. I don’t correct Mrs. Danker’s impression that it was Mrs. Raskin who told me about her cancer history.
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Mrs. Danker says. “Having Humphrey for five and a half years was not for nothing.”
Yeah, no.
“Tell me, Danielle,” Mrs. Danker says. “Tell me about Humphrey and you.”
She sits across from me in a chair.
“I hope you know he loved having you in his life.”
Her hazel eyes are softly inviting.
“What was his last day like?”
Finally. The question I’ve been waiting for. From the person I’ve been wanting to hear it from, although I didn’t know that until just this second.