His dresser is in his and Marnie’s room, her mother’s room now. He pulls the same shorts and T-shirt from the floor beside the bed, puts them on again.
The bathroom door is open, a new towel folded beside the sink. He reaches and touches it. There are more diapers on the stack. The diaper pail beneath the sink is empty, smelling of bleach.
At the end of the hall, their bedroom door is also open. He stands in front of it, says her mother’s name, clears his throat, tries again. “Lauren?” He leans in, but can’t make himself go any further.
In the living room, on top of Marn’s old hoop rug, yet another blanket has been folded and the baby lies on it, blinking at the ceiling. He wonders how long since he has seen her. The ceiling fan whirls at its lowest setting. The baby seems enthralled. Maybe it can focus now.
He stands in the hallway door, a hand up on each side of the jamb, watching the baby watching the fan. The sleep, however long it was, has cleared some fog, the baby coming more into focus, and he forgets about his search for her mother, until, from the kitchen doorway, she says, “Ted?”
He turns, sees her holding a spatula, her right hip canted out, a ghost stance that staggers him.
“Did you get some sleep?”
He tilts his head toward the baby. “I must have.”
“Your friend’s out on the porch. Rudy. He won’t come in. He says he’s fine, but he never leaves.”
Taz blinks, glances through the window, Rudy hunched out there like a gargoyle. Now and then he’s heard him talk to someone, a friendly murmur, sometimes a ‘Thanks,’ or a ‘No, not yet,’ drifting through the open window, occasionally a ‘Fine,’ and once a ‘Well, how do you think?’—Hagrid’s Fluffy barring the door. “That’s Rude for you,” he says.
She shakes her head. “You people and your names.” But she tries a smile, says, “I’m making eggs.”
He turns for the shower. “He’ll eat as many as you can make.”
She says, “I’ll scramble the whole dozen. Don’t be long.”
He stays under the showerhead until the hot gives out. Finds himself standing there shivering.
He steals into his room, slips fresh clothes from the dresser she’d refinished, does not glance anywhere else, take a chance of even a glimpse of anything of Marn’s.
Her mother lets him get dressed before she tells him to come to the table. She does not ask.
The eggs are already on the plates. Mountains of them. Bacon. She is holding the baby. She says, “You need to eat as much as you needed that sleep. And then we need to talk.”
He looks down at the table, rubs at his face. “I’m sorry, but I, I don’t really remember anything, not since . . . Do we have a plan?”
She dips a shoulder, maybe a shrug, maybe just rocking the baby. “Who would have planned anything like this?” she says, but quickly adds, “I came one-way. That was the plan. Just staying as long as Marnie needed.”
He can’t imagine Marnie ever making any such plan. He picks up his fork, takes a bite, feels guilty for it. The mindless body, insisting on going on.
“Ted?” she says, as soon as his mouth is full. “There’s the funeral to think about.”
He pushes back his chair.
“You can’t,” she says. “You can’t just not.”
“After breakfast, okay?” he says, picking up his plate. “I better feed the beast out there,” he says, heading for the door, even as she calls out that she’s already taken a plate to him, that he still wouldn’t come inside.
He drops down on the porch steps beside Rudy, who does have his own plate, is busy shoveling it in. Beside him sits a full ham, wrapped in clear plastic. “Hards and Dan dropped it off a while ago,” he says. “Your third ham.” He waves his fork toward what is suddenly a kind of garden. “I just started planting the flowers.”
Taz looks, sees some actual plants holed into the weeds, more just bouquets, cut flowers, ribbons hanging limp, the card holders stuck into the ground along with the flowers. Rudy gardening, nothing hard to believe anymore. Taz says, “She ask you in?”
Rudy pushes in bacon along with the eggs. “I opted for the company out here.” He uses a knuckle to push in a bit of egg. “But, man, she can cook.”
“They’re eggs,” Taz says, and watches Rudy eat, the flurry of it. He cannot muster another bite himself. “Anybody can scramble an egg.”
Rudy shoots him a glance, trial-runs a smile. “You couldn’t scramble an egg like this if you lived in a henhouse.”
“You crack them, you whip them around.”
“There’s all sorts of other goodness in here.”
“It’s called cheese, Rude.”
“And onions, the green kind.”
Rudy picks through the eggs, and Taz looks down the block. “Mushrooms, maybe,” Rudy says. “Some sort of fungi.”
“Only fungi around here is whatever’s growing on you,” Taz manages.
“Cold, man,” Rudy says, polishing his plate with his toast. “So?” he asks.
Still looking down the street, Taz says, “So what?”
“How’s the little one?”
“She’s asleep.”
“The big one?”
“I don’t even know when she’s leaving.”
“Okay,” Rudy says.
“How about you? You planning on staying out here forever?”
“Nah. Just keeping down the riffraff. You know. The first few days.”
“Thinned out yet?”
“Pretty much. You got a week’s worth of casseroles in your freezer.”
“Thanks,” Taz says.
Rudy shrugs, glances down at Taz’s plate. “You going to—” he starts, and Taz hands it over. Watches the frenzy resume.
Taking a breather, Rudy says, “Everybody coming over, Taz, they’re, they’re just doing what they can, you know? We’re all busted up. Don’t know anything else to do.”
“I know, I just—”
“And,” Rudy says, raising his voice just enough to interrupt. “Her, in there”—he jerks a thumb back—“she’s just doing the same.”
Taz sucks in his cheeks.
“She’s been feeding me every day.” He grabs his waist, gives it a shake.
Taz looks away from that. Like feeding a stray dog, winning him over.
“So, anyway, I figure, once you get your feet under you, we’re going to have to, you know, do something. All these people coming over, they’re all in shock. They need, I don’t know, like a party or something. For Marn.”
Taz stares. “A party?”
“For Marn.”
Taz feels like he should laugh.
Rudy pushes himself to his feet, holding out the second empty plate. “You let me know when?” he says.
“What, you’re leaving?”
Rudy smiles, nods toward the front door. “I think my work here is done.”
Taz watches him amble off down the block, lifting his arm in a wave. Taz waves back, then turns, takes a breath, picks up the ham, and goes inside.
Lauren’s still at the table, the baby up on her shoulder now, facedown against the burp towel. She pats the baby’s back as she studies him, a look he remembers, as if he’s from an alien species, something she’d love to understand.
“Rudy,” he says, “loves your cooking.”
“Rudy,” she answers, “is a piece of work.”
He gives a little smile. “No doubt.”
“So,” she says. “This funeral neither of us want to face.” She keeps her hand going, the tapping on the baby’s back as gentle as raindrops.
Taz looks around the room, as if for exits. “I don’t know if I—”
The baby lets loose a burp that would make Rudy proud. Lauren almost laughs. “You know, this whole time, you’ve never even told me her name.”
Taz blinks, still thinking funeral.
“On the birth certificate it only says, Davis, girl. I haven’t even known what to call her.”
“It’s Midge,” he says.
“What?”
“Her name.”
“Madge?”
“No. Midge.” He can barely say it. “It’s a kind of fly.”
“Honestly?” she says, starting the shake of her head. “A fly?”
Standing there holding a ham, he sees Marn singing it to the swell of her belly. Her pushed-out belly button. “It was Marnie’s idea.”
She says, “All right then. Midge it is.”