aunt and uncle had taken in foreign exchange students, and the homeless at Thanksgiving, and in more than one winter storm along route 7, she and Les had let hitchhikers climb into the back of their van. More than once, they’d been the hitchhikers.
She was thinking of Les as she dropped off the final step of the stairs, recalling the February morning she’d woken up to find him on her couch. If the children were to find out! Seven years had passed since she’d seen her ex, since she’d been with any man at all. Could she be blamed? Did she say yes to him when he called because she’d said yes to him in her bed? The only thing she could do that morning was keep busy, keep him quiet, make scrambled eggs. She’d do the same thing now—eggs and toast and bacon, a pot of strong coffee for her guests, at four-thirty in the morning.
But none of them drank coffee, and the boys didn’t eat bacon and eggs. Johnny made buckwheat pancakes instead, and Eliza praised the Vermont maple syrup. They told her about the trip, and the wedding, and the way Les had come through for them, and Jude showed off the gruesome scar on his arm, which had healed to a raisiny, hairless glaze. After breakfast, while Jude napped, Johnny washed the dirty clothes they’d brought. “No more quarters! I could do laundry all day.” He had grown up quite a bit since Harriet had last seen him skulking down Ash Street, a cigarette tucked over his ear. She was not sure Jude knew how to operate a washing machine. That was the consequence of her indulgence, the apologetic spoiling of an adopted child. Prudence cleaned without being asked, but now Harriet wondered if she had ruined any hope of self-reliance for Jude, if she had poisoned him against helping himself. Even Eliza, who had grown up with silver spoons, who apparently knew nothing about birth control, who had Les for a role model, sprang up from the table to help with the dishes.
It was not until Harriet made her way back upstairs to shower and change that it occurred to her it might be nice to have a full house. Prudence had become secretive, eating her meals in her room, stretching the phone cord as far as it would reach up the stairs. One night Harriet had caught her sneaking down the fire escape. It was as though, in deference to her absent brother, Pru were impersonating him.
She passed her room on the second floor, climbed the next flight of stairs to the third, and, after tapping lightly on her son’s bedroom door, eased it open. He was lying on his side with his bare back to her, and she stood there for several moments watching him sleep. After Teddy’s death, it was a sight that used to send her stomach up into her throat, but it didn’t worry her now. She understood that she had Johnny to thank for that.
So he didn’t know how to do laundry. She’d do his laundry a million times.
The householders settled in. They learned how to use the remote control, to jiggle the handle of the second-floor toilet. Harriet pored over an old vegetarian cookbook, her glasses dusted with flour. “Can you eat egg whites, Johnny? What about fish?” And one rainy day, Johnny and Harriet spent the whole afternoon in the basement, Johnny admiring her old drawings, Harriet admiring his.
“So your new friends are a hit,” Prudence observed one morning. “Mom practically Frenched them both at dinner last night.” Waking up to an otherwise empty house, Jude had wandered into his sister’s bedroom, where she was getting ready for school. Harriet was in the greenhouse, and Prudence didn’t know where Johnny and Eliza were.
He stood in the doorway, examining the fixtures of the room. The trundle bed where Eliza had slept the last several nights was closed, a pillow and folded blanket piled neatly on the floor. On the door, Kirk Cameron had been replaced by a calendar of male swimsuit models. The word Frenched was licking uncomfortably at Jude’s ear, and he wondered suddenly about the question his father had asked about Prudence, whether she was having sex. He studied her smoky eyes, the medley of bracelets—safety pins, braided strings, glittery bangles. Was this the kind of girl who had sex? Who Frenched and had sex?