29

Back at Mrs. B.’s, she held her hand out and said, “You give to me the phone now,” which I did, like I was ten and being punished.

“I give back when I think it is the right times for you to use,” she said as she slipped it into her purse.

“It doesn’t work anyway,” I said.

“I think you don’t know how it wooks,” she said.

“I know how it works,” I said, half under my breath.

“I have the sail phone here in my purse,” she said as she pulled it out and showed me. Thing looked brand-new and expensive. She probably had no trouble getting a signal on it anywhere. “It is off. This is the way how you turn on the phone.” She pressed a button. “And then,” she said as she pressed the button a second time, “this is the way how you turn off the phone.” She held it toward me and asked, “You want to practice?”

“I think I got it.”

A tour of the house followed and lifted my crappy mood some. Like Grandma Ruth not wanting to start her afterlife all pissed off, I didn’t want to start my life at the beach the same way.

Mrs. B.’s house was pretty cool. Pale blue walls that turned almost white in certain light. Sand-colored rugs over hardwood floors, navy and beige furniture. Ticking clocks in every room, very few knickknacks—mostly just books and picture frames—and watercolors of sailboats on the walls.

I had the whole third floor to myself. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. Mrs. B. led me up the stairs, which she took slowly but evenly, holding bunches of her skirt in both hands.

“So, I saw Abigail from next door,” I said on the way up. “Haven’t technically met her, though.”

“Yes. Abigail Howe. She is nice girl, but sometimes she disappears.”

“Disappears?”

“Is right wood?”

“Uh. That depends.”

“Disappears,” she said again. She made her hands into little fists and opened them as she said, “Puff. Sometimes I look out my window, and she is there. On the beach. Then I look again, and she is gone.”

“Yeah, well, maybe she just had to go inside for a little bit. You know. Like you do.”

“She is inside for three, four days. No one sees her,” Mrs. B. said as we reached the third floor. “Then I see her again. I say, ‘Where do you go?’ She says, ‘I go here. I go there.’ But.” She pointed to herself. “I go here and there, and she is not there. So. She does not want me to know where she goes, so I say she disappears.”

We walked into the room that would be mine that summer, and if I’d had my phone, I’d have taken a picture to show Sam and Kennedy. And my dad. It had all the standard stuff—bed, bench at the end, dresser, small desk, two nightstands, matching lamps, landline. But there was also a sliding door that opened onto a balcony, large enough for two chairs—white with navy-blue cushions—and a round table between them.

“Cool,” I said, and grinned, and drifted into a hypnotic stare at the water.

“Briggs Baby,” Mrs. B. said. “You are not leesenink.”

“I’m listening, Mrs. B.,” I said. “I just love being near that lake.”

“Yes, yes. The lake is very nice. But now, we talk.”

“Sure.”

She sat on the bench. I sat on the bed and took off my coat and tie.

“You are all mine until Owgust twelvt,” she said.

“Yes, I’m all yours until August twelfth,” I confirmed.

“I fly in Owgust to Azirona.”

“Azirona? I don’t know where that is.”

“It is in the south and the west.”

“Of Serbia?”

“Of America.”

“Oh, Arizona,” I said.

“This is what I say. My seesters live there. The one has the birthday in Owgust, so I go for that, and I stay, like the birds for the weenter.”

“Sure.”

“So. Across today and Owgust, you paint the house.” I figured she meant between today and August, but, across worked too. “I am tired by this color,” she said, pointing to the walls.

“Really?” I liked it. It was the kind of color you could get lost in if you stared at it for too long. Like you were floating somewhere between water and sky.

“Yes,” she said. “You start in other room up here. And when you are not paintink, you fix thinks?”

“I can fix a few things. Yeah. Not like a television set.”

“I do not have the television set.”

“You don’t own a television?”

“This is what I say.”

“Right.”

“It is all the junk.”

Old people always complained about stuff on television. Except Law & Order and any movie with a nun in it.

“I don’t suppose you have Internet access,” I said.

“It is more of the junk,” Mrs. B. said.

Great.

“So. Toilets run. Fow-cets drip. The drawers stick. The doors.” She loosely covered her ears. “Squick.”

“Squeak? Yeah. I can fix those.”

“Then,” Mrs. B. said, “when you are not paintink or fixink thinks, you drive me. I go to the groceries store. I go to the hair appointments. I go to the doctor appointments. I go to the shursh.”

“Church?”

“This is what I say. When I need you, I call to you. I don’t shout. I call.”

“Well, first of all, Mrs. B., my phone is in your purse downstairs. And, second, it doesn’t work.”

“No, I call to you,” she insisted.

“No, I can’t even get a signal on it.”

“We walk and talk.”

“Walk and talk?” I repeated, and tried not to sound rude, but what?

“Yes,” she said, and pointed at the nightstand. “We walk and talk.”

I reached across the bed for what I thought was the phone and then ran my hand across my head and scratched the back of my neck.

“Mrs. B.,” I said, showing her the device, “this is a walkie-talkie.”

“Yes. Walk and talk,” she said, and pulled one out of her skirt pocket, like she was a cartoon character pulling out a fully cooked turkey or something.

She held the walkie-talkie to her mouth, pressed a button, and the one in my hand snapped and crackled to life, and I scrambled to find the volume button to turn the thing down.

“I say, ‘Mrs. B. to Briggs Baby. Come in to Briggs Baby.’ Or somethink like that.” She turned hers off and pointed at me. “And then you say, ‘Hello. Briggs Baby is here.’”

I scratched the back of my neck again.

“So. We practice,” she said.

“I really don’t think we need to practice.”

“You do not know how to use the sail phone. Maybe you do not know how to use the walk-and-talk,” she said. She got this grin on her face, mouth curling up at the corners, when she said into the walkie-talkie, “Mrs. B. to Briggs Baby. Come in to Briggs Baby.”

I looked up at the ceiling and thought, Oh my God.

“Briggs here, Mrs. B.,” I said into that stupid thing. I felt heat in my face again but forced a weak smile to my lips. “How can I help you?”