Stevie shook his head.
“No?”
Stevie kept shaking his head. He was already out of his conversational depth. And he was tired. But he was blocking my way up, with one hand on Hugh’s leg and the other on the first newel post of the banister. I could tell without looking that Elsie had already fallen asleep. Her forehead lay hard and moist against my neck.
“Do you like coming here to this house?” Hugh asked him.
“Yeah,” Stevie said, swaying, shifting his small weight from the knee to the post and back.
“I remember coming here to visit my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother?”
“Grammy’s mommy.”
“Grammy’s mommy,” Stevie whispered, trying to fathom what that meant.
“She only wore black, huge long dresses down to her ankles. She was the last Victorian. And the only ghoul I ever met.”
“What’s that?”
“A ghoul? It’s worse than a ghost.”
“Oh.” He wouldn’t want to continue that conversation.
They looked at each other, Hugh breathing loudly through his nose, Stevie still swaying from knee to post. I could smell Hugh. I knew the scent by then. It was sharp and unclean, even after a swim, and I knew I wouldn’t like it anywhere else but coming up from his long taut body. I breathed it in greedily.
I knew I should nudge Stevie up the stairs but I sensed Hugh didn’t want to be alone. Something within him was crying out for something. Neither Stevie nor I knew what it was or what had happened, but we were compelled by it anyway.
“How’s your dad?” Hugh said. For a few seconds I thought he knew about my dad and the drugs and all the rehab places, that my mother had told all that to Mrs. Pike and they all knew and laughed about it at dinner when I was in the pantry, and my body stung everywhere at once.
“Good,” Stevie said. “Busy.”
“He and your mom get along?”
“Yeah.” There was a question in it.
“Sometimes parents fight. Like you fight with Elsie. They don’t do that?”
Stevie shook his head.
“Your dad is kind to your mom?”
“Yup.”
“And your mom is kind to your dad.”
“Yup.”
“Do you hear them talking? Not to you and your sister but to each other, about grown-up things?”
“Yup. A lot.”
“And they talk in nice voices?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When do you hear them talking?”
“Most times. Morning.”
“You can hear them from your room?”
Stevie took a breath for a big thought. “I think they’re watching TV but I go in and they’re not, they’re just lying there looking at the ceiling and laughing. They’re weird, I guess.”
“They’re not weird. They’re happy, Stevie. Will you promise me you’ll remember that?”
“’Member what?”
“Your mom and dad laughing. Will you promise? Even when you’re old as Grammy you’ll remember?”
“Yup. Okay. Good night.” He laughed. “I mean, not good night but good nappy night.”
“You won’t forget?”
“About what?”
“You’ve already forgotten!”
“No I didn’t. I won’t forget.” He laughed again. He didn’t move to go upstairs. “Laughing is weird. Why do we laugh?”
“Probably so we don’t blubber like babies.”
“Oh.”
Stevie took a couple of steps up and I followed. Elsie shifted with the sudden movement but didn’t wake up.
“Can we read the red car book?” Stevie asked me.
“Sure.”
We got to the landing. The air was warmer up here. We turned and could see Hugh now, still on the bottom step. He grew smaller as we headed up the next flight.
I lowered Elsie to her crib slowly, gingerly, and she did not wake up. I read Stevie two books, then he crawled into his firmly bound bed （Margaret made the beds every morning, tight as sausages）。 He was asleep before I’d gotten to the chorus of “Here Comes the Sun.”
Back out in the hall I stuck my head out over the upper railing. Hugh was still down there. He moved and I pulled back quickly.
Up in my room I continued my letter to Gina. It was over fifteen pages now, the longest thing I’d ever written. I liked to run my fingers over the words pressed into both sides of the pages with my blue ballpoint pen.
“Where’s Hugh?” Mrs. Pike said as I was buckling Elsie into her highchair that night.