With Benny, though, she was more reserved; she did know enough not to rush him. He stepped forth and stood blinking a moment—a serious-looking little boy under an upside-down bowl of straight black hair. “Say hello to Grandma and Grandpa,” Nicholas told him, and Benny said, “Hi, Granna. Hi, Grappa.” It made David happy to hear that Benny hadn’t outgrown his toddler names for them. And he still had that snuffly, croaky little voice—adenoids, maybe, or tonsils, but David found it appealing even so.
“How was traffic?” he asked Nicholas, and Nicholas said, “There wasn’t any. We could have roller-skated down the middle of the highway.”
“We could?” Benny said.
“Lots of luck, though, finding your kid a bathroom nowadays.”
“Oh, dear! What did you do?” Greta asked.
“Jif peanut butter jar,” Nicholas told her with a shrug. “Remind me to bring it in, by and by.”
He went around to the trunk to unload their belongings—just a couple of canvas duffel bags, but a considerable number of boxed games and wheeled toys—and he and David began carrying them toward the house. Greta followed with a plastic barn, and Benny walked next to her with a worn-looking plush bear. “We’re going to get a dog while we’re here,” he told her.
“You are?”
“Now, hold on, buddy,” Nicholas said, turning to give him a stern look. “We’re going to talk about getting a dog.”
“Can we?” Benny asked Greta.
“We’ll talk about it,” Nicholas said again, and then to David, under his breath, “Oh, Lord.” He had a weary, rumpled look, and he seemed thinner. And now that he’d shifted his sunglasses to the top of his head, David could see the strained skin around his eyes.
“I don’t think any dogs are even available right now,” David told him. “Our shelter has closed for the duration, and the staff has taken home whatever animals they couldn’t place.”
“Yeah, but one of that staff is Julie Drumm,” Nicholas said. “Remember Julie, from high school? She thinks she can line something up for us.”
“Ah.”
They entered the house from the front. “Pot roast!” Nicholas said, and he sniffed appreciatively.
“I thought you might like something homey,” Greta told him.
“I’m craving something homey,” he said. “It’s been pretty slim pickings lately.”
Then he told Benny, “I’m going to take our bags up. You can stay down here with Grandma and Grandpa.” Benny said nothing, but when Nicholas started toward the stairs he followed, still carrying his bear. Clearly he was feeling a bit out of his element.
By suppertime, though, he seemed more comfortable. He had taken a tour of the garden, where David let him pluck a tiny nubbin of a green pepper, and he had tried out a badminton racquet. In the garden he’d gone so far as to confess that he was a little scared of bugs, which David treated respectfully. “Of course you are,” he said. “I was scared too, once upon a time. Eventually you won’t be, but for now we’ll just steer clear of them.” Benny reported this to his father over supper. “Grappa used to be scared of bugs too, so he says we’ll just steer clear of them.”
“Or power through,” Nicholas suggested. “Learn to face up to them, maybe.”
“No, I think steer clear,” Benny said firmly, and he speared a chunk of potato. Then he told David, in a confiding tone, “I’m scared of banana threads, too.”
“Banana threads. I see. Well, I can understand that,” David said. He couldn’t help feeling honored.
In the evening, Greta read Benny some of the picture books from Emily’s and Nicholas’s childhoods. Benny proved to be on the very edge of knowing how to read for himself; he pounced on random short words and called them out to her. “Cat,” he said. “Dad.” And then, triumphantly, “Truck!”
“That is correct,” Greta said each time. She was always very formal with children. Even with her own, she had avoided the fluty voice and the cutesy phrasing that other mothers used, and children seemed to find that reassuring. When it came time for Benny to go upstairs to bed, he asked, “Can Granna tuck me in?” and Nicholas said, “Why not?”
“He misses having a woman around,” he told David once they were alone. “I don’t think he fully understands why he’s seeing so little of Juana.”