“Gooood niiiight,” I sang one octave higher.
“Good night. I love you,” Izzy said. I wasn’t sure which of us she was speaking to, but the words suspended me in motion. I stood halfway to the door, wondering if I should say it back. I’d never said that before, not to anyone. And no one had ever said it to me. But when I thought about it, I did love Izzy. And I kinda loved Sheba, too.
“Looove, looove, looove,” Sheba sang as she walked out the door. I knew it was the beginning of a Beatles song, because the twins had those records.
“Looove, looove, looove,” I sang after her, and then I went out the door and pulled it shut behind myself.
“How do you get home?” Sheba asked.
“I walk.”
“In the dark?” Sheba looked out the window on the hall landing. Tree branches moved in the thick blackness, like a giant’s waving arms.
“Well, I’ve never gone home in the dark before.” The sun set fairly late, but we’d had a long dinner, and then the bath.
“I’ll drive you. I want to see your house. Where exactly does Mary Jane, the harmonizing, churchgoing summer nanny live?”
I followed Sheba down the stairs and then into the kitchen, where Dr. Cone, Mrs. Cone, and Jimmy were sitting at the banquette. Jimmy was forearm-deep into a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers.
“Richard, where are the keys to your car?” Sheba asked. “I want to drive Mary Jane home.”
“Over there on the . . .” Dr. Cone pointed his finger from left to right. He lost his keys every day and I found them every day. I had been putting them in the same place, on the covered radiator in the entrance hall, with the hope that he would understand that when he came in the house, he should just drop them there. So far he hadn’t. Understood or dropped the keys.
“I know where they are,” I said.
“I want to come.” Jimmy shoved a handful of Zonkers into his mouth and then dropped the box onto the table so it fell sideways. He scooted out from the banquette and picked up Sheba’s hand. “Let’s go!” Jimmy took my hand too and pulled me and Sheba toward the swinging kitchen door.
“Can you find your way back?!” Mrs. Cone shouted.
“Yes!” Jimmy shouted. Sheba and I were laughing as he hurried us out of the kitchen.
“Do you want me to come with you?!” Mrs. Cone shouted.
I heard Dr. Cone say, “She’s just down the street, Bonnie!”
“We’ll be right back!” Sheba shouted.
In the entrance hall, I handed Sheba the keys and she ran out the door with them. Jimmy ran after her and then I ran too, as if we were fleeing something. When I was halfway to the car, I ran back and closed the front door. Then I doubled my speed to catch up to Sheba and Jimmy.
Jimmy was in the car and Sheba was standing at the open driver’s side. She banged on the roof twice and shouted, “C’mon, c’mon!”
I hurried into the back seat as Sheba was starting the car. She pulled away from the curb before I had the door shut. I felt like we were in an episode of Starsky & Hutch. One of them was always jumping into a moving car.
“We made it!” Jimmy shouted.
Sheba did a kind of a yodeling yell, and then we all started laughing. I knew it was a game, that there was no one chasing us and no one to run from. Still, it felt exciting, exhilirating, like we really were on the lam.
Sheba and Jimmy rolled down their windows, so I rolled down mine. Sheba wasn’t driving too fast, but we were moving at the speed of someone who knew where she was going.
I scooted up and put my hands on the back of the bench seat. “Um. My house is the other way.”
Jimmy turned so he was looking right at me. In the darkness, with only the glow of the streetlight, he appeared to be made of spun sugar. I looked at Sheba. She, too, was shimmery.
“Ah, the other way.” Sheba pulled the car into a driveway, then backed out and turned the car in the right direction.
“Mary Jane,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah?” I hoped he was going to ask me something I could answer easily without being embarrassed.
“Mary Jane.” Jimmy was twirling a hand-rolled cigarette between his thumb and first finger. He stuck the cigarette into his mouth and then leaned forward and poked his big pointer finger into the lighter.
“Is this doctor-approved?” Sheba asked.
“You were there.”
“But did you discuss it further? Does he know you’re going to do some tonight?”
“I’ll confess when we walk in the door.”