That seemed to surprise her. For a moment, she had no comeback. Stewie lay still, enjoying the silence. Watching the way the evening breeze through his open window twirled the thin white curtain around.
“How do you know that?”
“Mabel told me.”
Another silence, this one more strained. For as long as it lasted, Stewie couldn’t enjoy anything.
“Honey? You don’t think . . . you don’t hear Mabel saying anything to you, do you?”
It hurt Stewie, that she would allow for the possibility that he was crazy. He felt it as a burning in his belly while he answered.
“Of course not. What do you think about me, anyway?”
“Don’t take offense. Just something about the way you said it. You said she told you it wouldn’t be much longer.”
“Well, she did. And I can’t explain how. You just have to understand animals. You don’t spend very much time with them, so you don’t know. You just have to let them know you’re listening. That you want to hear what they want to say. If they know somebody cares how they feel, they’ll let you know. I can’t explain it. You just pay attention, and you know.”
“Okay. That sounds reasonable, I guess. So she told you . . .”
“She’s tired.”
“Well, honey. We’re all tired.”
“She’s different tired. Her lungs are old. She can’t breathe with them as well as she used to. Pretty soon she just won’t want to do it anymore. It’s too hard.”
His sister didn’t answer right away, so he went back to watching the curtain blow. The breeze through the window had begun to feel cool, and it felt good to him. But he wasn’t sure if the draft would be good for Mabel, so he pulled a thin, threadbare blanket over most of her box. He left open the part where her head was. He didn’t want to make things harder for her poor old lungs.
“You said something a minute ago,” Stacey began. “It was something about knowing someone’s listening and wants to know how you feel. Is that something that would help you as much as it helps the animals?”
He chewed that over for a minute, but wasn’t sure how to get it to take on a recognizable shape in his brain.
“What would that be like?”
“Like I would take you to an appointment. With a new person. And you would tell this person how you feel and what your problems are.”
“Why a new person? Why not an old one like you or Theo?”
“Because . . . this person . . . it would be someone whose job it is to know how to solve people’s problems.”
“I don’t have problems,” Stewie said.
“Really? Are you sure?”
“I have sad. But that’s not the same as problems. Problems are something you have to figure out a way to solve. You can’t solve sad.”
“Maybe . . . ,” she began. For a moment it struck Stewie that she was listening to him, but with more than just her ears. Listening more the way he listened to the hens. “. . . maybe not knowing how to deal with sad is a problem. And maybe there’s somebody who could help you solve that, by learning to deal better with your feelings.”
Truthfully, Stewie wasn’t sure how he felt about that. What he was able to sense didn’t seem very positive. But apparently it was important to Stacey, and she didn’t ask much of him. It was rare for her to push him in any direction.
“Could I bring Mabel?”
“I was thinking maybe we’d do this later. After she’s gone and doesn’t need you anymore. You said yourself it won’t be very long.”
“I guess I could try it,” Stewie said, though he knew he would regret having said so as the time drew nearer.
“You’re a very fine little guy,” Stacey said. “And I appreciate you.”
That made everything worthwhile. That replaced the burning in his belly with a warm buzz that seemed to have a vibration to it.
“In the meantime,” she said, “is there anybody it would help you to see? Somebody you might want to have come here for a visit? Maybe a friend from school? You haven’t been getting out much.”
“No,” Stewie said. And he did not feel inclined to elaborate.
“You have friends at school, right?”
“Yeah. Sort of. But nobody who’d be any help with a thing like this.”
“Okay. Well, if there’s anybody else you can think of . . .”
She began the process of pulling to her feet as she spoke.
“Maybe Marilyn,” he said.
“Who’s Marilyn?”
She was towering over him now. He did not look up.
“That lady I told you about.”
“The one you said reminds you of Gam?”
“Yeah. That one.”
“Stewie. Honey. We hardly know that lady. She’s just somebody you sold eggs to a couple of times. I’d feel funny asking her to come here for a visit.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to, then. You just asked if there was anybody . . .”
“I would just feel . . .”
“Theo knows her. Maybe Theo could ask her.”
Stewie heard his sister sigh. She sounded tired. Mabel-tired.
“Let me think about that,” she said.
And she left his room and left him alone. Left him to wonder if his family was really brave enough to do a thing like that for him or not.
Stewie clutched Mabel more tightly to his belly and dug into his spaghetti.
He looked up—a bit guiltily, though he hadn’t meant it that way—at Stacey and then Theo. They both returned his gaze evenly.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Stewie said.
“Oh?” Stacey sounded far away in her own head, as though she barely heard herself saying it. “What am I thinking?”
“That I told you six days ago it wouldn’t be much longer. That Mabel told me it wouldn’t. And it was true. That was all true. All about how her lungs are getting weak and it’s just too much trouble. And how pretty soon she just won’t want to do it anymore. It just won’t be worth it. But . . .”
He found it hard to finish that thought.
“But what?” Stacey asked.
When she asked it, Stewie realized she was tired and exasperated. It came through in her voice.
Theo’s head was up, and he was staring at Stewie. Waiting, apparently. But he did not choose to jump into the conversation.
“It’s hard to think how to say it.”
“Try. I’m having a little trouble understanding.”
“It’s her life.”
“Yeah. I know it’s her life, honey.”
“No, I mean it’s her life. Her one life. People want their lives. Right? Everybody wants their life. Right?”
“Not everybody,” Theo said, in that deep bass voice he had developed. “People commit suicide.”
“Theo!” Stacey barked. “That’s hardly appropriate at the dinner table.”
“Well, they do.” He looked down at his plate of spaghetti, his face flaming red. “I’m just saying.”
Stacey sighed deeply and turned her face back to Stewie. “We’ll give it a little more time, honey. But we can’t do this forever.”
Stewie was convinced—and would forever feel—that his beloved hen had understood Stacey’s final proclamation at the dinner table earlier that evening. He knew she hadn’t understood the words, because chickens don’t understand much English. Still, he felt she must have picked up on the overall feelings surrounding the situation.
Because she woke him that night and told him it was time for her to go.
How she woke him he would never know. He couldn’t have felt any movement from her, because she was in her box. And he didn’t think she had made a sound. But he was bumped out of a dream just as surely as he would have been if someone had shaken his shoulder.
He had been curled up on the rug, around her box, but he sat up and turned on the soft light beside his bed. He looked into her eyes and she looked back.
“Okay,” he said, and started to cry. “If that’s the way it’s got to be.”