The Night I Knocked on Her Door

The pajamas

The next night was a work night.

At four o’clock I told Emma what I wanted to do. She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Then she said, “We should bring something.”

“Like what?”

“Brownies. Dad always brought her something.”

So Emma made a pan of brownies from the box, the way Josh made them, with an extra egg so they come out cakey. She put them in the nine-by-thirteen with the blue lid and set them on the counter to cool.

At six o’clock I put the boys in their pajamas. Sam’s are the green ones with dinosaurs. Cole’s are flannel with deer on them, a Christmas present from Jeff. I put their winter boots on over their pajama feet because there was snow on the ground, an inch or two from Sunday, crusted and gray at the edges of the street.

I packed the little overnight bag we use for Grandma’s in Defiance. Sam’s stuffed rabbit. Cole’s library book. A pull-up for Sam just in case, which he would have died if he’d known about. Two clean pairs of underwear and two pairs of socks.

I held their toothbrushes in my hand. Sam’s green dinosaur one. Cole’s plain blue one.

“Why are we going in our jammies?” Cole said.

“Because we’re going to ask Miss Doyle for a favor,” I said. “And I want her to see exactly what the favor is.”

I put on my scrubs and my coat and didn’t zip it. I was going straight to work after.

At 6:15 we went out the front door.

Her porch

It was full dark already in the way February gets dark. The porch lights were on up and down the street, and you could smell somebody’s woodstove. The gravel crunched under the boys’ boots.

Emma stayed on our porch with the brownies. We’d decided that. She was going to bring them over after, so it didn’t look like a bribe. She was fourteen and she was in charge of how things looked.

Marilyn’s porch has three concrete steps and a black iron rail Josh put back on its bolts two summers ago. I went up the steps with Sam’s hand in mine and Cole right behind.

I knocked. Not loud. Just regular.

The porch light was already on. I heard the television go quiet inside. I heard her slippers on the floor. I heard the deadbolt.

Marilyn Doyle opened the door in a cardigan with a tissue tucked in the sleeve. She looked at me in my scrubs. She looked down at Sam in his dinosaurs and Cole in his deer. She looked at the toothbrushes in my hand.

Her face went white. Then it went red.

I had practiced a lot of things to say. I said none of them.

Cole held on to the back of my coat. Sam pointed at my hand and said, “Mine’s the dinosaur,” and Marilyn’s chin started to shake.

“Miss Doyle,” I said. “You were right. They shouldn’t be alone. I can’t afford a sitter. I work tonight and Thursday and Saturday, seven to seven. Would you help me? Would you…”

“Yes.”

She said it before I could finish. She said it so fast it came out like a cough.

“Yes,” she said again. “Get them in here, it’s cold. Get those boys in here.”