Stay, Rell

“Take your coat off,” Yasto said. “You make the room look cold.”

I had put it on to leave.

He was eighty-seven. I looked about thirty, as I had looked for longer than I could remember clearly. Something had happened to me centuries ago, and age had stopped. It had not stopped for anyone I loved.

Yasto knew that. We had been friends for forty years, ever since he sold me a tin of tea and complained that I looked too young to want that kind.

Now his niece, Marda, bought the tea. He still complained about it.

“I’ve been here all morning,” I said.

“Then you know your way around.”

From the doorway, Marda held up a paper bag of rolls. “I’m going upstairs for a rest. Can you stay while I sleep?”

There was family in and out of the house every day. Yasto was growing weaker, and none of us knew how many more days he would have. Marda had been awake much of the night. Her need was simpler than mine.

I said yes and took off the coat.

She put the rolls in the kitchen, told her uncle she would see him later, and went upstairs. Her steps grew slow near the top.

Yasto pointed at the book beside his chair.

“Page seventy-three.”

“You’ve read that one before.”

“I’ve read most things before. Read it.”

I opened the detective novel. The paper had gone soft at the edges. A dog had vanished from a house with a locked front gate. Somebody had found a blue pawprint near the back shed. The gardener said he had never opened the shed that day, although its floor had just been painted.

“The gardener took it,” I said.

“You haven’t reached the question yet.”

“He lied.”

“People lie when they’ve done something stupid, too.”

I read another page. The detective examined the gate again.

“This happened to me once,” I began. “There was a man who kept hunting dogs—”

“Was that before the paper they print books on?”

“Not quite.”

“I don’t want your hunting dogs. I want this dog.”

He closed his eyes, but I could tell he was still listening. He frowned whenever the detective said something foolish.

I read until the light crossed his slippers. Then I stopped at the end of a chapter and looked toward the hall.

Yasto opened one eye. “You’re measuring the door.”

“I have a train ticket.”

“Can you change it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have a piece of paper.”

I laughed. He didn’t. He waited.

I had done this before: chosen a visit that could still pass for a good last memory, then left while the person could wave. Later, someone would write to me. By then, I would have a room in another town and a reason I had needed to go.

Yasto had seen me through three moves. He had never asked how many other doors I had measured.

“I don’t know how to stay for this,” I said.

“Neither do I.”

His hands lay on the blanket. One had a small brown mark from the sun, shaped almost like an island.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Read badly. You do that well.”

“I don’t read badly.”

“You give every suspect the same voice.”

I gave the gardener a very low voice. Yasto made a sound that might have been a laugh or a complaint.

When he grew tired, he asked me to stop. I sat with the open book on my knee. Outside, somebody dragged a bin over the paving stones. The room smelled of weak tea and the rolls Marda had brought.

Yasto slept. I could have put down the book and left without an argument.

Instead, I moved my chair so its leg would stop creaking.

Marda came down in the late afternoon with her hair loose and a pillow mark on her cheek. She checked the kitchen clock and asked whether I wanted supper.

I looked at Yasto. He was awake again.

“Has the detective found it?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“The dog went into the shed. The gardener shut it in by mistake.”

“That doesn’t explain why he lied.”

“He was embarrassed. People do that.”

Marda took the empty cups. “You can argue over soup.”

I stayed for supper. I changed the ticket afterward, sitting at their kitchen table. Yasto had not asked me to promise every day ahead of us. He had asked for the afternoon, and then the afternoon had become evening.

I returned the next day. Sometimes we read. Sometimes he wanted silence. Once he told me to go and let his cousin visit without competing for a chair. I went for a walk and came back later.

He died the following week. His family was there, and I was there. There was no message saved for me. I held his hand because it was his hand.

At the funeral, Marda did most of the talking. I listened to stories I knew and stories I had never heard. Yasto had sold shoes before tea. He had once refused to sell either to a man who wanted to pay with a live goose. I wished I had asked about that.

The morning after the funeral, I sat in the house with Marda. She had washing to sort. I had no train booked.

“What happened to the dog?” she asked.

I looked at her.

“He told me you thought the gardener stole it. Did you finish?”

“No.”

“Find the last chapter. I want to know.”

The book was still beside Yasto’s chair. I brought it to the kitchen and turned past the chapters we had not reached. The dog had slipped into the shed while the floor was being painted. The gardener had shut the door, then lied about opening it because he was ashamed of his mistake.

I read the paragraph aloud.

Marda paused with a shirt over her arm. “Did it walk on the wet floor all that time?”

“The book doesn’t say.”

“It should say.”

I turned back a page. “Perhaps it does. Wait.”