“From Hummingbirds,” Eden said. “Ponytails. Little, wiry, and mouthy.”
“Hummingbirds are...”
“A sort of scout troop. They do crafts, earn badges, shred my nerves, stuff like that. Apparently they also get ad hoc vocabulary lessons when my back is turned.” She fixed her little daughter with a quelling stare.
Ava was missing alotof interesting stuff by being away in San Francisco.
“Gosh, Tod sounds like a charming guy,” she said.
“He’s a senior in high school. He drives a yellow car that has a gray door,” Annelise volunteered. “He has a fuzzy mustache.” She put her finger beneath her nose.
“Well, that explains a lot,” Ava said. “He’s probably just a little bitter. Growing a mustache as splendid as your grandpa’s takes years. So does owning great cars. Well, usually.”
She thought of Mac and the Audi and she wondered what became of that car. If it had been taken from him, too.
“We’re sorry if we hurt your feelings, Avalon,” Eden said firmly. “Aren’t we, Annelise?”
Annelise nodded, big eyes limpid with sympathy. Her hands knit together worriedly. “I really am sorry, Auntie Ava.”
“Oh, ha ha, don’t be silly. No worries, you guys,” Avalon managed gamely. “C’mon! You know me. You’d have to do a lot worse to offend me. Like maybe shtup my inter...”
Crap.
Eden closed her eyes and shook her head slowly to and fro.
“What’sshtup?” Annelise of course missed nothing, including the abrupt loaded little silence.
“I meant to saystuff, baby, but I’m so tired my tongue tripped over itself.”
Avalon’s dad sighed. “I’m going to go outside and poke around a bit. We have to get going but we’ll be back with some furniture tonight, eh?” He smooched her on the cheek, and so did her mom.
“We have to roll, too,” Eden said. “Annelise has a project on the Greeks due tomorrow and we have to get poster board. Maybe we’ll get the full tour later this week?”
“If you can get away, that would be awesome.”
Eden squeezed Avalon in a hard hug on her way out and low-voiced her good-byes. “I’ll visualize Corbin doubled over from a groin injury. Maybe I can have the Hummingbirds make voodoo dolls and stick pins in him.”
“I’m on board with that. Every little girl needs a merit badge for Revenge.”
Eden laughed.
And then everyone was gone.
The quiet in the house was socomplete. It was like she was a bug captured in a jar. Only the apocalypse would visit that kind of silence upon San Francisco.
She knew if she remained still long enough, the country’s ambient sounds would reveal themselves to her. The house would creak and pop and settle with wind and temperature; outside she’d tune into the birds and squirrels, the rustles in the grass and trees.
She opened the sash window in the living room and stood by, listened.
She thought she heard the low hum of a riding lawnmower off in the distance. The bleating of goats.
Her heart gave an involuntary little jolt.
Like a bird pecking its way out of an egg.
She drove downtown and stopped in at the hardware store to buy a slew of cleaning and scraping things, brooms and mops and buckets and sponges and the like, and took home about a ream of those paper paint samples. She stopped in at the grocery store to get some tea and food that could be noshed from a box or heated in the oven. By the time she got back Truck Donegal and Giorgio and her parents had arrived with the rec room couch, the squashy old bean bag chair, a short fridge, her twin bed, a card table, and a couple of chairs. She paid them in beer and pizza.
When they were gone, Avalon threw her yoga pants and T-shirt in the washing machine and found an old T-shirt and leggings her mom had stuffed into her gym bag. She pored over paint samples as if they were the Rosetta stone that would crack the code on all of her life issues, sorting into stacks she considered “probablies,” “love but have no use for,” and “afternoon light.”
