Chasing the Bear

Chapter 31

It was a pretty bad neighborhood. Mean-looking dogs behind chain-link fences. Chickens in some of the yards. Streetlights few and far apart. I wasn't comfortable. But I figured if Jeannie could live there, I could walk through it.

I didn't want to go to dinner at Jeannie's house. But her mother had invited me, and I couldn't just say no, so here I was.

Mrs. Haden met me at the door and I put out my hand like a well-brought-up boy. She took it and then pulled me to her and gave me a hug. I had very little experience at being hugged by a woman. She was wearing a lot of perfume.

"Oh, you dear thing," she said. "Jeannie's told me so much about you."

I nodded.

"And you're so handsome too," Mrs. Haden said.

I sort of nodded and sort of shrugged.

"I just had to meet you and thank you for saving my little girl," she said.

I didn't know what to say, so I nodded again and smiled as hard as I could.

"Come in, sit down, would you like a Coca-Cola? Jeannie, get him something while I look in the oven."

"Want a Coke?" Jeannie said.

"Okay," I said.

She and her mother both went to the kitchen. They looked sort of alike. Except Mrs. Haden was about twenty years older than Jeannie and looked like she might have had a hard life. She was still kind of pretty. Her hair was long. She was slim, and she wore a lot of makeup. She had on a black dress with no sleeves and black high-heeled shoes. It seemed very fashionable to me, and I wondered why she dressed up for dinner with her daughter and a fourteen-year-old kid.

Jeannie and I drank our Coke uneasily in the living room. Jeannie's house wasn't much. I'd been there once before with Jeannie when her mother was at work. The house was shaped sort of like a railroad car. There was a little front porch. Then you went in the front door into the living room, through the living room to the kitchen, through the kitchen to a bedroom, and in a little L off that bedroom there was a bath and another bedroom.

Mrs. Haden had cooked a chicken and some white rice and some frozen peas. We sat at the kitchen table. There was a candle lit on the table. Mrs. Haden was drinking some pink wine. "I'm sorry I can't offer you some," Mrs. Haden said. "But I couldn't without your father's permission."

"That's okay, ma'am," I said. "I don't enjoy wine so much."

Actually I didn't know if I enjoyed wine or not. I wasn't sure I'd ever had any.

"Oh, you will," she said, and drank some from her glass.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"Jeannie says you don't have a mother," Mrs. Haden said.

I ate some chicken. It was kind of dry.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You live with your father?" she said.

"And my two uncles," I said.

"Isn't that interesting," she said. "Three brothers raising a child."

"Actually they are my mother's brothers," I said. "My father and them were friends and when my mother died, they moved in to help out."

"Do you remember your mother?"

"No, ma'am."

"Three men and a boy and no women," she said.

She drank the rest of the wine in her glass.

"Oh, there's women," I said. "My father and my uncles all have a bunch of girlfriends, but none of them has got married."

Mrs. Haden gave herself some more wine.

"A house full of boys," she said.

"I guess so."

"Probably living on peanut butter sandwiches and cold beans from the can," Mrs. Haden said.

"We take turns cooking," I said.

"You too?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do you suppose they'd like to come here with you next time for a home-cooked meal?" Mrs. Haden said.

"I guess so," I said.

"Well, that's what I'm going to do," she said. "I'm going to invite them for a home-cooked meal."

I looked at Jeannie. She smiled blankly. I nodded.

"That would be nice," I said.