“No, I’ve never done anything like that,” I said.
“So,” she said. “Ask me anything. What do you want to know? Ask away. I mean it.”
I shrugged. “Have you and Dwight been together long?”
“Good question! It’s hard to pinpoint when we went from hanging out to really being together, you know? What’s funny is I actually used to be Dericka’s babysitter when she was little.”
“Huh. Interesting,” I said.
“I knew everyone in the family before I knew Dwight. I was hanging around with all of them for years. I was over here three times a week, before I’d even met Dwighty Whitey. Did you notice that’s my little name for him? There’s a long story there. I’ll tell you some other time. Anyway, Dwighty was at college. I’d only heard about him and seen his picture, but now, dunt dunt da dunt, we’re married. It’s funny how things work out. Who do you think is cuter?” She asked, tapping a picture on the bookshelf of Bellamy and one beside it of Dwight.
“Bellamy,” I said.
“Hmmm,” she said. “I like… both. Just kidding. But yeah, isn’t it funny how things work out?” She recapped her water bottle and tipped it upside down, right side up, upside down. Then she turned it right side up again and carefully balanced it on her head.
“It is funny, isn’t it?” I agreed. I was being as boring and lame as possible, the way I get when I don’t want to lead someone on.
“Emma, you never know what connects two people. People are like puzzle pieces. Sometimes they click right together, sometimes they don’t. Some people are universal pieces who can click together with lots of other people. And then some people are corner pieces who have way less options. They can only click with a small number of people.” The whole time she talked the bottle stayed balanced on her head. Perhaps she was trying to send me the message that even though she hadn’t competed in today’s challenges, she was capable of performing unusual physical feats as well.
“What a great analogy,” I said. “Puzzle pieces.” I nodded as though I really liked this. What I was actually thinking about was Pete. I wished he was here to see this weirdness. He would find the whole situation funny. We would laugh about it. I wondered if Bellamy would think it was funny, or if he would be as defensive towards Sherifaye as she was towards him. I was also wondering if they possibly had ever hooked up. God, I hoped not!
“Puzz ell Peeee sezzzzz,” she said deliberately.
“Yup,” I said. “Do you mind? I think I’m going to grab a refill.”
She took the water bottle off her head and took another drink. “Wait a minute. I want to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know about Charles Lindbergh?”
“Well, I know about him flying across the ocean. And his baby was kidnapped, right? I don’t know much else about him.”
“Now there’s an interesting one. You could read up on him every day for a month and you’d only be seeing the tip of the iceberg. They should make the study of Charles Lindbergh a college major. A person could be a Charles Lindberghologist. First of all, he fathered a lot of secret children. Because he believed in eugenics.”
I wasn’t sure what eugenics were. “Wow. How… disloyal and… careless of him,” I said.
“Careless?” she hissed with a furious wrath. “It was intentional.”
“Oh.” In my head I was thinking Google Youjennicks as soon as you get home.
“I think Dwight’s dad might feel the same way. Secretly, what attractive, successful person doesn’t, right? But it could be a real slippery slope. Luckily, the losers of society are popping out babies left and right so they have nothing to worry about. They won’t go extinct anytime soon. Dwight and I are thinking Delaney Linden for a girl and Dwight Junior for a boy. What do you think?”
“Those are nice names.”
“Linden sounds like Lindbergh. How strange that I never noticed that before. You’d better not steal them,” she said.
“Your children?” I asked.
“The names! You’d better not steal my names.”
“Of course I won’t. Um, please excuse me,” I said, edging towards the door.
Sherifaye casually shifted one of her long legs, scratched it, and in doing so plunked it up onto an end table, her dirty shoe amidst the knickknacks. A chunk of mud fell into one of Kate’s dishes of potpourri; she gave the potpourri a quick little flick and the mud was buried beneath a pinecone. “She’ll never know,” she said, like we were sharing some uniting daughter-in-law secret. Her leg separated me from the doorway like a fence. She smiled and put her hand on a bookshelf to keep her balance. “Just stretching,” she murmured.
It was too much for me to handle. “I’m going to get a refill,” I said, holding up my glass and scoping out the best route around her.
“Wait, Emma! No,” she said. “If you’re so thirsty, have some of my water.”