Free Eggs by Jerry Spinelli Page A

who. You could be ready to croak any minute. ‘A long and happy life.’ A lobster heading for the pot. ‘A long and happy life.’ ”
    She kept saying it in a funny way, her head wobbling like a puppet’s, and David could not keep a laugh gob from popping out. Primrose didn’t seem to notice. “Well, while she’s telling everybody else what a long and happy life they’re gonna have, what kind of a life am
I
having? Huh? What about
my
future? Huh? I’ll tell you what.”
    She held out her hand. She pretended to trace lines on the palm. “Ah, yes, here we are. I see . . . I see . . . a short and crappy life.” She gurgled up some spit, reared back, and sent a hocker flying out the door. “Ptoo!
That’s
what
I
get!”
    She left the car again. She was pacing, flinging her arms, kicking stones. “She’s nutso. A crackpot. Like that nutcake waving at cars all day.” She bent over and flapped her arm goofily at the horizon. As she stomped around the van, David tracked her passing one door, then the other. “I want —” She came back in. “You saw me at the library, remember?”
    David nodded.
    “You know why I was there? Huh?”
    David shook his head.
    “I was there because I never went to sleep with my mother reading to me.” She flopped onto the beanbag chair. “Did you?”
    David nodded.
    “Right. So did everybody else — except me. I try it a couple times every summer. I go to Summer Story Time. I close my eyes. I try to pretend the voice is my mother’s. But it never works. I just keep hearing the story and hearing the story and I never get to sleep.” She snapped her face away from him. She slumped in the beanbag chair.
    In his mind David heard the old familiar words: “Mike Mulligan had a steam shovel, a beautiful red steam shovel. Her name was Mary Anne. . . .” How those words used to spin the drowsies about him night after night when he was little. Even now it tickled him that a steam shovel had a girl’s name. He felt guilty for having such a warm memory in the presence of Primrose’s pain. He wished he could make her feel better, but he could not think of anything to say.
    She was subdued now, dreamy. She reached for the framed portrait. She stared for a long time at the picture in her lap, and David understood that a great and terrible secret had fallen to him. He had been given custody of Primrose’s dream, her heart. He understood that he could not tell her that he knew the truth. Not ever.

24
     
    For two full weeks Margaret Limpert wrestled with the question: Should she or should she not ask David to go with her to Midsummer Night’s Scream?
    Though she knew that grandmothers were welcome, it annoyed her that the annual scary story night at the library was billed as a parent and child event. For that matter, life itself was billed as a parent-child event: grandparents were not exactly banned, but neither were they invited. They were allowed. Grandparents were substitutes, stand-ins, expected to step in and play a role to perfection when the star was ill.
    But what happened when the star was more than ill?
    When her son’s wife had died, Margaret Limpert had grieved as long and deeply as anyone. She had loved Carolyn as her own flesh and blood, and when David and his father came to live in her house, David became her new son in her mind and heart.
    It didn’t take him long to set her straight.
    From the minute he arrived, he had been grumpy and silent and even mean with her. She was not even allowed to call him Davey. She thought she understood. He had lost his mother. He resented another person taking her place. Margaret backed off. Gave him his space, as the saying went.
    But how much space can you give to some one you live with? Someone you love? Was she supposed to let him go out in the cold without his gloves? Was she supposed to send him off to school without pointing out that his fly was open? She gave him what space she could, but matters only got worse.
    Their