Who Made Stevie Crye? Read Free Page B

reference books, her files, and her telephone.
    Unfortunately, Stevie despised the Kensingtons’ old machine. Frequent occurrences of type clash cut down her speed, the platen was loose, and ten minutes of playing the damn thing at the requisite energetic fortissimo reduced her arms to limp, sodden rags. Besides, the c , q , u , o , and e produced by the dilapidated Smith-Corona all looked like miniature bowling balls or piratical black spots, so greasy were the raised characters on the typebars. You came to such a machine only in an emergency. Because the Kensingtons put their other typewriter (a newer electric model) to regular daily use, Stevie could hardly ask to borrow that one. She had to get her Exceleriter repaired as soon as possible.
    But where? And by whom?
    At ten minutes to three Stevie shuffled her manuscript pages together, made more than a dozen hurried corrections with a leaky Bic pen, and prayed that her editor at the Ledger would forgive her the unconscionable messiness of the final few paragraphs. After arranging a dust cover patched with grimy strips of masking tape on the boxy machine, she bumped into Dr. Elsa in the clinic’s narrow hall.
    “You’ve been a lifesaver, Elsa. I’ve got to drop this off at the post office and get home to meet Marella.”
    “What about Teddy?”
    “Oh, he’s got basketball practice at the middle school. Thirteen years old and Dr. Sam measured him at five feet seven last month, half a head taller than You-Know-Who. Seems like yesterday he was in swaddling clothes. Crap-laden Pampers, anyway. I don’t expect him until six-thirty or seven.”
    Dr. Elsa, her habitual haggard cheerfulness giving way to a penetrating concern, gripped Stevie by the shoulders. “You all right, kiddo? Every time I see that vein ticking in your temple I want to take your blood pressure. Kids aren’t the only ones need checkups, you know.”
    “All I’m sick about’s my typewriter, Elsa.”
    “If you’re in a real bind, take ours. Not that clunker in there, the good one Sherry’s usin’ up front.”
    “No. I couldn’t. I’m not going to.” Grasping one of Dr. Elsa’s bony red hands, Stevie squeezed it companionably. “I need someone to talk to, though. You think you could come by this evening? Drop in for some wine and cheese dip? I’ve had the wine since Christmas, but the cheese dip’s new—I promise.”
    “You’re on. Look for me around eight. I’ll leave Sam home. This’ll be our own cozy little hen party.”
    “Teddy’ll be there, Elsa.”
    “That’s all right. He’s not a rooster yet .”
    During her time in the clinic, it had begun to drizzle, a depressing histamine mist from on high. Barclay huddled beneath this drifting moisture like a toy city in the hollow hemisphere of a paperweight.
    Back in her VW van, Stevie stifled a sneeze, swung past the post office to deposit her article in a curbside box, and eventually, behind a pair of yolk-colored buses, pulled into the elementary school’s oily-looking parking lot to pick up her daughter. Marella did not need to walk home in the rain. She was a willowy girl with a delicate constitution, a lively ballerina of a third-grader if you overlooked her occasional indispositions. Stevie usually did. Before Ted’s death she had smothered the child with affection. Since then, however, she had adopted a more levelheaded approach to raising her daughter, primarily to keep from spoiling her. Gratifyingly, Marella had never shown any signs of resenting this deliberate change in tactics. She appreciated whatever Stevie or anyone else did for her, and she would be pleasantly surprised to find her mother waiting for her outside the school in this icy mistfall.
    Or so Stevie believed.
    Perversely, then, Marella climbed into the microbus as if it were a taxi tardily arrived from the dispatcher’s. She slumped sideways in the seat next to Stevie’s and let her notebook drop to the floorboard with a rude resounding thump. Her