And now the students had decided to turn the dining room into Señor Mendoza’s room, on the theory that our geriatric guest might not be able to make it to the second story. These days I wasn’t too keen on going up and down stairs myself. When we bought our three-story Victorian house, Michael and I had been charmed by the twelve-foot ceilings on the ground floor, but now I was all too conscious of the twelve-foot stairway.
Half a dozen students swarmed in and out of the dining room, clearing out the sleeping bags, suitcases, knapsacks, and other paraphernalia and hauling most of it upstairs. That accounted for the thumps and thuds. Another two students were assembling a bed frame in one corner.
“Make way!” I heard someone shout behind me. “Mattress coming through!” I lumbered out of the way as nimbly as I could, which wasn’t very—these days I had the maneuverability and turning radius of an aircraft carrier.
“Oh, sorry, Mrs. Waterston,” said one of the students carrying the mattress. “We didn’t see it was you.”
“No problem,” I said. “Could someone do me a small favor?”
Three students leaped to my side. I handed Tawaret to a willowy redhead almost as tall as my five foot ten. I was fairly sure her name was Alice, but given how bad my short-term memory was at the moment, I decided to avoid testing that theory.
“Could you take this and put it on one of the shelves in the library?”
“What is it?”
“Good luck statue,” I said. “Scares away demons.”
“Awesome,” Probable Alice said, and she disappeared with Tawaret under one arm.
“That would scare away anything,” said a blond student whose name escaped me.
“Yes, and I have no intention of letting it scare Woodward and Bernstein,” I said, patting my stomach.
“Is that really what you’re going to call them?” the blonde asked. From the look on her face, I deduced she didn’t approve.
“No,” I said. “But we haven’t settled on names yet because we’ve chosen not to know the gender. My doctor refers to them as P and non-P, for presenting and non-presenting.”
“Presenting what?” she asked.
“Presenting is doctor talk for positioned to come out first,” I said.
“Whoa, you mean even in the womb, one of the kids is destined to be the younger?” she asked. “Who knew?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’m not betting on it. Non-P is pretty stubborn, and I wouldn’t put it past him or her to thrash around and shove P out of the way. And as you can see, P and non-P are pretty impersonal, so we usually refer to them by whatever nicknames come to mind at the moment.”
“Like Woodward and Bernstein,” the blonde said.
“Or Tom and Jerry,” I said. “Thelma and Louise. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
“Cool,” she said. Did she really think so, or was she only humoring her favorite professor’s boring wife?
“How about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?” she asked.
“Good one,” I said. “I’ll spring it on Michael later.”
She beamed. Actually, we’d already used that one, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
I’d been maneuvering through the swarms of students toward the front door as we spoke. I almost tripped over Spike, our dog, who still hadn’t figured out that in my present condition, I couldn’t even see my own feet, much less an eight-and-a-half-pound fur ball dancing around them. Or maybe he was doing it deliberately. Spike had been known to bite the hand that fed him, so why should I be surprised if he tried to trip the owner of that hand?
“Someone get Spike out of the way,” I said as I waddled over to the doorway to greet our guest. Or maybe I should drag Mendoza inside—why were they keeping an elderly visitor standing on the front porch so long? Did they want him to get pneumonia?
Just then the door opened with a burst of arctic air, and Señor Mendoza limped in, leaning heavily on a walking stick and bundled in a thick overcoat that was clearly intended for a much taller man—the hem dragged along the floor behind him. He was about five foot four, though he might have been taller if he weren’t so stooped. He had a wild mane of white hair, a ragged white beard, and an irrepressible twinkle in his eyes.
He also reeked of tobacco, which probably explained what he’d been doing outside—having one last smoke before entering the house.
“Welcome to America!” he exclaimed, waving his stick in the air. “I am Ignacio Mendoza! Happy to meet you!”
Michael followed Señor Mendoza in, helped him out of the overcoat and hung it on one of the coatracks, all the while making conversation in rapid-fire Spanish.