“Well, let’s wait a minute,” Ronny said. “I don’t want to leave that pan of water there.”

“I’m through with it anyway,” she said, and stood up, and walked to the bed, feet dripping. She dried them with a slip that had fallen on the floor. “That’s better. Now you boys go on so I can turn out the light. You ought not to be in my bedroom anyway. I don’t allow you boys to come in my bedroom.”

Ben picked up the pan of water and waited. Ronny said, “We’re so sorry. We just needed to get your feet warm.”

“Oh, that’s so nice,” she said, pulling up the blanket and setting her glasses onto the bed. She reached over to click off the lamp. “My feet do feel so warm now. I hope I get warm all over.” She lay into her pillows and closed her eyes. Ronny backed out the door, closed it quietly.

They waited and listened, Ben taking a deep breath, slumping against the doorsill, running a hand through his hair. He laid a heavy hand on Ronny’s shoulder, the warmth and weight resonant with something beyond their coming together again, into some other feeling, Ben stoic, looking down at the worn floorboards. “Can we go upstairs?”

“I don’t know,” Ronny said. “I’m scared she’ll start wandering again.”

Ben nodded, rubbing his face, straightening from the door. “We can leave the door open. I’ll come down to check on her.” When Ronny failed to answer at once, Ben’s expression darkened. “I won’t hurt you. Jesus.”

“That’s not the problem.”

“There ain’t a problem,” Ben said, and took Ronny by the elbow, guided him to the stairs. They watched each other, the moment searing, Ben shaken and Ronny heavy; here was Ben who had avoided him all semester, now wholly agitated, breathing like he had run a mile, nostrils wide, licking his lower lip.

But it wasn’t sex. They came together in the dark with the door open, only to stand near, to breathe, to listen to the ticking windup clock. Almost but not quite touching along the fronts of their bodies, heartbeats shaking, not looking at each other, Ben’s eyes closed most of the time, a deep pain lining his face, and then his arms reaching around Ronny, pulling bodies into fusion, and out of him this sigh, so long and quiet. Their heads together, Ben’s curls on Ronny’s ear. “You know what I’m thinking about?” Ben asked.

He did. It had occurred to him when they were helping Miss Dee to bed. “Your mom.”

A low sound, like a sob turned into voice, extended, but so quiet and slow it almost pooled between them. “Miss Dee is so little,” Ben said.

“I know. When I saw her out walking like that, in her nightgown. She would be so embarrassed.”

“Does she have anybody to take care of her?”

“A niece. But she doesn’t come around all that much. And she’s pretty old, too.”

In the dark and quiet there was a difference that Ronny could feel, that something had settled inside Ben, not only in this moment but altogether, a change in his body, in the spirit that coursed through him, an umbra of gravity, a feeling that he had aged. He was calm, even with the thought of his mother ringing around him. Ronny led him to the bed, sat him down, pulled the chair from the desk and moved it close, touched their fingertips together, felt Ben watching him. Ben edged the dark curls out of his eyes. “I just want to stay here, okay? I won’t bother you.”