Td be finer if I could find a cocktail dress that didn’t make me look like Elsie the Cow. Once I was a size six, do you know that? Before I married your father I was a size six. Now look at me! Elsie the Cow! Moby-damn- Dick!’
‘Mom, you’re not big. In fact just lately you look — ‘
‘Get out, Bobby. Please let Mother alone. I have a headache.’ That night he heard her crying again. The following day he saw her carefully packing one of the dresses into her luggage — the one with the thin straps. The other went back into its store-box: GOWNS BY
LUCIE OF BRIDGEPORT was written across the front in elegant maroon script.
On Monday night, Liz invited Ted Brautigan down to have dinner with them. Bobby loved his mother’s meatloaf and usually asked for seconds, but on this occasion he had to work hard to stuff down a single piece. He was terrified that Ted would trance out and his mother would pitch a fit over it.
His fear proved groundless. Ted spoke pleasantly of his childhood in New Jersey and, when Bobby’s mom asked him, of his job in Hartford. To Bobby he seemed less comfortable talking about accounting than he did reminiscing about sleighing as a kid, but his mom didn’t appear to notice. Ted did ask for a second slice of meatloaf.
When the meal was over and the table cleared, Liz gave Ted a list of telephone numbers, including those of Dr Gordon, the Sterling House Summer Rec office, and the Warwick Hotel. ‘If there are any problems, I want to hear from you. Okay?’
Ted nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘Bobby? No big worries?’ She put her hand briefly on his forehead, the way she used to do when he complained of feeling feverish.
‘Nope. We’ll have a blast. Won’t we, Mr Brautigan?’
‘Oh, call him Ted,’ Liz almost snapped. ‘If he’s going to be sleeping in our living room, I guess I better call him Ted, too. May I?’
‘Indeed you may. Let it be Ted from this moment on.’
He smiled. Bobby thought it was a sweet smile, open and friendly. He didn’t understand how anyone could resist it. But his mother could and did. Even now, while she was returning Ted’s smile, he saw the hand with the Kleenex in it tightening and loosening in its old familiar gesture of anxious displeasure. One of her absolute favorite sayings now came to Bobby’s mind: I’d trust him (or her) as far as I could sling a piano.
‘And from now on I’m Liz.’ She held out a hand across the table and they shook like people meeting for the first time . . . except Bobby knew his mother’s mind was already made up on the subject of Ted Brautigan. If her back hadn’t been against the wall, she never would have trusted Bobby with him. Not in a million years.
She opened her purse and took out a plain white envelope. ‘There’s ten dollars in here,’ she said, handing the envelope to Ted. ‘You boys will want to eat out at least one night, I expect
— Bobby likes the Colony Diner, if that’s all right with you — and you may want to take in a movie, as well. I don’t know what else there might be, but it’s best to have a little cushion, don’t you think?’
‘Always better safe than sorry,’ Ted agreed, tucking the envelope carefully into the front pocket of his slacks, ‘but I don’t expect we’ll go through anything like ten dollars in three days. Will we, Bobby?’
‘Gee, no, I don’t see how we could.’
‘Waste not, want not,’ Liz said — it was another of her favorites, right up there with the fool and his money soon parted. She plucked a cigarette out of the pack on the table beside the sofa and lit it with a hand which was not quite steady. ‘You boys will be fine. Probably have a better time than I will.’
Looking at her ragged, bitten fingernails, Bobby thought, That’s for sure.
His mom and the others were going to Providence in Mr Biderman’s car, and the next morning at seven o’clock Liz and Bobby Garfield stood on the porch, waiting for it to show up. The air had that early hazy hush that meant the hot days of summer had arrived. From Asher Avenue came the hoot and rumble of heavy going-to-work traffic, but down here on Broad there was only the occasional passing car or delivery truck. Bobby could hear the hisha-hisha of lawn-sprinklers, and, from the other side of the block, the endless roop-roop-roop of Bowser. Bowser sounded the same whether it was June or January; to Bobby Garfield, Bowser seemed as changeless as God.