Becky-Ma. For Larry she poured cornflakes into a bowl, sliced a banana over the cereal, and filled a jug with milk.
She made a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and put it in Larry's lunch box with an apple, a Hershey bar and a small bottle of orange juice. She put the lunch box in his school bag and added his home-reading book and his baseball glove, a present from his father.
On the radio, a reporter was interviewing sightseers on the beach near Cape Canaveral who were hoping to see a rocket launch.
Larry came into the kitchen with his shoelaces untied and his shirt buttons done up awry. She straightened him out, got him started on his cornflakes, and began to scramble eggs.
It was eight-fifteen, and she was almost caught up. She loved her son and her mother, but a secret part of her resented the drudgery of taking care of them.
The radio reporter was now interviewing an army spokesman. 'Aren't these rubbernecks in danger? What if the rocket goes off course and crash-lands right here on the beach?'
'There's no danger of that, sir,' came the reply. 'Every rocket has a self-destruct mechanism. If it veers off course it will be blown up in mid-air.'
'But how can you blow it up after it's already taken off?'
'The explosive device is triggered by a radio signal sent by the range safety officer.'
'That sounds dangerous in itself. Some radio ham fooling around might accidentally set it off.'
'The mechanism responds only to a complex signal, like a code. These rockets are expensive, we don't take any risks.'
Larry said: 'I have to make a space rocket today. Can I take the yoghurt pot to school?'
'No, you can't, it's half full,' she told him.
'But I have to take some containers! Miss Page will be mad if I don't' He was near to tears with the suddenness of a seven-year-old.
'What do you need containers for?'
'To make a space rocket! She told us last week.'
Billie sighed. 'Larry, if you had told me last week, I would have saved a whole bunch of stuff for you. How many times must I ask you not to leave things until the last minute?'
'Well, what am I gonna do?'
'I'll find you something. We'll put the yoghurt in a bowl, and ... what kind of containers do you want?'
'Rocket shape.' -
Billie wondered if schoolteachers ever thought about the amount of work they created for busy mothers when they blithely instructed children to bring things from home. She put buttered toast on three plates and served the scrambled eggs, but she did not eat her own. She went around the house and got a tube-shaped cardboard detergent container, a plastic liquid-soap bottle, an ice-cream carton, and a heart-shaped chocolate box.
Most of the packaging showed the products being used by families - generally a pretty housewife and two happy kids, with a pipe-smoking father in the background. She wondered if other women resented the stereotype as much as she did. She had never lived in a family like that Her father, a poor tailor in Dallas, had died when she was a baby, and her mother had brought up five children in grinding poverty. Billie herself had been divorced since Larry was ,two. There were plenty of families without a man, where the mother was a widow, a divorcee, or what used to be called a fallen woman. But they did not show such families on the cornflakes boxes.
She put all the containers in a shopping bag for Larry to carry to school.
'Oh, boy, I bet I have more than anyone!' he said. 'Thanks, Mom.'
Her breakfast was cold, but Larry was happy.
A car horn tooted outside, and Billie quickly checked her 'appearance in the glass of a cupboard door. Her curly black hair had been hastily combed, she had no make-up on except the eyeliner she had failed to remove last night, and she was wearing an oversize pink sweater ... but the effect was kind of sexy.
The back door opened and Roy Brodsky came in. Roy was Larry's best friend, and the boys greeted one another joyously, as if they had been apart for a month instead of just a few hours. Billie had noticed that all Larry's friends were boys now. In kindergarten it had been different, boys and girls playing together indiscriminately. She wondered what psychological change took place, around the age of five, that made children prefer their own gender.
Roy was followed by his father, Harold, a good-looking man with soft brown eyes. Harold Brodsky was a widower: Roy's mother had died in a car wreck. Harold taught chemistry at the George Washington University. Billie and Harold were dating. He looked at her adoringly and said: 'My God, you look gorgeous.' She grinned and kissed his cheek.
Like Larry, Roy had a shopping bag full of cartons. Billie said to Harold: 'Did you have to empty half the containers in your kitchen?'
Yes. I have little cereal bowls of soap flakes, chocolates, and processed cheese. And six toilet rolls without the cardboard cylinder in the middle.'
'Darn, I never thought of toilet rolls!'
He laughed. 'I wonder, would you like to have dinner at my place tonight?'
She was surprised. 'You're going to cook?'
'Not exactly. I thought I'd ask Mrs. Riley to make a casserole that I could warm up.'
'Sure,' she said. She had not had dinner at his house before. They normally went to the movies, to concerts of classical music, or to cocktail parties at the homes of other university professors. She wondered what had prompted him to invite her.
'Roy's going to a cousin's birthday party tonight, and he'll sleep over. We'll have a chance to talk without interruption.'
'Okay,' Billie said thoughtfully. They could talk without interruption at a restaurant, of course. Harold had another reason for inviting her to his house when his child would be away for the night. She glanced at him. His expression was open and candid - he knew what she was thinking. 'That'll be great,' she said.
'I'll pick you up around eight. Come on, boys!' He shepherded the children out through the back door. Larry left without saying goodbye, which Billie had learned to take as a sign that all was well. When he was anxious about something, or coming down with an infection, he would hang back and cling to her.
'Harold is a good man,' her mother said. 'You should many him soon, before he changes his mind.'
'He won't change his mind.'
'Just don't deal him in before he puts his stake on the table.'
Billie smiled at her mother. 'You don't miss much, do you, Ma?'
'I'm old, but I'm not stupid.'
Billie cleared the table and threw her own breakfast in the trash. Rushing now, she stripped her bed, - Larry's, and her mother's, and bundled the sheets into a laundry bag. She showed Becky-Ma the bag and said: 'Remember, all you have to do is hand this to the laundry man when he calls, okay, Ma?
Her mother said: 'I don't have any of my heart pills left.'
'Jesus Christ!' She rarely swore in front of her mother, but she was at the end of her rope. 'Ma, I have a busy day at work today, and I don't have time to go to the goddamn pharmacist!'
'I can't help it, I ran out'
The most infuriating thing about Becky-Ma was the way she could switch from being a perceptive parent to a helpless child. 'You could have told me yesterday that you were running out - I shopped yesterday! I can't shop every day, I have a-job.'
Becky-Ma burst into tears.
Billie relented immediately. 'I'm sorry, Ma,' she said. Becky-Ma cried easily, like Larry. Five years ago, when the three of them had set up house together, Ma had helped take care of Larry. But nowadays she was barely able to look after him for a couple of hours when he came home from school. Everything would be easier if Billie and Harold were married.
The phone rang. She patted Ma on the shoulder and picked it up. It was Bern Rothsten, her ex-husband. Billie got on well with him, despite the divorce. He came by two or three times a week to see Larry; and he cheerfully paid his share of the cost of bringing up the boy. Billie had been angry with him, once, but it was a long time ago. Now she said: 'Hey, Bern - you're up early.'
