“Well, life turns out strange sometimes. I was anticipating climaxing my service with my Little Little walking with me, and I got Dora instead.”
“She’s very tall for a diminutive,” said my mother. “She’s a good head taller than you are, Little Lion.”
“I will lift up mine eyes,” Little Lion answered.
“Little Lion,” said my father, “you might tell Little Little that the carriage awaits. Granddaddy’s sitting out there in it, in the rain. I’d tell Little Little myself only she seems not to hear anything I have to say this morning.”
“Now, we are not going to wash the family linen out in public, Larry,” said my mother. “Somebody better go find Cowboy and Mock.”
“I’ll go find them,” my father said. “We’ll see you at the house, young man.”
“I would ask you to ride along with us, Little Little,” Little Lion said to me, “but there’s only room for two.”
“And Dora is a big girl besides,” said my mother. “It’d take several coats of mayonnaise to cover her.”
Little Lion laughed and squeezed my hand. “I trust she’s invited to the banquet?”
“She’s not on the list,” said my mother.
“We can make room,” I said.
“Honey, I would love nothing more than to include her but we’re not having chicken à la king or anything like that. We’re having slices of beef Wellington, and I’ve already made room for Norman Powers’s mother who wasn’t expected, plus that dear little tyke from Mineola, New York, who showed up unexpectedly.”
“She can have my slice of beef Wellington,” I said.
“When it’s your favorite thing in the whole world, honey? Why, we planned it especially for your birthday,” said my mother, shooting me another one of her looks.
“We’ll manage,” I said.
“Nothing is impossible to a willing heart,” Little Lion said.
My mother said, “All lay load on the willing horse.”
“I like your sense of humor, Mrs. La Belle,” said Little Lion.
On the way home in our car, my mother said, “That little snip. If she’s a diminutive, I’m a Siamese twin.”
I sat in back, on my Kiddyride, between Mock and Cowboy.
Cowboy whispered at me, “That was him next to Gus Gregory, wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“He kept watching you over his shoulder,” she said.
I said, “I know it.”
My mother was continuing her diatribe. “Little Little, now is the time to fight fire with fire. Telling him to ask her to the banquet was a major mistake, but—”
“Whose idea was that?” my father asked.
“It was his idea,” said my mother, “but Little Little went right along with it, which was a major mistake.”
“Maybe Little Little isn’t all that taken with him in the ninth place,” said my father. “I’m not all that taken with him.”
“You wouldn’t be all that taken with Prince Charming if he rode right up Lake Road on a white horse with a wedding ring in a box in his back pocket,” my mother said. “You’d keep her in a hothouse the same as Grandfather La Belle keeps his prize roses in one, if you had your way.”
“If we were speaking, I would,” said my father.
“Well, we aren’t,” I said.
Mock Hiroyuki giggled and my mother told him, “There is nothing funny in this situation, in case anyone should ride up on a bicycle and ask you. That little snip is pushing her way into Little Little’s birthday celebration.”
Mock clapped his hands across his mouth and sank down beside me on the backseat.
“I’m not all that taken with him, either,” Cowboy said.
“Aren’t you?” I said.
“Not all that taken with him.”
“Well, I doubt very much that Cowboy is anyone to judge who is and who isn’t a catch,” said my mother.
“Are you?” my father asked her.
“Well, I caught you, didn’t I? In my opinion, Little Little,” said my mother, turning around from the front seat to see me better, “you should go home and put on that pretty little light blue dress Mrs. Hootman made for you last summer, and come out fighting, beginning at lunch. I don’t know why in the world you didn’t walk with him this morning, when it was obvious to everyone in that church he was waiting for someone special, calling out to her that way. Why, that was painful!”
“I’m not religious,” I said.
“The whole thing was painful!” Cowboy said.
My father said, “A-men.”
My mother turned back in the front seat and stared at the road, sighing and shaking her head. She said to my father, “Would you rather have her with The Roach, Larry?”
“I’d rather not have her with either of them.”
“Oh, don’t we know that! You’d rather have her to yourself.”
“The way I see it,” said my father, “there’s just no damn hurry, Ava. She’s got time. She’s only eighteen.”
“I remember when that little Blessing girl from Cleveland took her time deciding whether or not to marry that little Tompkins boy who was studying to be a doctor. Before she knew it he turned around and married what’s-her-name who won the TADpole chess tournament every year.”
“Oh, don’t start in on that little Blessing girl again,” said my father.
“She’s still living at home and she’s in her twenties now,” my mother said. “All we’re talking about here is a full happy life, with a family, all that anyone’s entitled to.”
“That’s all you’re talking about here,” said my father. “We aren’t talking about it.”
“Mock?” Cowboy said. “Do Japanese families bicker all the time?”
“Bery often bicka,” said Mock.
“Mock,” my mother said, “we are not bickering. We just want what’s best for Little Little.”
“We want her to do the loveliest thing that an oyster ever has a chance to do,” Cowboy said.
“They want me to make a pearl, Mock,” I said.
“I’m glad everyone in the backseat thinks that’s hilarious,” said my mother.
When we got inside the house, the white wicker giraffe was waiting for me next to my walnut sgabello in the hall.
“What is this?” My mother’s face broke into a delighted smile. “It has a card around its neck. Honey, I’ll read it for you…. It says: ‘I long for you.’ The long neck! I long for you!
