There were photographs taken showing my mother working there, for the front cover of the ACORN bulletin.
I stopped by the sunroom my first Monday morning on the job, the end of that June.
“Jesse,” my mother said when I walked through the door, “change into a suit. Put on a tie. Sick people, people in trouble, don’t want some kid in blue jeans calling on them.”
“Dad didn’t say anything at breakfast,” I said. “Hi, Seal.”
Seal was sitting there taking dictation from my mother. She said hi back and I noticed she was dressed in white, too—white dress, white sandals, even a white watchstrap.
“Your father didn’t realize you were going out in the same clothes you came down to breakfast in, Jesse. Now change into a suit and tie, then come back down here, because we’ve got some good news.”
“Super news,” Seal said.
“What’s so super about it?” I said, and suddenly got this shaky feeling inside it was news from Bud.
“I said change your clothes, darling, and let me finish up here with Seal. Then we’ll tell you.”
I went back up to my room and changed into a suit. I hated neckties, and spending my clothes allowance on them, so the few I had were real cheapos. Bud’s closet was jammed with sports coats, slacks, sweaters, shirts, and ties—he’d packed only one suitcase when he took off. But we were leaving everything just as Bud had left it, orders from the old man. “You may borrow anything from me, but leave Bud’s things alone.”
I got a tie from the back of my father’s closet, mulling over how I’d feel if they said Bud was on his way home.
At dinner last night we’d gotten another “ding.”
The ding was something my father’d worked out years ago when he was out on the road. He’d dial our number, and hang up before the first ring was over. There was just a little ding sound, “A ding,” my father said, “to remind you all I’m thinking of you, and I love you.”
Bud always dinged us at dinnertime. It couldn’t be anyone else.
He’d written my father and mother one letter after he first left, which I’d never seen, and all the other communications were dings.
“They’re coming closer and closer together,” my father said. “I hope that means it’s getting closer to the time he’ll be back with us.”
“I think he’s ready,” my mother said. “I just feel it.”
We’d interrupted our roast-beef dinner while my father bowed his head and said a prayer. He was a little teary eyed; maybe that was helped along by the two martinis he’d put away before we were called to the table. I couldn’t read my father very well anymore. It was getting so the only time I could was when he came across TV. He was dynamite then, I had to give him that.
I checked the tie out in the mirror and thought about how much Bud loved summers at the beach. He and Seal were both surfers. They could spend a whole day on their backs in the sand, too, soaking up the sun, getting neat tans. My skin broke out in the sun, and the only summer sport I really liked was fishing. Seal said you had to do too many cruel things to fish—put hooks through worms, tear the faces of fish; she had a whole lecture against fishing.
When I got back down to the sunroom, my mother was in the midst of dictation: “… and this is why I am personally writing to encourage you to become an ACORN.
“Dr. Pegler and I have talked together about what an effective ACORN you’d be! We were so impressed with the beautiful summary you wrote for us, at our request, when your cassette course ended.
“‘Rhoda,’ Guy said to me, ‘could we convince blank to enroll as an ACORN? Her personality has just that certain Christian charisma we need!’
“We will be praying that your answer will be yes, and we are enclosing the registration form for ACORN.
“Remember, blank, Jesus wants you to win! So do we! Sincerely.”
Then my mother said, “Seal, change the thirty dollar registration fee to fifty dollars. Have five hundred copies of this letter made up in the personalized style, using that list of names from subscribers to the cassette course. Now, honey, be very sure no letters are sent to two people from the same town. Of course, when blank is a he, substitute his for her.”
I said, “It must have been really boring hearing Dad say that five hundred times. Rhoda, could we convince blank to enroll as—”
My mother cut me off. “Oh, that’s just a figure of speech and you know it. That just makes being an ACORN sound more inviting.”
“It sounds like a con game to me,” I said.
“And you sound like Bud to me. Doesn’t he sound like Bud, Seal?”
“He will when his voice gets deeper.”
My mother went across the room, grabbed Blanche and Blanche’s white comb, and started grooming her.
“What’s the good news?” I said. “Did we hear from Bud?”
“Jesse Pegler,” said Seal, “do you think if we’d heard from Bud I’d be able to sit still?”
“Seal von Hennig,” I said, “do you think you’ll ever give up on Bud?”
“Now, Jesse, don’t be sassy,” said my mother. “We just had that ding, that’s all we’ve ever had, but that ding says he loves us.”
“I never even got a ding,” Seal said.
“Maybe never getting a ding says something else,” I said.
“Oh, Seal, sweetheart, dinging is our family tradition,” my mother said, “and I doubt Bud even knows you know what a ding would mean.”
“Then that’s the good news?” I said.
“Even if I never got a ding,” Seal said, “I wouldn’t mind seeing him coming through that door, even if he doesn’t want me.”
“Bud doesn’t know what he wants,” my mother said. “Oh, he’ll be here one of these days. He’ll plan it real dramatic, because Bud’s vain like Blanche here. Knows she’s going to
