“Is he too sick to have me visit?”
“Good heavens, no. He’ll be happier to see you than to see me.”
“I’m rooting some of my coleus to give him,” she says. “Maybe I’ll give it to him like it is, in water, and he can plant it when it roots.”
When she leaves the room, I go over to Milo. “Be nice to her,” I say quietly.
“I’m nice to her,” he says. “Why does everybody have to act like I’m going to grow fangs every time I turn around?”
“You were quite cutting when you came in.”
“I was being self-deprecating.” He sighs. “I don’t really know why I come here and act this way,” he says.
“What’s the matter, Milo?”
But now he lets me know he’s bored with the conversation. He walks over to the table and picks up a
“You know what you could do,” I say. “Wet a napkin and put it around that cutting and then wrap it in foil, and put it in water when you get there. That way, you wouldn’t have to hold a glass of water all the way to New York.”
She shrugs. “This is O.K.,” she says.
“Why don’t you take your mother’s suggestion,” Milo says. “The water will slosh out of the glass.”
“Not if you don’t drive fast.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with my driving fast. If we go over a bump in the road, you’re going to get all wet.”
“Then I can put on one of my dresses at your apartment.”
“Am I being unreasonable?” Milo says to me.
“I started it,” I say. “Let her take it in the glass.”
“Would you, as a favor, do what your mother says?” he says to Louise.
Louise looks at the coleus, and at me.
“Hold the glass over the seat instead of over your lap, and you won’t get wet,” I say.
“Your first idea was the best,” Milo says.
Louise gives him an exasperated look and puts the glass down on the floor, pulls on her poncho, picks up the glass again and says a sullen goodbye to me, and goes out the front door.
“Why is this my fault?” Milo says. “Have I done anything terrible? I—”
“Do something to cheer yourself up,” I say, patting him on the back.
He looks as exasperated with me as Louise was with him. He nods his head yes, and goes out the door.
“Was everything all right this weekend?” I ask Louise.
“Milo was in a bad mood, and Bradley wasn’t even there on Saturday,” Louise says. “He came back today and took us to the Village for breakfast.”
“What did you have?”
“I had sausage wrapped in little pancakes and fruit salad and a rum bun.”
“Where was Bradley on Saturday?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t ask him.”
She almost always surprises me by being more grown-up than I give her credit for. Does she suspect, as I do, that Bradley has found another lover?
“Milo was in a bad mood when you two left here Saturday,” I say.
“I told him if he didn’t want me to come next weekend, just to tell me.” She looks perturbed, and I suddenly realize that she can sound exactly like Milo sometimes.
“You shouldn’t have said that to him, Louise,” I say. “You know he wants you. He’s just worried about Bradley.”
“So?” she says. “I’m probably going to flunk math.”
“No, you’re not, honey. You got a C-plus on the last assignment.”
“It still doesn’t make my grade average out to a C.”
“You’ll get a C. It’s all right to get a C.”
She doesn’t believe me.
“Don’t be a perfectionist, like Milo,” I tell her. “Even if you got a D, you wouldn’t fail.”
Louise is brushing her hair—thin, shoulder-length, auburn hair. She is already so pretty and so smart in everything except math that I wonder what will become of her. When I was her age, I was plain and serious and I wanted to be a tree surgeon. I went with my father to the park and held a stethoscope—a real one—to the trunks of trees, listening to their silence. Children seem older now.
“What do you think’s the matter with Bradley?” Louise says. She sounds worried.
