Well. She squared her shoulders and turned to Hakim. “Now, about the baby-welcoming,” she said.
He looked worried. “This is what?” he asked.
“The party we give our new babies. It’s kind of a Davitch tradition,” she told him. “The idea came from one time when I was waiting for one of the girls at the airport and I saw this huge, happy, noisy crowd carrying balloons and placards and video cameras and regular cameras and flowers and wrapped gifts, and then the plane landed and a woman walked in with a tiny little button of a baby, Korean I think or Chinese, and the crowd started cheering and this couple stepped forward and the wife held out her arms and the woman gave her the baby and… I’ve always felt sort of cheated that we haven’t had any adoptions in our family. Adoption is more sudden than pregnancy, don’t you think? It’s more dramatic. So I said, ‘Why don’t we welcome our babies like that?’ And that’s what we’ve done ever since.”
Hakim blinked. Rebecca wondered, sometimes, exactly how good his English was. “Well, anyhow,” she said, “all I need from you two is a date. We can do it this weekend, if you like. The Open Arms isn’t booked. Or would you prefer just a Thursday? A normal family Thursday?”
“I will ask Min Foo,” he said. But he still looked worried.
It wasn’t a huge gathering tonight — just nine around the table. As usual, Troy and Biddy and Zeb were present — Biddy because she used Thursdays to experiment with new recipes, and Zeb because (Rebecca suspected) this was his only chance for a home-cooked meal. He would go home laden down with leftovers, she always made certain. It used to be that NoNo had been a regular too, but since the wedding they’d hardly seen her. Well, that was as it should be, of course. She was establishing her own traditions now.
Last week, NoNo had phoned Rebecca and asked how people formed car pools. Peter’s school was due to reopen and she would be in charge of his transportation. “Do I put an ad in the paper?” she’d asked. “Tack a note to a bulletin board? Or what?”
“You get hold of the school directory…” Rebecca began. She spoke slowly; she was trying to cast her mind back. “You look up all the students who live near you…”
“I asked Peter who lived near us and he said he didn’t think anyone. But I’m not sure he knows. It doesn’t seem to me that he has any friends.”
“None at all?” Rebecca said.
“Well, he never gets any phone calls, at least.”
“Maybe boys just don’t phone,” Rebecca told her.
“Oh, you’re right; maybe they don’t.”
“It’s not as if you or I have had much experience with boys.”
“You’re right,” NoNo said again, and her voice turned thin and quavery. “I’m really not equipped for this, you know?”
“Oh, sweetheart, you’ll do fine,” Rebecca had said. “Don’t worry for an instant. Just call Patch or Min Foo and ask them about car pools, why don’t you.”
Now she leaned across the table to Joey. “Joey,” she said, “do you ever talk on the phone?”
“I talk with you, Gram.”
“With your friends, I mean. Do you ever get on the phone and talk with them in the evening?”
“Well, sure, if I need to know about a homework assignment or something.”
“But not just to talk for no reason.”
“No reason! Then why would I call?”
“Aha,” Rebecca said. She told Zeb, “NoNo thinks Peter doesn’t have any friends because nobody ever phones him.”
“He’ll be okay. Just give him time,” Zeb said. Which was probably what he told every parent who walked into his office, Rebecca reflected. He was helping Lateesha cut her pork chop, and he didn’t even look up as he spoke.
“This spinach dish—” Biddy was announcing. “Could I have people’s attention, please? This spinach dish contains a tiny bit of nutmeg, but the point is that you’re not supposed to taste it. It’s only meant to enhance the flavor of the spinach. Does anyone taste any nutmeg?”
Hard to tell, for as usual, the others were too busy arguing and interrupting each other. “I think it’s delicious,” Rebecca told her.
But Biddy said, “I don’t know why I bother making the effort,” just as if no one had spoken. She snatched up the spinach dish and marched back to the kitchen.
Rebecca looked down at her plate for a second, and when she looked up again she found Zeb watching her. He said, “It’s just that you always say things are delicious. She didn’t mean any harm.”
“Well, I know that,” Rebecca said.
Then she said, “More pork chops, anyone? Who’d like another pork chop?” and the moment passed.
* * *
On Friday Min Foo and the baby went home, and Rebecca dropped the two children off along with a bag of groceries. From there she drove directly to a bookstore. “Do you have any books on Robert E. Lee?” she asked a salesclerk.
“Try Biography, over by the window.”
“Thank you.”
She crossed the store, pausing once or twice when something in another section caught her eye — a children’s book on ballet, which was Merrie’s current passion, and a collection of Holy Land photos that would make a very good birthday present for Alice Farmer. In Biography she found three books about Lee, one of them a paperback. She plucked that from the shelf and studied the portrait on the cover: Lee’s square-cut beard and disappointed gaze. He wasn’t someone she particularly admired. It was only that he represented the first and last extensive scholarly research she had ever undertaken. She had barely assembled her reference materials, was just starting to feel caught up in the project, when Joe Davitch walked into her life. Now the sight of Lee’s face brought back a swarm of memories: the musty smell of the Macadam College library; the sweetly rounded o’s of her history professor, who came from Minnesota; and the thrilling crispness of brand-new textbooks and spiral-bound notebooks purchased from the school store.
A couple of feet away, a severe-looking woman with a tight bun of white hair selected a hardback and showed it to a girl in a miniskirt — her granddaughter, most likely. “Now, this would be a good choice,” she said. “The life of Charles Lindbergh.”
“But it’s, like, humongous,” the granddaughter said. “I’d totally never finish it before the start of classes.”
The woman somehow managed to grow taller as she stood there. “May I inquire,” she said icily, “what kind of voice that is you’re using?”
Rebecca knew exactly what kind of voice it was. She’d heard Dixon call it a surfer-girl voice. (Though why it should be needed in Baltimore, Maryland, and how that shallow, breathy tone could be advantageous — did it carry more easily over the sound of the waves, or what? — she couldn’t say.) But the granddaughter didn’t seem to have heard. “And besides,” she went on, “he’s, like, a guy. Guys’ biographies suck.”
“I beg your pardon,” the woman said, growing even taller.