"You violated curfew, kiddo."
"Jeez, this is like a prison."
"Ease up on the boy," Herbert said. "When you and Janice were kids, Ah-"
"Was nowhere to be found," Steve interrupted.
Bobby wanted to tell Uncle Steve the truth.
"I was with Mom. We sat in her car down by the bay and talked for hours."
But he couldn't do it. Uncle Steve thought she was a really bad influence. But she didn't seem that way at all. She seemed kind of lost, like she needed Bobby more than he needed her.
Mom seems so lonely, like there's nobody for her to talk to.
So Bobby had listened as she talked about growing up in a house with a sick mother and an absent father, Grandpop always being off somewhere, and Steve out playing sports. Mom had been the outsider, or that was how she felt, anyway.
When Mom was talking about the man who picked her up hitchhiking-she couldn't remember his name, even though he might be Bobby's father-Bobby tried to decide whether he loved her. Yeah, he probably did in some weird way. But he was certain he felt sorry for her.
Now Bobby listened as Uncle Steve and Grandpop argued for the zillionth time about the past.
"Don't tell me you're still mad because I didn't come to your Little League games," Grandpop said.
"Or to my spelling bees, my track meets, or the hospital when I had my tonsils out."
"For crying out loud, you were only there a few hours."
"Because you wouldn't pay for a room. The doctor wanted to keep me overnight."
"Highway robbery."
Sometimes Bobby wished the two of them would grow up.
Victoria tried to decide who was more immature, Steve or his father. Clearly, they were equally argumentative and pugnacious. She tried to picture the Solomon home during Steve's childhood. It didn't seem to be a happy place. Certainly, it was not a quiet place.
They railed at each other another few moments, Herbert calling Steve an "ungrateful grumble guts," Steve calling Herbert a "tumbleweed father, gone with the wind." Then they seemed to tire, and Steve turned back to Bobby. "You still haven't said where you were last night."
"Probably with his little shiksa," Herbert said.
"Dad! That's a derogatory term."
"The hell it is."
Here we go again, Victoria thought. These two could argue over "Happy Chanukah."
"A shiksa's a gentile gal," Herbert continued. "Nothing derogatory about it. As for little Miss Havana-Jerusalem, her mother's a Catholic and that makes her a shiksa."
"So I'm a shiksa," Victoria said.
"Hell, no. You're Jewish by injection." Herbert laughed and took a pull on his bourbon. "Unless you two haven't played hide-the-salami yet."
"Dad, put a lid on it," Steve ordered.
Herbert grinned at Victoria. "How 'bout it, bubele? Stephen been slipping you the Hebrew National?"
Herbert cackled again and headed toward the living room without waiting for an answer. "Hold mah calls. Ah'm gonna watch a titty movie on Cinemax, then take a nap."
Victoria whirled toward Steve. "Why do you have to bait him?" she demanded.
"I could tell you, Vic, but I'm not sure you'd understand."
"Try me, partner. I've been to college and everything."
"It's a Jewish thing. We love arguing, complaining, talking with our mouths full. You're Episcopalian. You love-I don't know-drinking tea, wearing Burberry, the Queen of England."
Victoria was not particularly pleased about being reduced to a stereotype. She would talk to Steve about it later. But right now Bobby was still there, fishing into the Oreo bag. "Steve, don't you have some unfinished parenting to do?"
"Parenting's always unfinished." He turned to the boy. "So, kiddo, was your grandpop right? Were you with Maria last night?"
"Jeez, it's like the Inquisition in here." Bobby pried off the top of a cookie. "No, I wasn't with her. Maria's stupid dad won't let me see her anymore."
Victoria spoke gently. "Bobby, what's happened?"
"Nothing, except Dr. Goldberg thinks I'm weird." The pain was audible in the boy's voice.
"You're weird?" Steve said. "He's a periodontist."
Victoria ran a hand through Bobby's hair. "Why would he say something like that?"
Bobby hunched his shoulders. "Lots of reasons, I guess. Dr. Goldberg's always cracking on me. Like, he hates the T-shirt Uncle Steve got me."
"What T-shirt?"
Steve shook his head in Bobby's direction, but the kid either didn't pick up the sign or didn't care. " 'If We Don't Have Sex, the Terrorists Win.'"
Victoria shot a look at Steve. In the household of the three Solomon men, she now concluded, Steve clearly was the most childish.
"And Dr. Goldberg hated the poetry I wrote for Maria," Bobby continued. "I made anagrams of every line of 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.'"
"Why, that must have been beautiful," Victoria said, trying to boost the boy's ego.
"Dr. Goldberg said the whole poem was smutty."
"Smutty!" Steve smacked the countertop.
Why was it, Victoria wondered, that men always needed to throw things, hit things, and make noise to express displeasure?
"Who uses words like 'smutty' anymore?" Steve railed. "What else did this tight-ass say to you?"
"Nothin'." The boy licked another open-faced Oreo.
"C'mon, Bobby. Don't hold out on Uncle Steve."
Without looking up from the table, Bobby said: "That I was a klutz. That he didn't want me hanging around Maria. And in case I thought she liked me, she didn't. She just wanted me to do her homework."
Steve smacked both hands on the countertop. "That asshole! I'm going over there and kick his butt."
"That would be very smart," Victoria said evenly. "Give Kreeger ammunition for the judge."
"Forget Kreeger. This jerk's got no right to talk to Bobby that way."
"It's okay, Uncle Steve."
"The hell it is!"
"Steve," Victoria cautioned. "Settle down. You're not going over to the Goldbergs'."
"Vic, this is between Bobby and me, okay?"
She stiffened. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing."
"Are you trying to put distance between us?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Then answer this. Am I a member of this family or not?"
Steve hesitated. Just a second. Then he said, "Sure. Sure, you are."
Victoria remembered an early boyfriend once saying he loved her. She had thought it over a couple seconds-one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two-and finally agreed, "I love you, too." But if you have to think about it, well, the feeling just isn't there.
"So you don't consider me a member of the family?"
"I just said I do."
"Let's examine the instant replay," Victoria demanded, "because you looked like you were moving in slow motion."
"I just like to think before I speak."
"Since when? You have an intimacy problem, you know that, Steve?"
"Aw, jeez, don't change the subject. Name one good reason why I shouldn't go over to Myron Goldberg's house and call him out."
"Because it's juvenile, illegal, and self-destructive," Victoria said. "Three reasons."
That seemed to silence him. Then he said: "Okay, I get it. I'm going to take care of my stuff first. Go to Kreeger. Get my head shrunk, get the case dismissed. Then I'm going to see Myron Goldberg and ask politely but firmly that he apologize to Bobby."
"And if he doesn't? What then?"
"I'll kick his ass from here to Sopchoppy," Steve said.
SOLOMON'S LAWS
7. When you run across a naked woman, act as if you've seen one before.