"Yeah, I remember."
"Steven Martin!"
"Sorry, Ma, gotta go to work. Want to button my coat for me? For old times' sake?"
"I'll do no such thing. You're old enough to take care of yourself now."
He gave her a hug and a kiss.
Tonia had finished her eggs and, as she often did, took her plate out to the kitchen. She got into her snowpants and jacket and would have done her own zippering if her grandmother hadn't spotted her.
"Here, love. Let me do that."
"I know how," Tonia answered her grandmother, a little surprised at being thought incapable. She glanced over at her mother. Mirelle nodded imperceptibly and Tonia obediently submitted to her grandmother.
"How do you like kindergarten, dear?"
"Kindergarten? I'm in second grade. I'm no baby."
"You're so small though, lovey," her grandmother said, laughing to cover her mistake. "I've got five grandchildren to keep straight. Grandmother just forgot."
Tonia wasn't pleased that details about her could be forgotten.
"Thank you, Grandmother, for helping me," she said politely enough and then pointed wildly out the window. "It's snowing. It's snowing."
"Good heavens!" Mother Martin whirled to peer out the window. "This early?"
"It's not so early," Mirelle said. "December's half over. There's your bus, Tonia. Now remember, you walk over to Nick's room and then you both come to the church together. Now scoot."
" 'Bye, Mommie. 'Bye, Grandmother."
Tonia danced off, trying to catch the snow flakes in her gloves, spinning around underneath the soft fall, her face upturned.
"Do you mean to tell me that you're going to let those children walk to the church by themselves?"
"Certainly." Mirelle turned to her mother-in-law in surprise. "They've done it before. It's not all that far from their school and there's sidewalk all the way."
"Why, Tonia's only… what? seven? And Nick is just eleven?"
"Well, they're both capable youngsters and it's completely suburban…"
"Why, I never let either Steve or Ralph go anywhere unaccompanied until they were…"
"Boy Scouts and the other boys…" Mirelle broke off, thankful that Dad Martin's timely arrival interrupted her before she had blurted out what Steve had once told her: that the other Scouts had teased him and his brother unmercifully because either his father or mother walked them the five blocks to the meetings.
"Mary Ellen tells me that she allows those two little children to walk all the way from school to church," said Mother Martin, incensed and looking for support.
"Why not?" replied her husband, a little surprised. "Always did think you coddled those boys of ours too much."
"Arthur Martin!"
Mirelle regarded her father-in-law with new respect.
"Coffee, Dad?" she asked, breaking the stunned surprise.
Dad Martin looked skeptically at the weak solution in his cup.
"Mirelle, perhaps you'd make a new pot for me?"
"Arthur Martin, what's got into you?"
"Marian, you know I like coffee with some guts to it. Awfully glad when instant coffee came out, Mary Ellen," he said as Mirelle took his cup and the pot back to the kitchen. "Then I could make mine strong if Ma wanted hers weak."
Between getting her husband's breakfast in irritated silence and bustling about to iron the packing creases from her dress for the afternoon bazaar, Mother Martin kept pretty much out of Mirelle's way that morning. Mirelle loaded the Sprite with the last of her supplies, got the house picked up and a load of wash started.
"I don't know why you won't let me cook us a nice family supper here at home," Mother Martin began when she cornered Mirelle in the kitchen fixing a light lunch.
"What? Ask you to cook on your first day of holiday? No, the children have looked forward to the church dinner. Roman is acting as busboy and Nick is being allowed to put around bread and butters and set the tables between servings." Mirelle kept her voice light.
"I should think they'd be glad to sit down with their grandparents, they see us so seldom." Mother Martin gave an aggrieved sniff.
"Steve thought it would be a chance for you to meet more of our friends than we could have in the house at one time," Mirelle said, trying not to sound defensive.
"Hmmm, what's in this casserole?" asked Dad Martin, smacking his lips.
"One of my by-guess and by-gosh concoctions."
"Your cooking's as good as ever, Mirelle."
Mother Martin looked displeased, but Mirelle could think of nothing placatory.
"Children get hot lunches at school?" her father-in-law asked.
"Very good ones, too. For some of the students, it's the best meal of the day," Mirelle said, elaborating to keep conversation on a safe topic.
"Hummph. I hope you haven't had to have your schools desegregated," Mother Martin said austerely.
"No," and Mirelle could answer truthfully for the Wilmington school which the children attended had always had a black enrollment. She knew perfectly well that there had been blacks in Steve's Allentown high school class so she felt slightly nauseated to hear borrowed phrases and secondhand opinions frothing out of the mouth of her mother-in-law. She listened patiently through a badly organized and trite solution to Allentown's problems of overpopulation, lack of business, school system and town managerial shortcomings, fully aware that the founts of such wisdom were the omniscient Randolphs.
If there were any real affection between us, Mirelle thought as her mother-in-law chanted the magic phrases, this sort of thing would be tolerable, like her well-meant actions this morning at breakfast. I could have teased her about the eggs, and the weak coffee, and we could have laughed about Dad Martin longing for a pot of strong coffee and… oh hell. She hates me. It wouldn't have mattered who Steve married! Even the paragon Nancy Lou Randolph. Her one talent in life was dominating and she lost two-thirds of that when her boys grew old enough to leave home and marry. Good thing she had no daughters. They'd never have escaped. And yet, no thoroughly bad person could have raised someone like Steve. Why can't I find the good in her?
When Mother Martin finally concluded her monologue, Mirelle stacked the dishes in the dishwasher and went to change her clothes for the Bazaar. June had had bright colorful smocks run up by the Women's Guild, and supplied floppy artist's bows. Mirelle had unearthed a beret from her English school days to complete the outfit.
"You aren't going to wear that outlandish get-up?" Mother Martin was shocked.
"Everyone manning booths at the Bazaar is wearing the same thing," Mirelle replied calmly.
"I think it's cute," said her father-in-law.
"I think it shows very bad taste under the circumstances," Mother Martin said.
"The circumstances are, Mother Martin, that this is the costume which the Bazaar chairwoman chose for us. She has absolutely no way of knowing that I'm the bastard of an artist."
"Mary Ellen!"
Mirelle wished the sharp retort unsaid the moment she saw her father-in-law's reaction and cursed herself for losing control. Dad Martin was not the staunchest ally but she had prejudiced him once more.
"I was only reminding you that that fact is not common knowledge here in Wilmington." She didn't think an oblique apology would be acceptable but for Steve's sake, she would try. "My costume is a sheer coincidence, not something which I planned as a personal affront to you. If you still want to attend the Bazaar, just turn right onto the main road in front of the development. Take the first lefthand turn, and you'll run right into the church parking lot. Steve will be joining us there when he leaves the office."
Still seething, Mirelle drove the Sprite as fast as she dared on the now slippery roads. She was astonished to see that the light snow was beginning to cover the ground with ominous rapidity. She hoped that it wouldn't limit attendance at the Bazaar. As the church drew most of its members from the nearby developments, the snow might just add to the occasion. Mirelle pulled the Sprite up on a gravelly bank which had been left over from driveway repairs. It meant a longer haul with her clay but it would also give her tires traction when it came time to go home later.