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By Root 688 0

in the kitchen that evening when she brought the girls home. Emma came running to the porch. She shouted from outside, “Can Audrey stay over?” Theresa opened the door and set the bag lunch down on the kitchen table. Before Theresa could say no, I said, “That’s fine with me.” I’m not sure what I was thinking, or if I had even heard the request. The girls wrung each other’s hands. Audrey alternately clasped Theresa around the waist and jumped to her shoulders, beseeching her to say yes. I realized, too late, that Theresa could not allow her only daughter to stay in our house. The idea was absurd. We both spoke at once. “I would miss you too much, Audrey,” Theresa said. I was saying that it probably wasn’t a good night for it after all. She and I turned to each other as we were talking. I think we understood what had gone through the other’s mind.

“Wait,” Theresa said. “Settle down.” She put her hands on Audrey’s shoulders and made her keep still. “You girls get ready for bed and play in Emma’s room while Howard has his dinner. Then we’ll go home. Audrey can stay some other time. We’ll plan it—no, no complaining. You’ve got your chance to stay for a while.”

Everyone seemed to think, with very little protesting, that it was a tolerable compromise. We went upstairs. Emma first, and then Audrey and Theresa. Claire and I brought up the rear. There were baskets of laundry in the bedroom. I was afraid she might offer to take the dirty clothes home. She passed by and looked in without saying anything. As they got ready there was chipping and chattering. They made the house sound like a menagerie. There was peace in the commotion. I helped Claire into her pajamas and brushed her teeth. I put my clarinet together and stood in the doorway of Emma’s room with the reed in my mouth, watching my neighbor brush my daughter’s hair.

“How do you get a comb through your curls?” Emma asked Theresa.

“Well,” Theresa said, “I shampoo every morning. When it’s wet I quick brush it. All I have to do is let it dry and it comes out like this. If I brush it or comb it when it’s dry it gets frizzy. It sticks out—it’s big and awful.” She bit her lip as she smiled at me, over the top of Emma’s head.

“Really?” Emma turned to me to check if what Theresa had said could be true. My daughter’s hair and simple body were made of straight lines. I’d never given much consideration to our friend’s thick loopy curls, but I could see how they might be interesting to someone who had been bald for her first two years of life.

“Do a song for us, Daddy,” Claire shouted.

“I think I’ve forgotten,” I said. I hadn’t practiced in several weeks. I was going to sound rusty. While I put the reed in place I thought through my repertoire.

“I didn’t know you played,” Theresa said.

“I don’t really,” I said. “I just, ah—”

“ ‘Sing Me a Happy Song’!” Claire cried. “That’s my favorite.”

“ ‘We Can Work It Out’!” Emma demanded. “Or, ‘Morning Has Broken’! My dad,” she said to Audrey, “he knows all the songs.”

I played badly. Theresa continued to brush Emma’s hair. The three girls sat politely and listened. When I was done Theresa tucked them in the same bed. “Goodnight,” they called. We paused at the door. “Goodnight,” we said.

We went downstairs, the two of us. We could hear them plotting their riot. Theresa said she didn’t think they’d last long, that they were tired. I looked through the bare cupboards trying to find something to offer her. There was milk in the refrigerator. “I’m fine,” she said. “You eat.” She fed her family skim milk, not our whole milk with the cream sitting in a lump on the top. She always insisted it was milk to bathe in, not to drink.

“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing for me to sit at my own table, in front of the sack she had brought. She opened the cupboard, reached up for a glass, went to the sink, and poured herself some water. I looked in the bag. There were two bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwiches. The toasted wheat bread was saturated with what was undoubtedly low-fat mayonnaise. There was a bunch of grapes, carrot sticks, cold cooked beans