Chapter Seven

“Mom,” I said, “don’t you think it’s about time you had Al’s mother over? You know, for a drink or a cup of tea?”

My mother said, “I suppose so.”

“Well,” I said, “you’re always telling me to be friendly and nice to new kids who come to school. Some day I may be a new kid myself and in bad need of a friend. Isn’t that what you say?”

“Yes,” she said, “you’re right. It’s just that with her work and my family there isn’t much opportunity.”

“You’re making excuses,” I said. It was what she always says to me when I try to get out of something, like a D in a French test.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m making excuses.”

“How come you don’t like Al’s mother? She is really very nice.”

“How can I like or not like her when I don’t know her?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “You are judging on first impressions and appearances.”

“You certainly have total recall when it suits you,” my mother said, shaking her head. “I hear my words coming back at me as if there were a tape recorder in the house.”

“Mom, I think it would be nice. I know Al would like it if you would ask her mother over. It would be a nice gesture.”

My mother went to the chest in the dining ell where she keeps her linen napkins and tablecloths and her box of good stationery.

“For Pete’s sakes,” I said, “just give her a call. You don’t have to bother to write a note. She only lives in 14-C.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll do it my way.” My mother has had this box of stationery as long as I can remember. She uses it to answer engraved wedding invitations and things like that. The paper has a thin line of blue around the edges and her initials all curlicued at the top in the same blue. My father calls it her putting-on-the-dog stationery.

Finally she licked the envelope and said, “Would you mind just putting this in their box? I don’t think a stamp is necessary.”

“When did you ask her for?” I said.

“Next Sunday. I asked her and Al to come for tea.”

“Do you think you could get rid of Teddy for the afternoon?”

“Outside of tying him to his bed, I don’t see how,” she said.

“And Daddy. Is he going to be here?” I’m not sure Al’s mother would appreciate my father. I think he’s funny and Al thinks he’s a riot, but you never know.

“Now just stop it,” my mother said. “We can’t exterminate all male members of the family just to keep Al’s mother happy. Don’t make me sorry that I asked her.”

She was right. I ran out and put the invitation in their box fast.

“My mother is inviting your mother to our house,” I said to Al the next day.

“What for?”

“For tea, dope. On Sunday. You’re invited too.”

“I don’t know,” Al said. “I hope she doesn’t have a previous engagement.”

Al’s mother sent back a note on stationery that was even more putting-on-the-dog than my mother’s. It was cream-colored and about a half inch thick and had her initials in black.

“One-upmanship,” my father said.

She would be delighted to come on Sunday at four. She and Alexandra would be delighted. It was so kind of my mother to ask them.

My mother started polishing silver and ironing napkins. “I wonder if I’ll have time to take the curtains down and wash them,” she said.

“This thing is geting out of hand,” my father said when she started waxing the floors and made him sit all scrunched up in one corner of the room.

“Don’t you think you should get a haircut?” my mother said, squinting at him.

“That does it.” He put on his old Army jacket my mother has been trying to get rid of for years. “When the coast is clear, put a candle in the window,” he said.

“Oh, dear,” my mother said. “I wish I’d never got into this.”