“Actually, Angie, Charles and I never go to concerts anymore. Not rock or opera. Not even supper clubs,” said Caterina, Angie’s second sister. Cat, who had been called Trina and had dark brown hair when she was growing up, had somehow metamorphosed into a platinum blond Supermom with her own interior design business. Franz Kafka had nothing on her.
Angie sat in the family room of Cat’s Tiburon home and watched her sister make a diorama of the Pilgrims’ landing.
“So coming up with dumb compromises isn’t a problem for you anymore?” Angie asked hopefully.
“Not at all. Movies are our most common entertainment now—when we can find the time. I’m always so busy!”
“Reminds me of Paavo. He’s always too busy for me, it seems,” Angie murmured. “Say, isn’t Kenny supposed to make that diorama himself?”
“Really, Angie! Have you ever seen an eight-year-old’s diorama? One of his classmate’s father is in the Army Corps of Engineers. Kenny needs a fighting chance at a good grade.”
Angie didn’t think that was the idea of the lesson, but she held her tongue. “So now you and Charles go to the movies.”
“Not go to the movies. We rent them.” Cat placed a big rock that had PLYMOUTH written on it in the box, then stepped back and eyed it as if she were studying the placement of a Louis XV writing desk. “Married people don’t go to the movies much.”
“They don’t?”
“Heck, when you’re newly married, who needs them?” Cat adjusted the rock about a centimeter to the left and contemplated its new position. “Then for a while, after the initial blush—so to speak—of wedded bliss, you do go to shows. But soon, quick as a wink, all that ends.”
“It does?”
“That’s right.” Cat put some glue on the bottom of a cutout of the Mayflower and stuck it in the box. “Before you know it, you’ve got kids. Then you know what you do?”
Angie shook her head.
“You go to the video store and rent movies like Ernest Goes to Jail. By the time it’s over and the kids are asleep, you are too. And so’s your old man.”
“Oh, dear.”
The Mayflower was listing badly.