When Carla AND STEPHANIE RETURNED HOME FROM the mall, Jessie was preparing dinner and humming.
“What’s that song?” asked Carla, struck by the strange intricacy of the melody.
“‘Now I See Thy Looks Were Feigned,’” said Jessie cheerfully.
“It’s a rondeau.”
The odd allusions had not abated.
Carla decided to ignore Jessie’s answer but made a mental note to look up rondeau in the dictionary later. The Webster’s in the hall had gotten a lot of use lately, though occasionally it failed to serve and Carla had to resort to the library to consult the more capacious Oxford English Dictionary.
At this point, Mark came in the door, looking disheveled. “I’m bushed,” he announced, throwing himself down onto a chair. A clamor that had been gradually escalating in the other room as Stephanie and Jeffrey wrestled over a CD that neither one really wanted was suddenly accompanied by shrill screams. “Would someone tell those goddamn kids to shut up?” he snapped crankily.
Jessie brought Mark two Tylenol with a scotch and then went into the other room to speak to the children. In no time, the racket
had died down. Jeffrey and Stephanie came into the kitchen looking puzzled, and Stephanie motioned with her eyes for her mother to follow her into the living room.
“What’s wrong with Grandma?” asked Stephanie when they had retreated together. “She’s acting really weird.”
“What did she say?”
“She came in while Jeffrey and I were fighting and told us”—Stephanie paused, obviously intent on recalling the exact phrase—“not to sully ‘the family’s cousin’—something like that.”
“The family escutcheon?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Yes, Carla thought, it was weird. Where had the words come from that her mother was using with such alarming frequency? Margot’s theory about her picking them up from old movies did not hold water. There were too many and the contexts too varied. Perhaps, Carla thought, she’d been listening to the vocabulary tapes they had bought for Jeffrey at the Teacher’s Store. He was supposed to listen while sleeping and have the words creep into his brain through osmosis. The technique had not worked on him, but perhaps Jessie had borrowed the tapes and her brain was more conducive. But since when were rondeau and escutcheon fifth-grade vocabulary words?
“Dinner’s ready,” Jessie called from the kitchen. “Make haste.”
“Make haste?” said Stephanie. “Weird!”
Once everyone was seated, Jessie began putting pieces of a strange-looking food onto their plates.
“What’s this?” asked Jeffrey, inserting a large forkful into his mouth without waiting for an answer.
“Shepherd’s pie,” replied Jessie, “my most acclaimed recipe.”
“I don’t remember you ever making shepherd’s pie,” said Carla suspiciously. She had had the dish in a London pub during her junior summer abroad—but not, to her knowledge, before or since.
“It’s pretty good,” said Jeffrey, shoveling the shepherd’s pie into his mouth with gusto and washing it down with large gulps of
chocolate milk. “Is there any venison in it?” Jeffrey had liked the alleged venison stew that Jessie had made the month before. At the question, Stephanie put down her fork and waited anxiously for her grandmother’s reply.
“I don’t use venison in my shepherd’s pie,” said Jessie huffily. “Dame Quigly did. Couldn’t abide it.”
“Dame Quigly?” Mark looked up curiously. “Odd name. Is that a friend from the JCC senior group?”
At this point, however, the phone rang, interrupting the flow of conversation. It was Jeffrey’s guidance counselor, calling to discuss his behavior issues. Carla went into the other room for privacy and then called Mark in to relay the conversation.
“She says his behavior suggests Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity,” sighed Carla. “She recommends we consider putting him on Ritalin. I really don’t like having him take medicine on a regular basis at his age.”
Mark began thumbing through the PDR looking for the side-effects of Ritalin. “I can’t say it’s something I know much about,” he said. “We probably need to consult Finkel.” (Finkel was their pediatrician.)
“But Finkel only knows about colic,” said Carla doubtfully, “and not much about that.” Her confidence in Finkel had been undermined when he appeared on 60 Minutes and told Mike Wallace that he didn’t really know what colic was, even though he was presumed to be a national expert on the subject—an example of intellectual humility, fine for a classical philosopher, but not exactly what one wanted from a pediatrician.
“Try a psychiatrist, then,” suggested Mark. “It’s really more up their alley.”
So here was something else to consult Dr. Samuels about, thought Carla. She was going to have a lot to discuss at her Thursday evening appointment.