The Two-Family House(46)

“Yup.”

“Did it work?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Let me know what happens.” Was her mother smiling?

All in all, Natalie didn’t think Fridays were so great. But Thursdays—those were terrific. First of all, Thursday was library day at school and she was allowed to take out as many books as she could carry. Second, Thursday was her day to go to Teddy’s house. Ever since the night Teddy locked himself in his room, Tuesdays and Thursdays had become their days together. Their mothers knew they couldn’t take them on errands or to dentist appointments, and Natalie’s mother always baked something special for Tuesday afternoons.

One of the reasons Natalie liked going to Teddy’s was that it was peaceful. Her house was too noisy. Harry was gone most of the time, but Joe and George were always yelling or fighting or messing around. Sam was even worse—always teasing her or hiding her schoolwork. But at Teddy’s house, Aunt Rose left them alone. She didn’t make Natalie sit at the table and talk about her day or her week the way Natalie’s mother did with Teddy.

When Teddy came over to her house, Natalie’s mother couldn’t stop herself from hovering. The older Natalie got, the more annoyed she became with it. Her mother fawned over Teddy, making his favorite foods for dinner and forcing him to take seconds. Once, after a particularly irritating day, Natalie accused her mother of liking Teddy better than her own children. “That’s ridiculous!” her mother insisted. But Natalie wasn’t convinced.

Aunt Rose was the opposite. There were no special cookies or treats on the days Natalie came over, and Aunt Rose didn’t speak to her any more than she spoke to Teddy or his sisters. Natalie liked it that way. Every once in a while, Natalie felt her aunt staring at her when she sat at the kitchen table doing homework. Did Aunt Rose think Teddy was giving her the answers? Or that she was giving them to him? But Aunt Rose never said anything, so Natalie didn’t ask.

There was something about the predictability of dinner at Teddy’s that was comforting. Aunt Rose cooked on a weekly schedule, so every Thursday night the family ate the same meal. Thursday night happened to be meat loaf, mashed potatoes and peas. The dinner never varied. The conversation never varied either. And there was never very much of it.

“How was your day?” Aunt Rose would ask Uncle Mort.

“Fine. Our shipping productivity is up seven percent from last year at this time. How was yours?”

“Fine. Does everyone like the meat loaf?”

“It’s good,” Dinah would say. Mimi would nod, push the food around on her plate and then spend the rest of dinner staring at her reflection in the silverware. Judith was never there because her Thursday classes ran late.

“Teddy, what did you learn at school today?” Uncle Mort would ask.

The standard reply to this was “nothing,” but once in a while, when he was feeling more confident, Teddy would try to tell his father something about their science experiment or about what happened in a book they were reading. No matter how hard he tried, though, Teddy would end up stammering, coughing and sputtering through his explanation. Natalie couldn’t understand why. If you knew someone was going to ask you the same question every night, how difficult was it to have an answer ready? But Uncle Mort made Teddy nervous. Natalie wanted to interrupt sometimes, to clarify something Teddy said or help her cousin get his point across. But she worried that interfering would embarrass him, so she stayed silent. Truth be told, she enjoyed the feeling of sitting at the table and not having to say anything. At her house, if she didn’t jump into the conversation, her mother was liable to feel her head and ask if she had a fever. At Teddy’s house, she could relax.

One Thursday in the middle of September, Natalie and Teddy were playing outside. Teddy wanted to practice pitching, so they wandered into the garage to look for an extra baseball mitt. “Think there could be one in here?” Natalie asked, pointing to a dusty cardboard box. Someone had printed GARAGE on it in neat black lettering.

“Maybe. Let’s open it,” Teddy told her. He pulled off the packing tape and pried open one of the corners. “Darn,” he said, disappointed. “It’s just a bunch of old books.”

“What kind of books?” Natalie wanted to know. “Anything good?”

“I can’t tell.” He pulled harder on the cardboard flaps. “It looks like textbooks. They must be Judith’s.”

“Are you sure? They look really old. Let’s see … Theories of Probability, Calculus, Modern Statistics. These are all math books. These can’t be hers.”

“I guess not.” Teddy was confused. “I wonder whose they are.”

“You know what?” Natalie told him. “I think these are your dad’s. My dad told me once how much your dad loves math.”

“My dad never talks about it.”

“Hey, let’s look at this one.” Natalie pulled a thick green book out of the box. The silver letters across the front read An Introduction to Mathematics.

“Can’t we just have a catch?”

“I don’t have a mitt, remember? Besides, this one says it’s an introduction. Maybe we could figure some of it out. We can ask your father about it at dinner.”

“Okay.” Teddy was resigned. “Let’s bring it to my room.”