what, hon? Come again?
A party to commemorate the date the girls arrived, she told him. In two weeks it will be a year; can you believe it? Saturday, August fifteenth. We ought to mark the occasion.
Would you be up to it, with your mother?
Bitsy's mother had suffered a setback a whole new tumor, this time involving her liver. They'd had a hard couple of months. But Bitsy said, It would do me good. It would do us all good! Get our minds off our troubles. And we'd confine it to the two families; no nonrelatives. Make it kind of like a birthday party. A daytime event, right after the girls' naps when they're at their best, and I wouldn't serve a full meal, only dessert.
Maybe a Korean dessert! Brad said.
Oh. Well.
Wouldn't that be neat?
I checked Korean desserts on the Internet, Bitsy told him. Spinach cookies, fried glutinous rice ...
Brad started looking worried.
She said, I was thinking maybe a sheet cake frosted like an American flag.
That's a great idea!
With candles? Or one candle, for one year. But absolutely no presents; remind me to tell the Yazdans that. They're always bringing presents. And we might sing some sort of song together. There must be a suitable song about waiting for someone's arrival.
There's 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain,' Brad said.
Well ... and the girls can wear Korean outfits. Shall we offer to lend Susan a sagusam? You can be sure she doesn't own one.
That would be good.
We could have a ceremony, sort of. The girls would be in another room; we'd light the cake and start singing; they would walk through the door hand in hand ... just like arriving all over again. Don't you think?
And, hey! Brad said. We could show the video!
Perfect! The video, Bitsy said.
Her brother Mac had taken all the different airport videos to be edited into a single tape. Since then the tape had sat on a shelf there never seemed to be time to watch even the news, anymore but this was their chance to view it. Maybe at the end of the party, to wind things up, Bitsy said. Is this all too hokey, maybe?
Not a bit.
You're sure, now. You would tell me if it was.
You couldn't be hokey if you tried, Brad said.
The nice thing was, he meant it. She knew that. He had this notion that she could do no wrong. It was Bitsy says this and Bitsy says that and Let's ask Bitsy, shall we? She took his face between her hands and leaned forward to give him a kiss.
Bitsy never liked for this to get around, but Brad was not her first husband. Her first husband had been Stephen Bartholomew, the only son of her parents' oldest friends. Bitsy's parents and Stephen's parents had double-dated all the way through Swarthmore and kept devotedly in touch ever since, even though the Bartholomews lived clear across the country in Portland, Oregon. Bitsy had seen Stephen precisely twice in her life both times when she was too young to remember before they entered Swarthmore themselves; but the idea was, they were bound to be instant soulmates. The first letter her mother wrote her, the first week of Bitsy's freshman year, began with Have you met Stephen yet? And no doubt Stephen's mother was asking him the same thing.
Of course they did meet, by and by, and to nobody's surprise they promptly fell in love. He was an ethereally beautiful boy with a narrow, calm face and sea-gray eyes. She was plainer but a born leader, the campus star, outspoken and impassioned. They went through four years of college as an established, recognized couple, although they had such different interests (chemistry for him and English for her, not to mention her various political activities) that it was a struggle to find the time to be together. Christmas of their senior year they became engaged, and they married the next June, the day after graduation, and moved to Baltimore, where Stephen had a fellowship at Hopkins and Bitsy went to work on her education credits at College Park.
Then she met Brad.
Or no, first she started noticing Stephen's flaws.
A party to commemorate the date the girls arrived, she told him. In two weeks it will be a year; can you believe it? Saturday, August fifteenth. We ought to mark the occasion.
Would you be up to it, with your mother?
Bitsy's mother had suffered a setback a whole new tumor, this time involving her liver. They'd had a hard couple of months. But Bitsy said, It would do me good. It would do us all good! Get our minds off our troubles. And we'd confine it to the two families; no nonrelatives. Make it kind of like a birthday party. A daytime event, right after the girls' naps when they're at their best, and I wouldn't serve a full meal, only dessert.
Maybe a Korean dessert! Brad said.
Oh. Well.
Wouldn't that be neat?
I checked Korean desserts on the Internet, Bitsy told him. Spinach cookies, fried glutinous rice ...
Brad started looking worried.
She said, I was thinking maybe a sheet cake frosted like an American flag.
That's a great idea!
With candles? Or one candle, for one year. But absolutely no presents; remind me to tell the Yazdans that. They're always bringing presents. And we might sing some sort of song together. There must be a suitable song about waiting for someone's arrival.
There's 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain,' Brad said.
Well ... and the girls can wear Korean outfits. Shall we offer to lend Susan a sagusam? You can be sure she doesn't own one.
That would be good.
We could have a ceremony, sort of. The girls would be in another room; we'd light the cake and start singing; they would walk through the door hand in hand ... just like arriving all over again. Don't you think?
And, hey! Brad said. We could show the video!
Perfect! The video, Bitsy said.
Her brother Mac had taken all the different airport videos to be edited into a single tape. Since then the tape had sat on a shelf there never seemed to be time to watch even the news, anymore but this was their chance to view it. Maybe at the end of the party, to wind things up, Bitsy said. Is this all too hokey, maybe?
Not a bit.
You're sure, now. You would tell me if it was.
You couldn't be hokey if you tried, Brad said.
The nice thing was, he meant it. She knew that. He had this notion that she could do no wrong. It was Bitsy says this and Bitsy says that and Let's ask Bitsy, shall we? She took his face between her hands and leaned forward to give him a kiss.
Bitsy never liked for this to get around, but Brad was not her first husband. Her first husband had been Stephen Bartholomew, the only son of her parents' oldest friends. Bitsy's parents and Stephen's parents had double-dated all the way through Swarthmore and kept devotedly in touch ever since, even though the Bartholomews lived clear across the country in Portland, Oregon. Bitsy had seen Stephen precisely twice in her life both times when she was too young to remember before they entered Swarthmore themselves; but the idea was, they were bound to be instant soulmates. The first letter her mother wrote her, the first week of Bitsy's freshman year, began with Have you met Stephen yet? And no doubt Stephen's mother was asking him the same thing.
Of course they did meet, by and by, and to nobody's surprise they promptly fell in love. He was an ethereally beautiful boy with a narrow, calm face and sea-gray eyes. She was plainer but a born leader, the campus star, outspoken and impassioned. They went through four years of college as an established, recognized couple, although they had such different interests (chemistry for him and English for her, not to mention her various political activities) that it was a struggle to find the time to be together. Christmas of their senior year they became engaged, and they married the next June, the day after graduation, and moved to Baltimore, where Stephen had a fellowship at Hopkins and Bitsy went to work on her education credits at College Park.
Then she met Brad.
Or no, first she started noticing Stephen's flaws.
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