Page 23

Doctor Marlowe sat back and ate her piece quietly with a tight smile on her lips. It made me feel like we were all being taped for some psychological study she was doing.

"Granny calls him a beanpole. He's almost as tall as I am already. He looks like my daddy more than he does Momma. He's a good boy, shy and quiet, too quiet for his teachers. He's not doing so good in school:'

"Well," Jade corrected.

"What?"

"He's not doing so well in school."

"Yes, Miss Perfect," I said. "He's not doing so well. Maybe, if you got the time, you can come over and tutor my brother."

Cat stopped chewing and looked from Jade to me, anticipating more nasty words.

"I'm sorry," Jade said. "It's a habit, correcting people. When I do it to my mother, she gets all flustered. And maybe I will," she added.

"Will what?" Misty asked.

"Tutor her brother. I've done it in school as part of the Big Sister program."

"Sure," I said. "Only, I won't hold my breath."

"People do help each other sometimes," Jade said, "no matter what you think."

"Right," I said. "Look how much we're already helping each other?'

She smirked. Maybe we couldn't be friends after all, I thought. Maybe we were what Granny called Momma and Daddy: Oil and Water.

"I hope you girls will eat all this. I don't want to have it in the house. It's too tempting," Doctor Marlowe said. She looked at Cat, who was

encouraged to take a real bite.

"Where's Emma today?" Misty asked. I wondered if, like me, she was imagining Emma eating it all. Doctor Marlowe's sister was twice her width.

"She's a little under the weather. She has bad sinus trouble, especially on days like this," Doctor Marlowe explained.

"How long have you and Emma lived in this house?" Jade asked her.

"I've been here all my life. My situation after my parents divorced was a little different from your situations. My sister and I lived with my father because my mother wanted it that way."

"Why?" Misty asked first.

Cat looked up with interest, probably just as eager as the rest of us to know more about the person who was supposed to bring us to all the important answers about ourselves.

"My mother was more into her career than into being a wife and a mother. I suppose that contributed to why they got a divorce in the first place, not that I'm suggesting for one moment she couldn't or shouldn't have had a career."

"So you lived here with your father?" Jade asked. "Yes, and then Emma returned about twentytwo years ago after her divorce," she said.

"So actually you've lived in the same house all your life?" Misty asked

"Yes."

"What did your daddy do?" I asked. Since everyone else was badgering her with questions and she wasn't refusing to answer, I thought I might ask something too.

"He was a corporate attorney and my mother taught Drama-speech at UCLA," she revealed. "I saw her often, more often after I had gone to college."

"Are they both dead?" I asked.

"My father is," she said. "My mother is at an adult residency now. She suffers from Alzheimer's disease. You all know what that is?"