honey.” Mrs. Traub put down her coffee cup and looked up from the newspaper.
“Hi. Mom, this is Laura Hoffman. She’s in the dramatic club too.”
“Hi, Laura. How did the meeting go?”
“It was fun,” Beth said. “Is there anything to eat?”
She rummaged through the copper-colored refrigerator and came up with Hawaiian Punch, chive cheese and two pears. Then she took a box of crackers and a bag of potato chips from a cabinet.
“Leave some room for dinner,” Mrs. Traub said mildly.
“We will.” Beth lined up everything on a red enamel tray, along with glasses and knives. “Listen, is it all right if Laura stays for dinner?”
“No, really, I can’t.” I didn’t want to just barge in like that and have Mrs. Traub worrying about how to stretch the lamb chops to feed an extra mouth.
“Of course you can,” Mrs. Traub said. She didn’t seem to be counting lamb chops in her head. “It’s only going to be spaghetti and meatballs, Laura, and I’ve got plenty. We’d love to have you.”
“Well—if you’re sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble.” I did want to stay. I felt very comfortable in Beth’s house.
“It isn’t any trouble. It’s all made already, except for the spaghetti; we just have to put an extra plate on the table, and if it makes you feel better, I’ll let you do that.”
She grinned at me, and I smiled back. She was very pretty, younger than my mother and a lot more dignified looking. She had on this cream-colored pantsuit with a brown and beige striped sweater. My mother, who could be absolutely stunning if she felt like it, is about as clothes-conscious as my father. She’s partial to old jeans and sweat shirts with pictures of Beethoven on them. When she goes out shopping, she throws a fringed shawl over this outfit. She has even been known to rush out for a carton of milk in the winter with a twenty-year-old mink coat draped over her sweat shirt and jeans.
If I protest that people will think her even more eccentric than they already do, she replies, “But it’s coming back in style. This type of coat is just what they’re wearing now.”
Beth’s mother was waiting for my response.
“Come on, Laura,” Beth urged. “Stay.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you. I’d better call home and tell them.”
I followed Beth upstairs. The sound of the television was barely audible up there and in her room, with the door closed, you couldn’t hear it at all.
“You can use the phone in my parents’ room,” Beth said. “Just shut the door so you can hear yourself talk. My brother sits in front of that TV all afternoon.”
“How old is he?”
“Seven. He’s a real brat.”
“So’s my brother. Seven, I mean.”
“We ought to get them together,” Beth said. “At your house,” she added quickly.
After I called home we ate the cheese and crackers and pears. Beth’s room was as neat and quietly elegant as the rest of the house. Everything was white and yellow and green; it would be summer all year round in there.
“Your mother’s nice,” I said as we finished off the potato chips and juice.
“Yeah. You’ll like my father too. They’re okay. You won’t like Roger. But that’s all right. Nobody likes Roger, except my parents.”
“You have a great house,” I said enviously. “Wait till you see mine. It looks like a rummage sale.”
I began to wonder what Beth would think of my family when she saw the way we lived. It’s not that we would be condemned by the Board of Health or anything. It’s just that the place always looks like a crazed litterbug has just run amok through it. My mother has a woman who comes in to clean every Friday and before she comes we dash around trying to put away the clutter that’s amassed during the week so she can get to things like floors, countertops, etc., but within a day or two all the stuff somehow reappears in the living room and dining room and you’d never know that underneath all that mess it was really clean.
“We have a maid come in Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,” Beth said. “It would never look like this if she didn’t. My mother’s a lawyer.”
Well, that explained why she was all dressed up. After all, even my mother wouldn’t go out to work in a sweatshirt and jeans. Although my father does, come to think of it . . .
We had planned to do our homework, but every time we picked up a pen and actually started to work one of us would begin talking and we’d forget what we were supposed to be doing. We found we liked the same books, watched the same TV programs and hated the same things in school—graphs, maps and fractions.
We agreed that Jean Freeman would probably be the star of any play Mr. Kane’s club put on.
We were just about to give up on the homework and do pantomimes instead when Mrs. Traub called us to set the table.
I followed Beth as she bounced down the stairs and was suddenly aware of how at home I felt here. I could very easily get used to living surrounded by quiet elegance, I thought. It was quite a comfortable feeling.
Since Beth knew where everything was, she carried in all the dishes and forks and things and I set the table. We do set the table at my house, in spite of what you might think. As a matter of fact, we use a very old, fancy set of china that my Grandmother Hoffman gave us. It’s practically an heirloom. We also use real silver and cloth napkins. My mother says she likes to set a nice table. It never seems to bother her that we usually eat in the kitchen, and that it might strike people as a little silly to use all that good stuff when stacks of pots and half-empty packages of macaroni and little heaps of recipes and clippings surround you on all sides and you know you’re eating in the midst of this mess because you can’t get into the dining room . . . But as long as the table looks nice she doesn’t care.
Beth’s mother had changed her clothes. She was now wearing plaid slacks and a turtleneck sweater. She didn’t look one bit less classy than she had before.
“This is my father,” Beth said. “Daddy, this is Laura Hoffman.”
“Hello, Laura.” He turned to his wife. “Isn’t it amazing, Lee? The older Beth gets the prettier her friends get.”
Mrs. Traub just smiled, like she had heard that before.
I, on the other hand, hadn’t. At least, not from a father who looked like him. He was much younger than my father and he could have been a male model. He had dark blond hair, dark brown eyes and had either just come back from Miami Beach, or used Insta-Tan.
I realized I was staring. I quickly went back to setting the table.
“Did you call your parents, Laura?” asked Beth’s mother.
“Yes, I did before.”
“That’s good. Beth, get Roger away from the television, please, and tell him we’re eating.”
Beth sighed. “All right. Where’d you leave the leash?”
I giggled. She went into the living room and yelled, “ROGER! COME AND EAT!”
“If I wanted someone to scream for him, I could have done that myself,” Mrs. Traub pointed out.
I couldn’t believe she’d ever scream about anything.
Beth disappeared from the living room and came back a few moments later propelling her brother by a firm grip on the back of his neck.
“You don’t have to choke me to death,” the boy whined.
“Laura, this is Roger.”
“So,”