I started gathering my belongings to return to the torture chamber, where the judge wanted to have a post-sitting-shee-vah conference. About what, Bob only knew. I was rummaging through my purse when Mark and Maggie came to say their good-byes.

“Sheila, again, thanks for everything,” Mark said. Maggie jumped into my lap, as she’d done sporadically through the day. Unlike most little kids, she actually liked me for some reason.

“Bounce me bounce me bounce me,” she demanded. I wanted to bounce back a vodka tonic, not a three-year-old. I nonetheless obliged. Maggie squealed with glee, getting louder and louder with each bounce. “More more more!” I obliged again. Maggie latched onto my chunky necklace, nearly beheading me. I kept bouncing. Matthew emerged from the bathroom, his face contorted in a manner evidencing permanent damage.

“Let’s go,” he instructed, grabbing my purse for me. Maggie wouldn’t budge. I stopped bouncing. She was pissed.

“You’re mean! Mean! Mean!” What was it with these Friedmans and saying everything in threes?

Suddenly I felt drenched in sweat. But I wasn’t even that hot. And was that stench something Matthew brought from the bathroom?

“Oh my God, Sheila!” Matthew screamed, pointing at my cleanly shaven legs. “She pissed all over you.” I hoped he was blending the literal with the figurative, but judging from the bottom half of my dress, which was soaked, I knew that wasn’t the case. There was, in fact, urine streaming down my leg, creating little puddles around my ankles. The mini-Friedman had already fled the scene of the crime and had joined Esther in the kitchen. Matthew and I held our breath before laughing uncontrollably.

“Is there wheat in this?!” Esther had propped herself against the counter and was reaching for a leftover, dried-out sandwich. “Is. There. Wheat. In. This?!”

We didn’t stick around to find out.

Chapter Twenty-two

Matthew managed to grab a towel for me on our stealth exit from the judge’s house. I wiped my legs, hoping that passersby would think that I’d accidentally walked into a sprinkler.

“How on earth that woman can turn such a beautiful home into a place of such abject grossness is beyond me!” Matthew exclaimed as we sped down the street.

“Matthew, that’s your problem—you continue to be shocked by her.” I smiled, mimicking one of his favorite lines.

“Yeah, sorry if I am shocked by the fact that I just served as the judge’s two-hundred-year-old sister-in-law’s pooper scooper. That is shocking.”

“Yes, I suppose I, too, am shocked that over the course of the year, I peed my pants for the first time since I was three and got peed on for the first time ever by a three-year-old.”

We laughed our way to a park bench in Rittenhouse Square.