“I don’t care what they say. But it isn’t true.”

“Fine, then. That’s fine. Then you don’t have to worry about it. Forget I . . . said anything.” And she does this funny thing with her hand, like she’s wiping something with a cloth, making a squeaky noise, like it’s a whiteboard or something, which kids have started to do, which means, like, wiping it clean. “I have to go. I’ll see you at school.”

I crawl back through the hedge again. Mom calls me in for supper. I guess she really is pretty—I watch her moving around the kitchen. Her hair has gone yellow, her skin tanned. All that Texas sun, Granma says. Mom has started swimming again and you can see the muscles in her arms. She looks happier than she used to look in New York.

Mom finishes eating early, because she wants to go out. She’s going to see a movie with a friend of hers and just spends a minute in the bathroom to brush her teeth and put on a little lipstick. I wonder if she’s going with Mr. Tomski. After she leaves, Granma and I clear up together.

Granma’s very quick at everything. She rinses the plates and stacks them, she rinses out the glasses and lays them in the drying rack. She puts the pots in the sink to soak. I watch her swollen hand in the dishwater and feel sorry for her.

“Do you mind having us stay with you?” I ask. I don’t know why—nobody has said anything in about five minutes.

“Do I mind? Who says mind? Of course, I don’t mind. What put that idea into your head?”

“I don’t know. It’s something Dad used to say. Do you mind. Mom doesn’t like it either. She says it sounds stuffy.”

“It’s a little stuffy,” Granma says. “But people can’t always help what they sound like.”

She’s drying one of the pots with a cloth and afterward gives me the pot so I can put it away. It lives in a cupboard under the kitchen counter. “Bending down,” as Granma says, “isn’t something I’m good at anymore.”

“Do I sound like Dad?” I ask her.

“Hard to say, since you never talk.”

“Okay, if you want me to talk, I’ve got a question.” I give her the salad bowl and she reaches up to put it on a shelf. “Is Mom going out with Mr. Tomski?”

“Boy, you don’t mess around,” she says, but not really in a kidding voice. “Did she mention something to you?”

“No.”

“Then you should ask her.”

“Does Dad know?”

“I said, young man, that you should talk to your mother.” But she’s only pretending to be annoyed. Her dishcloth is wet, so she hangs it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs to dry. “Okay,” she says, “if you’ve finished your homework, you can watch a little TV.”

But I don’t want to watch TV, at least not yet. There’s something bugging me. “Granma,” I say, and she says, “What?”