As far as Mifalda was concerned, Lu was out of control. She'd been branching out with her singing and performing. It had started when people began asking her to say a little speech or sometimes do a little skit when she was entertaining at their party or at their christening. Lu was glad to oblige, and everyone said she was a natural at acting. A little local theater in town that did shows for children on Saturday mornings was told about her, and all of a sudden Mifalda heard that her daughter was taking the lead in a children's play called Puss in Boots. Then the next thing Mifalda heard, Lu was spicing up her performance by doing cartwheels, exiting from the stage after her final song by flipping head over heels. Everyone talked about that too—and of course they loved it. There was an offer for Lu from another amateur theater group in town—this one performed plays for the adults—but Mifalda had gotten wind of that in time to put her foot down.

Then the people at the USO had asked Lu to sing. The army had turned Yale University into a training school for officers—Mifalda wasn't quite sure how it had all worked—but suddenly the town was full of young cadets who were going off to fight, and everyone wanted to keep their spirits up. Entertaining these young men was a patriotic thing to do. At least, that was what Lu kept saying. To Mifalda, the young men were the problem. She didn't want her daughter parading around in front of them—or flipping head over heels—no matter how unpatriotic that sounded. She and Lu had screaming matches about this that usually ended in their not speaking to each other and Mifalda having to say things to Paulie like “Ask your sister to pass the grated cheese.”

In desperation, she'd finally sent Lu off to California to visit Eddie and his new wife, hoping that maybe while she was gone people would find someone else to entertain them by singing and making jokes and doing cartwheels. Or maybe Lu herself would forget about it. But people hadn't found anyone else, and Lu hadn't forgotten. As soon as she returned home there was an invitation to perform that even Mifalda couldn't say no to. There was no money involved, and she'd be singing at a family wedding; it was the kind of thing she'd done a hundred times before. And of course Paulie would be there to watch out for her.