Oh, Gerald, she wanted to tell him, I hope you don’t talk like that in front of your classmates. He had only one friend in school that she knew of, an eight-year-old girl named after the city in which her parents had met: Plattsburgh. He sometimes went to her house to give her cooking lessons. Last week, her mother had called Jane to complain that Gerald was condescending to Plattsburgh and creating “self-esteem issues.” As if her name wasn’t a guarantee of that. If only she knew how to talk about any of this without hurting his feelings. He took a bite of his toast, chewed for a few seconds, and then let his mouth drop open. A lump of masticated bread plopped onto his plate.

“Gerald! What was that?”

He held up his toast. “What’s this?”

He was making it sound as if she’d just tried to poison him, an effective tone to take since her conscience wasn’t clear. “It’s your toast, my dear, what do you think?”

“What’s on it?”

“Listen, mister, we ran out of butter and I haven’t had a chance to go shopping, so I used margarine. Which happens to be good for you.” That was unlikely, seeing as everything, including breathing, was unhealthy.

“I hate it! You know I hate it!”

“Gerald, sweetie, I will go shopping today and I will get you some butter. Sweet, unsalted, not in quarters but in a one-pound block, just the way you like it. All right?”

“That doesn’t do me much good this morning.”

Where had he learned to talk like this? What gremlin crawled up the stairs to his third-floor “apartment” each night and gave tutorials in sarcasm and bullying? If only she had the option of blaming it all on TV, life would be easier. But Gerald had almost no interest in television, aside from the occasional cooking show. And what was the right thing to do now? Punish him? Run down to the store on the corner and buy some butter? Get to work at the churn? She picked up his plate and put it into the sink, ran water over it and turned on the disposal. “I can offer you cereal, banana, or peanut butter sandwich.”

“Lyuck, lyuck, lyuuuuck.”

Thomas walked in the back door, mopping his face with his T-shirt.

“Morning, boys and girls. What’s the racket in here?”

Jane watched as Gerald looked from one parent to the other, made a mental calculation of some kind, and said, “Nothing. I wasn’t hungry, that’s all.”

It was a clear-cut case of divide and conquer, but she wasn’t going to enter into the fray by further explanation. It was better to allow herself the luxury of believing it just didn’t matter.