Chapter 26: Summer School, and an Exchange with the Tappet Brothers

The next morning I woke up at about 7:00. I got up to brush my teeth and as I
crossed the hall I noticed that the house already smelled like coffee and bacon. I
performed a few morning ablutions and descended to the first floor, where I could hear
that Stoney and Mrs. W were talking. I walked through the dining room to get to the
kitchen, and there was a large green chalkboard set up in front of the buffet at the end of
the dining room. I pushed open the door to the kitchen—one of those two-way doors that
would swing in either direction—and found Mrs. W drinking coffee, looking at the
Chattanooga Times and smoking a cigarette, and Stoney at the stove. There were maybe
sixteen rashers of bacon on a piece of newsprint next to the stove and Stoney was frying
something in a skillet.

“Hello, everybody,” I said, as I entered the room.”

“Hey, Henry,” said Mrs. Wertheimer.

“Yo,” Stoney called out.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Not much,” said Mrs. W, taking a drag off of her cigarette, still looking at her
paper. “I’m reading about Vice President Gerald Ford, our third in almost as many years,
and regretting mightily that I voted for Richard Nixon, although I freely admit that he
seemed like the better candidate over that chump George McGovern—please don’t judge
me—and Stoney is making me some French toast.”

“Stoney can cook?” I asked. In the background, I saw him spatula two squares of
French toast onto a plate, cut them into triangles with the spatula, rearrange them on the
plate, then serve them to Mrs. W with four slices of bacon. She had a tin of Vermont
maple syrup at the ready.

“Why thank you, Stoney,” she said, and laid a napkin in her lap.

“Mrs. W, you know, if you got a microwave oven, we could heat the syrup, which
you might like,” said Stoney, pouring her a glass of cold milk. She looked at her plate
with great pleasure. It almost seemed like tears were welling up as she stubbed out her
cigarette.

“Stoney, this may be the prettiest breakfast I ever did see,” she said.

“Why thank you!” Stoney said. Mrs. W poured syrup, cut off a wedge of French
toast, and smiled happily as she chewed. She added bacon and milk to the mix, and
seemed utterly delighted.

“He’s good,” she said.

 “Want some?” Stoney asked, looking at me.

“I’ll have some bacon, if there’s extra, but I don’t like sweet stuff for breakfast as
much as I ought to,” I said.

“That’s cool,” he said, handing me two slices of bacon on a salad plate. “I’ll cook
me some,” he said, and proceeded to dip first one, then another, slice of bread into what I
assumed was a mixture of eggs and milk, and dropped them into a very large frying pan.

“Stoney, this is wonderful,” said Mrs. W.

“Cool,” he said, and cooked his own French toast. “Anybody else want bacon?”
he asked, and when nobody responded he piled eight or ten pieces of bacon on his own
plate, arranging his French toast in triangular slices as he’d done Mrs. W’s. He sat down
at the breakfast table and poured himself a glass of milk, then drenched his French toast
in maple syrup. I refilled my coffee cup. The food all smelled really good, and I
regretted passing on Stoney’s French toast. I ate my bacon and we passed different parts
of the paper around. Stoney was looking at the sports pages. “Fuck,” he said. I looked
up, wondering how Mrs. W was going to take this.

“What?” she asked.

“Detroit just sucks,” he said.

“You’re a Tigers fan?” she asked.

“Sure,” he answered.

“Not gonna be a good year for you, I’m thinking,” she said. I had no idea she was
a baseball fan.

“Who’s your team?” I asked.

“Eh. You know. I get the Braves on the radio. I’ve always been a Giants fan,
though, and I just can’t root for the Braves against San Francisco. Yo u?” she asked me.

“Dodgers.” There was a slight pause.

“Interesting choice. How’d you end up there?” She asked. Stoney finished up his
French toast and the last little piece of bacon, scraping the bite through the last of the
maple syrup, which he wisely finished with a swallow of whole milk. He smiled a happy
smile.

“Yeah, well, the Dodgers and the Yankees were the big teams in the sixties, when
I was watching them on TV every Saturday. Dizzie Dean and Pee Wee Reese. Pee Wee
had been a Dodger, and Dizzy was always playing tricks on him. He’d wait until Pee
Wee was taking a bite of his hot dog to ask Pee Wee a question, and Pee Wee would get
all ticked off about it. But he knew those Dodgers. That was the time of Don Drysdale
and Sandy Koufax, when the good guys might win on one run, any day. Maury Wills
would walk, then steal second. He’d get to third on a bunt, get home on a sacrifice. And
the pitching was so good that it was enough”

“Who are the ‘good guys?’” Stoney asked, pouring himself coffee.

“This is how the Dodgers faithful refer to their team,” Mrs. W said, after a brief
pause, without looking up. “They’re unaware they do it.”

“Gotcha. Say on, MacDuff,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” I said.

“So you’re a Dodger fan,” said Mrs. W.

“Yes, of course.” Mrs. W shook her head, baffled, and Stoney looked at the
ceiling in embarrassment. “What’s so wrong with the Dodgers?” I asked. Mrs. W took a
drag from her cigarette and looked at me critically.

“I’m a life-long Giants fan,” she said. “This goes back to the Polo Grounds and
Ebbetts Field. Now its an L.A, versus Bay Area thing. Different mentality. Hard to
explain.” There was an awkward silence.

“So I noticed that there’s a blackboard in the dining room,” I said, after a few
minutes’ silence.

“All right, top off your coffee mugs. Let’s go start our first math problem, she
said, and rose to move into the dining room. The morning light was streaming into the
dining room but she turned on the lights anyway. Stoney and I took seats at the dining
room table. She’d thoughtfully placed a coaster at each place, plus she had one of those
dining room table covers.

“Okay,” she said. “You’ve seen diesel trucks?” We both nodded and sipped at
our coffees. “They have these cylindrical tanks.” She looked at us and we both nodded.
She drew a diagram of a cylinder, then struck a diameter across one end, then traced a
diametrical rectangle across the perimeter of the cylinder. “When they’re half- full, they
look like that,” she said, pointing with her chalk. “What do they look like when they’re a
quarter full? I need you to strike another rectangle that will define the plane that the
surface would occupy if the volume of the cylinder was one quarter full.” She took a
drag off her cigarette.

“Cool,” said Stoney.

 “Any questions?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said.

“I can tell you this will solve lots easier in two dimensions than in three,” said
Stoney.

“It’s a volume problem,” I said.

“Yeah, but if you solve it in two dimensions to find a chord that divides half of a
circle into two areas of equal area you’ve also solved the cubic question, and you’re
dealing with square roots, not cube roots,” said Stoney.

“Lordy. You’re right,” I said. Mrs. W smiled and cocked a wry eyebrow at
Stoney’s observation, and gave each of us a short yellow legal pad, a stack of plain white
typing paper, and some pencils. “There’s a pencil sharpener in the hall closet,” she said.
“I have an appointment with my hairdresser and a lunch appointment with some friends.
I’ll be in and out. Good luck with it.” Stoney frowned in mild frustration as she left.

“I have no idea how to do this,” he said. After a few minutes he picked up a chalk
and started doodling in formulas. “We have to divide a semi-circle into two portions of
equal area with a chord parallel to the diameter.”

“Well, that’s one way to state the problem.” I drew a large circle on the
blackboard and added an x and a y axis that met at the radius.

“Okay, so this is geometry,” said Stoney. He wrote “x 2 +y2 =R2 .”

“How so?” I asked. He wrote “ x = R2 − y 2 ” below it. “Okay,” I said.

“That’s just Euclid 1 translated into Leibniz, 2 ” he said. “How do we turn that into a
chord?” He’d drawn a circle divided into quadrants. I took my chalk and drew a thin
rectangle across a segment of the lower half. He looked at it and nodded. He thought a
minute, then wrote dy next to my rectangle, so that we had

1
Surely you know who Euclid is.
2
Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton came to understand the ideas that we now call Calculus at about the
same time shortly after the Revolutionary War. They used different notation to describe the same
functions, and all mathematicians everywhere now use Leibniz’ notations. Not sure why, but then I don’t
y' y'
know how Newton would have expressed A = ∫ −R
dA = ∫ 2 R 2 − y 2 dy .
−R
 “Okay,” said Stoney. “So if we make those almost-triangle shaped pieces really
small and slice our half of the pie into incredibly small rectangles we’ll get close to
determining the area of the lower half of the pie. Which, you may know, we could do
with high school algebra, leaving college calculus completely aside, so we must ask
ourselves whether we are going the long way around to a simpler, more elegant solution.”

“So you’re not stoned?” I asked.

“No, not at all. Slightly hung over. I drank grappa and consoled myself with
Kuhn after lights out. I may have mentioned that I have no dope. Or anything else. A
tragedy of immense proportions that I wish you could grasp.”

“Why?”

“Because then you would understand the keen and urgent need for a solution.”

“You seem … different.”

“How so?” he asked.

“You’re wearing jeans and a tee shirt. Topsiders®. 3 No odd pieces of suits. No
color. No sunglasses. You’re … focused.”

“Perhaps so, but being high would be much, much more fun,” he said.

“You would not be more fun to be around were you high.”

“Don’t be selfish, Henry. It would be much more fun for me.”

“So if we take the number of the rectangles to the limit and yank out the little
almost triangles, we get …” I started.

3
In 1974 all Topsiders had white rubber soles and brown leather tops.
 “No, no, I’ll do it,” he said. “You’re right. I can figure this out.” He thought for a
minute, placing the chalk at his lips like he was taking a drag off a cigarette while he did
so, leaving a chalk mark on his lips. He was startled by the chalk. “Jesus!”

“It’s just chalk, Stoney.”

“True.” He pulled a 100 millimeter Winston out of a gold pack and lit it one-
handed with a book of matches. He took that first drag that smokers take, inhaling
deeply, and looked at the board. I went into the kitchen, emptied the ashtray there into
the garbage can under the sink, and placed the emptied ashtray next to him. He didn’t
seem to notice, but he put his cigarette down in it a few seconds later.

“Okay, so we get length = 2x = 2 R2 − y 2 .”

“Yeah, you said that before,” I said.

“Don’t be impatient, Henry. If yo u’re impatient you’ll never get laid.”

“What?”

“And height is dy,” he said.

“You’ve said this before. We need to lay out the function. What was that about
getting laid?”

“Okay. So I think we get dA= 2 R2 − y 2 dy,” he said.

“So now we have to express that as a function.”

“I am un-stoned, not stupid,” he said, taking a drag from his cigarette. He looked
at the drawing for a minute. “I’m used to solving puzzles. I’m not used to making them
up. What do you get?”

y' y'
“I think A = ∫ −R
dA = ∫ 2 R2 − y 2 dy ,” I answered. He thought a few seconds.
−R

“Say it again.”

y' y'
“A = ∫ −R
dA = ∫ 2 R2 − y 2 dy .” He wrote it down and looked at it as a museum
−R

curator might look at an artifact of unknown provenance. He eventually started nodding

at the blackboard.
 “You have to be right. Fuckadoodledoo. I need to look at this a minute.” He
smoked his cigarette in silence. I returned to the kitchen for more coffee. 4 There were
two pieces of bacon left and I snagged one. When I came back he had flipped the
blackboard over and was writing speculatively on the clean side. He’d write a few
figures then erase, then write a few more.

“So you’re trying to integrate?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s a bitch.” After about an hour we hit on

.
It was preposterously difficult to solve. Stoney decided to graph it on plain paper
and it solved to a disappointingly straight line. We then worked out the calculations for
actual fractions and came up with a chart for percentages of diameter that allowed us to
strike chords across the circle that described area in terms of eighths. We divided the
volume of a cylinder into eight wafers of equal volume. It was kind of a way of doing
Mrs. W one better, and we were feeling slightly smug about it. By the time we were
done it was time for lunch.

Stoney had thought ahead and boiled some eggs for egg salad. He looked at the
mayo in her refrigerator, Hellmann’s® brand, and thought for a minute. “How hungry are
you?” he asked.

“Hungry but not starving.”

“Take out the trash. I want to make my own mayonnaise,” he said, beginning to
search through Mrs. W’s cabinets.

“You can make mayonnaise?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, pulling an avocado green Mixmaster® brand stand mixer from a
cabinet with a clear glass bowl and the beaters. My mom’s Mixmaster® had been
yellowish-brown, like a combination of French’s® mustard and Gulden’s ®.

“I always thought of mayo as something like motor oil or yogurt,” I said.

“How so?”

4
It took Stoney much longer to write these functions on a blackboard than it does for you to read them.
Over twenty minutes passed between this cup of coffee and the last one. This kind of calculus is hard work,
at least it was for us.
 “Things that can’t be made at home.”

“You can totally make yogurt at home,” he said. “Take out the trash.”

“Stoney, when was the last time you were sober? Not on any mind-altering
substance at all?”

“I don’t know, man. Like, I’m smoking a cigarette and buzzed from coffee now,”
he said, shaking his head.

“That doesn’t count,” I said.

“You straight people are so weird when it comes to drugs, man.”

“And in this case straight means ….” I asked.

“Non-freak 5 ,” he said.

“So when do you think the last time you were this sober was?” I asked.

“I dunno. I went off to Lawrenceville in 1968.”

“So it’s been six years since you’ve been sober?” I asked.

“’Sober’ might be too strong a word for my current status,” he said.

“What are on?”

“I thought it wise to steady my nerves a bit through this ordeal, so I may have
added a dollop of Jack Daniels to my coffee.”

“I didn’t see you go upstairs,” I said.

“Not of my Jack Daniels, of Mrs. W’s Jack Daniels.”

“Stoney,” I began.

“Oh, don’t get your boxers in a bunch. I’m pretty sure Mrs. W is on to me,
anyway, and it was just one dollop. Or maybe two. Or let’s just say ‘some.’ Take out the
trash and I’ll start lunch.” He cracked an egg into the Mixmaster® bowl, then added
French’s® mustard, sugar, and salt, then turned the beaters on. He’d also found a bottle of
Wesson® oil. I retrieved the trash from under the sink and took it out the back door.

5
Up until 1974 or early 1975 but not at all thereafter, “freak” meant a person with long hair, colorful
clothing, countercultural political views, bell-bottomed Levi’s, and personal experience with the effects of
smoking marijuana.
 The back door exited onto a large screened- in porch that was at a slight angle to
the part of the house where the kitchen was, and overlooked a very nice garden. I didn’t
seem to be closer to the garbage cans. I looked around without finding any clues. Two
doors down, two girls in very revealing bathing suits were sunning themselves on their
own back porch, which was not screened. 6 I put the trashcan down on the porch and
opened the back door to see if there were any trash cans out back. There was a lovely
garden with occasional large metamorphic rocks protruding from a thick green noisier
carpet. There were willow trees towards the back. There were no garbage cans.

I held my right hand over my eyes like the bill of a cap to shield them from the
sun to look at the two girls. They had noticed me, and waved, smiling. They were lying
on redwood porch recliners. One was tall and angular with short sandy blonde hair and
the other shorter and slightly plumper with shoulder- length brunette hair and bangs. Both
attractive, both wearing sunglasses. We spent a few seconds waving back and forth and
they both smiled as they said something to each other I couldn’t hear because they were
maybe 200 yards away. I waved a last time and returned to the house with the trashcan. I
re-entered the kitchen, and noticed a second exit, which I tried carrying my trashcan.
Stoney waved as I passed through, cigarette hanging from his lips. The second door
opened to the garage, oddly a one-car garage, but there was a door to the left of the
garage door, and there were trash cans right outside that. I dumped the kitchen trash into
the outside, steel trash can and then rinsed out the kitchen trash can with water from an
exterior spigot next to the door. 7 When I got back to the kitchen, Stoney was squeezing a
lemon and appeared to be frying bread cubes in olive oil. I was about to sit down, but
Stoney had a question for me.

“Do you know what basil looks like?” he asked.

“You mean the herb, in a jar?” I asked.

“No, on the hoof,” he answered. I had no idea what he meant by this. “I noticed
when we came in last night that Mrs. W has it planted in the ornamental beds near her
front door, along with some other herbs. Basis is the tallest plant in those small square
bed and has the broadest green leaves. Go pick me ten basil leaves, distributed across as
many different plants as possible.”

“Is this some strange mystical deal?” I asked.

“No this is lunch. Hurry.”

6
I much prefer screened porches, especially in the South.
7
In 1974, plastic garbage bags were not used in Tennessee. Trash was placed directly into a kitchen (or
bathroom, or bedroom) trash can and these were emptied directly into a metal trash can somewhere in the
back of the house. Municipal workers then mo ved the refuse from the large metal cans into garbage trucks,
an aromatic process for them, to be sure. Because you placed kitchen refuse directly into them, you washed
them out every time you used them, or, if you had children living in the house, you made your children do
so.
 I went, found some basil leaves, and when I got back Stoney had just emptied
some fresh hot croutons onto paper towels. There was a bowl of fresh cubed tomatoes
he’d salted and drizzled with olive oil which he then tossed with the fresh hot croutons.
He quickly rinsed then minced the basil leaves and stirred them in. He placed small piles
of the tomato salad next to each of two egg salad on white bread sandwiches 8 on two
plates, which he then placed on the breakfast-area table next to two tall glasses of milk,
previously poured. “Lunchtime,” he said.

His egg salad was excellent. His home- made mayo, which I’d meant to observe
being made but had not, added an excellent zing, and he added thinly-sliced green olives,
which I’d never before had in egg salad but which I have to admit were delicious. Same
for the tomato salad—the combination of flavors was excellent and the croutons added a
delicious crunch.

“Stoney, this is great,” I said.

“Tomatoes need more salt. Feel free,” he said.

“Where in the Hell did you learn to cook?” I asked. He frowned.

“You don’t learn,” he said. “You either can or you can’t.” As we ate we tried to
talk about baseball, but because he was an American League guy and I’m a National
League guy, we didn’t have much common ground, although we both hated the Yankees,
as do all right-thinking people. I gathered our dishes and took them to the kitchen. I tried
to keep Stoney from helping clean up, since he’d now made two meals for me and I
should do something, but he insisted on helping. There was a surprising lack of stuff to
clean up, though. All traces of breakfast and lunch preparation was gone, everything
neatly washed and put away.

“How’d you do this?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“Cook two meals and leave a clean kitchen,” I said.

“It’s just easier if you clean up as you go,” he said. “Try it, you’ll see.”

“Okay.” I put our two glasses, two plates, and two forks in the dishwasher as he
rinsed out the tomato salad bowl. No leftovers, no mess. We heard the sound of the front
door opening, then Mrs. W called out “Anybody home?”

8
Wonder Bread has changed in the last few years. It’s stiffer and doesn’t taste the same. They’re trying to
convince us we’re eating whole wheat bread, but they can make it white because they’ve found some
albino wheat. They should give this up and go back to making seventies-style Wonder Bread, and market
this toast they’re manufacturing now as health-food albino bread or something. Health food Wonder Bread
satisfies no one. You only buy it when you forget how bad it was last time.
 “In the kitchen,” I called back, and turned to go meet her. I found her in the
dining room, looking at Stoney’s calculations on the chalkboard.

“Lordy, this is clever,” she said. “How in the world did you get here?” Stoney
came in and flipped the blackboard over to show our original functions. She took several
puffs off of her cigarette as she looked it over. Her hair was very neatly coiffed and
slightly darker red tha n it had been at breakfast. “God almighty, you guys are geniuses,”
she said,” smoking and shaking her head. We both smiled proudly. “Also compete
idiots,” she said. “But that’s just wonderful.” She stubbed out her cigarette.

“Thank you,” said Stoney, pleased. He returned to the kitchen and returned with
a celebratory drink of some sort, while she re-examined both sides of the chalkboard.
The aroma of Scotch whiskey wafted into the room.

“That’s not the Laphroaig, is it?” she asked, without looking at Stoney.

“No, ma’am. Cutty,” said Stoney.

“You leave my Laphroaig alone,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Stoney, taking a sip, or maybe a gulp, from a large-sized
beaker.

“What was this about idiots?” I asked.

“This is an extremely elegant solution,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Stoney.

“Also preposterously difficult,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Stoney.

“Can you get to the idiocy part?” I asked.

“Do you mind if I clear some space?” she asked. “I’m sorry. This is all so pretty
and so complicated and you did such a great job with it. “I’ll call Dr. Henry as soon as
we’re done and ask him to send over two more of these chalk boards so I won’t I have to
erase your calculations next time. I really didn’t know you two could come up with
such… convo luted, yet elegant ideas. But can I erase the back nine?” She was referring
to Stoney’s iterations on the back side of the blackboard. It was Stoney’s stuff, so I
looked at him.

“Sure,” he said, reluctantly. Mrs. W erased the blackboard until it was clean. She
drew a new diagram. It took a few minutes.
 She cocked her head and looked at it a minute, frowning.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.

“What?” asked Stoney.

“We screwed up by going with two dimensions.” I said. “This will be simple by
comparison. You can get there with geometry and trig.”

“How so?” he asked with a puzzled expression. Mrs. W wrote

V= LD 2
8
(θ − sin( θ ) ) on the board, then lit up another Benson & Hedges. Stoney looked
up at her diagram. She looked at him, then cocked an eyebrow. She knew I already had
it and wasn’t going to engage in flattery. Stoney looked at it, frowning, for maybe forty
seconds, then the “I see it now” expression lit across his face.

“Well, damn,” he said. “And with that, you can tell the area of the surface, too,
can’t you?” That caught me off guard and I snapped back to look at the diagram. Mrs. W
smiled and took a drag off of her cigarette, but waited until I figured it out before she
wrote down. “T = 2 y ( D − y ) = D sin (θ2 ) .”

“I’ll be dipped in…” Stoney began. Mrs. W and I looked up sharply.

“…something or another,” said Stoney, with a look of surprise at our reaction. “That’s
the area of the rectangle at the top of the cylinder, isn’t it?” He shook his head and lit
another Winston.

“Let’s talk about language and manners, Stoney,” she said, placing the chalk
firmly between her lips and trying to take a drag off of it. She yanked the chalk from her
mouth and frowned at it, then retrieved a cigarette from her nearby purse and lit it with
her Zippo®.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, apprehensively.

“I’m not a prude and don’t really care what language you use. I cuss like a
sailor.”

“Yes, ma’am.”
 “In the South, though, there are words we use in polite company and words we
don’t,” she said. I realized at that moment that I’d never seen her blow a smoke ring.

“Yes ma’am.”

“As an older woman and a teacher I qualify as ‘polite company’ and you’re not
allowed to swear around me unless I give you permission to do so.”

“I find Southern manners to be very complex,” he said.

“If you’d been raised at home instead of at boarding school you’d be more at ease
with this, but you have good instincts. It helps that you’re polite by nature.”

“Did you tell her I went to boarding school?” Stoney asked, with a quizzical
expression. She laughed at that.

“One thing I can tell you about Henry Baida,” she said. “He doesn’t talk about
people. An odd quirk, but it’s him.”

“How did you know I went to prep school, then?”

“Deduction. The fish shows a high degree of adaptation to dorm life. Plus you’re
wearing Topsiders, a Martha’s Vineyard tee shirt and a navy blue belt with little green
whales on it. Mid-day drinking with no self-consciousness.” I hadn’t noticed the belt.

Stoney looked down at himself, confused. “So?”

“You didn’t pick up any of that in Detroit.” He pondered this a moment.

“Exeter?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.” He smiled slightly and put out his cigarette.

“Andover?”

“No, ma’am.” His smile broadened a bit.

“Lawrenceville,” she said, and they smiled. “Of course. So you leaned math from
people over at Princeton.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“An interesting world, Stoney.”

“Yes ma’am.”
 “Back to manners. One way you show respect for people is by respecting their
customs, and in this part of the country men, especially young men, are expected to show
respect for women, especially older women, by watching their language.”

“Yes, ma’am. I apologize in advance for any lapses.”

“A nice thought, but you still have to apologize when you lapse, as well.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Can you blow smoke rings, Mrs. W?” I asked.

“No, Henry,” she said, frowning in slight exasperation at the interruption.

“I can,” said Stoney, and shot one at high velocity towards the ceiling. It slowed
before it got there, but just barely bounced off before it dissipated.

“We’ve learned a lot today, Mrs. W. Thanks.”

“I’m a teacher Henry.”

“Not really. I’ve had lots of teachers. You make me learn. Something’s different
here.”

“Thanks. Henry, just remember, the essence of math and physics both is to pare
things down. And Stoney, since you don’t like physics, remember that the essence of
math is to pare things down and also that the essence of manners is being aware of who’s
present.”

“Yes, ma’am. What do you want for dinner?” Stoney asked.

She looked up at him and thought. “Beef Stroganoff?”

“Can do. Vegetable?”

“Brussels sprouts or salad either way.”

“Well, we can do both of those. What kind of bread do you like?” Stoney asked.

“New Orleans French bread,” she said.

“Can do, but it’ll take several weeks. What about tonight?”

“Something ciabatta- like,” she said. “I haven’t had good Italian bread in years.”

“We can do that. You have flour?”

 “Buckets.”

“Yeast?”

“Buy new. Whatever I have is going to be years old.”

“May be he lpful with the sourdough starter, though. You understand that once we
get the New Orleans French started we’ll be needing to eat it every day?”

“Sounds wonderful,” she said.

“Where did you learn to cook?” I asked.

“Henry, I’ve told you. You either can or you can’t. One day when you’re seven
you realize that the au pair who has brandy on her breath is trying to feed you Frosted
Flakes® for the fifth day in a row and you offer to make her breakfast instead and it
becomes a routine.”

“My sister claimed she learned how to cook,” I said.

“That means she knows how to follow recipe cards,” he answered. True. She
always had a card in front of her. “I should probably buy some minnows. I haven’t fed
Hank in over a week.”

“Hank?” Mrs.W asked.

“My fish.”

“Your piranha?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hey Mrs. W, who are the two girls on the back porch two doors down?” I asked.

“Girls?” Stony asked.

“They were sun-bathing at lunchtime today,” I said.

“What were they wearing?” Stoney asked.

“You know, bathing suits,” I said.

“One piece or two piece?” he asked.

“Two.”
 “How small?” he asked.

“Stoney. Let’s revisit the manners issue,” said Mrs. Wertheimer. “You are about
to engage in a conversation about young women’s bodies in the presence of a more
mature woman.”

“I guess that might be a little inappropriate, huh?” he asked.

“No, no,” she said. “It is extremely inappropriate.”

“Ah, shit. I’m sorry, Mrs. W.”

“Stoney …”

“Oh, yeah, right. I’m soooo sorry.”

“Stoney, understand. I’m not teaching you right and wrong. I’m teaching you
manners. There’s nothing wrong with the way you talk, but you’ll go farther in the world
if you learn to modulate your tone.”

“Yes, ma’am,”

She fired up another cigarette and stood. “Do you need another problem for the
afternoon?”

“No, ma’am, we need to go to the grocery store. Do they sell wine in grocery
stores here?”

“Yeah. Sure. It’s not great but it’s okay.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“About minnows, have Henry drive you out to Hixson Marina. It’s not that far,
and as I recall they sell live bait.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Somehow the world always becomes more ordered around Mrs. W. She gathered
her cigarettes, her purse and her keys, and waved goodbye. I looked over at Stoney, who
seemed lost in thought.

“Modulate my tone,” he said. “Cool.”