to a movie,” her father suggested.
Kate said, “I’m washing my hair after supper.”
“After supper? You’re washing your hair after supper? Why are you doing it then?”
Kate sighed and slung her bucket into the broom closet.
Pyotr said, “We are wondering if you can be explaining to us what braising is.”
“I have no idea what braising is,” Kate said. She went to the sink to wash her hands. There were bloody meat wrappers in the sink and a cabbage core, along with several outer leaves. Since her father was fanatic about the clean-as-you-go principle, she knew all too well whom to blame. “Don’t you dare leave the kitchen like this when you’re finished,” she told Pyotr as she dried her hands.
“I will take care of everything!” Pyotr said. “Eddie is staying to dinner?”
“Who’s Eddie?”
“Your sister’s boyfriend. In the living room.”
“Edward, you mean. No, he’s not. ‘Eddie’! Good grief!”
“Americans love to be called nicknames,” Pyotr said.
“No, they don’t.”
“Yes, they do.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Please!” Kate’s father said. “Enough.” He was stirring a pot on the stove. He looked toward them with a pained expression.
“Plus, he’s not her boyfriend,” Kate told Pyotr.
“Yes, he is.”
“No, he’s not. He’s too old to be her boyfriend. He’s her tutor.”
“Your sister is studying microorganisms?”
“What?”
“Book on her lap is Journal of Microbiological Methods.”
“It is?”
“Is that a fact!” Dr. Battista marveled. “I didn’t even know she was interested!”
“Oh, geez,” Kate muttered. She flung her towel onto the counter and turned to leave the kitchen.
“Is like a proverb I know,” Pyotr was telling her father as she walked out.
“Spare us,” Kate tossed back. In her sneakers, she made no sound as she crossed the hall. She popped through the living-room doorway and said, “Bunny—”
“Eek!” Bunny said, and she and Edward sprang apart.
The Journal of Microbiological Methods was not on her lap anymore. It lay at the far end of the couch. Even so, Kate crossed the room in four strides and picked it up and stuck it in front of Bunny’s face. “This is not what you need to be learning,” she told Bunny.
“Excuse me?”
“We’re paying him to teach you Spanish.”
“You’re not paying him a thing!”
“Well…and that’s exactly what I meant when I told Father we should be paying.”
Bunny and Edward looked bewildered.
“Bunny is fifteen years old,” Kate told Edward. “She’s not allowed to date yet.”
“Right,” he said. He was less practiced than Bunny at faking self-righteous innocence. He flushed and looked glumly down at his knees.
“She can only see boys in groups.”
“Right.”
Bunny said, “But he’s my—”
“And don’t tell me he’s your tutor, because why did I have to sign your D-plus Spanish test yesterday?”
“It’s the subjunctive?” Bunny said. “I just never have gotten the hang of the subjunctive?” She seemed to be asking whether there was any chance this explanation might be convincing.
Kate turned on her heel and walked out. Before she was halfway across the hall, though, Bunny had jumped up from the couch and come after her. “Are you saying we can’t see each other anymore?” she asked. “He’s just visiting me at my house! We’re not going out on dates or anything.”
“The guy must be twenty years old,” Kate told her. “You don’t find anything wrong with that?”
“So? I’m fifteen years old. A very mature fifteen.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Kate told her.
“You’re just jealous,” Bunny said. She was following Kate through the dining room now. “Just because you have to settle for Pyoder—”
“His name is Pyotr,” Kate said through her teeth. “You might as well learn to pronounce it right.”
“Well, la-di-da to you, Miss Frilling-Your-rs. At least I didn’t have to rely on my father to find me a boyfriend.”
By the time she was saying this, they had reached the kitchen. The two men glanced over at them, surprised. “Your daughter is a jerk,” Bunny told their father.
“I beg your pardon?”
“She is a snoopy, jealous, meddlesome jerk, and I refuse to—and now look!”
Her attention had been snagged by something outside the window. The rest of them turned to see Edward slinking past with his shoulders hunched, veering beneath the redbud tree to cross to his own house.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Bunny told Kate.
“Why is it,” Dr. Battista asked Pyotr, “that whenever I’m around women for any length of time, I end up asking, ‘What just happened here?’ ”
“That is extremely sexist of you,” Pyotr said sternly.
“Don’t blame me,” Dr. Battista said. “I base the observation purely on empirical evidence.”
Monday 1:13 PM
Hi Kate! We went to get marriage license!
Who’s we?
Your Father and I.
Well I hope you’ll be very happy together.
“How do