She’s about the opposite of my mom. Pop does the shouting in our house, and except for the one hassle about bike-riding on Twelfth Avenue, Mom doesn’t even tell me what to do much. She’s quiet, and pretty often she doesn’t feel good, so maybe I think more than most kids that I ought to do things her way without being told.
Also, my mom is always home and always ready to listen if you got something griping you, like when a teacher blames you for something you didn’t do. Some kids I know, they have to phone a string of places to find their mother, and then she scolds them for interrupting her.
Mom likes to cook, and she gets up some good meals for holidays, but she doesn’t go at it all the time, the way Nick’s mother does. So maybe Nick doesn’t come to my house because we haven’t got all that good stuff sitting around. I don’t think that’s it, really, though. He just likes to be boss.
One day, a couple of weeks after we went to Coney, he does come along with me. We pick up a couple of cokes and pears at his pop’s store.
Cat is sitting on my front stoop, and he jumps down and rubs between my legs and goes up the stairs ahead of us.
“See? He knows when school gets out then it’s time to eat. That’s why I like to come home,” I tell Nick.
We say “Hi” to Mom, and I get out the cat food while Nick opens his coke. “You know those girls we ran into over on Coney Island?” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I got the blonde’s phone number, so Sunday when I was hacking around with nothing to do, I called her up.”
“Yeah? What for?”