“My father wasn't supposed to be sitting in the kitchen . . .”

My father wasn’t supposed to be sitting in the kitchen, in the suit he wore to work, at three o’clock when I came home from school.    

My father never was home in the afternoon, neither were any of the other fathers I knew.  Ginger’s wasn’t, he came home after we were done with our games and I had gone home. Molly’s father didn’t go to an office, he went to a plant, the kind where they make things, and he came home earlier but not till dinnertime.  

My father didn’t speak just as he didn’t speak in the morning when I got up or in the evening when he sat down with his newspaper and sometimes fell asleep even before he had supper.  He’d shake when my mother woke him up to tell him supper was ready.

My father seemed to see everything, underneath or through.  But now he looked at me, then away from me, as if I wasn’t there.

My mother came out of their bedroom wearing her best dress, not the fanciest but the newest, the one she'd brought home one day and held up in front of the mirror saying, "Isn't it American?"  It was stiff navy blue material with a cinched waist and white star-shaped buttons.  It was hard to the touch. 

She dressed up for the opera or a party, more dressed than this, but not in the daytime, not in the afternoon. 

She was carrying the neat square train case she'd taken on the Denver Zephyr with lingerie and makeup, slippers and the clothes she would wear to meet my grandparents in the morning—more than you'd think would fit.

My mother stood there not like my mother but a woman going out, already on her way. 

"Where?" I asked, and she opened her mouth, but he spoke first.

"Eve, put the bag down," my father told her.

"It isn't heavy," she said.

"Everything is heavy now."

He looked at his watch and said, “Mrs. Ewen will be here any minute.”

“Mrs. Ewen?” I asked.

“From across the hall.  To stay with you.”

“Why?”

“A child your age can’t stay alone.”