Mom slices cheese and puts it on the pieces of bread she’s laid out, then pops the sandwiches under the broiler.
“Can we play Scrabble after dinner?” I ask. “Yup,” she says. “And I’ll kick your butt this time.” She starts to do an extremely premature victory dance, waving a kitchen towel around as she sashays in a circle.
“Will not,” I say. I see the tickle-glint in Mom’s eye and start to back out of the room.
“Will too!” she says, lunging for my especially ticklish right side.
I shriek. “No . . . fair!” I gasp, laughing. She knows exactly where to tickle me, but apparently she was born tickle-proof. My anatomy books do not show diagrams of tickle zones.
The phone rings. “Keep an eye on those sandwiches,” she says as she runs into the living room.
“Hello? . . . Oh, hello, Thelma,” she says.
That’s a little weird. My mom and her sister get along okay, but they don’t talk much, even though Thelma lives only an hour away. In a very big house in a very fancy suburb, ever since she married a very rich lawyer, on top of having all her own rich-banker money.
“. . . Oh, dear, I’m sorry to hear that. Yes, of course we can help . . . Tuesday? Yes, that will be fine. That’s my day off, so I’ll be here all afternoon . . . yes, we’ll see her then. Good-bye.”
