The majority of the time I spent at the Kruegers was, of course, spent with Paul. Usually we shut ourselves upstairs in his room and worked on his projects. He would explain them to me in patient, loving detail. Some of the things I did eventually understand. Most of them I didn’t, but it mattered little. I found it fun to be with him, to work on them, to see how they came out. He could so easily conceptualize what he wanted to do and then create it that I was excited just to be a spectator to the process. Through January and most of February we worked on a contraption to photograph Kirlian auras and then hunted for various items to try in it, including money and gloves and once, the seat off the upstairs toilet. But Paul’s real passion was for astronomy and his dream was to build a telescope larger than his current one. So we spent hours and hours together, paging through catalogues that sold ground lenses and mirrors and numerous bits and pieces that I had no understanding of, in preparation for creating what I came to think of as ‘our telescope’. Actually, I was impressed by the telescope he already had. I’d never seen one that powerful in someone’s home before and I knew it must have cost a great deal of money. We spent a lot of our evenings looking through it. I learned how to locate Procyon and Andromeda and Mira, ‘the Wonderful’, and helped Paul keep his observation notebooks. Sometimes we attached his father’s camera to the telescope, and once I got to take photographs of the moon. Later, we made plans to get them blown up into posters, some for his room, some for mine.
At my house, life remained very much the same.
‘Daddy,’ said Megan one evening as we were sitting at the dinner table, ‘can I have a slumber party?’
Dad looked up. ‘You can. The question remains whether or not you may.’
Megan groaned. ‘May I have a slumber party? I got to thinking about it today and I thought, well, maybe when my birthday comes around, we might’ve moved and I won’t know any kids to ask. So can I have a slumber party now while I still got friends?’
‘We’re not moving to my knowledge,’ my father replied.
‘Well, we might. You never can tell. Besides, my birthday’s right in the middle of summer vacation, and there’s never any kids around then anyway. So can I have one now? And we can count it for my birthday, like an advance against it or something. I won’t ask for anything then.’
‘What’s a slumber party?’ Mama asked.
‘Oh Mama, it’s where kids bring over their sleeping bags and sleep on your floor. And you eat food and stuff. It’s real fun.’ Megan obviously had it plotted out already in her head.
‘Well, Meggie,’ my father said, ‘I can see why you’d like to do it, but I don’t think it’s a very good idea right now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for one thing, it’d be a lot of trouble for your mama.’
‘No, it wouldn’t. Just a little party. Just a little, little, little one. Just maybe me and Katie and Tracey Pickett and Suzanne Warner. And maybe Jessica. And, oh yeah, Melissa. I can’t forget Melissa because I went to her birthday party in November. Remember? But that’s all. Just them. And I already got it thought out. They could bring their sleeping bags and we could do it in the living room. And we could have dinner, you know, like hot dogs or something. Nothing big. I could make hot dogs myself. Then we’d just watch TV and go to sleep. We wouldn’t be any bother at all, Daddy.’
By the set of his jaw, I could tell my father had already decided against it.
Megan studied his face.
‘No, Meggie,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid not. Maybe some other time. Maybe when we get a bigger house.’
‘But we’ll never get a bigger house.’
‘Sure we will. Maybe we’ll get a house with a rec room in it. Then you can play games and everything.’
‘By then I might be old and not want a slumber party.’
‘Sure you will.’
Megan fell silent a moment, her lower lip jutting over her upper. ‘I want a party now, not some far-off time, Daddy. Not someday.’
‘I know you do, kitten.’
Putting her elbows on the table, Megan braced her face on her two fists. She rolled her eyes in my father’s direction. ‘It’s not fair. I never get to do anything. Katie had a slumber party just last week. Katie’s had three of them.’
‘Yes, and you got to go to every one of them, didn’t you, Megs?’ Dad said.
‘That’s not the same.’ Megan’s voice had grown whiny. My father’s brows began to knit together when she spoke like that. ‘Well, it’s not, Daddy. Sometimes I want to do these things too. Sometimes I just want to be like everybody else.’
‘But you’re not everybody else, are you?’
‘No,’ Megan said in a low voice. I could see she was about to cry. Mama, next to her, was busying herself with the mashed potatoes.
‘Well then,’ said Dad, ‘that’s that. Just as soon as we’re in our new house, Megan has a party. I’ll mark that down in my diary so I remember. Just as soon as we’re settled.’ He looked over at her. ‘But in the meantime, young lady, take your elbows off the table and start on all that food.’
Megan was still teetering dangerously on the edge of tears. With one foot she kicked against the leg of the table. Milk danced in our glasses. Mama turned around and lifted the coffeepot from the stove. She asked Dad if he wanted more.
‘You know something,’ Megan said, her voice low and hoarse, ‘I don’t really like being in this family very much. In fact, I hate it.’
Without even looking up from his food, my father said, ‘You’re excused. You may go to your room, Megan.’
Megan just sat, kicking the table leg.
Lifting one eyebrow, he looked over at her. Megan threw down her napkin, rose and left.
I felt sorry for Megs. I knew exactly how she felt. Besides, it was easy to hear from her voice that she’d had the slumber party all planned out. You could tell that she’d most likely sat through all of Katie’s party the previous week, saying to herself, at my party we’ll have hot dogs, at my party we’ll watch Happy Days, at my party there’ll be even more girls than here. Megan always did have more dreams in her head than sense.
After the dishes were done, I stopped by her room. She was lying on her back on the bed, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling.
‘Look, I’m sorry about your not getting to have a slumber party, Megs.’
‘Go away,’ she said.
‘I know how you feel. I remember wanting stuff like that too.’
‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘He’s just mean.’
‘He’s not trying to be, Megs. He thinks he’s doing the right thing.’
She looked over. ‘It’s because of Mama, isn’t it? He just doesn’t want to bother Mama. Well, I didn’t hear Mama say anything against it. I didn’t hear her complain.’
‘Megs, it’s not his fault. It’s just one of those things.’
‘Well, whose fault is it, then?’ she asked and rolled over on to her stomach. The instant she said that, she knew the answer. Gently, she kicked at the bed with her foot. Silence followed. I picked at the wallpaper by the light switch. ‘You know what, Lesley,’ she said at last.
‘What’s that?’
‘I hate Mama.’
‘No, you don’t.’