Free Casebook by Mona Simpson Page A

beginning to see that we were better at talking him into things than she was.
    Then, the Tuesday morning before vacation, when we were racing around his house, Holland appeared at the sliding glass doors wearing cutoffs and combat boots, carrying a small orange suitcase, and holding the New York Times in its blue bag. Her legs were tan, with little yolks for knees. I opened the door. She handed me the paper. My dad and the Boops pressed up around me. My dad gave her a look; I was more fluent in his looks than in Latin. This one meant accusation.
    “No traffic.” She shrugged.
    Boop One crossed her arms and stuck her head down and said she wasn’t going to school. Chin on her chest, she shook her head, saying, “You can’t make me.” My dad pushed her into the den, which wasn’t so far, and we could still hear.
    “Why do you take her to Hawaii and not take me ?”
    “Dad, we’re late!” I yelled, aware of Holland standing there, looking down at her miniature suitcase.
    My dad finally quieted Boop One, but she didn’t say a thing all the way to school. She looked out the window, mad and proud. A tiny queen.
    The last day of school, it seemed a lot of the kids were leaving for somewhere else. Everyone asked, Where’re you going?
    Just staying home , I said.
    And some people asked, Are you still in the same house? That was how I could tell they’d heard about the separation. I mean, as if you say to a normal person in a normal family on a normal day, Are you still in the same house?
    I couldn’t stop thinking about money.
    Eli wasn’t coming to Thanksgiving either—he was working in an animal shelter. He liked to volunteer holidays, the Mims said, because that gave the people who worked there a chance to be with their families. This was admirable, I knew, but I kind of wished he were just coming, since Dad wasn’t. Charlie’s family was supposed to eat with us, too, but then his older brother wanted it at their house with just the family. Sare called my mom the day before to explain, not apologize—it went without saying that what Reed wished trumped us. The Mims cried without making any noise. She hung up the phone. She’d invited them a month in advance to make sure we had a full house. Postseparation, holidays became obstacle courses. We weren’t enough by ourselves.
    Marge arrived, carrying in a bowl of warm nuts with rosemary, trailed by three Chinese mathematicians. My mom hadn’t had friends like Marge before. Marge wore cotton pants and T-shirts, like what they put on little kids, and those same colors. Pastels. Not a good look on a woman of a hundred and eighty pounds. I supposed none of that had mattered when she’d had a husband. She’d solved one of the world’s open problems when she was twenty-nine. Only a handful of people in the world ever do that. My mom didn’t think she could. Marge’s mind, the Mims said, was incredibly elegant. And she turned out to be an amazing cook. She fried Japanese peppers on our stove and slid sunny-side-up eggs on top, because Boop Two wouldn’t touch the turkey, which had once had a face. Marge said she’d tasted this in a restaurant, then pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen and badgered the chef into teaching her to make it.
    The day felt easy, light, and impersonal, the way it can be in a packed movie theater with all those people you don’t know laughing at the same time. I was glad when everyone finally left.
    “Marge is thinking of Internet dating,” my mom told me as we cleaned up.
    I didn’t think that had much chance.
    “Remember, she can read a demographic chart, and she’s decided it’s promising. She’s looking into one called Science Connect.”
    My sisters were in bed by the time Eli’s cab pulled up in front of our house. He didn’t have his borrowed car. He walked in carrying a suit and a white shirt on a hanger.
    Later on, I heard them talking. They sat on the porch steps, a blanket over their knees.
    “I never