LITMIR.BIZ

      6

      Frances was delighted to be spending the evening with Daisy and Mack. For one thing it was much less stressful than evading questions from Flo and Liz about whether or not she’d made an appointment with her doctor. They were getting tiresome.

       Even though she was where she wanted to be—away from the prying eyes of her friends—she was grateful that Daisy and Mack had plenty of homework to keep them occupied. For some reason trying to keep up appearances these days was exhausting. She was relieved to be able to simply sit and glance through the magazines she’d brought along or to watch TV.

       She was startled when she glanced up and found Mack standing in front of her, his expression a mix of dismay and embarrassment. She’d seen that look often enough in her classrooms over the years to have a pretty good idea this was about homework troubles.

       “Is everything okay, Mack?”

       He shrugged.

       Frances had to hide a smile. Even at seven, kids had a lot of pride. “How’s your homework going?” she prodded. “All finished?”

       He shook his head, his cheeks turning even pinker. “I don’t get my math problems.” He gave her a pleading look. “Could you help me? Subtracting’s hard.”

       Though she was pleased to be asked, she wondered if she’d be any help. “I can certainly try,” she said. “And if I can’t, I imagine Jenny can.”

       His expression turned puzzled. “Jenny? Who’s that?”

       Frances blinked, then shook her head and gave an embarrassed chuckle. “Did I say Jenny? I meant Daisy. Jenny’s my granddaughter. She lives in Charleston.” Jenny had been named for her mother, Frances’s daughter, Jennifer.

       Mack’s face lit up. “I remember her. She used to come to visit. Sometimes she even spent the weekend.”

       “She did,” Frances confirmed. “What a wonderful memory you have!” At the moment, she envied him.

       “She was bigger than Daisy, though,” he said, looking perplexed again. “How old is she?”

       Frances felt as if she were slogging through mental mush as she tried to recall. “She must be fifteen now.” Or was she older? Had Jenny gone off to college? Or was that Marilou? And why couldn’t she keep them straight? There were three girls, she remembered that much. Jennifer had so hoped for a boy that last pregnancy, but there’d been another girl. On the teacher salaries she and her husband earned, they’d decided a fourth child simply wasn’t in the cards.

       Darn! If she could remember all that, why couldn’t she keep the names and ages straight?

       The answer, of course, was obvious. This was another of those troubling mental glitches. It was a good thing Flo and Liz weren’t around to witness it. Their pleas that she make that doctor appointment would become even more strident.

       “Sit beside me and show me those math problems,” she said, rather than dwelling on her earlier slip.

       Finally confident that he wasn’t going to be judged, Mack eagerly crawled up on the sofa beside her and showed her his paper. Thankfully, the problems were fairly basic subtraction, something she hadn’t forgotten.