By the time the oatmeal was done the kitchen had warmed enough that the window over the sink was running with water. Rosie sat at the table in her nightgown and two of his old sweatshirts and kicked the rung of her chair while she ate. Cal ate standing up. He had found, over the last year or so, that he could do most things standing up, and it saved time.
On the counter, under the sugar canister, was the envelope from Duquesne Light. It had come on Tuesday. It was pink, which was how you knew. White meant a bill, and you put it in the drawer with the other bills; pink meant you had ten days, and then a man came in a truck. His mother had read it at the table on Tuesday night with her elbows on either side of it and her hair still pinned up from work, and she hadn't said anything, and then she'd folded it in thirds and put it under the canister like a person putting a stone on top of something to keep it from blowing away.
Cal had counted. Tuesday plus ten was a week from Friday.
He looked at it now and then looked away and rinsed his bowl.
"You have to sign my paper," Rosie said.
"What paper?"
"The paper. For the trip. To the Buhl." She said it like bull. "There's a planetarium and they make it dark and then there's stars on the ceiling. Denise went last year and she said they make the sun go down and it's like the whole sky goes around."
"I can't sign it. It has to be Mom."
"You signed the other one."
That was true. He had signed the one for the eye doctor at school, and the one about head lice, in his best cursive, Darlene M. Dunn, with a loop on the D that he'd practiced on the back of a math sheet. But those didn't cost anything.
"How much is it?"
Rosie got very interested in her oatmeal.
"Rosie."
"Four dollars," she said to the bowl. "And you have to bring a lunch but I can bring a lunch, that's fine, that's not extra."