"No," my mother said. "No, I'll tell him. Spratley. S-P-R-A-T. Yes. Mrs. Spratley. And he missed—yes, last night. He wasn't—no, I'll tell him. Thank you. Yes. You too."
She hung up. She stood there with her hand still on the receiver.
"Who was that?" I said.
"A woman," my mother said, "named Mrs. Euphemia Spratley. Who wanted your father to know that she missed him last night and she hopes he's all right, because it's not like him not to come on a Thursday, and that he should not give up, because he's doing so good, and she'll see him next week. She said to tell him to bring the book."
"What book?"
"I have no idea, Joey," my mother said. "I have no idea what book."
He hadn't gone out the night before. I'd noticed that and not thought anything of it. He'd stayed home that Thursday, the 14th, for the first time in six weeks, and sat in the front room in the dark with the TV off and Boog in the window behind the painted screen, and at a quarter to seven Boog had gotten up and gone to the front door and sat there, waiting, looking back at my father. And my father had said, "Not tonight, buddy. Not tonight." And Boog had sat by the door for an hour.
When my father came in from the Florkowskis' with grease on his hands, my mother was waiting in the kitchen. I wasn't sent upstairs. I don't think either of them remembered I was there.
"A Mrs. Spratley called," my mother said.