"For what?"
He didn't answer right away. He looked at the cat. "I needed some things."
"What things? Ted, what things? That's Christmas. That's Joey's bike. What things?"
"Just some things, Ro. I'll put it back. I'll put it back when I get work."
"When you get work," my mother said, and that was the first time I heard that particular voice come out of her, the one with the crack down the middle of it like a dropped plate. "When you get work. You know what would get you work, Ted? That test. That test that you took two months ago. That nobody has the results of. That the college has no record of. You want to know what the lady at the college told me yesterday? She told me there's no record of a Tadeusz Dombek sitting for the test on September 14th. None. She looked twice. She said maybe he signed in under a different name. Did you sign in under a different name, Ted? Did you?"
I was sitting on the stairs. I could see them both through the banister rails. My father stood in the doorway with his big hands hanging at his sides, and he looked at the floor, at the brown and yellow linoleum squares, the way I looked at the floor when Sister Mary Agnita asked me where my homework was.
"I went," he said.
"Did you take it?"
He didn't say anything.