"Boy. I like your mother." Trent said the moment she was gone, "My mother would have taken your blood and urine and had it off to the lab by now."
I laughed and accused him of exaggeration. I hadn't met his mother yet, but I couldn't imagine her to be as severe as he was portraying her. However, he didn't relent, "She treats our family name, reputation, and status no less than she would if we were royalty. It gets embarrassing and difficult at times. My father is easier and not as taken with himself,
"But," he added, seeing the look of concern on my face. "I'm sure when she meets you she won't be able to do anything but melt."
"'Not unless she's made of ice cream," I said.
"No, she would rather be thought of as rich butter," he replied, and we laughed.
"I didn't know you were going off to baseball camp this summer."
"Yeah, but it's not that far away. I'll be around to eat chicken burgers as many times as I can."
I laughed, but it felt good to hear how much he wanted to see me.
Before Mommy called us to dinner I showed him one of our family albums with Daddy on different ships, one an aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise.
"There are more than twenty-eight hundred sailors on it, more than one hundred seventy chiefs, and more than two hundred officers. With the air wing there could be more than five thousand people on it. It's like a little city. Daddy says. I was very little when he was on it. so I don't remember ever seeing it. but I have seen it in harbor."
"I guess you're a real Navy girl,- Trent said. smiling. "You know so much detail about the ships and all."
"Sailor Girl."
"What?"
"That's what my father calls me."
"Oh, right."
He laughed. We looked at some more pictures, and then we went in to dinner. Trent really loved Mommy's chicken burgers. I could see he wasn't simply being polite. When I started to help her clean up, she insisted I get right to studying. She gave me a look that told me she approved of Trent very much.
He thanked her, and we went to my room. The first thing he noticed was all the dolls and souvenirs Daddy had brought me over the years, each unique to the place he had been. I had set up my notebook and our textbook with bookmarks for our studying.
'We'd better get to it, huh?" he said. "First the sacrosanct."
"Time for a new word," I countered. "Stop being facetious."
He laughed. "Okay, okay," he said, holding up his hands while still leaning on his crutch. "Let's go at it"
As before, his problem was the disorganized manner in which he kept his notes. Organizing it all helped us to study. Mommy stopped by once to ask if we needed anything more before she settled into watching television and waiting for my father. She made watching television sound like a warm bath.
After she left us Trent leaned over to kiss me.
"I figured since she invaded the sacrosanct. I could. Just for a moment, of course."
"It's not the sacrosanct. It's an adjective, not a noun. We are studying English. and Madea will have vocabulary on the test, Trent."
"Ave, aye, sir." he said, and saluted.
For a moment the salute gave me a strange chill. My father's face flashed before me. It threw me back to the moment of discomfort I had experienced at the helicopter liftoff. That nervousness surged through my body, rattling my bones. I glanced at the clock. Daddy was going to have a very late dinner tonight the way this was going.
"You all right?" Trent asked.
"What? Oh. yes. C'mon, let's review the quotes from Julius Caesar," I said, and turned to those pages in my notebook. Involving myself in my work was the only way to keep the annoying finger of anxiety away from my heart., I had no idea why it was there, and that made me more jittery. Every once in a while I glanced at the clock and took note of the time. Trent caught me doing it and asked if I thought he should leave soon.
"No, we have more to do," I insisted, and we continued.
When the doorbell sounded about forty minutes later, it seemed to ring inside me as if my heart had become a gong to strike. Anyone at our door had to be someone living within the gated compound, since the security guard hadn't called to announce him or her, but Mommy had not mentioned any of her friends coming over to visit. Most anyone would call first to see if we were home or if it was a good time to come.