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glasses and he never spoke in a loud voice. Frances knew he was smart, and she always expected to hear that he had the highest marks in his school, but Aunt Pearl said he was a sloppy student. Just before they reached the subway, her father began to walk with Simon, asking him questions about school. Uncle Mike put his arm around Aunt Pearl, and Hilda moved over to Frances and brushed her fingers over Frances’s hair as if there were specks on her.
    In the subway Simon sat by himself. Hilda’s dress puffed up through the opening in her coat when she sat down. It might have been nice, Frances thought, to rest her head on her mother’s satiny dress and to smell her perfume. She had brought a book, and she read all the way into New York.
    When they came out of the subway it was drizzling, and the cars driving by sounded unhappy, their tailfins large and rain-spattered, looking indeed like something from the sea. But the banquet was in a hotel close by, and they hardly got wet.
    They hung up their coats in the hotel cloakroom and went into the ballroom, where round white-covered tables were set for ten, and there was a lectern at the front of the room for speeches. The outgoing president, Ellie Potter, a woman in a black silk suit, came to greet them. She laughed like a man. “You brought the whole crowd, I see,” she said, shaking hands with Uncle Mike and patting his shoulder at the same time. And when Frances looked around, she saw only one other child, a girl a little older than she was. Hilda and Pearl talked to each other, as usual, and Frances stood near them. Simon backed away and stood by himself, watching his father, who was shaking hands and greeting people, introducing his family to some of them. “My brother,” he’d say, and Nathan would shake hands with the person. Then he’d gesture in their direction. “My wife. My brother’s wife.”
    Then Uncle Mike got into an argument with another man. Uncle Mike chopped at the air with the side of his hand again and again, as if what the man thought was a piece of meat and Mike was chopping it with a big knife into smaller and smaller pieces. They were arguing about short forms. The man said, “But it’s so easy. It’s so fast. You can’t imagine—”
    It was time to sit down. The man and his wife were seated at their table. The meal began with fruit cup, and Simon didn’t eat his. He reached into the center of the table and took a roll from the plate there. “Don’t fill up on bread,” his father said. Aunt Pearl and Frances’s mother didn’t notice. They were talking with the wife of the short forms man. Frances ate her fruit cup.
    Mike had to lean across the table to argue now. “ My notes—” he said, his mouth full, and then paused to swallow. “Anybody who can read stenotype can read my notes. I get hit by a truck tomorrow, you can read the transcript. You with your abbreviations—everyone has a private system.”
    â€œNone of us sticks to the book exactly,” said the man.
    â€œWell, I don’t know about you,” said Mike, “but I stick to the book.”
    â€œI guess I don’t expect to be run over by a truck,” the man said. He was smiling.
    â€œI have nothing to hide,” Uncle Mike said again. “Anybody who wants to see my notes is welcome.”
    â€œHow about the pen writers?” said the man. “What sense would they make of your notes? How about Ellie Potter?”
    Uncle Mike waved his hand. “Those people are living in the Stone Age. But that’s different. This business of hiding things—secrets—”
    Waiters took away the empty bowls and Simon’s full bowl, and brought plates of roast beef, potatoes, and peas. “Well, the Stone Age!” said the man. “Artie over there was saying we’re living in the Stone Age, using stenotype machines, not getting ready to switch to