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course, and that’s very important. But I meant a job outside the home.”
    “If he had a job outside the home,” I said, “we’dhave to pay somebody else to take care of the babies. That would be a job for them, right? So how come it isn’t a job for my dad?”
    “Good point!” She beamed at me, surprised. “I can see not much gets past you.”
    For a moment I felt pretty good, but then she started talking about the stresses on a family when a father is unemployed and the mother is working, how it can be so hard for everyone …
    “But Mrs. Van Gent? I think my dad
likes
taking care of the babies.”
    “Well, of course he does, Robby. I’m sure he loves them very much.”
    But somehow I had the feeling she didn’t understand. Dad didn’t just love the babies, he honestly enjoyed being the one who took care of them. That’s a different thing.
    “I think it’s wonderful he’s willing to pitch in like this until something comes up for him.”
    I sighed. I just wasn’t getting through to her. She seemed to have this picture in her mind of how our family lived, and nothing I said could change it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t try to explain about Mom getting the money from Grampa Brooks’s house when he died, how we weren’t rich but we had enough so Dad could stay home with the babies for a while if he wanted.
    “He must really have his hands full,” she went on. “Do you ever feel he doesn’t have as much time for you anymore?”
    I looked at her sitting there, so nice and sympathetic. She was
trying
to understand.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes.” I thought about how he’d promised to play checkers with me the other night after the babies were down, and then kept falling asleep right in the middle of the game.
    So I told her about that, and before I knew it, I was sort of complaining how Dad and I hadn’t really been able to hang out together since that first week when Mom and the babies had to stay in the hospital in Salem.
    I talked about what a great time we’d had then, sitting by the wood stove at night, eating chocolate cigars and listening to the rain beat on the cedar-shingled roof, how Dad told me again about my being born right in our house and my first bed being a wooden apple box.
    “He says I’m lucky. I can leave doors open all my life, and when people say ‘What’s the matter? Were you born in a barn?’ I can say ‘Yes!’ ”
    Mrs. Van Gent smiled at that.
    Then I told how one of my favorite things used to be riding with Dad in the pickup, coming home with a load of firewood we’d chopped, knowing Mom would fix hot chocolate for us. These days Mom used the pickup to get to work. I hadn’t ridden in it in ages.
    Before the babies, we used to take trips and visit my cousins, but that was too hard now. Heck, we couldn’t even go out to eat.
    Well, we did once, but between Lucy spilling ice water in my lap and Freddie unsticking somebody else’s old chewing gum from under the table and chewing it, Mom and Dad got kind of crabby.
    “Okay, I admit it,” I said to Mrs. Van Gent. “I wasn’t exactly Mr. Cheerful myself. But I still don’t think my mom should have made that crack about wishing they’d asked for a table in the No-Whining section.”
    Mrs. Van Gent nodded sympathetically.
    “I mean, how polite can a guy be expected to act with ice water in his pants?” I shook my head, remembering. “The last straw was when Lucy grabbed the hair of the lady in the next booth. I’m sorry, ‘Beth,’ my dad says to my mom, and he’s saying this loud enough for everybody in the place to hear. I’m sorry, but this is absolutely the last time we offer to take Mona’s kids anywhere!’ ” I rubbed my heel against my shin. “We haven’t been to a restaurant since.”
    “Is that something you miss?”
    “Not really. That doesn’t matter at all compared to our trip to Powell’s Books. You know, in Portland?”
    Mrs. Van Gent’s face lit up. “Oh, it’s a wonderful