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the phrase early ambulation was one of those elaborate mouthfuls—like War Production Board or Office of Price Administration—worn smooth by familiarity.
    At last the two men had their boat in the lake, which was a milky tan-green color, cloudy with stirred-up sediment. Papa rowed, of course,despite his injured hand. Uncle Dennis wouldn’t catch anything. Papa would probably catch something and throw it back. Papa would smoke cigarettes and Uncle Dennis his pipe. They had six bottles of Stroh’s between them. They wouldn’t return for lunch until the bottles were empty.
    Stevie rushed off to swim. There was always something at once comical and depressing in this, because of course he had to remove his glasses. It seemed—poor kid—he could hardly make out the murky water he charged at so excitedly.
    Remaining on shore were the “four girls”—Mamma, Aunt Grace, Bea, and Edith. They sat on two blankets. Carefully shielding her fair skin, Aunt Grace had placed her blanket in the shade, with Bea beside her. Having placed hers in the sun, Mamma squinted into the light.
    Once Bea had come fully to appreciate the extent of Mamma’s jealousy, it was remarkable how many family dealings were freshly illuminated. What was Mamma doing now? She wasn’t merely sitting in the sun… No, she was registering her disdain for the pampering solicitude Grace showed herself—her disdain, even, for the pretty new sun hat with the lime-green ribbon.
    Edith sat beside Mamma in the sun. She had been given a jelly-and-cream-cheese sandwich to “hold her” until lunch. In a patient and exacting process, Edith had set about consuming as much grape jelly as possible without actually biting into the sandwich. Gradually, gently, she squeezed and kneaded the bread, coaxing out little purple seams, which she licked up. Only when satisfied that no more jelly was to be extracted would she bite into the sandwich.
    Edith was utterly absorbed in her task, and Mamma was lost to some dangerous foul mood. So it fell upon Bea and Aunt Grace to keep the conversation alive.
    Aunt Grace asked about her still-life class and Bea told her about Professor Manhardt, who even on the hottest days wore a vest, which he called a “waistcoat.” Aunt Grace’s sincere interest facilitated Bea’s talk—about her classmates, and even about her bright ambitions for her art. Bea had sold one artwork in her life: a watercolor done on Belle Isle, called International Waters , with Detroit lying on the right side and Windsor on the left and the distant Ambassador Bridge, uniting the two countries, in the central background. Aunt Grace had bought it last year, for ten dollars, for Uncle Dennis’s forty-fifth birthday. The painting hung in Uncle Dennis’s office, behind his desk. International Waters wasn’t a very good watercolor—Bea could see that now—and she’d offered a free replacement. But Uncle Dennis wouldn’t hear of it.
    Then Bea recalled someone and something she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten until now: the soldier on the Woodward Avenue streetcar yesterday. “Oh, but listen to this,” she cried. Bea recounted the story at length, and Aunt Grace’s little interpolations—“Really?” “Oh my,” “You poor thing”—made clear she appreciated its every nuance.
    “How mortifying! You must have felt terribly self-conscious,” she said.
    Oddly, this time the story fired Mamma’s imagination. “But what did he say?” she asked.
    “I told you. Just the one remark: Nice ridin’ with ya, miss.”
    “You do know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers on streetcars.”
    “But I didn’t. That’s the whole point. I don’t think he even heard me thank him, for heaven’s sake.”
    Mamma deliberated. “You say he was handsome?”
    “He was very handsome.” Yes, he had been handsome, though in Bea’s imagination he’d now become almost the handsomest boy she’d ever seen.
    “It’s a good way to find trouble. Talking to