The Dreeson Incident(88)

Tom, up from his nap, came wandering down the hall barefoot.



Missy looked up. "Who's on babysitting patrol?"



"You take it, honey," Chandra said. "Get all three of them up, will you, and then take them out where Katerina and the guys are to run off some steam before we start eating.



"And talk to Katerina. She's bound to be feeling a little out of it. Keep her company."





"Nani and Pop are having dinner with Aura Lee and Joe. Ray's family will be there, too. They all decided to go to Aura Lee's when we decided not to have dinner at home but come over to Gran's instead." Missy's tone was very neutral.



"Presumably," Chip said, "Nani has her nose a bit out of joint because the rest of us are here."



"She was expecting a formal presentation of Katerina."



"There's time after dinner. Katerina and I can walk over there and I'll introduce her to everyone else."



"You two," Missy said, "certainly do have an unending store of excuses to go for walks." She gave him a wink. Not only she but everyone else at the table could make a pretty good guess as to what they spent some of their time doing on those walks.



Then she turned. "I'm sure this is exactly how you wanted to spend your first visit to Grantville, isn't it, Katerina? Meeting more and more apparently endless bunches of Chip's relatives, most of whom are going to give you that 'is she really suitable?' look. You'll survive. Clara had to go through it last month and she's flourishing. Aren't you?" She waved to Clara at the other end of the table, who waved back.



Missy turned back to Katerina. "But, of course, she didn't have to face up to inspection by Nani. That's Mom's side of the family."





Chapter 27





Ron Stone was feeling rather paralyzed in the presence of Missy's grandmother. Not so much her parents. Chad and Debbie Jenkins weren't so bad. He'd seen them often enough when he was in high school. But as the conversation progressed, it was slowly dawning upon him that, necessarily, Missy had as many relatives as Chip did. All of whom probably took as much interest in her activities as they did in Chip's. This was just one grandmother. There was another one, somewhere out in the woodwork. A grandfather. More aunts and uncles.



He advised himself to be cool. Yes, that was the word. Cool, Stone, cool. If you are totally casual, maybe they will all be so preoccupied with Chip's girl that they won't notice you. What was that word in the poem they had studied in English literature? Hecatombs? Yes, that was it. Missy didn't just have cousins. She had hecatombs of cousins, most of whom trailed spouses and children along with them.



In the poem, hecatombs had involved broken hearts. Broken dreams. Something broken.



The grandmother was discussing the history of the serving dishes on the table. Each bowl and tray, none of which matched any of the rest, had apparently been passed down in some branch of her mother's family for several generations.



For a guy who had never exactly met his mother, since she had taken off from Lothlorien Commune for parts unknown before he was old enough to remember, this was a little disconcerting. Ron looked a little warily at Gerry, sitting close to the other end of the table, who had never exactly met his mother either. He hoped that Gerry would keep his mouth shut on the subject of mothers.



The old lady asked his opinion on the design of the gravy boat.



To the best of his knowledge, this was the first time he had ever seen a gravy boat.



"Well," he said, "it's bourgeois." Then clearing his throat, "But it's good bourgeois."



Missy was trying not to giggle. Chandra wasn't even trying not to.



Ron had a feeling that he should sink down right through the floor.



Missy's uncle was looking at the gravy boat with a critical eye. "I think," Wes said, "that that's a fair enough assessment."



Missy's grandmother glared at Missy's uncle.



Ron analyzed his feelings and decided that they clearly fell under the label of "immense, deep, profound gratitude." He could, he thought, get to like Missy's Uncle Wes.



He looked toward the other end of the table again. Gerry was talking to Missy's Aunt Clara. Since their conversation was entirely in German, it was more or less sliding in and out among the rest of the dialogue at the table.



At least until Clara looked up to the end of the table where he was and said, "Wesley, how interesting. This young man Cherry plans to study theology at Jena."





Wes looked down toward her, smiling. The soft "g" sound, along with occasional tangles with the past tenses of irregular verbs, was almost Clara's only concession to the fact that English was not her first language. She had even mastered the English "w"—an uncommon achievement for an adult whose native language was German. Though, as she had once whispered into the ear she was tickling, her desire to be able to say "Wesley" correctly as soon as she had the chance had provided an uncommonly strong motivation.