The Angel Singers Read Free Page B

from experience that platitudes such as “Well, you’ve got plenty of time” really didn’t mean much when one wants something now.
    Dinner went well, except for Joshua’s tendency to deliberately interrupt Eric on several occasions with his attempts to get Jonathan’s attention. Jonathan finally told him gently but firmly that it was not polite to interrupt. Eric was gracious enough to appear not to notice.
    “Are you coming to Crandall Booth’s next gathering?” Eric asked as Jonathan refilled his wineglass.
    “Is there a date for it? I hadn’t heard.” Jonathan offered to refill my glass, but I raised my hand to indicate I was okay.
    “A week from Sunday. Roger will be announcing it on Tuesday,” Eric said. “I was talking to him last night.”
    “Isn’t that pretty short notice?” Jonathan asked.
    Eric took a sip of his wine and shrugged. “That’s the way Booth does it. I think he tends to have some control issues, and I know Roger doesn’t like it. But because Crandall’s a major financial backer and a member of the board, he can do stuff like that.”
    “Well, I’m looking forward to it,” Jonathan said.
    “I want to go, too!” Joshua declared, which struck me as a little aggressive. Usually he would put his request in the form of a question.
    “We wouldn’t go without you,” Jonathan said, reaching over to put his arm around the boy’s shoulders.
    After dinner, I asked Joshua to come help me clean up the kitchen and put the dishes in the washer, to give Jonathan and Eric a chance to talk; but he would have none of it until Jonathan said, “Joshua, go help Uncle Dick. He needs you.”
    The minute the last dish was done, Joshua was back in the living room.
    *
    Around eight thirty, seeing it was close to Joshua’s bedtime and knowing he would be very unwilling to go, I said, “Hey, Joshua, are you about ready to take your shower?”
    I hoped the mention of a shower would, given his behavior most of the evening, offset the chances for a tantrum, since to his mind taking a shower was synonymous with being a grown-up. Jonathan gave me a quick look then realized what I was doing and told Joshua to go get his new pair of pajamas from his room.
    Ever since he’d recovered from his recent appendectomy, we’d been trying to give Joshua more independence and responsibility when it came to taking care of himself. While we didn’t have any standard yardstick of five-year-old behavior to measure how his development compared to other five-year-olds, or even if we were treating him in an age-appropriate manner, we tried using common sense and playing things by ear. As far as we knew, he was doing very well.
    When he came out of the bedroom, I excused myself and went with him into the bathroom for his evening getting-ready-for-bed routine. He wanted Jonathan to do the honors, but Jonathan said, “It’s Uncle Dick’s turn. You go with him.” I was vastly relieved when this did not provoke a cloudburst. Maybe he was just getting tired of sulking.
    We had started alternating his regular tub baths with occasional showers, which he took as a true sign that getting his own car and going off to college weren’t far away. Still, showers were a little tricky in that they required our turning the water on for him and adjusting it before he got in, thus invariably getting ourselves at least partly wet, then watching him closely through the glass so he didn’t try to tinker with the controls. The first few times had involved either Jonathan or me getting into a bathing suit and actually getting in the shower while he mastered shampooing and soaping.
    When he was through, we’d open the door to turn off the water and have him step out of the shower and stand on a towel during the drying-off stage, which he was also getting used to doing for himself. He seemed to be under the impression that if he couldn’t see it, it didn’t need drying, so we usually had to do at least some touch-up with the