The Vandemark Mummy Read Free

having to spell it out all the time. She was ignoring that, he guessed. He held the letter in his hand, without opening it.
    â€œOne for me too, and a thick one for you, Dad,” Althea said.
    They all three stood looking at their envelopes. “I never got a letter from your mother before,” Mr. Hall said. His was a brown manila envelope, addressed to Sam Hall, Vandemark College, Portland, Maine. “It is thick,” he said. He opened it carefully. “Pictures,” he said, and unfolded the piece of paper, to read.
    Althea and Phineas read theirs. Nobody sat down. “Hey kiddo,” Phineas’s mother wrote, “how are things in Vacationland? Things here are rainy and I start worktomorrow.” She told him about the apartment, and the swimming pool and tennis courts that came with it, about what movies were playing and where she’d seen kids and what they were doing. It wasn’t a very long letter. At the end she said, “I admit it, I almost miss the mess, and the smell of old feet. You wouldn’t consider sending me one of your previously owned socks, would you? I could hang it up in the spare bedroom.” Phineas grinned. He’d been wondering what he’d say when he wrote her back, because he was going to have to write her back, and he thought it would be pretty funny to really send her a sock. First he’d wear it for a few days, until it got seriously smelly.
    â€œShe sounds okay,” Althea reported. “Lots of museums and concerts, libraries.”
    â€œShe gets cable TV with the apartment,” Phineas reported.
    They looked at their father. He spread the photographs around the table, so they could all look at them. “It looks like a pretty typical apartment complex, don’t you think? Not swinging singles.”
    â€œHow can you tell that from pictures?” Phineas asked.
    â€œThe parking lot. I figure swinging singles have smaller, newer cars. There’s a nice mix of station wagons here, and big old sedans.”
    â€œI don’t think Mom will like it,” Phineas said. “It looks like a giant motel.”
    â€œShe likes the job,” Althea reminded them.
    â€œThe job’s why she’s there,” Mr. Hall reminded them. “A job she couldn’t turn down. It’s the congressman who worries me.”
    â€œReally?” Phineas asked.
    â€œYeah, really. He’s much too good-looking, and much too unmarried, and your mother is—a heart-stopper.”
    Phineas didn’t have any idea what to say about that. Luckily, Althea did. She not only looked like their father, she thought like him too. Phineas looked and thought like his mother, mostly.
    â€œOnce Mom makes up her mind, nothing can change her,” Althea said. “You know that, Dad.”
    â€œWe all made the decision together,” Mr. Hall said.
    â€œYou and Phineas and I did.” Althea wasn’t going to budge. “She’d already made hers, no matter what we did.”
    â€œBe fair, Althea. Your mother is the one who earns big money.”
    â€œThat’s the argument she used, and it’s not honest,” Althea said. “This job here, teaching college, is your chance. It’s the first time you asked us to move to your job. Equality doesn’t mean that women get to drag their husbands around after them, the way men used to do women, all their working lives. Does it? It means everyone has a chance.”
    â€œIt was just bad timing,” Mr. Hall said. “Your mother isn’t any happier about it than we are.”
    â€œI didn’t say I was unhappy,” Althea pointed out.
    â€œNo,” her father agreed, “You didn’t. You just suddenly decided that you couldn’t live if you didn’t know enough Greek to translate Sappho, and buried your face in books. A psychologist would go to town on that, Althea.”
    Althea shrugged. Phineas didn’t know why they