The boy's outside running off some steam in the gathering twilight while I get the rudiments of dinner begun. He has on the tools of his trade--plastic sword, plastic dagger, lassoo, a broken part of a toy listening device that resembles a pistol, a few sheriff's badges--all the accoutrements necessary for a Spy In Shining Armor or whatever. He's officially not playing with any of his little friends because he's been grounded from playing with friends for an incident of extreme lippiness the previous evening, maybe the one before. But Meredith is out with her younger sisters in their backyard next-door and I'm not going to push it that the two of them are leaning close across the fence whispering the way they do.

Mom's home, dinner's ready, time to come in! All those evening admonishments of every childhood.

In he marches, a little reluctantly but without making a big fuss of it. What is very obvious is that he's obscuring something underneath his coat. In through the back door, quick through the kitchen past the parents, and I begin tailing him through the livingroom towards his bedroom.

"I'm just going to hang up my coat," he announces back at me, which would, of course, make for the first time in his entire life that he's hung his coat up on the hooks in his room without being badgered about it first.

"Show me what you have under your coat," I nod sagely.

How do parents do that? his look says. I always wondered that as a child, still do, having no clue how I managed to acquire that superpower.

It's a spiral notebook and a pencil and he's babbling about it being spy stuff and Meredith gave it to him and how she says he's supposed to return it every day or something or whatever.

"Okay," I nod, "that's your all's business."

Gotta respect their privacy. It is strictly their business. Or is it?

After dinner I'm alone in the house, find the hiding spot, pages of her writing listing school readers and such until a final paragraph:

I just laugh to myself. That's Meredith! Such a bossy little girl that for nearly a year none of the kids in the neighborhood wanted to play with her. But she's reformed, or learned to become a little more discreet with her power urges, and these days the two of them are thick as thieves, a real regular spy ring, and . . .

And then--oh my god!--and I can see exactly that, that she'll be the one. The girl-next-door and all that and they'll grow up and get married, probably--maybe--move to some other city, other cities, do all that sort of wandering around as is the imperative et cetera of youth, and married, settled down, have some children, choose careers, move back to the hometown, grandchildren, maybe--if my meager health permits the needed longevity--great-grandchildren. My wife, the picture of healthy living anymore, will somehow be out of the picture, divorced, hit-and-run, succumbed to the long-term carcinogenic effects of the tri-weekly consumption of broccoli, whatever.

Yes, Meredith will be in charge, by god! And she'll be the one nagging me into a nursing home. A pre-death residence! Insisting on prying me out of my house and home. Even though I'm perfectly fine, basically fine, having simply managed to get to be too fucking old. Sure, I might forget and leave upstairs windows open in the winter, burn a few things in the oven, open a window upstairs in mid-winter because I've burned something in the oven. Sometimes maybe my feet won't move fast enough and I'll wind up piddling in my pants a little bit and then wind up always wearing a pair of pants that've been piddled in a little a few times because what does it matter? who's to know? who's to care? and it'll be a good idea because it'll save me having to make the rickety trip down the stairs into the basement to use the washer and drier so often, and besides I'd almost always remember to put on a pair of clean pants if I was expecting company so maybe the real problem would be people popping over to my house completely unannounced, not to mention the huge bank of--oh what's that quasi-religious term I'm thinking of? and so what if my memory's not what it used to be--dispensations I've earned for all the years I spent washing out piddled-in pants that certainly didn't belong to me!