Susan sank gratefully onto a bench in the middle of the mall. She had been shopping all morning and was beginning to believe that keeping up with the girls was easier than shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. She and her mother had gotten up well before dawn and headed for Dallas. The drive took nearly four hours at the alarming speeds her mother had driven the Cadillac, but they had made this drive for years and Susan never flinched, even though she’d come to realize while living in Illinois that non-Texans didn’t drive like this and most considered a four-hour drive to go shopping to be out of the question.
The Thanksgiving party yesterday would have been enough to send some women to bed for a week. The house had been filled with politicians, doctors, lawyers and their assorted offspring, nearly eighty when all counted. The food had been delicious and the house had looked perfect. Servants hired to serve and clean hadn’t left until nearly midnight. Yet at four a.m., her mother had been in the kitchen pouring coffee into a thermos for the drive.
The girls were still asleep. Robert would be on duty in the morning, just like a regular ‘Daddy day’ which was usually Saturdays at home. After he fixed them breakfast they would probably beg to be allowed to swim all morning, and it was certainly warm enough for that. Ahh, Texas weather. Mostly warm, with enough of a taste of winter so you could enjoy the snow then play golf or swim after a few days. Her father would have office hours all morning, but after the girls were awake from their naps he would have the chance to read to them and play for a while.
She wiggled her toes. Her feet already hurt and she had another hour before she was to meet her mother for lunch in the tea room at Neiman’s. She eyed the toy store down the mall warily. She knew exactly what the girls had been asking for. There was a doll called “Baby Boo” that they both wanted, and wardrobes of clothes for it. Also, an art kit Helena had asked for, with a little desk to keep all the colors and sketchpad, and Missy wanted more Breyer’s horses. She sighed. It was time to tackle that.
The toy store was even more crowded than the rest of the mall. A small kit caught her eye as she headed toward the baby dolls. It was a doctor kit. Both her husband and her father were doctors. And both had proudly showed her similar doctor’s kits that they had bought both of the twins. Each girl would have a doctor kit in Texas and at home in Illinois. It was already common for her to find the girls with their father or grandfather treating a long line of stuffed animals and baby dolls. Missy always seemed to lose interest faster and decide the dolls needed to recover while listening to a concert or watching a play or dance act.
Susan gathered up her choices and paid for them and left the store loaded down with packages. She walked past that little doctor’s kit one more time. Both men in her life, her father and her husband, were dead set on making at least one of the girls into a doctor. Probably Helena, who always answered in the affirmative when asked if she wanted to be a doctor. Missy was just as likely to say she wanted to be a veterinarian, a princess, a fireman, or anything else that struck her fancy.
A shop across the walkway caught her eye. It was one of those new science stores with all sorts of educational toys. In one of the windows was a display with glowing stars, a number of books about astronomy and a short stubby telescope on a tripod. She remembered how much the girls enjoyed watching the stars with her when they would visit the lake in the summertime. Sitting below the telescope was a beautifully illustrated book about the stories behind the constellation. She smiled as she recognized familiar characters from the myths that had always fascinated her, stories she had already shared with the girls. It drew her like a magnet.
A young salesman, probably still in his teens, was happy to show her the telescope, how it worked, how easy it was to set up. He showed her books with star maps and told her about his astronomy club which had stargazing parties. In the end she had him pack up the telescope, a short stubby refractor with an adjustable tripod, and half a dozen books, including a coloring book about the constellations and several other books that were much too old for the girls, but she would enjoy them herself. She couldn’t possibly carry another package, so she arranged for them to be wrapped and shipped back to the ranch. Her mother would put them under the tree when they arrived, and they’d be all ready for Christmas.
The girls were both bundled against the cool evening breeze, but both were also jumping up and down with excitement. Susan sat on the diving board by the pool, looking at the instructions to the telescope. When they had opened the package this morning, the girls had wanted the telescope put together right away, but Susan told them they couldn’t use it until dark. It wasn’t that they didn’t have plenty of toys to play with in the meantime. The living room had been covered with ribbons, bows, and wrapping paper, as well as toys and clothing of all descriptions. Just unwrapping everything had taken hours.
As soon as it began to grow dark this evening, Helena had been at her elbow asking about the telescope. So here they were, on the patio trying to point the telescope at something. Despite the sighting scope, it wasn’t as easy as Susan expected, so she decided to point it at the moon. She fiddled with the dials and looked through the eyepiece and nearly winced at the bright disk that came into focus. It was breathtaking, craters in grand relief and mountains sharply visible.
“Let me see!” Helena insisted, climbing up on the diving board next to her mother.
Susan moved aside and Helena stood in her place, bending over the eyepiece.
“Oh!” The little girl sighed. “It’s so pretty.” She looked up as if comparing what she saw in the telescope to the moon she could see with her eyes. “It looks like a fairy land, all white and silver.” She moved back to the eyepiece.
“It does look close, doesn’t it?” Susan said with a smile and steadying Missy who was climbing onto the diving board to take her turn looking.
Helena stepped aside at her sister’s nudge and leaned into her mother’s arms. Susan swept the child up and they both looked up at the moon.
“Daddy says the moon is made out of cheese.”
“I don’t think any of the astronauts who’ve been there have found any cheese.” Susan smiled.
“Can I go there someday and see?”
Susan kissed her daughter. “Maybe you will, sweetheart, maybe you will.”
