“That is quite a compliment,” I said.
“I’ll say. I wonder what’s keeping my mother? If we’re too late setting out for school, there isn’t any point in going at all.”
“Hold on. I don’t understand. Why did her ex-husband keep coming back?”
“For the T-shirts.”
“You lost me.”
“No, I didn’t. You’re standing right in front of me.”
I sighed. “Yes, Frank, I know. But the T-shirts. I don’t understand why your mother’s ex-husband kept coming back for them.”
“Oh,” Frank said. “When he was a movie star, my mother’s ex-husband didn’t wear shirts much. But when he did he was famous for wearing tight black T-shirts. In fact, he got his actor name out of the collar of a shirt he was wearing.”
“His actor name? What was his real name?”
“Milton Fuller, but his friends called him Milt. Or, if they were pals from his Muscle Beach days, Milt the Built. Even though that sobriquet was well earned, you can see why as a serious actor he opted to change it to Hanes Fuller. Changing one’s name was a common practice among entertainers in the olden days. Fred Astaire’s original moniker was Frederick Austerlitz and his friend Benjamin Kubelsky was known to the world as Jack Benny. Why Hanes aka Milt would go to the trouble of changing his name but then go out in public in a shirt meant to be worn as underwear is baffling to me.” Frank grimaced at his shoelaces, which were, of course, untied.
I knelt down and double-knotted the laces for him. “Can’t be tripping on these bad boys on the playground,” I said. “So why are his shirts still here?”
“Once Hanes aka Milt became famous and the story about how he selected his actor name got out, the underwear company that provided him with his inspiration sent him boxes of their shirts gratis. After he wasn’t such a big movie star my mother suspected the underwear company wasn’t mailing them anymore, but that Hanes aka Milt was. My mother started marking the boxes ‘return to sender’ and told him not to come over ever again. Even though there were about a hundred shirts in boxes here he’d opened and forgot. In this context, my mother accompanies the word forgot with this gesture.” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Under normal circumstances my mother would have thrown something like that out, but as you can see, they’re very handy to have around. I like to use them for polishing silver. I wish we had a goat.”
“A goat?”
“If we had a goat we could strain its milk through his T-shirts and make ricotta cheese. My mother and I could sell it at the farmer’s market. To make money.”
“Sell what at the farmer’s market to make money?” Mimi asked. She was standing in the doorway by then, looking distressed.
“Goat cheese. You and I could man the booth together, although of course neither one of us is technically a man. We would need aprons. The long white kind, like waiters wear in restaurants in France.”
I could just see it. I could also see that Mimi was working herself into a state. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I can’t find my cell phone.”
“I’ve got my cell phone,” I said.
“I can’t leave the house without my cell phone,” she said. “I need it.”
“Oh, well. If we can’t leave the house it follows that I’ll have to stay home from school today,” Frank said.
“Should I call your phone?” I asked.
“Yes,” Mimi said.
I called her cell and within moments we heard a tinny, muffled Cab Calloway singing “hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho” from the neighborhood of Frank’s pocket square.
“I think your phone is in Frank’s pocket,” I said.
Frank fished it out. “Ah, yes. I changed your ringtone, Mommie. It was on a default setting so if you happened to be in a crowded room when it rang you might not recognize it as yours. Now you won’t have that problem. Are you glad I changed it?”
“Of course I’m glad, Monkey,” Mimi said, though she didn’t look it.
“But you’re making the angry face,” he persisted. “Are you angry with me?”
“What angry face?” Mimi asked.
“Dr. Abrams has a chart in her office. We’ve been using it to prepare me for the resumption of school. The oval that looks like this”—Frank lowered his eyebrows and pressed his lips into a thin, straight line—“is the ‘angry’ face. If you raise one eyebrow on the angry face like this”—he demonstrated—“you’re ‘skeptical.’ ‘Pleased’ looks like this.” He relaxed his eyebrows, crinkled his eyes, and shaped his mouth into a smile. “I thought the whole exercise tedious until Dr. Abrams pointed out that the greats of the silent era were masters of these subtleties of facial expression.”