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case, when we went out, he could be very nice to my mother, buying her piña coladas without rum (she couldn’t drink because of her medication) and her favorite thing to eat, fried shrimp dipped in tartar sauce with coleslaw. He still treated her like a baby, fastening a paper napkin around her neck as a bib and even wiping her face for her, which I noticed she seemed to like, though she often griped to Peter, “I can’t stand it when he treats me as though I’m not even a wife, but a daughter.”
    Another thing she must have always enjoyed was showering Poppa with praise: “Oh, Louie, your cooking is like a five-star restaurant” or “Louie, can you show me that picture of you in San Juan again? You look just like Robert Redford in that one.” The only reason I noticed it now was because the way she talked about Poppa to Peter was so different. Poppa loved compliments. At home, we had a game: “Tell me all about your Poppa-pa.” Snuggling with him, I’d tell him everything a girl believes about her father—that he’s the biggest man and the most handsome, the wisest and the best. But I often wasn’t the best in Poppa’s eyes.
    As we were sitting at the eatery, I must have slipped up and started playing with my hair, because Poppa said, “Look at that. She makes herself a public spectacle. This child has no comprehension of anything. Not life, not me, not anything.” He said the last without anger, but regret. He was quiet for a minute, almost thoughtful. Then he went on, “There is nothing worse than a bad habit. A bad habit,” he repeated, looking at Mommy. “Is there anything that you can think of that will end this bad habit of hers? This habit that—”
    Mommy quickly started talking with the hope of derailing the speech that was just starting to gather steam, because she knew—we both did—that once he got going, it would be a long while before he stopped. “I’m sure she’ll outgrow it. Dr. Gurney always said some children are more nervous than others and we shouldn’t worry about a silly little thing like Margaux playing with her hair. He actually said nail biting is worse and we should be glad she’s not one of those types; that leads to hangnails and infections. And Puh—” Mommy said, and I knew that this was the start of Peter’s name; she quickly swallowed the sound with a gulp of orange Hi-C. She knew Poppa got annoyed when Peter was mentioned, except in the context of his living conditions. Poppa had asked Mommy to describe what “that house” was like, and had smiled when Mommy told him about the toilet that didn’t always flush or the ants on the windowsill, or the fact that Peter once said he had picked up most of his furniture from curbs on garbage night and bragged that there was nothing a little Krazy Glue or some wood filler couldn’t fix. Poppa was delighted to hear of a sink that some days brimmed with dirty dishes—not even properly scraped. “The smell of those animals must be insufferable,” Poppa had said.
    Poppa narrowed his eyes at the “P” sound, but he didn’t say anything.
    “Anyway,” Mommy said, looking away. “Like Dr. Gurney said: it’s not permanent. He said these exact words, ‘Children outgrow things.’ And Margaux will outgrow playing with her hair.”
    “Outgrow,” Poppa said, not too loudly, but with a severity that indicated that if he were in charge of the English language, he would omit this particular verb from every dictionary. Then, as though granting the offending word a chance to redeem itself, he tried pronouncing it slightly differently, in a gentler tone, while hooking a steamer in his thumb and forefinger.
    The storm of Poppa’s nerves seemed to have quieted.
    He cleared his throat and said, “Keesy, I am going to tell you the story of a young girl in Puerto Rico who had bad habits; they were different habits than yours, but equally destructive. The mother and father worried because the children at school thought the