The Goodbye Time by Celeste Conway Page A

thirty-second President of the United States, and Tom was just crazy about the guy. He read everything ever written about FDR’s life and about his wife, Eleanor, and sometimes he’d go around pretending to
be
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On his eighth birthday, when my mom took him to the bakery to pick out his cake, he made the lady write HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FRANKLIN on it. That’s how crazy Tom was about him. And that’s why I just think he would have gotten it and not made fun of us or told us we were weird.
    When we got to my building, the doorman, Larry, said hi and gave me a huge envelope that hadn’t fit in our mailbox. It was from Harvard University, the big famous college my brother was going to attend in the fall. They had probably sent some more papers for him to fill out.
    When Katy and I first went into my apartment, we thought no one was home. But then we smelled grilled cheese, which was a sure sign that Tom was there.
    “Do you think he’ll make us some?” Katy asked in her English accent as we dropped our hundred-pound backpacks on the kitchen floor.
    “Don’t know,” I said. “Uncle George is a bit of a lout these days.” Uncle George, by the way, wasn’t one of our regular characters. But sometimes when we were playing, we had to give other people parts. They, of course, didn’t know, like Tom didn’t know he was Uncle George as he came into the kitchen quietly in his big white socks. He was carrying a plate that still had half of a grilled cheese sandwich on it.
    “Hi, you two,” he said to us. He looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, with his rumpled hair and his wrinkled pants and T-shirt.
    “Hey, bloke,” I said. “Mind making us some sandwiches?” He was used to me calling him things like bloke and mate, so he didn’t think anything of it. I knew he didn’t feel like making us anything and had probably been trying to sneak back into the kitchen before we got home. But he’s a pretty nice guy, and I think he realized how much he was going to miss me when he went away to school.
    “All right,” he said, “but I’m not serving tea or anything like that.”
    “Jolly good,” I answered. Then Johnny and I (Johnny was Katy’s character) started pulling out the teacups and the fancy pot and sugar bowl. I took out my special sugar cubes too, which had tiny flowers painted on them with edible paint and came from some fancy store in England. After that we sat down at the table and watched Uncle George make the sandwiches.
    “Don’t be telling Uncle Georgie about me bad grades,” Johnny said in a voice so low I could hardly hear him.
    “I’ll think about that,” I replied in a stern voice. Then: “If you think you’ll be going out on a date this weekend with Clarissa with grades like that, you’re blooming daft.” At that, Johnny looked like he wanted to yell at me, but instead he bit his lip and lowered his head, really mad but holding it in.
    “I’ll be putting the water on, then,” I said. I got up to fill the teakettle, but Uncle George told me to stay out of his way, that he’d do it, so I went back to the table and rolled my eyes at Johnny.
    “Ever since he lost his job down at the fish-and-chips plant, he’s been like that.”
    “Blarky?” suggested Johnny.
    “More like wormy.” Sometimes we made up words that we thought sounded British, even though we’d never heard any English people use them on TV, which they call the telly.
    “You can’t keep me from seeing Clarissa,” Johnny muttered through his teeth.
    “Shall I have a chat with your uncle about that?” I said, all threatening. Johnny shot a hateful glance at Uncle George, but luckily, George was too busy flipping grilled cheese sandwiches onto our plates to notice. They smelled really good and we couldn’t wait to taste them, even though it was
American,
not English, cheese dripping out of the Wonder Bread.
    “Looks bloody yummy,” I said.
    “I’m bloody glad,” Uncle George answered.