favorite break down. She kept them in her studio. She never sold
anything she wrote, but from time to time she received an encouraging
rejection letter, and she thumbtacked those to the wall. When we kids
came home from school, she'd usually be in her studio working. If it was
quiet, she was painting or contemplating potential subjects. If the
typewriter keys were clattering away, she was at work on one of her
novels, poems, plays, short stories, or her illustrated collection of pithy
sayings—one was. "Life is a bowl of cherries, with a few nuts thrown
in"—which she'd titled. "R. M. Walls's Philosophy of Life."
Dad joined the local electricians' union. Phoenix was booming, and he
landed a job pretty quickly. He left the house in the morning wearing a
yellow hard hat and big steel-toed boots, which I thought made him look
extra handsome. Because of the union, he was making steadier money
than we'd ever seen. On his first payday, he came home and called us all
into the living room. We kids had left our toys out in the yard, he
declared.
"No, sir, we didn't," I said.
"I think you did," he said. "Go out and take a look."
We ran to the front door. Outside in the yard, parked in a row, were three
brand-new bicycles—a big red one and two smaller ones, a blue boy's
bike and a purple girl's bike.
I thought at first that some other kids must have left them there. When
Lori pointed out that Dad had obviously bought them for us, I didn't
believe her. We had never had bicycles—we had learned to ride on other
kids' bikes—and it had never occurred to me that one day I might
actually own one myself. Especially a new one.
I turned around. Dad was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed
and a sly grin on his face. "Those bikes aren't for us, are they?" I asked.