Visiting Papa and Eva:

            We sat at the kitchen table over dinner, watching the evening news. "Goddamn it!" Papa shouted. "Look at him! Just look at him!"

                "We know, Pat," Eva said. "We already know!"

            "He's a goddamned actor!" Papa continued. "He's just reading his lines. He doesn't know a damn thing about the government. The damn fools watch him and think he's such a good President! They don't realize that it’s a performance! He's still playing a part in a B movie!"

            "We can't stand Reagan," Eva told me.

            "He's a charlatan!" Papa said. "An empty-headed fool!"

            "Your Poppa called the White House to complain," Eva said.

            "I called the White House every week! And you know what they did?" Papa asked. "The White House operator asked my name! She wanted to take it down!"

            "It made him your Poppa so mad!" Eva added.

            "I told her, I am an American citizen, that's who I am, and that's enough! But she always wants to write down my name, and she wants to know where I'm from. She wants my goddamned address! Well, I'm not going to give it to her!"

            "He's given her quite an argument!" Eva explained.

            "Of course I gave her an argument!" Papa said. "What are we coming to, that the White House is making a list of the names of people who complain! Are we blacklisting people again? Back to that bastard McCarthy? But she won't budge an inch. She has to take the names, she says. She's instructed to take the names! I've called the White House for years, I told her, and I've never given my name! But, no, no, that's the policy, she said. She has to take my name! Just obeying orders! So that's it! I've given up calling them altogether!"

            "Tell her what you've been doing instead, Pat," Eva instructed, giving a little giggle.

            "Well," Papa said, "I go out on my little errands. I've taken up stopping at the supermarket every day. I check out what they have to offer in the meat department, and I position myself right beside the most expensive cut of meat I can find."

            "Yes?" I prompt.

            "And then I wait. Sooner or later, someone comes along. 'Look at that tenderloin, lady,' I say to her. 'Isn't that a beautiful cut of meat?'

            "'Why, yes,' she'll say.

            "'Wouldn’t that make a wonderful dinner? ' I ask.

            "'It would,' she’ll say.

            "'Hey, lady, wouldn’t that make a great dinner for your family tonight?' I ask. 'Why don't you buy it for them?'

            "'Oh, no,' she'll say. 'I can't buy that!’

            "'Why not?' I ask. 'You said it's beautiful! Why won't you buy it for them?'    

            "'I can't,' she says, 'It's too expensive!'

            "'Too expensive? ' I say. 'Well, let me ask you one question. Who did you vote for in the last election?'

            "'What?' she says. 'What?'

            "I make it simple for her. 'Who did you vote for in the last Presidential election?' I ask. 'Did you vote for Reagan?'

            "'Why, yes, I did,' she says.

            "'Hell, then,' I say, 'you deserve these prices!' And I walk away."

            A few months later during another of my visits, Eva, chuckling, informed me, "Your Poppa had a problem with Reagan. Tell her, Pat!"

            "Oh, that!" Papa said, shaking his head. "It's Eva's fault! She’s the one who loves ballet!"

            "Well, you know I studied ballet as a girl," Eva said. "Of course I love ballet! But your Poppa and I have a subscription series to a lot of different kinds of cultural events in the district."

            "But this was ballet!" Papa reminded.

            "Of course, when we go to a performance, we make a big night of it, and we go out to eat before the show," Eva said. "Always to the same place."

            "There's a restaurant at the Kennedy Center," Papa said. "So we eat dinner there. Very convenient."

            "And the food is wonderful," Eva said. "But what your Poppa really likes there – oh, show her, Pat!"

            Papa went to the silverware drawer and retrieved a teaspoon. "Here it is," he said, waving a spoon at me. "This is what caused the whole damn problem."

            "Your Poppa just loves the spoons they have at the restaurant!" Eva said.

            "Just the perfect size and shape," Papa told me. "Fits easily in the hand."

            "It is a nice spoon," I agreed.

            "I’d love to have a full set," Papa said.

            "I think that one is quite enough!" Eva said.

            "Maybe so, maybe so." He folded his arms across his chest.

            "Well, we were going to a ballet recently," she continued.

            "Joffrey," Papa interrupted.

            "A traveling company," Eva explained. "We went out to dinner before the ballet, and your Poppa took a spoon!"

            "I stuck it in my jacket pocket while we were eating dessert," Papa said. "They didn't notice a thing."

            "And so we left the restaurant, but when we arrived for the ballet, there was a huge line."

            "Young Reagan dances with the Joffrey," Papa said. "He was one of the performers."

            "We knew that in advance, Pat!”

          "But what we didn't know in advance," Papa said, "was that President and Mrs. Reagan were going to be attending the performance the night we went. And of course they had all kinds of special security measures, and the Secret Service was all over the place. But the reason for all the lines, what was really holding everything up, was that everyone going into the theater had to go through a metal detector first. A metal detector!”

            “And there your Poppa was, with a stolen spoon in his pocket! As soon as he tried to pass through the detector, he set off all kinds of alarms!”

             Buzzing! Bells! Oh, lord!" He laughed and ran his hand through his hair.

            "They pulled your Poppa out of line," Eva said.

            "And I had to account for myself. They interrogated me. They wanted to know why I was trying to get into the theater with a teaspoon!"

            "I told them we had just gone out to eat," Eva said, "and I fibbed a little. I said that your Poppa had picked it up accidentally from the restaurant, so it was all a mistake."

            "They let me go," Papa said. He laughed again, then took a sip of coffee. "But what the hell kind of problem did they think I could cause with one damned  teaspoon?"