Alice was 7, Dori 5, and Jack was 3 that weekend in 1964 when the three siblings went to stay with their Grandma Helen and Grandpa Gary for a few days.  Where their parents had been is long forgotten as they rarely went anywhere without the children but stayed in their small rural house in their small town. 

So Alice, Dori and Jack savored the change in routine, enjoying the differences of Grandma Helen's versus their own home.  Grandma had made soft-boiled eggs for breakfast, put them in small cups and set them before her grandchildren.  Dori and Jack had never had eggs like this before, only fried eggs or hard-boiled.  They weren't  sure how to eat these.  Alice ate at Grandma's more often, being older, and salt-and-peppered her egg, chopping it into soup with the side of her spoon.  Dori watched.  She had never had soft-boiled eggs before and Jack announced he wanted cereal.  Alice tore up a slice of buttered toast and put it into her egg.  "It's good, eat it."  She said.  Dori began to do the same.  Grandma brought a bowl of cereal to the table feigning disappointment.

"Greta's kids, Craig and John, eat anything you put in front of them and are grateful to have it!  They don't ask questions and always say thank you."  Dori kept eating.   These eggs were good and she had decided to eat more when she finished this egg.  "Who are John and Craig?" asked Alice.  "Who's Greta?" asked Jack. 

"Greta is John and Craig's mother and they're staying here for a while.  You be nice to them when you see them.  And don't  ask a lot of questions."   This was a peculiar conversation but not one to make a whole lot of difference to anyone at the time.  These people were nowhere in sight and of no concern at breakfast time.  

But as weeks went by, Greta and her sons materialized and became more familiar to the whole family, not just Alice, Dori and Jack, but their parents, their aunts and uncles and cousins.  More was learned about Greta, mostly by Alice who explained things to Dori, who explained things to Jack who mostly did not care, but he did come to like Greta very much.

Greta was only 24, petite with short dark hair and dark brown eyes rimmed by thick lashes.  Her eyes crinkled in the outer corners when she smiled or laughed, which was often.  This was a little surprising considering the sadly dramatic story that unfolded about her.  The story was that she had come from a wealthy family and at the age of 19 ran off with an unsavory charmer who was out to get her money.  His name was Rene, which was again unusual.  This part of the story was intriguing to Dori in particular as she knew about rich people from watching old movies on TV.  Bette Davis had been rich in Now Voyager.  If Greta was rich like Bette Davis, as people said, why on earth would she be living with her 2 sons at her Grandma and Grandpa's house, an old farm house in a small rural town?  It was puzzling until you heard the rest of the story.

Greta had left her charming cad of a husband in Europe, taking her 2 small sons with her.  Her family had cut off much of her income, but it was said to still be a considerable amount of money.   Greta was very frightened of her ex-husband as she said he had beat her.  He was said to be much older than she and wore a mustache.  Dori, Jack, Alice and all of their cousins were forbidden to discuss any of this with Greta or her children in order not to upset them.  Dori's mother, Katie, instructed her children NEVER, EVER to mention John and Craig's father to them or ask them why they were living with Grandma and Grandpa.  But on one occasion Grandma and her daughters showed Dori and Alice a picture of Rene, Greta's husband, and told them to keep an eye out for anyone lurking about who might resemble him.  Greta said she was sure he had followed her here to Grandma's house.  So that morning Grandma and her daughters drove into town to go to the bank, then drove around looking for Rene.  Alice swore she had spotted a man with  a mustache outside the drugstore.  "No! Could that be him?"  It was all very exciting.

When Alice, Dori and Jack met John and Craig (actually Jean not John, but no one in their family would call him Jean, it was too outrageous), Alice immediately took to Craig who was small and adorable, 2 years old, but much smarter and quicker than any 2-year-old they had known before.  He was cute and dark-eyed like his mother, and very elfin and twinkly.  John was 4, a bit stockier than Craig, and much more serious. 

Once, when John and Dori were watching a torrid drama on Grandma's color TV, she was slightly embarrassed as a man kissed the neck of a heavily eye-shadowed woman, hard.  "Why is he biting her?" Jean asked.  "I think he is kissing her," answered Dori.  "My father, Rene, used to kiss my mother, but then he made her cry and we had to come live with your Grandma, Helen." 

This revelation brought the conversation to a screeching halt.  For one thing, Dori could not ask how Rene had made his mother cry though she wanted to so very badly, and yet did not want to know because she liked Greta so much.  She did not see how she could even acknowledge the existance of Rene without asking a million questions about him:  What's it like to have a father with a mustache?  What was it like to see your mother on the cover of Life magazine?  Then there was another way the conversation could have gone.  She could have shared with Jean the fact that her father never kissed her mother, routinely made her cry, and yet they would probably never leave to go live anywhere else, ever.  But saying any of this, even one word of it to Jean would only invite trouble.  She nodded in his direction and said, "let's watch something else."

Jack liked both Craig and John.  John could be very bossy while Craig took him down a notch with some fun teasing.  Greta, Jean and Craig lived with Grandma Helen for about one whole year.  During that time, Greta would come over to have coffee with Alice, Dori and Jack's mother, Katie, quite often.  They became very good friends even after Greta remarried and moved out of town.   Greta seemed quite happy most of the time, despite her many misfortunes.  She came to remind Dori of Mary Poppins or Maria in Sound of Music, with her short hair and cultured voice.  She could double cross her legs while she sat and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes hour after hour at Dori's Grandma's house.  Compared to everyone in town, Greta seemed exotic and different.  Dori and Alice had seen a photo of Jean and Craig wearing lederhosen and looking quite happy.  They really were like The Sound of Music.  John let it be known that they had lived in Europe and that you could not get there by car.

When it was time for John to start school, he would be going to the same elementary school as Jack, Dori and Alice, but there was a problem.  Greta could not let him ride the school bus as he might end up in Timbuktu where Greta could never find him.  No one in Dori's family had ever voiced such a concern before though their children rode the school bus routinely.  Dori noticed other differences in the way Greta did things.  For one thing, she made jokes often about people who Dori had never found in the least bit amusing, like her grandfather.  Grandpa Gary, Big Gary, often sat in the livingroom smoking cigars.  He had had a heart attack and could no longer smoke cigarettes or drink beer as the rest of his family did most evenings.  He spoke rarely, and often only to his son about stock car racing, work at their gas station and the most boring of subjects, to Dori, that is. 

But sometimes on Friday nights when aunts and friends were over, and Greta would be there with her legs double crossed, and her tannish hands smoking and drinking, just being so cute, Grandpa Gary wandered out of the dark living room and stood just to the side of the kitchen table where all the women were sitting, including Dori and Alice.  "Gary heard all the giggling out here and wanted to see what the women were up to. "  She said, "just dying to know, aren't you, Gary?"  These were unlikey thoughts ascribed to Grandpa, and Kate, Alice's mother, laughed hard.  No one else did until Grandpa walked out of the room and Grandma Helen looked at all the girls around the table and said "Just dying to know!" And then everyone, including Greta,  did laugh. 

Alice noticed that Greta had an easy way about her compared to her own parents.  She never yelled at John or Craig, and often cuddled Craig in front of everyone, which was odd in Alice's experience.  Once she had been teasing her own brother, Jack, who Greta seemd to like very much.  Greta tried to coax Alice into being kind to her brother, which made her tease all the more.  Finally Greta said, very calmly, "Alice, don't make me get angry with you."  Quickly, "I'm sorry," said Alice and she was given a big forgiving smile.  Again, unusual. 

Alice and Dori admired Greta for her slim figure, cute clothes and sunny disposition.  It seemed that for these exact same reasons, Kate, their grandmother and various members of the family all called Greta crazy.  Life was difficult.  It was serious.  It was not about looking cute or being silly (unless you'd been drinking quite heavily).