Then Mary turned her full attention to her ex-husband. Thomas crouched on his hands and knees at her feet and gazed up at her with an expression that was both embarrassed and fearful. She looked down at her ex-husband and smiled condescendingly at the sight of him confined to a playpen wearing nothing but doubled cloth diapers and oversized plastic pants.

Mary grinned at how infantile her ex-husband appeared and said, “I see your description of Tom on the phone this morning was right on the money! He looks so much like Bobby, that if Tom was a bit younger, they could be twin brothers. It looks like I was right about him needing baby clothes. Are diapers all you have for him to wear, or has he started to make messes in his pants like baby?”

His mother nodded and said with a faint trace of pride, “He wet his first diaper during the night.”

Mary nodded and asked, “Other than peeing in his diapers, does he act like a baby?”

His mother smiled maternally and admitted, “He was sucking his thumb and playing with his toes in the playpen after breakfast this morning.”

“Good!,” Mary said surprisingly, “That means he’s adjusting to his new life. Once we get him properly decked out in baby clothes like Bobby, I’m sure he’ll be much more comfortable.”

Mary cooed sarcastically down at Thomas, “Does Tommy wuv wearing dydees?” She turned to his mother and grinned, “Tom is an awfully cute baby. From some of the things he did while we were married, I know he must have regretted being forced to grow up. Although he was a good husband and father, I think that deep down inside, he would have rather been your baby than be a man. I always suspected that he loved you more than he did me. I guess he’s happy now, Mother.”

Thomas’s mother smiled at Mary’s admission of her son’s devotion to his mother and her ready acceptance of the awkward situation. It made things so much easier. Marge said to Mary gently, “I think you should call me Marge, Mary. I’m younger than you are now. Why don’t we put aside our differences and be friends?”

Mary agreed and put Bobby in the playpen with Thomas. “I’ll call you Marge if you’ll call me Mary,” Mary said, “And from now on, I’ll call Tom ‘Tommy’. Tommy can call me ‘Aunt Mary’.”

Marge shook her head a bit sadly and replied, “I don’t think he’ll be calling you Aunt Mary for some time. I tried to get him to say “Momma” to me after I fed him and he couldn’t talk. I seem to remember he didn’t start talking until he was at least a year and a half years old.”

Marge smiled and said, “How’s Bobby been doing?”

“Oh, he’s fine. Bobby just finished a growth spurt so I thought I’d get him some clothes that fit him better. I thought that with all that’s happened in the past couple of days, you might not have had time to go shopping for Tommy. Now that Tommy is about as young as he’s going to get, you’ll probably want to go shopping for baby clothes. I thought the two of us could go clothes shopping together. You know, you’re a lot younger now. You could probably use some new clothes too. That dress you’re wearing would look good on someone in their fifties, but it’s a little frumpy for a twenty-two year old woman. …..Besides,” she said with a grin, “your measurements aren’t the same as when you were fifty years old. You’re a lot slimmer now!”