Coasters. Gerald Duff

healthy enough to me.”

      “It’s what it means, Waylon,” Beth said. “It’s all a part of the way she’s changing his life and his lifestyle. I don’t care what Dad eats, no, long as he’s not raising his cholesterol levels too much. The bad kind, I mean.”

      “Let me ask you something,” Terry said in a challenging tone, looking from her sister to Waylon and then back again at Beth. “Has Dad ever mentioned Mama’s name to you in the last two months? Answer me that. That’s all I’m asking you.”

      “I don’t have to study to be able to tell you the answer to that,” Beth said. “He hasn’t said word one about her since a week after the funeral on Friday, March the eighteenth. You know, when we had him out here with you and Ronnie to eat supper that Sunday after the Oilers game.”

      “Astros,” Terry said. “Exhibition game.”

      “Astros,” Beth said, making a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Whatever. You know it’s the truth.”

      “Well, hell,” Waylon said. “Mama’s gone. Maybe he’s trying not to think about her. You know, working out his grief. Life goes on, and all that. Dad’s a healthy man.”

      “He first met her two months ago,” Beth said, dropping her head forward and looking up at Terry from under her bangs. “Remember when he announced that in no uncertain terms?”

      “At the Piggly Wiggly produce section,” Terry specified. “Out on the Golden Triangle highway. Can you imagine?”

      “I thought it was the one on Proctor, there in town close to the Thunder Bowl.”

      “Uh-uh,” Terry said with certainty. “The new one. The Gucci Piggly Wiggly. How I know is he said she asked him if cilantro was the same thing as parsley. They don’t carry that in the one on Proctor. Cilantro, I mean, of course. Everybody’s got parsley. Even Sav-Mor carries that.”

      “As if she wouldn’t know the difference.”

      “Oh, he bought the whole thing,” Terry said. “He was real proud he knew parsley wasn’t cilantro.”

      “Dad didn’t really know,” she went on. “He just guessed. But to hear him tell it, he’s been cooking Santa Fe Southwestern all his life and knows all the herbs.”

      “Ha,” Beth said and made a shooing motion at Bip and Bop. “Go play in your room, boys. Go on, now.” The dogs gave no sign of hearing and in fact edged a little nearer to the chair where Waylon was sitting.

      “Come ahead,” Waylon said. “Just try me.”

      “Listen,” he continued, turning his attention to his sisters. “Don’t y’all think Dad’s just lonely? Needs him a little company? A little female companionship?”

      “I would never begrudge my father his friendships with other people, men or women,” Terry said, Beth nodding in agreement. “It’s the quality of that relationship I’m concerned about, and the intentions this Hazel Boles person might have that worries me and Beth.”

      “You don’t think they’re dishonorable, do you?” Waylon asked. “You don’t figure she’s trying to get in Daddy’s pants?”

      “Make light, Waylon. Go ahead,” Beth said. “It’s not Daddy’s pants we’re talking about, and I don’t even want to think about his damned old pants. We’re thinking about this Hazel wanting to get in something else of his.”

      “Right,” Terry said, pointing toward her sister with all five fingers on her left hand. “Charlie McPhee’s pocketbook’s what we’re talking here.”

      “What’s Dad got in his pocketbook for a woman to be interested in?” Waylon said. “You know what he makes at the plant. Next to nothing, really, on this reduced shift schedule. He’s as good as retired. He just works to be doing something.”

      “The very fact that all you consider about Dad’s net worth is his semi-retired salary shows how much you know about finance, little brother,” Beth said.

      “I guess you mean the house on Helena,” Waylon said and leaned forward to stare into the eyes of the wire-haired terrier to his left. “Bip, I’ll give you such a bop as you’ll never forget.”

      “You’re talking to Bop,” Beth corrected.

      “Bop, I’ll give you a bip that’ll make your ears ring until next Christmas,” Waylon said.

      “The house on Helena,” Terry said, speaking in a singsong, counting tone. “Two cars, one less than a year old. Forty years worth of retirement fund. Fully-vested, I might add. One CD I know of, maybe more, and last but not least, over four hundred acres of property in Limestone County.”

      “That’s what we mean when we use the term net worth,” Beth said as her sister sat back on the sofa triumphant from her recital.

      “Shit,” Waylon said. “I didn’t know I was living with a fucking tycoon.”

      “No reason to say that word in this house,” Beth said. “None at all.”

      “Tycoon is not a racial slur,” Waylon said. “Look it up in the dictionary and learn something.”

      “Oh, hush, Waylon,” Beth said. “It’s time for us to get serious.”

      “I guess you’re right. Anytime four hundred acres of rocks and scrub cedar and scorpions in Limestone County’s at hazard, we ought to put on a long face.”

      Waylon felt like it was his turn to sit back in his seat after delivering a telling comment, so he did, looking from sister to sister with a smile for each.

      “You can’t grow anything on that land,” he added. “Y’all know that’s why Dad had to move us down to the Gulf Coast in the first place, to get a job he could raise us on. And there’s sure not any oil on it. They’ve already punched dry holes all over that part of Texas.”

      “Oh, my,” Beth said to Terry. “Don’t we know our economic trends, to be so unemployed.”

      “Uh-huh,” Terry responded in a sweet voice, emphasizing the huh part of her agreement with her sister. “But it looks like to me Waylon’s not up on what developers are doing these days to build high-dollar residences for all those commuters into Dallas.”

      “He’s been busy,” Beth said. “Advancing his career at BP. Hadn’t had time to keep up.”

      “Commuters,” Waylon said. “That’s a long haul into Dallas from out yonder in Limestone County.”

      “Not the way Dallas is spreading out,” Beth said.

      “And not with interstate highways going every direction,” Terry added. “If you haven’t noticed.”

      Everyone fell silent for a space and watched Bip and Bop watching Waylon for an opening to one or both of his knees. In a while Terry leaned forward to put her napkin into the Dunkin’ Donuts bag and fold its top over to keep crumbs from falling out onto Beth’s coffee table.

      “Hazel Boles doesn’t necessarily know about traffic patterns around Dallas, does she?” Waylon finally said. “Or Dad, neither.”

      “We don’t know what Hazel Boles does or doesn’t know,” Beth said. “But we know what we know, and that’s enough for us to be real concerned about what might be developing between those two senior citizens.”

      “Maybe it’s a love match,” Waylon said. “Did you ever consider that?”

      “This situation’s not a tennis game,” Terry said, looking pleased with the response she had come up with on the fly. “It’s dead serious for all of us, Waylon. Us with our families and you with, well, your work prospects.”

      “I’m just between gigs,” Waylon answered. “Like the young folks say. I won’t have to be living at Charlie’s