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“To keep her face firm. You wouldn’t understand.”
    “You’re right about that,” Daniel said. “I sure don’t understand what a sixteen-year-old girl needs to do exercises to keep her face looking good for. Suppose a ugly girl do the exercises, do she stay ugly?”
    “Tell me about your idea, Daddy.”
    “Yeah, well, I figure if all the hospitals in the country would use these inert dyes as wrist markers to color code basic patient information—allergies and whatnot—then there would be a lot fewer accidents.”
    “If people were more careful, then there wouldn’t be any accidents,” Carol said.
    “Yeah, but they ain’t and that’s that,” Daniel responded. “Put some fire under the coffee, baby.
    “Anyway, if I do go, I’ll get a lot of recognition from the hospital,” he went on. “Then, if they put my idea in practice, maybe they’ll even name it after me.”
    “The Brown Plan?” Crystal looked up. “Sounds like Dull City to me.”
    “What’s wrong with Brown? Brown’s a nice name. If you were smart you’d look around for a boy named Brown to marry so you wouldn’t have to change your name.”
    “Can’t you think of anything else for your daughter than getting married?” Crystal’s mother asked.
    “Loretta thinks I should just use Crystal. She says it has a nice feel about it.”
    “Sure does, baby.” Daniel closed his eyes and put his head back. “I remember when I went to see you for the first time. I was working at Sydenham Hospital and you were born in Metropolitan.”
    “Do you want coffee?” Carol poured two eggs into a small frying pan and ran the whisk through them in a quick, counterclockwise motion.
    “Yeah, give me a little more coffee,” Daniel said, his eyes still closed. “The last snow of the season had just fallen and it was cold as anything for March. I was walking down along Fifth Avenue, and there was a newsstand with icicles hanging from it.”
    “I think I’ve heard this story a thousand times, and it doesn’t get a bit better,” Carol said.
    “Yeah, it do,” Daniel said. “Now listen to this part. I saw them icicles and they look just like crystals to me and that’s how you got your name.”
    “If I had known that’s what you were naming her after, I wouldn’t have accepted it,” Carol said.
    “Crystal.” Daniel opened his eyes and put his hand on his daughter’s wrist. “The way your mama used to love me, I could have called you Snowflake and she would have loved the sound of me saying it.”
    “She still does, right, Mama?” Crystal was cutting the cantaloupe her mother had given her.
    “Can you imagine?” Carol put the perfectly scrambled eggs in the middle of the table. “If we had had a boy, he wanted to name him Roosevelt.”
    “After Teddy , not Franklin,” Daniel said.
    “What difference does it make?” Carol asked.
    “It makes a lot of difference,” Daniel said. “Franklin was a politician, Teddy was a fighter. That’s what the Browns are, fighters.”
    “When you going to Chicago, Daddy?”
    “They want me to go the end of October,” Daniel Brownsaid. “I guess I’ll go. What the heck, they can use the thrill of seeing a real Brown in action.”
    “Mama, did you tell Daddy?”
    “I don’t see why we have to discuss everything in the world with your father, Crystal,” Carol said, glancing toward her husband. “We wouldn’t, either, if he could drag himself out of the Stone Age.”
    “Tell me what?” Daniel Brown looked at Crystal.
    “Daniel, please don’t start acting colored,” Carol said. She turned out the fire under the coffee and poured him a cup.
    “Tell me what?”
    “Loretta wants Crystal to go out with a boy in public so they’ll be seen together.”
    “In public?” Daniel put two teaspoons of sugar in his coffee and stirred it. “Who’s the boy, King Kong?”
    “Sean Farrell, Daddy,” Crystal said. “He was the teenager in US Inc. last year, but he’s going to have his own show in