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London, I see France …"
    Still dazed, I tugged my skirt down from Dover to Marseilles just as a rumble like a subway train sounded in the hall.
    Mom went on, "You really had me going there, kids. Perfect aim. Great acting, all three of you! Frederico and Felicia Save Jane. You could get on the hospital entertainment list with the clowns.”
    James murmured, "What kind of drugs is she on?"
    The rumble in the hallway got louder, and Mom held out a cookie tray. "Anyone?"
    "Ethel! Ethel! I'm here." Thump, clank, thump, clank came down the hall. Dad and his cane.
    Yvette looked revolted at our whole dog and pony show, but she really looked aghast when her escape route from the room was again blocked, this time by a huge tray of pinwheel sandwiches carried by Arlene, my parents' nice gray-haired neighbor.
    "Sorry, Ethel. Price Mart only had small trays left." Arlene bustled in and balanced the food on the arms of Mom's potty chair.
    Then in came Harold Hamilton, my dad, huffing and puffing. He was oversized, from his leonine head and smudged glasses to his brand-new farmer Levis and size sixteen Nikes. Everyone wobbled a bit, adjusting to the change in air pressure as he took up the space of three or four adults and his personality spread out and filled all the empty corners in the room. He'd recently slowed down after a hip replacement, and he used his four-pronged cane like an outrigger on a cruise liner.
    "Harold, can't you pick up your feet?" my mother complained. To us: "I hate it when he shuffles. He never used to shuffle."
    As we all tripped over each other and fell into the gold curtain to accommodate Arlene and Dad, I felt like Harpo Marx in that overflowing stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera.
    "I got her, Ethel. I got her on the phone. Arlene had to call Monica for the number, but I got Rhonda." Dad's brown eyes found me under craggy brows. "Oh, there she is. Your face is all red, Rhonda. You sick? Well, you're in the right place for that, right, Ethel?"
    "She’s fine. Sandwich anyone?" Vanna Mom held out the tray of pinwheels.
    Dad popped three in his mouth like candy.
    I turned to roll my eyes at James, who'd ended up plastered against the back wall.
    Dad was now wolfing down Mom's leftover dinner pudding. "Hospital food's better these days. Should be, for all we're paying these quacks to fix your mother." Dad wasn't Christian Scientist. He had just grown up with rural doctors who didn't know much.
    "Better bring your foghorn if you want any attention here. I don't think those buzzers work at all." He pushed Mom's call button. Then his eye lit on Yvette. "Or get this nurse here to check you out." His huge hand swallowed up Yvette's arm.
    Yvette's eyes bulged like a bug's. Again.
    Mom said, "Harold, that's—"
    Dad boomed, "Hey, Nurse Nellie! You already took my wife's temperature once today, and the barometer said she was very dry. So can I take her home now?"
    "—not a nurse! She's a friend of Rhonda's!" Mom yelled. "Let her go!"
    James hissed at me, "Gotta go. My beeper," just as Mom said, "Rhonda, where's James?"
    Dad now zeroed in on James, catching him by the shoulder and pumping his hand like an old friend. "Hey, I know you. Didn't you date my daughter?"
    "No!" I yelled, way too loudly. Man, after all my care keeping James away from my parents' house and my mother's scheming ways, here he was, an awkward deer in Dad's headlights. "I mean, not yet."
    Dad frowned. "Yeah. Didn’t you come over to fix Rhonda's—"
    I said, "No, Dad. You've never met him. Really. Sorry, James. He had so many students over forty-two years of teaching that everyone looks familiar to him.”
    "But I met him." Dad looked confused. "I know."
    "Somebody's forgotten," Mom sang.
    "Not me," I sang back, smiling at James, who looked frayed around the edges. He had been through the ringer this evening, saving me and all.
    Mom chimed in, "Be fair, Rhonda. Remember all those dates you brought home, back in the stone ages.”
    God, give me