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woman,” Milton said.
    Her mother had loved that bird. She’d claimed chickens were sensitive. Her father kept threatening to roast it on the Italian chicken machine. Food wandering into the yard must be rotisserized, he’d said.
    “We set her free,” Ruby told them. She and her mother had thrown a suitcase over Albertina and loaded her into the back of the car. She’d squawked the entire drive up the inland waterway until they unzipped the cover and set her free on a deserted stretch of road. Sally brought along five pounds of seed that she spilled to make a trail into the trees. She brought the Brownie too, to take photos of the chicken hurling herself up in attempts at flight. She was a huffy bird. Sally went back twice, but as far as Ruby knew, she never saw Albertina again. “Shouldn’t we go home?” Ruby asked.
    Her father passed her another nickel. “Keep your sweet self away from this John Douglas.”
    “I am an adult, Daddy.”
    He squinted, examined her with his watery eyes now gone dark, the color of thunderclouds. Next he leaned close to her fingers. “Pinch it tight, then let it fly.”
     
    How long had they been at this? Her left earring pinched. She opened and closed it against her tender lobe. John Douglas gave the earrings to her on their third date, tiny enamel bumblebees. It seemed like days ago that she’d kissed John Douglas goodbye at the train station and he’d squeezed her arm, hard. Both of them were hung over. “God damn it,” he’d said. “Call me JD.”
    “You gonna blow, puny?” her father asked.
    She started to say she was marvelous, only the word was unwieldy and caught in her throat. It felt as if nickels careened around the inside of her skull.
    “You’re just like your mother. Sally is what you call a delicate drinker.”
    Ruby’s mother was sitting at home, waiting to welcome her with coleslaw and a pile of clean clothes to take back to college. They’d better leave. Soon.
    Milton handed her a clean rag and she mopped her forehead. He slid a pile of soda crackers across the bar to her.
    “Sally never could drink,” her father continued. “When we lived in the tent, when we were building the house, she’d barely sip brandy before she started complaining about the spins and climbed into bed. Your mother had icicles for feet. Tiniest damn feet”—he held his hands apart—“size four and a half. She’d get shoes in the little boys’ department at Sears.” He shook his head, grinned around the end of his pipe. The skin beneath his stubble had gone gray and loose as worn flannel.
    Ruby shook the pack of Salem cigarettes, tapped it against her wrist, and then finally ripped open the entire side to get at one. She’d outgrown her mother’s ridiculous shoes in the sixth grade. She struck a match and inhaled long and full. The smoke came out, wrapped around her words: “We should go home.”
    “We had ourselves a time. We had your sister, then you.”
    Ruby played with a nickel on the bar, twisting it back and forth in her fingers. She and John Douglas could be together right now. Maybe they’d have driven to the coast for the weekend. His car, with its soft leather seats, the tiny blue and red lights on the dash, reminded her of a jewelry box. Perhaps they’d have gone out for crab, laughed while the waitress fastened paper bibs around their necks, and then piled crab shells high on the table. With John Douglas, Ruby wouldn’t have to hear again about her sister. When she flicked the nickel free, it shot out, glimmering in the faint light, spinning on its slender rim. The longest spin they’d had that night.
    Her father watched. “It was losing Joyce that did it.” The nickel slowed, teetered, and fell. He dropped his arm around Ruby’s shoulder, leaned in, and kissed her cheek. “You were a baby.”
    She felt the sagging weight of damp armpit on her shoulder. He sipped his beer. “She’s something,” Teddy said to Milton, and then, staring into the