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could hear my mother tapping her foot on her bedroom floor as though she was sending out some angry message in Morse code.
    “Of course I care about Daddy. It’s just that this gala is very important. Well, I’ll try. I cannot promise a thing. I said I’d try. Don’t bring that up again, Mama; that was a long time ago and doesn’t have one damn thing to do with Daddy’s heart.”
    Mother slammed the phone down on her nightstand and then began slamming doors. She was mad, and every door in the house was her victim. I pretended to be asleep, tightly closing my eyes and sliding farther under my covers. And even though I was desperate to know what had happened to my grandfather on the other end of the telephone, it was ten o’clock before I braved leaving my room and wandered downstairs.
    I found Mother sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee in one hand and the telephone receiver in the other. A lit cigarette was resting on the edge of a round, silver ashtray, a gift from Mrs. Hunt. She’d bought it at Tiffany. Mother had never held a cigarette before she met Mrs. Hunt, but now she could balance one perfectly between her long, thin fingers no matter what she was doing, even while she was combing her hair. When the surgeon general announced that smoking caused cancer, Mother only laughed, saying that a government-paid doctor is hardly one to be trusted with your life.
    “Evelyn, it’s absolutely unbelievable,” she moaned, sniffling a bit for added effect. Mother always sounded like another person when she was talking to her friends, particularly to Mrs. Hunt. She sounded like somebody I wished I knew.
    “I’m still in shock. She just called this morning before I’d had a chance to have even one cup of coffee. I mean the girls’ trunks are packed and everything. They’re ready to go.”
    Mother tapped her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray.
    “The poor man, yes, I’m sure he was working too hard. I’ve tried to get him to sell that farm, but he won’t hear of it.”
    Mother put the cigarette to her mouth and drew the smoke into her lungs. “Camp? In North Carolina? No, I really hadn’t thought of that. Oh, but you’re right. It probably is too late to send the girls this summer.” She sighed, blowing smoke in my face as if I wasn’t even standing there. “But yes, do remember us for next year. The mountain air would be so good for Sister’s complexion. Yes, yes, I know. Thanks, Evelyn, so very much. You’re such a dear friend.”
    I stood cautiously by my mother’s side, afraid that even the slightest movement might annoy her. She finally waved her left hand, motioning for me to sit down while keeping the receiver tightly clutched in her right. I wondered for a moment if my grandfather was dead, maybe lying motionless in a field surrounded by stalks of young corn he was nurturing into adulthood. But Mother sharply slapped her hand on the table in front of me, and my thoughts and attention quickly fell back to her.
    “Well, you know Charles has Nathaniel tied up all summer building that damn barn, and for what, a couple of old horses that should be in a bottle of glue.
    “Maizelle? Lord, no. I can’t trust that woman to get anything right but a hot buttered biscuit. I swear I think her mama dropped her on her head when she was a baby. Did you know, Evelyn, that I found her in Adelaide’s bathtub the other day taking a hot soak?”
    I hated it when Mother talked about Nathaniel and Maizelle that way. Nathaniel was only building that damn barn because Mother wanted every inch of Grove Hill looking its best come September since she would be hosting several luncheons at the house in the weeks before the ball. She even wanted the horses looking their best and had told Nathaniel to start giving them better feed and to brush their coats every day. And poor Maizelle, she had only taken that bath because her back was hurting from kneeling on the kitchen floor, scrubbing the baseboards with