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Ava didn’t seem to hear her mother. “Did you talk to Elvis?” she asked Nance, pacing.

“Not really,” said Nance. “Just to say hello. To me he was just a white boy singing colored songs. How wrong I was!”

“Oh, I wish you’d talked to him when you had the chance!” Ava said. “You’re so lucky! Mom and I went to Memphis over Christmas break. We got to see Graceland and Lauderdale Courts and Sun Studio and Humes High School. All the old Elvis places.”

“Please stop talking about Elvis,” Suzi said. “We’re trying to plan our trip to Italy.”

“Please be nice to your sister,” Caroline told Suzi.

“Please sit down, Ava,” Suzi, the assistant parent, put in.

“Please shut up,” Ava told her.

“You shut up.”

“Stop it, you two,” Caroline said, in that same flat voice she’d been using too often lately.

“Nance’s going to think you fight all the time!” Vic said.

“We do fight all the time,” said Ava.

“It was a joke, Ava,” Vic said.

“A lame joke,” Caroline said, without looking at Vic. “Go finish your homework, Ava.”

“I can’t. I’m going to fail!”

“No, you’re not.”

It was obvious by then that Vic’s family couldn’t hold it together for five minutes, not even in front of a guest. It’s time to go home, lady, Vic silently told Nancy Archer. Just leave us to feast on one another’s carcasses. “Good-bye, Ava,” he said. “Do what your mother asked you to do.”

“I taught at Humes High School,” Nance put in, “for fifteen years.”

To his relief, Ava didn’t respond to this. She slunk back to her room.

“So that’s what you were doing,” Caroline said, half under her breath.

Nance turned to Vic and asked him about his work.

Vic picked up his favorite pillow, a suede pillow with a fuzzy dog embroidered into one side, clutched it to his chest, and told Nancy all about the portfolio project. As he talked, he thought of something he could do for Nancy, a way he could arrange for her to meet more people, nice people, unlike his wife. “We’ll start scoring about the middle of June,” he told Nance. “You probably don’t need the extra income, but if you want to get out of the house, it might be fun. We hire lots of retired people. All you need is a bachelor’s degree. The scoring will last about a month. You can set your own hours!” Vic was aware that he sounded like a game show host, but his enthusiasm wasn’t put on and he knew that some of it had to do with Gigi.

Nance clapped her hands together. “I swan. I just might. Thank you, Vic!”

“Will it be over by the time we go to Italy?” Suzi asked.

“It’ll be over in about six weeks,” Vic said, “God willing.”

“Dad went to graduate school in English,” Suzi told Nance.

“He had to drop out so he could support us,” Ava yelled from her bedroom.

Ava was right … well, half right … but Vic hated to hear such excuses. He’d applied to graduate school because he loved Fitzgerald and Hemingway, but not long after he’d enrolled he was informed that his literary heroes were beyond passé, a couple of sexist old drunks, and he felt trapped in classes where politically correct theory heads pontificated. But he’d dragged his family down to FSU from Iowa so he’d hung on for a while, too long maybe. Finally he grabbed his M.A. as a kind of consolation prize and got on with things, taking a full-time job at FTA. He was fine with his decision. He actually liked his job at FTA and was good at it.

“Is Dr. Spriggs going to score papers for you, too?” Nance asked him.

Caroline answered for him. “Dad’s memory’s not so good.”

“How bad is it?” Nance frowned intently.

“Bad,” said Caroline.

“It’s not that bad,” Vic said.

Caroline made a scoffing sound. “I’m the one who looks after him all day. I should know.”

Suzi clambered to her feet. “I’ve got some social studies to finish. The Incas and Mayans.” She smiled politely at Nance and thanked her for coming. Then she stopped, just before rounding the corner, and stood there dramatically. “So can I go to Italy with Nance? Can I?”

“No, you can’t,” Caroline said.

Suzi said, “What? Why not? She needs me.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Vic said, when Caroline didn’t reply.

Suzi waved