“Why?”

“Shanice, are you talking to me, your granny, or to somebody else?”

Seems like she comes to or something, and then eases down close enough where her arm touches mine. She looks straight ahead at the TV but I know she don’t watch no basketball. “Shanice?”

“Yes,” she says without turning to look at me.

“Look at me.”

She turns her face toward mine in slow motion, and when she’s facing me, now I can see that something done happened to this child again. That’s what’s in her eyes. Sadness, and some kind of hurt. Right now they red and glassy, like she been crying or slept real hard. But wait a minute. If I ain’t mistaken, is that beer I smell coming from her breath? This can’t be right. Her mama poured that beer down the drain. Even still, I know beer when I smell it. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Just tired and hungry. Aunt Paris, did you get anything fun to eat or only healthy stuff?”

“I got some halibut,” she says.

“I talked her into buying some pork chops,” Lewis says with a little chuckle. He’s standing at the screen door, puffing on another cigarette and sipping on a bottle of something. He always sounds cheery after his first couple of drinks, but his happy thermometer drops to depressing in a matter of minutes after that third one.

“What are you drinking now?” I ask.

“Just a cooler. It’s only seven percent.”

“But this is the third one. You forgot to mention that,” Paris yells from the kitchen. “Ma, have you heard from Charlotte?”

“I can hold my liquor, Paris, thank you very much. I’m not a child, so you don’t have to spill the beans on me to Mama like you used to. I think we’ve all grown up, if I’m in the right house.”

“Shut up, Lewis,” she says.

“She ain’t coming,” I say. “She still scared to fly. Said she’d have to take a train or something. I don’t care. She said Al might be going on some kinda vacation. I don’t know what she talking about.”

“Janelle! Hurry up and get off the phone. I need to use it!” Paris yells.

“Where’s my prescriptions?” I ask.

“In here,” Paris says in a much lower voice from the kitchen. “I’ll make dinner. And trust me. It’ll be something everybody can recognize and eat.”

“I’ll get them for you, Granny,” Shanice says, apparently looking for any excuse to get up. Janelle finally comes out the bathroom with the portable in her hand. She looks like she just lost something. She hands it to Paris.

“What’s wrong with you, girlfriend?”

Janelle just shakes her head. “Nothing.”

“Well, do something besides look pitiful. Help me. Make the salad.”

“Ma, Daddy just pulled up,” Lewis says.

I pop five of the seven pills with a sip of Diet Pepsi, which I cannot stand the taste of, that Dingus set on the cocktail table. I hope one in particular works fast. “Shit,” I grumble.