In the booth, when the line connected, it was his mother who answered.

“I don’t believe my ears,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I’d pretty much forgotten about you.”

He’d never gone two weeks without speaking to her, and the sound of her voice brought him immediately home and made him feel ashamed of himself. But when she asked how he’d been holding up, like Effie, he said they were having an amazing time. They’d gone to a dance last night. They’d gone sailing twice. They’d met lots of interesting people, people from New York, people from California, artists and actresses, writers and intellectuals. He didn’t know why he was going on about it, she wasn’t impressed by such things. He felt low and indulgent and disgusted with himself. If she’d really known what he’d been up to, she’d have been ashamed of him.

When he was finished, she waited for a respectful beat and said, “Well, we’re about ready to have you back. I’ll tell you the Old Wing won’t be finished. You and Effie are going to have to make do with your old bedroom for the next couple of weeks. Carswall had to fire one of the Fletcher boys. He showed up drunk the other day and couldn’t hit the damn nails with his hammer. But Bo’s going to finish it off, and you could help him when you get here.”

“Actually, Mama,” he said, “we’re probably going to stay here a few more days.”

“You’re going to stay there a few more days? You’ve been there for two weeks.”

He and Effie had worked out earlier what they’d tell their families, but just now it occurred to him that what they’d agreed upon—that an old friend of Effie’s was coming into town to see her, and they wanted to spend a few days together—would seem frivolous to his mother, who already considered Effie a frivolous woman, not because she was, but because she was Daisy Tarleton’s daughter. So he explained that Effie had come down with a bad flu, that she’d been bedridden for two days, that she was feeling a little better now but was in no condition to travel, and his mother agreed. She took illnesses seriously.

“You take her to a doctor yet?”

“No, Mama. It seems like it’s running its course at this point.”

“Take her to a doctor anyway. If it’s strep or something it could lie low and come back as scarlet fever—believe me. I nearly died of it when I was a girl.”

“I know, Mama,” he said. “Okay, we’ll see a doctor.”

She said Carswall wouldn’t be happy with their extended vacation, and that piqued him.