He doesn’t answer; he wants to make sure he’s got all the pieces he needs to this machine before they leave his mother’s this afternoon; it would be typical, he thinks, if they got back to the city and he realized only then that he’d left some important part behind. And the cousins are coming, when? He glances at his watch—in just an hour, and then, if there really is a front coming through, they should get on the road, and so it’s now or never. He swallows. The cousins. He hasn’t yet told Ruth that they are coming; he didn’t know himself until his mother mentioned it as they’d stood side by side at the sink, elbow deep in breakfast suds. Laurie’s family, his mother had said, meaning her late brother’s wife; Wilson isn’t sure if he’s even met these cousins before.

He lifts the tone arm of the player. The needle seems to be relatively well intact, and the table spins, and so as long as the transducer works—and he thinks he’s got it all hooked up right—the machine should be good to go. He connects the wires from the amplifier to the speaker and looks up.

“Ruth,” he says.

She looks at him.

“My mother mentioned that a few cousins might be stopping by for lunch.”

Ruth shuts her eyes. “How considerate of you to let me know,” she says.

“I just learned myself.”

“What does that mean, ‘a few’?”

“Laurie’s family,” he says. “Benton’s wife.”

“And that means…”

Wilson puts the tone arm back in place, struggling to screw it in with his fingertips.

“Wilson.”

He looks up. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Knowing your family, that could mean a small village,” she says.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Ruth,” Wilson says. “It wasn’t my idea, it wasn’t my plan, but we’re here, and they’re coming, and as soon as lunch is over, we can get out of here and we never have to come visit my mother again. Fuck. This goddamn piece of shit!” But just as he says it, he gets the screw to catch the thread, and the tone arm is affixed. He feels himself turn red. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not my ideal plan either, but you know my mother.”

“Yes, I know your mother, Wilson, and I adore your mother, you know that, so don’t pull that on me.”

Wilson raises an eyebrow.

“It’s just—cousins?”

Wilson sighs. He pulls a record from its jacket and blows it free of dust. “I don’t think you’re exactly in the position to give me shit about my family,” he says. His voice is low. “Let’s remember exactly why we were a day late in getting here.” He swallows and looks up.