“Yeah.” And then, because Carl was listening, I told him everything that had happened with Telly. How Gloria was always picking at him, but he never seemed to mind. Until this lady came into his work, needing her belts replaced. She was a dental hygienist at the clinic that opened across the road from the garage. After Telly fixed her car, she entered him into this smile contest they were running. Somehow Telly won, and they fixed his teeth, scraped off the gunk, took out chipped ones, glued on fake ones. He had a plastic and metal thing he clipped in when he slept, even though Gloria called him Tin-Mouth Telly.

Everything changed after that. He shaved off his enormous mustache. Grinned like a hissing cat. I barely even recognized him. He looked like he should be inside the television instead of gawking at it. And then I noticed how his nails got cleaner and he trimmed the hair out of his nostrils and there was more space between his words. When Gloria took little swipes at him he started clapping back, a little here and there. She didn’t like it.

“Sure, you treat Chicken better than you treat me,” Telly said once.

“That’s ’cause I don’t like dogs.” She laughed. If that was a joke, Telly didn’t find it funny.

One night at dinner he started to describe a book he was reading. About a man who made this fortune and built a house to get a girl’s attention. “Daisy’s her name.”

“Daisy?” Gloria replied. “Daisy who? Who’s Daisy?”

“The girl in the book, Glow. Aren’t you listening? This guy improves himself hoping she’ll fall in love with him.”

She put down her fork. “What’s wrong with you? You never read a book your whole life.”

“So? Does that mean I can’t change? Better myself?”

“Change why? You think someone else’d put up with you?”

It turned out someone else would. Telly left the next weekend. Took most of his stuff in garbage bags. Some of his beloved guns from the basement in a couple of totes. Piled it all in the bed of his truck. “Going where I’m wanted!” he yelled.

“You’ll be back!” Gloria screamed as he drove off. “Begging me. Hands and knees, Telly. Hands and knees. You’re nothing without me.”

After his truck disappeared, Maisy and I just stood there watching the cloud of dust fall back to the ground. Gloria bumped past me, said, “Too bad he didn’t throw you in a garbage bag. Toss you on top of the rest.” Maisy started to gasp, trying to hold her crying inside.

“And he hasn’t called once or come around since,” I told Carl.