“Pretty good, I guess. He’s surrounded by a harem of women wanting to console him.” I thought for a moment. “Just like you would be.” I could imagine Fred’s grin 250 miles away. “It’s the truth and you know it. I’m not going to be stiff in the grave before you’re married again.”

“I’ll never marry again,” Fred said emphatically. “No way.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with marriage?”

“Nothing, honey. I just could never be married to anyone but you.”

Bull. I wouldn’t be stiff in my grave.

“When’s Millicent’s funeral going to be?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Fairchild hasn’t made all the arrangements. Sister and I’ll go, though.”

Our talk ended with Fred’s usual admonishment. “Do not,” he said, “and I repeat, do not let Mary Alice get you mixed up in any of her harebrained schemes.”

“Like what? Bungee jumping?” The mental picture of Sister jumping from a tower and bouncing on rubber bands like a yo-yo was an awesome one. Probably it was to Fred, too. “She’s at the writers’ conference every day,” I assured him.

“I wouldn’t put bungee jumping past her.”

“I love you, too,” I said. And I did. Forty years, and the thought of any woman other than me consoling him was infuriating.

Frances and Haley were sharing a box of Kleenex and watching Elizabeth Taylor die beautifully in The Last Time I Saw Paris. Haley looked up from the floor where she was sitting in some kind of semi-yoga position. “What did Papa have to say?”

I sat on the sofa beside Frances. “He said not to go bungee jumping.”

Elizabeth Taylor gasped for breath.

“That pneumonia sure got to her in a hurry,” Frances said.

“Getting locked out in that snow and rain, and she’d already had it once.” Haley wiped her eyes.

Elizabeth Taylor cashed it in. The music, “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” soared. I reached for a Kleenex. “At least Van Johnson didn’t get married again before she was stiff in her grave.”

“You know,” Frances said when the credits were rolling and Haley was crawling over to hit the rewind button, “one of the security blankets of my life is that Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds are older than I am.”

“I know what you mean,” I agreed.

Mary Alice came in carrying the manuscript she had been critiquing. “Damn,” she said, looking at the TV. “She’s already dead.”

“I can run it back,” Haley offered.

“Just to where she’s locked out. I love it when she’s collapsing against the door and it’s snowing and raining.” Sister put the manuscript on the coffee table. I picked it up and looked at it. On the cover page, she had written in red magic marker “Medical help is available.”

“What kind of critique is this?” I asked. “Medical help is available?”