“You’d love it, Dee. I know everywhere to stay. By the time we got through helping Patsy and Myron, that was their names, have fun we had seen the island.”

“I wish I could go. I’ve never been anywhere. My life’s passing me by.”

“Let’s see the house,” Irise said. “I’ve been visiting here forever. I can’t wait to see what your momma’s doing.”

“She’s doing everything. She didn’t want this monstrosity, but Daddy had to have it. He said she could do anything she wants to with it, so she’s doing it.”

“We love Ariane,” Charles William said. “We met her at Saint James’s. We think she’s a doll, an absolute doll.” He stopped to inspect a piece of wainscoting that was being nailed up beside a chimney. As if on cue, my mother came flying down the stairs with her hair tied up in a turban. She was trying to look like a person who could boss workmen around and had taken to tying up her hair and wearing canvas wedgies instead of her usual two-inch heels.

“Oh, Charles William,” she exclaimed. “Irise. You darlings. How nice to have you here. You’ve met Rhoda. Isn’t she precious?” She stopped by me and squeezed my shoulder. It was still early in the day and we hadn’t had time to have an argument yet. Every day she woke up thinking she could understand me and “stop fighting with me.” Every day I broke her heart.

“Make your guests some coffee, honey,” she said. “Take them in the den. Charles William knows all about decorating. He helped your cousin Martha Ann do her whole house. See if you think the sofas are all right, Charles William. I can still send them back. Joe January said he’d take them back if I decided I didn’t like them.”

“I can find you a mantel for that chimney in the hall, Ariane,” he said. “If you want one. They’re tearing down a place in Fairfields that has some fabulous ones still in it.”

“Oh, would you? Please get one. Whatever you think will fit.”

“I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll take Dee with me. Do you mind if I call her Dee, Ariane? Rhoda is too closed for her. She needs an open sound.”

“He always gives people nicknames,” Irise said. “He never even calls pets the names you give them.”

Twenty minutes later we were in the den smoking Pall Malls and drinking coffee and listening to Ravel’s “Pavanne for a Dead Princess.”

“It’s divine,” Charles William said. “I could listen to it forever. I think I’ll play it at my funeral.”

“You won’t be at your funeral,” I answered. “You’ll be dead.”