“Nothing you can do about it,” she would answer, steam rising from the poached egg skillet, lighting up her pale golden face, her fierce eyes never meeting his. “Nothing anybody can do about that mess.”

On this morning Daddy was sitting in his chair at the table, carefully separating the white from the yellow of his eggs. He allowed himself to eat the whites, then a few nibbles of the yellow. He was less than fifty years old but he had already started his thirty-year stint of worrying continuously about his heart.

“What was Malcolm calling you about?” he asked. “You aren’t very nice to your mother, Sister. You got to be nicer to her. What did he want?”

“Nothing. He was drunk.”

“I never knew him to call in the middle of the night. That’s more your speed. You haven’t been mouthing it around about that trip we took, have you? You wouldn’t be that big a fool, would you? Even you wouldn’t be crazy enough to do that, would you?” He laid the newspaper down on the table and fixed me with his eyes. Coal black eyes sunk deep in the sockets, an Irish strain. I have those eyes and so does my brother Dudley, but neither of us ever learned to use them like Daddy could.

“I haven’t told a soul. Why would I?”

“Because you mouth everything around. I never knew you to keep a secret.”

“I don’t believe in secrets. I don’t do anything I’m ashamed to tell.”

“Well, you better keep quiet about this, Sister. I don’t want your momma finding out about it and if that little husband of yours finds out its going to make it hard for me to get you a divorce. I had it all settled about the custody of the children and you had to go down there to Alexandria and start living with him again. Now I got to start all over.”

“What could he do?”

“He could make a lot of trouble if he wanted to. So just try to settle down and don’t go telling anyone else. Did you tell that sissy britches Waters boy? I heard you were out drinking with him the other night.”

“No, I didn’t tell Charles William. And don’t talk about him like that, Daddy. He’s my friend. He’s the best friend I have.”

“He’s a queer duck, that’s for sure. Well, go on and get Mayberry to cook you some breakfast. You been looking peaked lately, Sister. I want you to stop all this drinking late at night. Your momma wants you to stay home with these babies.”