DAD signals: TV’s too loud.

CASS punches the mute, sets down the remote, picks up the bucket of chicken. Meanwhile:

DAD (on the phone): I see…What do you mean? Like Charles Lindbergh, or who?

GRANDMA: He called! Your brother called here this afternoon!

CASS: Bro?

GRANDMA: Yes! Luke called! I told him don’t you dare come around here.

CASS: That ain’t gonna stop him.

Throughout, GRANDMA whips up dough, and CASS gets himself some milk and attacks the chicken at the dining room table. GRANDMA confiscates the store-bought biscuits.

DAD (on the phone): Yeah, people like Charles Lindbergh. Like that woman who got lost—Famous Aviators, I understand. Did they ever find her? Amelia Earheart? (Brief pause.) I mean her bones, Jeanine, or the plane. What town are you Famous Aviator people from, anyways? (Brief pause.) Jeanine, I’m not buying anything today, but just to be curious, how many volumes in the whole Famous Aviators series? (Pause.) Well, that’s a pretty good value. I still don’t want it. They’ve got shows for that now. They’ve got a whole History Channel. Uh, Jeanine: in some sense of it, I’m just wasting your valuable time on this discussion. To me time is no big deal, I’m semi-retired. I mean I could get the first one and send it back, or something, but—I could sign up and all just so you get a sale on your record. Just the first volume in the remarkable series. Just—(Brief pause. He digs out his wallet.) Well, you understand this is just to be doing you a favor. When the first volume gets here I intend to send it straight on back to the central people. I just want you to get the commission for now. Well, it’s no big deal. Ain’t going to cost me, and I’m just sitting here semi-retired on disability, watching the cavalcade of human existence. Kind of monitoring all that from a certain vantage point.

GRANDMA: The cavalcade of life!…

DAD: It’s of a spinal nature, a spinal disability.

GRANDMA (brandishing and tossing out fast-food biscuits): This KFC dough is concocted in Mexico! They tie it up in giant plastic sacks and drive it everywhere in trucks!

DAD (on the phone): Oh, I get kind of kinked up and just lay there in bed sometimes. Like Elvis did toward the end. (Brief pause.) Nothing in particular. Nothing causes it, really. Just current events, for the most part, just the news of the times, it’s so depressing. That’s why I like the History Channel. (Pause.) What? (Pause.) Because it’s history, Jeanine. It’s all said and done. By other people. (Pause.) Yes I do. I have it ready. Visa card number five two three two, eight five two five, two aught three two, eight four one four, expires aught seven, thirty-one, aught three, in the name of Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra: two L’s at the end of Wendell, and Homes is H-O-M-E-S. (Pause.) Correct. Two. Double L. L plus L. (Pause.) No, it’s a lot of names, but just one person.