CASS: What about hers?

DAD: Hers?

CASS: Do they let her keep her wedding ring in prison?

DAD: We’re divorced.

CASS: I know.

DAD: So it stands to reason she’s not married.

CASS: Well…Yeah…

DAD: And has no use for a wedding ring…I couldn’t’ve married your stepmom if I wasn’t divorced first.

CASS: And are you and Carol legally divorced now too?…So she ain’t my stepmom, is she? Or is she? What’s the rule on that?

GRANDMA: The rule is you don’t go getting divorced! I never did! None of my people did, not originally. Then all of a sudden I don’t know. Just California, I guess. From here it spread on out. The Vileness of California. The Vileness was spreading out, and we come a-headin’ this way to collide with it, all of it. Idolaters and UFOs and burning incense. Drive-up churches. Do you know what they call it? “Californication.” Go down to State Street over by the courthouse, not a block from it, and you know what you’ll see? The Divorce Store!

DAD: Momma, settle yourself.

GRANDMA: Oh my God, my holy Lord God Almighty. Did our Heavenly Father just spit on California and turn on his heel? I have not felt the touch of the sacred in my heart since we crossed that line into California…I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to go, I’ve got—

DAD (overlapping): Aw, Momma…. Will you make us some popcorn? Why don’t you—I got you some of that that just pops in a sack in the microwave. Please, Momma, please—

GRANDMA (overlapping): I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m absolutely hysterical. Did you get some of that in the bag? Oh, well, I do think I’d like to give that a whirl. Let me get my reading glasses for the directions on the sack. Pop it in the sack! I don’t mind if I do!

DAD (overlapping): Yes, Momma, sure thing, yes, Momma, yes, it pops automatically right in its own bag.

CASS: We tried it.

GRANDMA: We did! We tried it. That’s true.

CASS: It was pretty good.

GRANDMA: It was. Cass liked it.

CASS: Yeah, it was pretty—

GRANDMA: But do you see this? Arthur Cassandra put this ring on my finger two weeks before my twenty-third birthday, and it has never been anywhere but right there where it is! I’ve never had it off!

DAD: Momma. Momma. Momma. (Pause.) I’ve still got my ring from Carol upstairs somewhere. It’s got two diamonds in it. But I think they might be fake.

GRANDMA: Fake! That was your father’s ring that I gave to you! Do you not remember? Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra.

DAD: Oh, of course, of course, you’re right, Momma, I apologize—

GRANDMA: He gave you your wedding ring for your second wedding, and he gave you your name after the greatest Chief Justice of the United States.

DAD: He misspelled it.

GRANDMA: The Chief Justice misspelled it.

DAD: It’s his name. H-O-L-M-E-S. Not H-O-M-E-S.

GRANDMA: Dropping any old letter down in the middle. Your name is properly spelled. His—is a great big old total mess…Your father, Arthur Cassandra, was a champion speller, a gifted man just like you, a brilliant—he wrote campaign speeches for the Mayor of Odessa, Texas—Gus Willard. Your daddy loved poetry. He used to sit by your crib when we had it in the living room and read free verse by Walt Whitman…Walt Whitman was actually—a very good poet!