DAD: Yes. What was it?

MARIGOLD: Four weeks this time. Now it’s two weeks—two weeks left.

DAD: I meant the reason.

MARIGOLD: But they’ll extend it another four weeks, I think, because I’m uncooperative.

DAD: And there’s the reason. The Cassandra pride. Well, that’s always the reason for everything we do, I guess. Did Bro actually say to you that he was sorry?

MARIGOLD: No. We didn’t talk. He’s asleep in a chair. Napping.

DAD: Dreaming he’s sorry.

MARIGOLD: Anyway, things are quiet. Grandma’s in bed, probably watching one of her talk shows.

DAD: I can’t watch talk shows. The conversations make me tense inside. I’m so afraid they’ll stall out and just…stare.

MARIGOLD: They were shooting a gun? You actually heard a shot? Or shots?

DAD: Nothing to get involved in.

Pause.

Marigold? Do you have any tattoos?

MARIGOLD: Me? No…Tattoos?

DAD: And there’s the chief symptom. Not one tattoo among all of us. We’re too prideful…Do you see? Nothing’s good enough for us. No tattoos…Nothing can be permanent because the next thing’s got to be new and improved. We live around the next curve in the road. We’re never here, nothing’s finished, it’s never the end.

MARIGOLD: Well, but you got married—that’s sort of permanent—and Bro—and—at least it’s decisive to get married—

DAD: Marriage…We’ll get married, but we never mean it. Our unions are the erasable variety. John, Luke, and I were all in the service. Three enlisted men. A total of nine years in the ranks, and not a single tiny tattoo amongst us.

MARIGOLD: But Cass has quite a number of tattoos.

Pause.

DAD: Tattoos?

Pause.

And he was never in the service…

He sighs.

Sad! Beautiful! Beautiful! Sad!

MARIGOLD: Daddy, it’s depression. They have…excellent medication for depressed—

DAD: You can’t medicate the backbone blues.

MARIGOLD: I know, Daddy. But John’s been taking some, and he feels great. Or much better.

DAD: John? Whenever did you see John?

MARIGOLD: He calls me sometimes. Just out of the blue. I don’t know where he’s, you know, hiding—

DAD: The last time I saw John was right there on that television: up on the roof of the parking ramp in downtown Dallas. On the news. Shooting down into the street…holding a phone to his left ear and a revolver to the other. Holding himself hostage. Demanding a jug of wine. Enjoying the natural freedom of an idiot…He’s been tried and sentenced in absentia. Eight years minimum when they catch him. As they surely will. Anybody with his brand of thought processes…

Pause.

I remember being a little girl I never was.

Pause.

When your brother John…Oh.

Pause.

Oh. John’s been caught, you know.

MARIGOLD: He has?

DAD: Yes, in the strangest place. Iowa.

MARIGOLD: He has?

DAD: Yes, darlin’. Darlin’ Marigold. Or Ohio. His lawyer called from Dallas to say he’d been contacted but regretted he couldn’t be of help in this case because he’s a district attorney now and was actually the one who filed the request for extradition. But anyway he says that John is in Iowa or Ohio awaiting extradition. Or possibly Idaho. Ask your grandmother about it. She’s got all the details. They’re very tough in places like Iowa. The travel arrangements are pretty doggone medieval.