“I didn’t say it mattered. What’s got into you?”

“You would have never called him an ‘old family retainer’ if he were white.”

“Oh, Roxanne! Did you put pepper in your Wheaties? What do you care? Just come with me. Let’s get this over with and go out and have a drink. I could use a drink. We’ll get some flowers in Westwood. They don’t have anything decent in Culver City.”

I asked Thelma to cancel my afternoon appointments, but I had an awful premonition that this was a very bad idea. My anxiety was confirmed when we walked into his hospital room and saw Ruby sitting on one side of his bed, Coralee on the other side, and Clarence, shorn of command, wearing a hospital gown. They all three glared at me.

“How nice to see you again,” I said awkwardly, absorbing their ill will. I turned to Irene. “This is Clarence’s wife, Ruby, and his niece, Coralee. They came to Julia’s funeral.” Coralee hadn’t been there, but Irene didn’t notice, and she nodded to each politely and asked how Clarence was feeling.

A little girl, Serena, with a book and a teddy bear, sat in a chair at the foot of the bed. She was Ruby and Clarence’s granddaughter. She asked to see my diamond ring. “You engaged?” she asked.

“No, it belonged to my grandmother.” I took our enormous bouquet of scentless hothouse roses and put them on the windowsill beside an immense floral arrangement of overpowering white lilies; the card read, Get well soon, Leon and Denise Greene. Also on the sill was a peanut butter jar with a few scraggly mums and asters from someone’s garden. I was struck with the vivid contrast: the expensive gesture versus the felt tribute.

It seemed indecent to me to be talking about Clarence’s bowels. I would have rather talked about the mop handle stuck up Booker’s horn. Clarence himself sat stoic in the bed, grim, while Ruby and Coralee rattled on about his internal viscera. Irene listened, her face a perfect mask of concern.

Suddenly Terrence burst in. “I came as soon as I heard! Oh, Liza Jane!” he cried with undisguised happiness before he saw Irene.

I could feel a deep flush, not just over the birthmark, but over my whole body from the sudden pounding of my heart, and a gushing sensation between my legs that made my eyes widen in surprise. “This is my sister. Irene, Terrence, Mr. Dexter. This is . . .” The man I love? A sonnet? Erotic poetry? Something in French? I stood there speechless.

“Terrence is my nephew,” said Clarence in a cold, corrective tone.