An elderly woman comes out the screen door, sitting down in a chair next to the old man. The kids sit on the porch rail, waiting. Last, a stunning brunette comes out the screen door and down the porch steps. (She was supposed to be Clara Swift, but that didn’t work out.) The brunette looks more worn out than the wrecked redhead in Ocean Avenue—as if living with Paul Goode, or merely missing him, takes a toll. The brunette is wringing out a wet dishcloth before she realizes what everyone is watching—the approaching car. As if an unseen hand has pushed her, she sits down hard on the porch steps. She wipes her hands on her apron and gives a passing thought to her hair, then she doesn’t bother. She sits there as if she’s given up on her appearance, and on everything else. The old woman gets out of the chair. She urges the old man to get up, too; she pushes him back through the screen door, into the kitchen. Then the old lady gets the kids to go inside—they complain, drag their feet. The worn-out brunette is left alone on the porch steps as the music rises.

As the car stops, we see the faces of the soldiers inside; they are trying not to gawk at the stunning but worn-out brunette. Only one of them gets out of the car; he takes a duffel bag from the trunk. Paul Goode is the returning soldier. The worn-out brunette just sits on the steps, wringing the dishcloth in her hands; she stares at the ground, not at the soldier. (Is that because Paul Goode went to the war as a young man in his twenties, and—after two tours of duty in Vietnam—he came home looking like a guy pushing seventy?)

Paul Goode nods goodbye to his younger-looking buddies; they know better than to hang around. As the car leaves, Paul sits down beside the brunette on the porch steps. He puts his hand in her lap, palm up, not looking at her. Maybe he thinks she’s too worn out, but she looks thirty or forty years younger than he does. The brunette drops the dishcloth and takes his hand in both of hers. Her head falls on his shoulder. The old faces and the faces of the children are at the screen door, watching them. Grace slept on; the TV in our bedroom faded to black; the end credits to Forgetting Nebraska rolled.