Across the envelope’s upper left, a phone number had been jotted in red ink under the words: “New for now.” I calculated it’d been six months since Mother mailed this. So which had won? Grace’s “new” or her “now”?

After twenty power breaths, I dialed from the kitchen extension so Bethany might overhear. I wanted my darling nearby; she intuitively understood all this; she now decided to make coffee, though lately neither of us could safely drink caffeine after 3 p.m. I felt singularly lonely finally ringing up my mom. I calculated it’d been eighteen years since last I heard her voice.

As I took in extra oxygen before punching a final digit, the scent of fresh-ground coffee somehow helped. Bethany then swung a Jack Daniel’s and water before my face, ice clinking. Her rosy hand held it there, ringing like some baby Liberty Bell. (If she had not run off three months later to Oaxaca with her gynecologist after seven secret years of weekly checkups under him, I swear I’d still be with her.)

“Pelican Manor Marina. Larry from Security. What?”

I asked for Grace (had to turn over the envelope to learn the most recent of her married names). Doing so, being this jumpy, I spilled half the needed drink. My wife laughed behind me. Well, Larry said, he didn’t usually go and fetch owners, but this once he’d maybe go for Grace, since it was Grace, yeah, he’d drag off and bring her clear back here to the phone, he guessed, but this single time only, understood? And I’d just have to wait and pay the charges, no matter where I was calling from. “And someway, mister, you just sound long distance.”

“You have no idea,” I told this Larry. But he’d already set down the receiver. I now had time to picture him, then her. I imagined a blond-haired Grace, made up like Kim Novak in the second half of Vertigo, down by the seaside selling crab burgers. She’d be wearing some paper cap tipped at a sailorish angle, hawking burgers off a rolling dockside cart. Beneath her striped French patio umbrella, Grace would be flirting with half-nude surfer-boys my daughters’ age, and all while Grace tried to ignore the dozen pelicans gathered, barking, unmannerly, expecting handouts. Even among birdlife, word had leaked out: my mom was “easy.”

Behind me, Bethany hummed so I’d feel accompanied, filling dead phone airtime. I could plainly hear some Florida AM radio, one of those scary right-wing call-in shows. “Is it just me, Ed, or is the International Communist Jewish Media Banking Cartel gettin stronger every day, Ed? …” I was also privileged, during the six endless minutes I waited, to eavesdrop on snatches of three men’s listless conversation. They spoke of one mighty big fish, their catching it. Voices cracked, they sounded like old-timers. They debated whether they should have released their monster before the official photographer’s boat got to them. Some guy recalled how he’d brought on board one of those disposable yellow cameras, but it’d somehow plopped into his beer cooler and no pictures turned out and, wouldn’t you just know, the one time you really truly needed proof to win a goddamn trophy plus get on the six o’clock news!