“It did?” Angie lowered herself into the rocker on the porch to watch the fireflies bumbling around the garden. “Did Ma have the right address?”

“Sure she did, she got it off the sheet you left. What kind of nutty place are they running down there, mail can’t even find you?”

“I’ll look into it,” Angie said, thinking of her mail cubby in the English department, that rectangle that had been empty every day since she got here, and then of Patty-Cake Walker and her smile. No counterstrike, indeed.

Her father was saying: “So, your aunt Bambina wants to know if you met that Jesse Jackson yet. She’s always had a thing for that man, you know. Like a girl with a crush on a priest.”

In the background there was a snort of dissent, and then the phone was dropped and picked up again.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Fran Mangiamele. “So, have you?”

“What? Met Jesse Jackson? He lives in Chicago, Ma.”

“What do I care about Jesse Jackson? I’m asking you”—her mother paused dramatically—“about John.” And then, into the silence: “John Grant.”

“I know who you mean,” Angie said.

“Well?”

“I told you already, Ma. He’s here, he’s getting married, end of story.”

“What’s she saying?” boomed her father.

“For Christ’s sake, Tommy, go get on the extension.”

“I like this phone better. What’d she say?”

“She says he’s marrying somebody else.” To Angie, her mother said: “It’s a solid thing, this engagement?”

“Ma,” Angie said wearily, “you want me to break up his relationship?”

“It’s not the worst idea,” said Fran. “It’s how I got your father, you know. He was going to marry Loretta D’Oro. You remember? We used to call her Goldy, she came in for breakfast every day until her husband took a heart attack and she quit working the counter at the Korean grocery. Your father was going to marry her, until I made him think different.”

“That’s not true!” shouted Tommy Apples. “Never!”

“Oh, it’s true. You ask Bambina, she’ll tell you.”

The phone changed hands abruptly, and her father said, “You paying toll charges to hash over old gossip, or do you want to tell us something interesting? What’s the old lady like, anyway?”

“Wait,” yelled Fran. “I’ll get on the extension.”

A half hour later, Angie put down the telephone and felt it ring, immediately, under her hand.

“Ma, what?” she said.

There was a long pause, and then Caroline Rose’s soft voice said, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Oh,” said Angie. “Sorry, I thought you were my mother. No, you’re not interrupting.”