“Well, it’s something. An extreme preoccupation, whatever. I just have a thought about that and, well, our other problem.”

“We don’t have another problem.”

She frowned, the three lines in her brow gathering, and her eyes went from blue to gray. “We have a problem,” she said, her voice low.

He looked away from her, avoiding further eye contact.

“Just, I was thinking, maybe some therapy.”

“I don’t need therapy. For Pete’s sake, Al. Everyone goes through lulls. Everything’s fine.”

“It’s not fine for me.”

He stood up.

“What?” she said.

“I’m going to go get some stamps.”

“Good!” she said, as if he were a patient making progress.

He went from the backyard to the front. She was making a big deal out of nothing. Sex slowed down at their age—that was totally normal. He’d want to again. And of course he was upset about the trees. Who wouldn’t be? He’d thought he’d be counseling Terrance through the crisis, and Allison was suggesting therapy for him!

Terrance hadn’t even noticed Cox’s deforestation, truth be known. When Ted pointed it out when Terrance came for Tuesday-night tacos, his brother nodded and said, “Looks like the trees got a buzz cut. Get it, Teddy? Like a buzz saw?”

Terrance could be so reasonable sometimes. More reasonable than him or Allison. More reasonable than that idiotic Dana at the nursing home, whose most recent call Ted had accidentally answered. She told Ted she was suspending Terrance for a day for heating a patient’s coffee in the staff microwave.

“For heating coffee?” he’d said.

“For heating coffee.”

“Was it cold?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Did the patient get burned?”

Again, not the point. So what was the point? Ted had to bite his tongue to keep from asking. Suspending Terrance for heating coffee would only ensure that he would not heat coffee in the future, not that he wouldn’t heat soup or add ice to a lukewarm drink.

Poor Terrance. He was forever trying to do nice things only to have them backfire. Like the time when they were kids, when he stole a cookie from the school cafeteria because Ted was hungry, only to be caught with a fist full of crumbs; or the day he gave Ted his dry shoes when Ted’s got wet in the creek, and came down with a bad cold.