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momma’s zone. She’ll drill you out of the ballpark. You’re AA crazy at best, Toni, but your momma was an All-Star in the majors.”
    The Friesens were the first to come by with condolences that afternoon, Bill Sr. with a squat eight-sided bottle of Blanton’s Single Barrel, Penny carrying a beautiful lasagna from The Olive Garden.
    (I am nine and sulky. My mother is cooking food to take to Mr. Hierholzer at the end of the block. His wife has just died. She dumps a fat tablespoon of butter into a dish of yellow squash poached in cream. Across the street Candy and my friend Greg and Greg’s cousins from San Antonio are playing Batman, but Momma has made me stay inside and cook all afternoon. First it was an apple pie and I nearly cried because the air was so humid my crust wouldn’t hold. Then chili rellenos. My fingertips are still burning from handling the poblano peppers. Now we’re making poached squash. I hear Candy laughing from across the street, she’s five and never has to do anything, and I ask why we can’t just buy Mr. Hierholzer an ice cream cake at the Dairy Queen.
    â€œWhen I die, we’ll see who brings store-bought and who brings homemade,” Momma says. “Then you’ll know who my real friends were.”)
    â€œWe were just so sorry when we heard.” Penny Friesen held out her lasagna. I used to think Penny looked down her nose at us—Momma said it often enough—but after I grew up I decided she was just shy and awkward, particularly in the shadow of her big affable husband. Penny always wore the uniform of her class, the white linen blazers, pink lipstick, gold hoop earrings, and white hair spun into a round ball like a puff of bleached cotton candy, but she wore it without conviction, like an impostor.
    I forgave her the store-bought lasagna. “Daddy’s out back.”
    Bill Sr. nodded and waggled the bottle of Blanton’s. “I’ll bring out some glasses,” I said. Daddy would nurse his Dos Equis, of course, but Bill would want to try some of the expensive bourbon he had brought. I showed them to the French doors and let them into the garden.
    The younger Friesen, Bill Jr., was the next to arrive. He was a blandly ugly man: a big head topped with curly brown hair stuck on a big loaf of a body that never managed to fit properly into his very expensive suits. He had inherited his mother’s white complexion, turned pasty and running to freckles, along with watery hazel eyes and an unfortunate mouth that was too wide and full-lipped for his face. He was rather a good argument for makeup for men, actually; a bit of foundation and some careful management of his lips would have done him a world of good. I had known Bill Jr. since he was in diapers, and made him show me his wee-wee when we were six. At the time I thought it looked like something you would put on a hook to catch catfish.
    Since then, Bill Jr. had graduated from the Fuqua School of Business and returned to take up his part of the family business, the investment division where I worked. He was an okay boss. Now that he was in Management, he never called me anything but Ms. Beauchamp. He never closed his office door when talking to a female employee, which was appreciated, and he never raised his voice. As a boy he had often fantasized about being an admiral in the Navy; he saw himself in a commanding, rather than fighting, role, though he carried the ideals of honor fully in his chest. His version of a glorious death was going down with a ship. He was also greedy and a bit of a sneak, as long as he wasn’t caught by anyone, including himself. “I’m just so sorry,” he said. “Don’t, ah, don’t worry about that oil prospectus we were talking about. You just do what needs to be done for the family right now.”
    â€œThanks. As Momma would say, I’m about worn to a frazzle with Daddy and all.” Not to mention having the