Her hazelnut eyes shift toward me. She nods.
        Father laid the flagstone himself. It was left over from one of his failed investments, the Los Angeles Gardens tavern on Route 66 on the east side of Yukon. The tavern's long formica-topped bar and one of the interior walls were made of flagstone and concrete mortar. In the center of our patio Father anchored a single wide flat stone to a wooden pedestal to serve as a picnic table.
        “I remember sitting on the patio with you and Dad in the evening. Remember that? We'd watch the skyline of Oklahoma City begin to glow in the east, especially the old First National Bank. And then, when they finally built it, the McGee Tower where you worked.”
        Mother's eyes soften, and she seems to look beyond me to a place miles and years from this room.
        “You'd serve us sweetened ice tea or lemonade. Dad would smoke an El Verso cigar or a Swisher Sweet, and you'd smoke Winston cigarettes.”
        Almost imperceptibly, Mother shakes her head.
        “Oh yes, you did, Mom. You know you did.”
        Is that a smile? When I was growing up, Mother would allow herself two cigarettes each evening. As twilight faded into night, the red tip of Mother's cigarette would mark the onset of evening like a tiny beacon. In those moments, she looked peaceful, content with her life with Father and me, smoke streaming from her lips, dissipating into the breeze that wrinkled through farmer Bleu's wheat just beyond our backyard. When I was fourteen, Dr. Enos apprised Mother of the dangers of cigarettes. In response, she pretended to quit. This fooled neither Father nor me. For the next three and four decades, respectively, we would smell cigarette smoke on her clothes and in the bathroom. Sometimes she would forget to flush, and I would find a half-smoked Winston floating on the water or lying waterlogged on porcelain in the center of the bowl, a brown ribbon of drowned smoke trailing sadly through the clear liquid into its open grave.
        Be a little careful, Alice, a little careful. Remember, the life you save may be your own.
        Is that line from the funny money episode, or a later one? It doesn't matter. If the shriveled air sacks in Mother's lungs could still bear the stress, I'd walk over to the employee break room right now and buy her a pack.
        Instead, I pull another photograph out of the drawer.
        “Who's this, Mom?”
        As she scowls at the new 3 X 5 in my hand, I realize that the question, so easy just a few months ago, is no longer fair.
        “That's your youngest grandson, Truman.”

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