For one thing, he plays in a rock and roll band. He comes from New Orleans, and according to Taylor he is tall and lanky and wears a little gold earring, but his voice sounds like Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind.

“Your daughter has fled the premises,” Jax reports. “She took the second generation and went to see the Grand Canyon. How do you like that?”

“Then it’s true!” Alice shouts, startling herself.

Jax isn’t rattled. “True blue. They abandoned me here to talk things over with the door hinges.” He adds, “Then what’s true?”

Alice is completely confused. If something had happened to them, Jax would know. “Nothing,” she says. “Some darn thing I saw on TV. Harland had the news on and they had somebody falling over the Hoover Dam, and I could have swore there was Taylor Greer talking to the camera, just for a second.”

“If Taylor fell off the Hoover Dam, she wouldn’t be talking to the camera,” Jax points out.

“Well, no, she wouldn’t, so I got worried that it was Turtle that had fell off.”

“Couldn’t be,” Jax says in his gentleman’s drawl. “She would never let Turtle fall off anything larger than a washing machine. And if she did, she’d be on the phone to you before the kid hit bottom.”

Alice is disturbed by the image but feels fairly sure Jax is right. “I kept hoping they’d show it again, but Harland’s gone over to Home Shopping now and there’s no coming back from that.”

“Could be they’re at the Hoover Dam,” Jax says thoughtfully. “She doesn’t always keep me up to date.”

“They both did go, then? She took Turtle out of school?”

“School is out for Easter break. They thought they’d go have a religious experience with sedimentary rock.”

“You should have gone with them. That ought to be something, that Grand Canyon.”

“Oh, believe me, I wanted to. But my band got a gig in a bar called the Filth Encounter, and you can’t miss something like that.”

Alice finds herself calming down, listening to Jax. He always sounds so relaxed she wonders sometimes about his vital signs. “Well, that’s good they went,” she says mournfully. “That little girl’s already way ahead of me. I’ve never even got down to see the new Toyota plant at Georgetown yet.”

“Is everything okay?” Jax asks.

Alice touches her eyes. Half the time he comes across like he was raised on Venus, but his voice is wonderfully deep and slow, something she could use around the house. “Well, not really,” she says. “I’m a mess. Just crazy enough to think I was seeing my own daughter on TV.” She pauses, wondering how she can confess her troubles to someone she’s never met. It’s midmorning in an empty kitchen: the territory of lonely-hearts call-in shows and radio preachers for the desperate. She tells him, “I guess I’m leaving Harland.”

“Hey, that happens. You never did like him much.”

“I did so. At first.” She drops her voice. “Not to live with, but I thought he’d improve. Under the influence of good cooking.”

“You can’t rehabilitate a man who collects light bulbs.”

“No, its headlights.”

“Headlights. Is that actually true?”

“Off old cars. Any old car parts really, as long as they don’t make any noise. You should see my living room. I feel like I’ve died and gone to the junkyard.”

“Well, come live with us. Taylor leaves all her car parts at work. We need you, Alice. Taylor hates to cook, and I’m criminal at it.”

“There’s no hanging crimes you can do in the kitchen,” Alice says. “I give a man extra points just for trying.”

“Your daughter doesn’t give a man extra points just for anything.”

Alice has to laugh. “That’s a fact.”

“She says I cook like a caveman.”

“Well, forever more.” Alice laughs harder. Clark Gable with a gold earring and stooped shoulders and a club. “What does that mean?”

“No finesse, apparently.”

“Well, I couldn’t move in with Taylor. I’ve told her that fifty times. I’d be in your way.” Alice has never lived in a city and knows she couldn’t. What could she ever say to people who pay money to go hear a band called the Irri-tated Babies? Alice doesn’t even drive a car, although few people know this, since she walks with an attitude of prefer-ring the exercise.