A 6 p.m. collect call to Winter Park, Florida from a hospital pay phone:
"Mother, what can you tell me about the people who live behind you, the Sappingtons?"
"The Sappingtons? (Long silence.) Ralph Sappington is a worthless drunk who never mows his lawn until the city tells him to. Why last week before I flew to Winter Park to visit my sister and to look at the house she wants me to share with her, I heard him screaming at somebody… at four in the morning! Then his shed burned down – he wasn't there so I had to call the fire department!"
"No, not Sappington, his daughter. She would be about my age."
"Who, Elizabeth?"
"Erzulie. Why didn't you ever let me play with her?"
"Your father took one look at them the day they moved in and said, "Trash." He was right."
…
…
"…was there ever a wife, a woman other than his mother?"
"No, I think he must have ordered Erzulie from the back of a comic book for fifty cents… no, wait… there was one. He had two, you know, wives."
"Do you remember her, the first one?
"She was foreign, a tiny thing, with dark hair, nothing like that fat bottle blonde – I never saw her up close – he used to beat her. One day she wasn't there - leaving MISTER Sappington to take care of a newborn – not that I blame her, but she could have taken the baby with her… a terrible woman! He brought his mother up from…where was it? Some place where they don't wear shoes and live in log cabins with dirt floors – not that she was any improvement, she screamed all the time: she said there were horrible things attacking her – I never saw a thing. Neither did your father."
"Didn't you try to help?"
"After MISTER Sappington called us a bunch of dirty Jews when your father asked him to mow his lawn? We've been Presbyterians since 1956! Your father told me to ignore them. Besides, I was too busy raising a Spengler; it took all my time to give your father the son he deserved. I'm not surprised that Erzulie turned out to be as trashy as her father – the police were over there all the time – I caught her rummaging around in our garbage cans like a stray dog theThanksgiving you didn't come home from college - your father called the police."
…
…
("…mother, did you love him?")
"Who? The line must have gone bad, I can't hear you – what did you say?"
"Mother, did you love him?"
"Love who?"
"My father."
"Mister Spengler was a wonderful man, a genius."
"Did you love him?"
"It was an honor to be Mister Spengler's wife. He was brilliant."
"I ASKED, did, you, love, him?"
"I was very lucky to be Mister Spengler's wife."
…
…
…click.