5

“So how did it go?" Jim Spelling asked Jane, Cecily, and Shelley as they trooped in the door. He was at the kitchen sink washing grease off his hands.

“Not bad—" Jane said, preoccupied.

“Not bad?" her mother and Shelley said in unison. "Jane! Have you gone mad?" Shelley finished. "What?"

“Earth to Jane. Do I need to get the jumper cables?”

Jane laughed. "I'm sorry. I was thinking about something else. The class was ghastly, at least Mrs. Pryce was. Is Katie home, Uncle Jim?"

“She came and went."

“She's not supposed to go anywhere."

“Just next door to look at somebody's hair. Why anybody'd walk five feet to look at hair is a mystery to me.”

Shelley was getting out coffee cups. "It's my daughter's, and it is worth gawking at. She looks like somebody went at her head with a lawn mower."

“I've been thinking about it, and I believe Agnes Pryce is insane," Cecily said, sitting down at the kitchen table. "I remembered her as being overbearing and insensitive, but nothing like that performance tonight. Maybe it's a particularly nasty form of senility.”

Shelley joined her at the table, setting cups around. "You might be right. I did some volunteer work at a nursing home for a while. There was a man there, not all that old, but he'd had a stroke. He was belligerent and had the foulest mouth I've ever heard. His family was always visiting and always left in tears. Apparently he'd been a gentle, kind person before. The doctor and nurses kept explaining to them that the stroke had triggered activity in some part of his mind that we all have, but normally repress. I guess his inhibitions had been cut off somehow. Maybe that's what age has done to Mrs. Pryce."