Lennie said. Cassandra, who had been folding laundry as she spoke to her mother, almost dropped the portable phone cradled between neck and shoulder. Her parents had not, to her knowledge, initiated contact with each other for years. On those occasions where they had been forced to share the same space—usually events centering on Cassandra—they managed to be polite, nothing more. Things between them had been more strained since Annie’s death, as if all that frosty goodwill had been for Annie’s benefit. “Y-y-y-yes,” Cassandra said, starting to lose her grip on the phone, then dropping the T-shirt in her hands in order to grab the receiver before it fell to the floor. She wanted to point out to her mother that she really did need to discuss the format of her father’s interview at the Gordon School. Besides, her mother was free to call her, to ask and even issue invitations. But Cassandra didn’t raise either point because she knew how Lennie would reply. Reminded about the Gordon School event, she would say something self-deprecating, self-pitying.
