The kind where everyone came in at exactly a quarter to nine, primed on caffeine or good spirits and ready to get down to work immediately, and the kind of morning we were having the Monday after the conference on sexuality. June lolled on one end of the long sofa reading the newspaper and groaning softly. Ray sat on the other end, coaxing Antonia with a pacifier, an adoring, absent look on his face. Penny sat, most unlike herself, in a slumped position over her desk, trying to focus on a cup of coffee. Something about her strongly reminded me of our mother, maybe the way the oversize glasses sat on her small, sharp nose; maybe the way her dry, half curly hair stuck out. Once her short brown hair had been kept artificially perpendicular with mousse, now it had an indifferent perm and was parted on the side. Penny the svelte had gotten careless about her dress too and seemed to go about in stained sweatshirts that she could whip up at the sound of a cry. She was definitely slowing down.
