Keep the Change by Thomas McGuane

then back. He held a glass by its stem. He paused. He turned his eyes to the glass. In slow motion, the glass inverted and began its descent to the floor. Joe watched. It seemed to take a very long time and then it became a silver star to the memory of Joe’s mother. It disappeared in the debris of its predecessors. Smitty sent the remainder of the glasses to the floor with a motion like a shot-putter, even tipping up on one slippered toe. Then he relaxed. Nothing had happened really, had it? All for the best, somehow. Still, thought Joe, it makes for a rather long evening.
    “Why don’t I show you your room,” said Lureen, “and we can get caught up on our rest.” Because it had become ridiculous to let this pass without remark, she lowered her voice to say that “everyone,” meaning Smitty, had problems which Joe couldn’t be expected to understand because he hadn’t been around. Smitty stood right there and listened blithely.
    “Taking this all in?” Joe asked Smitty quietly.
    “Mm-hm.”
    “You know,” Lureen mused desperately, “Duffy’s Fourth of July at Flathead Lake was a hundred years ago.” Joe had no idea what to do with that one other than take it as an obscure family reference intended to restore the intimacy she had withdrawn. Duffy’s Fourth of July at Flathead Lake. What was that?
    “Joe doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” sang Smitty. Then he turned to Joe. “You are among friends,” he said gravely. “Think of it: your own flesh and blood.” He leaned his weight in the pockets of his robe like an old trainer watching his racehorses at daybreak. All his gestures seemed similarly detached from his surroundings. Smitty walked up to the barometer and gave the glass a tap. This seemed to give him his next idea. “I think I’ll head for my quarters now,” he said. “The artillery has begun to subside. Another day tomorrow. One more colorful than the other.”
    When Smitty left the room, humming “The Caissons Go Rolling Along,” a queer tension set in. Joe knew now his arrival was an invasion, his presence abusive. He thought of making up alarming lies about the space program, ones he could deliver tearfully, accounts of loyal Americans shredded by titanium and lasers. If some sort of guilt based on an unimpeachable national purpose could be held over Lureen, possibly this miserable tone could be altered. “I delivered the little things to the space shuttle that made it a home, the nail clippers, the moisturizers, the paperbacks, the tampons …”
    But the tension didn’t last. He went back into the kitchen and helped her clean up the broken glass. Lureen held the dustpan. Joe tried to sweep carefully without letting the straws of the broom spring and scatter bits of crystal. He wanted to ask Lureen why she stood for it, but he didn’t. They swept all around the great gas stove. As Joe knelt to hold the dustpan,he saw that its pipes had been disconnected. It was a dummy, a front for the mean little microwave next to the toaster.
    “A service for twenty,” Lureen said, referring to the broken crystal. “Who in this day and age needs a service for twenty?” A laugh of astonishment. Who indeed! My mother needed it, Joe thought. From each window of the kitchen, each except the one that opened on the tiny yard, could be seen the clapboard walls of the neighboring houses, the shadows of clotheslines just out of sight above, duplexes that used to be family homes. A service for twenty! They laughed desperately. How totally out of date! And finally, how removed from the space program! I don’t feel so good, he thought.
    “Joe, Smitty and I have made not such a bad life for ourselves here,” Lureen said after they finished cleaning up. “We never have gotten used to the winters. And you know what we talk about? Hawaii. It’s funny how those things start. Arthur Godfrey used to have a broadcast from Honolulu. He had a Hawaiian gal named Holly Loki on the show. Smitty and