sewn new ones on from a pair of gloves her brother left at Christmas, and those had gone through in 2008, and she had sewn the ones that were there now from the tongue of a work boot, which was why they did not match each other or anything else. The left pocket sagged. It sagged because for thirty-six years it had held a rubber-banded stack of three-by-five index cards and a golf pencil, and it still did, out of habit, though he had not needed either one since April.
"You're not wearing that," Imogene said.
"I'm wearing it."
"Arvel. You're going to buy a car."
"I know what I'm going to do."
"You're going to walk into a car dealership on Frederica Street looking like you came to fix their furnace. They'll take one look at you and sell you whatever's been sitting on the lot since the flood." She pointed the spatula toward the hall closet. "Your navy blazer is right there. I had it cleaned for the Hendersons' anniversary and you wore it for two hours."
"The navy blazer," Arvel said, "has never done anything for anybody."
"It's a jacket. It's not supposed to do anything."
"This one has." He put his hand flat against the left pocket, and felt the cards through the wale, and the little hard stub of the pencil. "I'm going to see somebody today, Immy. I want to look like myself."
She knew who he meant. Or she knew enough. She stood for a moment longer with the spatula, and then she made a sound in her throat that was not quite a word and turned back to the stove, which was how Imogene surrendered, and had been since 1974.
He ate his eggs. Through the window over the sink the sky was going from gray to the thin, washed blue of the last day of October, and in the yard across Locust Street somebody had already put out the inflatable cat, which was eight feet tall and orange and which lay deflated on the grass every morning like a hide and stood up every evening at six when the timer came on. Arvel could see it the way he saw most things now: as color without edges. An orange shape on a green shape. If he looked straight at it, the middle went soft and swimming, as though he were looking through the bottom of a glass of water. If he looked a little to one side, he could catch the outline with the corner of his eye.