As Grandpa comes to get the boys' pajamas, since they are sleeping in his apartment, now that Addy is sick in bed, he tells Nell that her mother has a date. Nell wonders why her mother would have a date, and when her mother shows up, she meets her date, ""Ernie"", a man from her past. It turns out that he was a jazz musician that knew her mother before she had met and married Nell's father. When they were young, he took her to a dance contest, and asked her to go on the road with him, but she rejected. Nell cant beleive that this is true, since Mama Maybelle calls him ""Sneakers"", which is what her dogs name in Alabama was as well. In the end, as Ernie waits outside for Maybelle, Nell asks her mother if the two of them ever had sex, and Mama Maybelle tells her that Nell should know the answer to that question, and tells her she has a lot of growing up to do, and that she must realize that her mother is a woman, just like herself. (thetvdb.com)