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soft whispers but usually in the loudest. When Mamie was a girl Grampie Nadel came to the house courting and in short order coaxed her under the lilac bushes. He was blond then, not bald, and Mamie was as pretty as a China doll. Right away he started bragging around town but soon could have bitten his tongue off, for later he had to marry Mamie so that my mother could come along in respectable fashion. I shuffle down the walk and peep into the car. The bare head turns, the face spits out a smile like a worm of toothpaste, and I mumble, "Mom's not home. Hi, Grampie." He doesn't swallow the lie and instead taps the horn twice, his signal, his demand. Moments later my mother slips out of the side door, hurries to the car, and sits in it with him. They don't talk about anything, but they try. Next 
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door Celia Kidd moves the curtain on her pantry window, which is wide-open. She doesn't like to miss anything and seldom does. Glimpsing her, Grampie Nadel thumbs his nose. He thumbs his nose at me and at Grammie Marlowe, who is back behind the screen, and at all the lilac bushes in view, which is a shot at my great-grandfather, who once threatened him. When he drives away he leaves Celia Kidd furious, my great-grandmother mumbling, my mother squeezing her hands, and my great-grandfather turning in his grave. As a girl Mamie had played piano, and after she married Grampie Nadel she gave lessons to support herself, for he never did. Her madness dribbled out of her aloneness, an ever-deepening pool of purple, which Grampie Nadel left her in to sink or swim. He had more women than fingers  |
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