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and a greed for things. Mamie, whose insides were as delicate as tea cups, had a hyster-ectomy, which made Grampie Nadel hate her beyond reason, as if she had maimed herself to spite him. He tortured her by driving back and forth in front of the house with his current woman friend. If Mamie lowered the shades, he blasted the horn. Barely school-age then, my mother watched Mamie pound the piano till the sound of it and of the horn outside flooded the house. In fits of wildness, she bloodied her fingers on the keys and then on where she was most useless by tearing hair from it. Finally Grammie had her committed. "I know where I am," she said. "I'm in the China house." She never left the China house except once, and Grampie Nadel never went near it, nor did he ever contribute a dime toward her keep, which 
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came out of Grampie Marlowe's pocket while he was alive and then out of the State's. For a long time Grampie Nadel disappeared and then began showing up again in front of the house to talk with my mother, to see what kind of kid she had (me). He still had women, but they had turned as pumpkin-like as he, and he never had them with him in the car. The smoke of a cigarette lies across the parlor like a birch branch, and my mother tries to bat it away as Grammie Marlowe enters the room. At once they begin to bicker about Grampie Nadel. "I won't have him here," Grammie Marlowe says. "Not even parked outside. Do you hear?" "He's my father!" my mother says and wrings her hands as I've seen Mamie do, except Mamie takes her fingers and twists them as if wrapping candy kisses.  |
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