No wonder she kept cocking her head as I went on about “summer movies” and the intolerable poetry of my compatriots. I was standing and she was sitting on a dim street in front of a butcher shop, and come to think of it, she could have been waiting for the early morning return of the lambs and the bleeding sides of beef to their hooks in the window. For my part, I had mixed my drinks, trading in the tulip of wine for the sharp nettles of whiskey. Why else would I be wasting my time and hers trying to explain “corn dog,” “white walls,” and “the March of Dimes”? She showed such patience for a dog without breeding while I went on— in a whisper now after shouts from a window— about “helmet laws” and “tag sale” wishing I only had my camera so I could carry a picture of her home with me. On the loopy way back to my hotel— after some long and formal goodbyes— I kept thinking how I would have loved to hang her picture over the mantel where my maternal grandmother now looks down from her height as always, silently complaining about the choice of the frame.
