The Man of Music took his guitar over to a group of young women who were lounging around on the orange plastic benches, clutching snagged blankets and dingy pillows, reading magazines and eating candy bars, waiting for the Atlanta bus. “Y’all ready for some music?” the Man of Music asked. “’Cause I’m here now.” But not a single one even bothered to look up at him.

The last person to come off the bus was the old man. The bus driver and a tall, silent man each got under one arm and walked him off the bus, his feet flopping down the steps. They tried to set him up in a rickety wheelchair, but he landed crooked in the seat with his sweater rucked up under his arms, and the tall man and a stooped old woman pushed him on out of the bus station like that, without bothering to straighten him up.

Return to Sender

“MAMA, YOU CAN’T order things out of that catalog,” said Emily. She was going through her mother’s mail, and as usual, several envelopes were addressed to Sears Roebuck and Co. in her mother’s shaky penmanship, stamped RETURN TO SENDER with the pointing hand.

“Luten had one of these American Beauty top buggies,” said Mrs. Nash. She was looking at the ads for horse-drawn carriages in a Sears catalog reprinted from 1909. “‘More than a hundred little special features in the manufacture go to make this a smoother, handsomer, more stylish, more lasting and better top buggy than could be had for twice the price.’ That’s absolutely true,” she said, squinting at the grainy black-and-white illustration through a magnifying glass. “It was black, with stripes in a New York red. It had velvet carpet on the floor and a tufted leather seat.”

Emily’s sister, Lucille, thought they should throw out the Sears catalog. “It just encourages her,” said Lucille. But Emily kept remembering what the woman had told them at the Alzheimer’s seminar, that the old memories were the strongest, and if you could connect the old and the new, you might be able to open up pathways of communication. Emily sat down with her mother and pointed to the cover of the catalog. “Mama, look right here where it says ‘A Treasured Replica from the Archives of History.’ The catalog isn’t real. It’s a copy. You can’t order things out of it.”

“It is real,” said Mrs. Nash. “Just look at this. I remember that deep roll on the seat and the nickel dash rail and the antirattlers; the ride was just as smooth.”

“Mama,” said Emily, but Mrs. Nash had turned to mantel clocks and statues of women and hunting dogs to set on top of them and wouldn’t listen.