The next morning Emily gave her daily report to her sister, Lucille, on the telephone. “She’s ordering things out of the catalog,” Emily said. “A horse-drawn buggy and some kind of big old britches.”

“You need to throw out that catalog,” said Lucille. “She’s got to live in the real world, Emily, like the rest of us.”

“Remember what the woman said about the old and the new and the pathways of communication?” said Emily. But Lucille was busy raising her illegitimate grandson and planning the town’s big Victorian Christmas celebration and didn’t have time to listen to Emily talk about pathways in their mother’s brain. Emily heard a series of beeps from the telephone where Lucille had mashed her cheek against the buttons, then in the background “O Holy Night” and little Ned snuffling and whimpering.

“Emily, I’m cooking five meals for Mama, I’m feeding Ned, and I’ve got to get the music lined up for downtown, the soundman is coming tomorrow. Don’t start talking to me about grass.”

Ever since they had attended the Alzheimer’s seminar Emily had been imagining her mother’s mind like a green meadow with a blue sky overhead, and something like a bush hog cutting graceful, curving swaths through the tall, soft grass. Emily had always been that way, her thoughts would just stick on one useless topic, like grass, for days at a time. There hadn’t been a name for it, just a range of adjectives, from “delicate” to “no-count,” until last year Lucille had decided that Emily had attention deficit disorder, gotten her a prescription for Ritalin, and given her her first job, sewing the Victorian strollers’ costumes for the downtown Christmas celebration.

“She is an extremely capable seamstress,” Lucille had insisted when the wardrobe chairman had said, stretching her eyes wide, “Emily?” And sure enough, on just three little pills a day, Emily had completed forty of the costumes. They hung from the picture molding all around the living room—tailcoats, weskits, skirts with bustles, and jackets with leg-of-mutton sleeves.

“Horse,” said the baby, pointing with a gummy finger. He was sitting in Mrs. Nash’s lap looking at the harness in the Sears catalog while Emily sewed piping in a bodice seam and Lucille washed a load of clothes and stacked up frozen food in the top of the refrigerator.

“That is the martingale and those are the traces,” said Mrs. Nash. “That strap runs through a loop right here and fastens to the shaft.”

“Horse,” said the baby.

“Emily, look here,” called Lucille. “This food is numbered. You fix one first, then two; when you get down to five, I’ll come back, see this?”

“Horse,” said the baby.

“Who is this baby?” said Mrs. Nash. “Whose little baby is this?”