“I don’t know if they’re Republicans, Nana,” I said.

“I know I’m not being fair—maybe the golfers just dress like Republicans,” my grandmother said, sighing. She had great disdain for golf as exercise. The nurses at River Bend reported that Nana sometimes shouted at the golfers. “If you’re doing this for exercise, just keep walking—don’t keep stopping!” my grandmother yelled at them. It upset her more to see women playing golf—the women were definitely dressed like Republicans. “If women are Republicans, they’ve been brainwashed—the men have brainwashed them,” Nana said. The nurses at River Bend reported that my grandmother was always saying this. There were residents at River Bend who refused to sit with Nana in the dining hall; probably they were Republicans.

Near the end, this made Nora like my grandmother—at least a little more than Nora used to like her. Nora actually said it was a good thing Nana never knew that Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha had predeceased her.

“No woman wants to outlive her children, Adam—not even them two children,” Dottie would tell me later. “I knew I shoulda gone back to Maine, when them two moved your grandmother to the bend in the river.” Yet my aunts had persuaded Dottie to stay in the Front Street house. Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha hadn’t chosen a Realtor; my aunts were still renovating. Someone had to keep the old house clean, my aunts decided, and Dottie knew the Front Street house.

“Have you seen the ghost, Dottie?” Aunt Abigail asked my grandmother’s faithful housekeeper.

“The Realtors have heard about a ghost in the house,” Aunt Martha chimed in.

“I don’t do spirits—I don’t see ’em or clean ’em,” Dottie answered. “There’s people I know who sure as shit saw somethin’, but if I can’t see it, I’m not messin’ with it,” Dottie told them.

“What on earth does that mean, Dottie?” Aunt Abigail asked her.

“I can keep the attic clean, but I’m not recommendin’ that you mess with it,” Dottie answered her. “I was wastin’ my breath, Adam—I shoulda known that them two aunts of yours weren’t listenin’,” Dottie would tell me later. Fortunately, my grandmother would never know that them two had died—or how they’d died. Among the marbles Mildred Brewster had lost, she’d lost the marble for time. For Nana, losing the time marble was a blessing.

When had Abigail and Martha last visited my grandmother at River Bend? Why, it was just the other day, Nana would have answered, although Dottie had moved back to Maine, and my aunts had been dead for four or five years. The Front Street house kept changing hands; in four or five years, that house had seen as many new owners. The Realtor would keep lowering the asking price, following the repeated renovations to the attic.