“It was a woman, Adam—she did that,” my grandmother said, giving me the finger. A lady golfer had flipped her the bird, one of the brainwashed Republican women. Among the River Bend residents, Nana knew there was talk of retaliation.

The townies, the local people of Exeter, who weren’t well-to-do or part of the academy community, called the River Bend residents River Benders; the near-death residents, of course, were called River Enders.

The act of reprisal against the golfers was expected by both River Benders and Enders—not by the golfers. “It appears that one of us pooped on the putting green,” my grandmother told me, in hushed tones—as if she were speaking of a sacred act. A River Bender—maybe a River Ender, with nothing to lose—had retaliated by taking a big dump on the putting green, very close to the cup missing its flag.

The groundskeeper for the golf course was the one who discovered the giant mound on the green. It was suspicious that my grandmother and all the residents with views of the putting green had waited at their windows for the groundskeeper’s arrival. “The residents definitely knew the poop was on the green before the groundskeeper got to it,” a young nurse confided to me; she was more candid than the older nurses at River Bend, but she didn’t go so far as to say the residents had foreknowledge of the outrageous act of defecation. Whatever person did the defecating became “an overnight legend at River Bend,” or so the young nurse earnestly told me. Yet the defecator would remain an unnamed hero.

If Nana knew who did it, she took her knowledge of the daring dumper to her grave. (To Mildred Brewster’s thinking, even defecating was better exercise than golf.)

When Dottie’s postcards came, Nana didn’t know who Dottie was—not to mention what Dottie was saying. “How are you, Mrs. Brewster? I’m still kicking,” Dottie always wrote, before signing her name in the surprisingly legible handwriting of her grocery lists.

“Who is Dottie? Exactly what is she kicking?” my grandmother would ask me, or one of the nurses. When we reminded her who Dottie was, and how “still kicking” was just Dottie’s way of saying she was alive, Nana was indignant about the misunderstanding. “Well, why doesn’t Dottie sound like Dottie—why doesn’t she say it the way Dottie would have said it? It’s not ‘kicking,’ it’s kickin’!” my grandmother exclaimed. It was Dottie’s voice she still remembered, and mine.

In the end, Nana didn’t remember me when she saw me. Even if I had visited her as recently as a week before, or only a day before, she would stare at me, not knowing who I was. “It’s me, Nana—it’s Adam,” I would have to tell her each time. She always recognized my voice.

“Oh, Adam—you’ve gotten so old, dear,” she would say.