“I said ever—I mean, it’s not believable to be into sex this much!” my mother declared.

“When it comes to sex, my mom is more of a Brewster girl than you think she is,” I told Nora.

“When it comes to being stubborn, maybe,” Nora replied. “When it comes to sex, Ray is not a Brewster girl, Adam,” Nora insisted.

And she wasn’t surprised by Little Ray’s lukewarm response to Paul Newman. “I thought my mother liked handsome—at least, she uses the word a lot,” I complained to Nora. My mom and I had seen The Hustler, Hud, and Cool Hand Luke together.

“I’ll bet you think Paul Newman is handsome,” I said to my mother, after all three films.

Each time, Little Ray said the same thing: “Too much testosterone.”

“That’s not weird. That sounds right to me—and it’s just like Ray, not to give a shit about testosterone,” Nora said. Here was my grandmother’s theme, albeit worded more coarsely.

It happened that Nora and I and Little Ray saw The Old Man and the Sea together. Given what my mom had said about Spencer Tracy, I expected her to like him as a two-armed fisherman this time, even though he was three years older. But my mother fell asleep at the beginning of the film.

“Does she often sleep in movies?” Nora whispered in my ear.

“Never,” I whispered back. We watched my mom (sound asleep) as closely as we watched The Old Man and the Sea. I hated Hemingway—I mean, reading him. I already knew the fishing story, but Nora hadn’t read it.

“I was on the sharks’ side, the whole way,” Nora said at the end. “And you slept the whole way, Ray,” Nora told my mother.

“Did I?” my mom asked, in her innocent-sounding way. “Well, there must have been something more interesting happening in my sleep,” was all she said.

After the film, Nora said that Ray looked as if she was “on the sharks’ side—even in her sleep.” Nora and I found the subject of my mother, sleeping soundly through a movie, more engrossing than The Old Man and the Sea.

I’ve forgotten where we were—Nora, my mom, and I—when we saw True Grit together. It was the end of the sixties. John Wayne was back in the saddle, where my mother believed he belonged. I guess Hollywood thought John Wayne belonged back in the saddle, too, because they would give Wayne his first and only Oscar for his role as the one-eyed, potbellied marshal.