At the end of True Grit, Little Ray gave Nora and me a glimpse of her seemingly obdurate nationalism. Keep in mind that I was almost thirty and Nora was already in her mid-thirties. Nixon had been elected the year before, the same year as the My Lai massacre; both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been killed; and the protests against the Vietnam War were rising. A year later, the Ohio National Guard would shoot and kill those college students at Kent State. Nora and I weren’t feeling particularly nationalistic.

“You see?” my mom said to Nora and me, in her little-girl way. We were among the moviegoers leaving the theater, at the conclusion of True Grit.

“See what, Ray?” Nora asked.

“John Wayne is old and fat, and he’s lost an eye,” my mother explained, “but he comes off better than he did in Ireland.”

“You don’t like Ireland, Ray?” Nora asked.

“I don’t think about Ireland one way or another,” my mom answered. “I have no desire to go there, or anywhere else that’s foreign. I like staying here, in America. So should John Wayne.” But I knew she loved Austria, home of the Arlberg technique.

“Ray doesn’t like anything foreign,” I explained to Nora. “Except for skiers,” I added. “Ray likes Toni Sailer and Toni Matt and Sepp Ruschp and Hannes Schneider—they’re foreign, but they’re Austrian. I guess foreignness in movies is another matter.” I paused. I looked at Little Ray, to see how she liked listening about herself in the third person, before I spoke to her. “You don’t like foreign films—in particular, the ones with subtitles—do you?” I asked my mother.

“I don’t go to the movies to read, sweetie,” my mom told me.

“You don’t like to read anything!” I pointed out to her.

“I have read and will read everything you write, Adam—everything you show me,” my mother told me, kissing my cheek.

“But, Ray, the movies with subtitles are the ones with good sex,” Nora said.

“I don’t go to the movies to get good sex!” my mom exclaimed; she laughed, kissing Nora on the cheek. Little Ray had to stand on her toes; she needed to put her arms around Nora’s neck to steady herself. On tiptoe, my mother was barely tall enough to kiss Nora’s cheek, and I’m guessing Nora bent down to help her. “My dear, dear Nora,” Little Ray said. “Not everything is about sex!”