All of them made me feel welcome and at home with them, all the time, although I was the outsider among them—the straight guy with a questionable history of unfriendly former girlfriends.

Once in a while, I ran into Rose on the academy campus. I didn’t ask her about her muscle spasms. Our friendship wouldn’t recover from her headfirst, self-exposing descent of the attic stairs.

“There are worse things than limping,” Rose told me.

It was Maud who warned me my grandmother was “losing her marbles.” Maud ran into Nana in downtown Exeter, where Nana said she’d parked her car but couldn’t find it. Maud knew we didn’t let my grandmother drive—not after she’d driven into the garage and kept on driving, through the back wall. Maud knew Dottie drove Nana everywhere.

My grandmother mistook Maud for poor Rose. “Your limp is much better, dear—if I didn’t know you had a limp, I would scarcely have noticed it,” Nana told Maud.

“I’m Maud, Mrs. Brewster. I broke my arm, I had a cast for a while,” Maud said to her. “Rose had a wicked limp, but her limp is all gone now.”

“How are your muscle spasms, dear?” my grandmother asked her. Then Dottie showed up. “What on earth are you doing here, Dottie?” Nana asked her housekeeper.

“I was lookin’ for you!” Dottie told her.

“As for exposing yourself on the stairs, dear,” my grandmother was saying earnestly to Maud, “the best thing you can do is not think about it.” Maud knew what and how much I’d seen of Rose, as poor Rose was descending the attic stairs. Maud had told me she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maud believed Rose’s sex life was ruined by her unthinkable exposure.

“This is the one with the busted arm, Mrs. Brewster—not the one with her whatsis in the air, all the way down them attic stairs,” Dottie tried to tell my grandmother.

Dottie had also warned me Nana was “slippin’,” as she put it. “She makes tea all day and night, but she don’t hear the kettle singin’,” Dottie said.

“So she’s losing her hearing?” I asked Dottie.

“She’s losin’ more than her hearin’, Adam. When she takes the kettle off the burner, she leaves them flames burnin’—she’s gonna burn the house down, if she don’t piss herself to death first,” Dottie said.

“She’s incontinent?” I asked Dottie.

“I don’t know about that, Adam, but she’s just standin’ there pissin’, when she don’t know she’s pissin’—them diapers don’t work, you know, if you don’t remember to use ’em, and she won’t let me put ’em on her,” Dottie said. “As for them two aunts of yours, them two will hasten her death,” Dottie added.