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fatty, decadent food that was forbidden in my household. As she sat dousing her French fries in salt, I watched, wide-eyed, until my inner Good Samaritan got the better of me.
    â€œYou shouldn’t eat so much salt,” I said. “It’s not good for you.”
    â€œI’m old,” she crowed with a big, hearty laugh. “I want to enjoy myself.”
    Mostly, her visit had the hushed, stopped-time languor of a hospital waiting room. I watched Betty read the paper, apply her lipstick, and smoke. Our rented cottage was a drab, simple affair that was supposed to be within walking distance of the beach. It might have been, but I don’t remember us going to the beach even once.
    T he next summer, Betty returned. Our rental this year was one of a half dozen neat white cottages with dark green shutters that matched a larger house with rocking chairs on its porch. My fear at what embarrassing thing Betty might say to the other guests as we sat in these chairs wastrumped by my relief from the constant boredom of sitting in the cabin with her, and we spent long hours rocking together while she smoked.
    Our new cabin was within walking distance of one of my favorite places in the world—the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse. Betty and I walked to the lighthouse every day, me prattling along as I did. “Why is that little building by the lighthouse red?” I asked.
    â€œHow should I know?” Betty laughed.
    â€œDo they still have lighthouse keepers?” I asked, my commentary eventually puttering along on its own when I got no response from Betty.
    Like my father, Betty wasn’t accustomed to children, and so she didn’t take the usual parental approach of trying to make every moment into a lesson. Instead, she laughed at me, not feeling the need to pretend to be polite.
    She was old. I amused her. She didn’t care how I felt or what anyone thought. She was going to laugh. She was on the vacation she had earned, and she was going to read her paper and smoke her cigarettes and eat as much salt as she wanted.
    This second cabin was also near a restaurant that held an epic place of honor in my mind: the Gosnold Arms. It was across the road from the New Harbor Co-op, where Mom and Craig took visitors to eat fresh lobsters served on paper trays at picnic tables overlooking the harbor. At that age, and with our strict health food diet, I loved any excuse to eat out. I fancied myself a bit of a sophisticate, though, and looked longingly across the road at the Gosnold Arms, located in a regal building with a long front porch.
    I’m not sure whether Betty and I arrived as the restaurant opened in an attempt to be thrifty, or because we’d both been waiting for dinner for hours, as it was one of the day’s only distractions. But we happened to hit the early bird special.
    I braced myself as the server approached. Who knew what Betty would say? She had a habit of demanding sliced lemon at the end of a seafood meal and rubbing it over her fingers to erase the fishy smell she imagined to be lingering there.
    â€œWe have two options for the early bird special tonight,” the server happily chirped. “Lamb and veal.”
    Mom was raising me as a strict vegetarian. Although I enjoyed breaking the rules when I stayed with Grammy, eating one of her dry hamburgers was one thing. It was quite another thing to consume one of the cutest animals I’d ever seen. I had to have the alternative. I waited for the waitress to leave.
    â€œWhat’s veal?” I asked.
    â€œBaby cow,” Betty said without a second thought.
    When the waitress came back to take our order, she beamed down at me.
    â€œAnd what would you like?” she asked.
    â€œVeal,” I said, the word sticking in my throat.
    As much as I was eager to join the big world and saw Betty as a means to get there, I was uncertain of my ability to handle the vast options it included. And yet, my longing only grew.
    T