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the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre.
    “Your show was a piece of stinking shit,” she yelled, surrounded by an audience of beaming senior citizens. “You don’t know
     fuck about shit, niggers.”
    The private hospital had seven circles of hell, and when Mrs. Denardo was sent upstairs to its steaming core, my brother,
     my sisters, and I lost interest in visiting.
    Once the construction was completed, Ya Ya moved into a spanking new building reserved exclusively for senior citizens, a
     high-rise development called Capitol Towers. The apartments featured metallic wallpaper and modish asymmetrical rooms, the
     wall-to-wall windows offering a view of the local mall. No one in Raleigh lived in a high-rise, and we found ourselves briefly
     captivated by the glamour. My sisters and I fought for the opportunity to spend the night in Ya Ya’s swinging clubhouse, and
     one by one, we took our turns standing at the darkened window swirling a mocktail and pretending to be mesmerized by the glittering
     lights of North Hills.
    I enjoyed pretending that this was my apartment and that Ya Ya was just visiting.
    “This is where I’ll be putting the wet bar,” I’d say, pointing to her shabby dinette set. “The movie projector will go in
     the corner beside the shrine, and we’ll knock down this dividing wall to build a conversation pit.”
    “Okay,” Ya Ya would say, staring at her folded hands. “You make a pit.”
    Again my father hoped Ya Ya might make some friends, but the women of Capitol Towers tended to be short-haired modern grandmothers
     with compact cars and stylish denim pantsuits. They kept themselves busy with volunteer work and organized bus trips to Ocracoke
     and Colonial Williams-burg.
    “That is so cute!” they’d say, fawning over the tissue-paper Santa decorating the lobby. “Isn’t it cute? I told Hassie Singleton
     just the other day, I said, ‘That Saint Nicholas is just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!’ And speaking of
     cute, where did you buy that sweatsuit? My goodness, it’s cute!”
    The word
cute
perfectly illustrated the gap between Ya Ya and her new neighbors. Stretched to its most ridiculous limit, their community
     password had no practical application to her life. She owned no makeup or jewelry, wore no breezy spangled sweatshirts or
     smart, tailored slacks. Her door was free of seasonal cutouts, and she would no sooner square-dance than join the Baptist
     ladies for a tour of the historic pantyhose factories of Winston-Salem. She left her apartment only to ransack the community
     garden or sit quietly sobbing in the lobby, drying her tears with the tissues used to sculpt the latest holiday display. This
     was not the picture Capitol Towers wished to present. These were robust seniors hoping to make the most of their retirement,
     and the sight of our grieving, black-clad Ya Ya deflated their spirits. It was suggested by the management that perhaps she
     might be more comfortable somewhere else. Legally she met their residency requirements, but spiritually she was just too dark.
     They began keeping tabs on her, looking for some technicality, and were overjoyed when she fell asleep late one afternoon
     and set a small fire with her neglected iron. Forced to leave Capitol Towers, Ya Ya took up residence at Mayview, a low brick
     nursing home located next door to the old county poorhouse. This was an older, considerably less mobile crowd than she’d known
     at Capitol Towers. Many of the residents were confined to wheelchairs, their spotted scalps visible through tufts of unkempt
     hair. They peed themselves and sat farting in the lobby, chuckling at the trumpeting sounds that issued from their nightgowns.
     Unlike her former home, Mayview made no attempt to disguise the inevitable. There was no talk of one’s well-deserved golden
     years, no rented buses or craft carnivals. This was it, the end of the line, all passengers please double-check the overhead