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didn't call by a first name. I'd just gotten the feeling when I met her that she wasn't comfortable with American familiarity. She didn't correct me, even though I introduced myself as Dinah.
    They both nodded and said hello. Becky asked if she liked the class.
    "WHAT?" Ellen was always asking you to repeat things. She had two daughters who lived nearby. Why one of them didn't get her a hearing aid, I had no idea.
    "Do you like the class?" Becky said, speaking slowly now, loudly.
    "Oh, yes, yes. Very much. Thank you."
    "Your hair is so beautiful," Becky said.
    It was hard not to notice Ellen's hair, which was pure, perfect white, the color of snow. You could see the pink scalp beneath it. She wore it in a loosely braided chignon. It must have been very long, as if she hadn't cut it for many years. Maybe never.
    Ellen nodded her head at Becky. "Thank you, and so is yours, my dear."
    Becky thanked her. I looked at their two heads, enjoying the dramatic contrast.
    Ellen turned to me. "So then. I must go. My daughter is picking me up in a little while. I will see you Thursday, Dinah. Yes?" Ellen's face is deeply lined, her nose beaked, but despite her age and the bow of her back, she still manages to carry herself with a stately dignity, even elegance.
    "Wouldn't miss it." I loved that class. Partly because I've always liked hearing people's stories, that's what psychologists do, partly because I loved them.
    And what stories I heard from those septuagenarians and octogenarians! Frieda Brodsky had been a mail-order bride. Abe Modell was a retired dentist who called his autobiography-always-in-progress From the Ukraine to Novocaine. When he was nine and his brother Max eleven, Cossacks rampaged through their town near Minsk, killing their mother. The boys were put in steerage on a boat bound for America and a distant relative, who was to collect them at Ellis Island but never showed up.
    Some of them were excellent writers, too. Especially Carl Moskovitz, part of a core group who'd been coming since I first started teaching the class seven years ago. Ellen had only the past September joined the class for the first time. At the beginning of every new session, I always had everyone introduce themselves again, for the benefit of the new people. This they all did at length, telling birthplace, age, number of children and grandchildren, and singing the praises of a spouse, dead and alive. Ellen said, "I'm Mrs. Max Shoenfeld. Ellen is my forename. I'm eighty years old and I come from Munich, in Germany. My husband of thirty-six years died ten years ago. He was a fine man, and I miss him every day. I have six grandbabies. Esther, Rebecca, David, Nathan, Allisa. And Jennifer."
    Carl always introduced himself by saying, "Carl Moskovitz. Accountant. Retired." A man of few words. He wrote just like he talked. Deadpan, and mordantly funny, whether depicting his brother-in-law's boorish behavior at Carl's wife's funeral, or the time in 1947 when he lost his pants in a bet and had to walk the Coney Island boardwalk in his underwear. They weren't all as good as Carl, but they all tried the assignments. Except Ellen, who just kept saying, "No, no, I just like to sit and listen." Except that she could hardly hear.
    "Well, goodbye then." She waved. Her fingers were as bent as winter twigs, the skin on her fingertips puckered, like dried parchment.
    "See you Thursday, Mrs. Shoenfeld." I watched her walk away, then glanced at my watch. It was after two. "I have to go pick up Elijah," I said to Becky. "I promised I'd help set up for the Winter Fair tomorrow."
    "What'd they rope you into this year?"
    "Elijah and I are in charge of the clown toss." When Brian and Elijah were two, Becky and I took them to a local fair. Brian thought the clown wandering around was funny, but Elijah started screaming at the top of his lungs. I had to take him home. “
    "He's come a long way," Becky said. She planted a kiss on my cheek, then we said goodbye and I headed