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ready because she was taking me with her to church. She probably didn’t think it safe to leave me alone in the house with her carpet a second time.
    She chose a skirt from the closet and I drew it over the leggings I had slept in. I borrowed a sweater from Natalie’s drawer and poked my hair, washed toothpaste over my stale gin breath. I dug in the closet until I found my new boots. Nana made me change them, telling me the heels made me look like a call girl—which translated as hot-tamale-Pisquale in Katy-speak. I was willing to do things Nana’s way withoutargument. I loved my Nana despite her objections to stillettos. She stood, purse in hand, waiting while I made the necessary adjustments.
    “Do I have to go?” I asked, knowing what her answer would be in advance.
    “What do you think, young lady?” Nana became impatient with my inquisitiveness.
    I stroked my hair with Natalie’s brush and nearly electrocuted myself with the static. Nana consulted her watch and fiddled with the knob on my bedroom door. Her pale gray eyes shot beams when she realized the time.
    “Can we drive?” I asked.
    “You need a little fresh air,” she said. “Find yourself a coat.”
    When we reached the door and the sun streamed in, my eyeballs just about fell out. I wondered if my sunglasses had enough UV protection to help me deal with all the shining judgment flooding the driveway and my hungover senses. My guess was likely not.

6
    ONE GOOD THING ABOUT LYNN STREET WAS THAT we were near the church so the walk in the daylight was short. Black patches of ice covered the walkways, a result of the rain and temperature drop from the night before. My nose dripped. Nana dug into her bag and retrieved a blue tissue and handed it to me. I would have preferred a handkerchief because I loved the trees even if Nana didn’t, yet nothing as unsanitary as a reusable cloth handkerchief had been in Nana’s possession since 1969, the year they began making stuff you could throw away.
    Nana strode beside me, her head held high, her square-heeled shoes clopping on the walk. She somehow knew where the pavement was booby-trapped. Any other old lady might have complained about thewind, but my grandmother was the Clint Eastwood of her euchre club.
    Even so, I worried about her as I trudged at her side. Nana held her worldview to her like a shield. Her face turned white at the slightest hint that the toilet might overflow, and, when I forgot to scrape my shoes on the mat once, she began wheezing. Thinking of her overcome with Natalie’s news nearly made me blubber and sniff so hard I would need six blue trees’ worth of tissue to sop me up. Aunt Denise had tested Nana. My mother had disappointed her by becoming pregnant with me. My grandfather had lost his farm and left Nana a widow, and yet Nana marched on, trusting that her churchy beliefs would one day save all of us.
    A car passed driving twelve miles an hour the way old people do on a Sunday morning in Heaven. The distraction allowed me to hide my emotions from Nana. Someone rolled the window down, and a friend of Nana’s waved and warbled hello. The friend was wearing white gloves. Where did she buy them? The world was full of deep, unsolvable mysteries.
    The neighbor in the car was one I had seen in my grandparents’ wedding album. In the old photos, all of Nana’s best girlfriends looked young, happy, and full of life. Nana had been a joyful person, laughingover her shoulder at her bouquet-jostling bridesmaids in their wide-brimmed hats. Those had to have been better times. To hear Nana talk, the worst thing she and her friends had ever done was grease a litter of pigs so her farmer father couldn’t catch and slaughter them. She could laugh about that antic until the tears rolled down her face. The funniest thing that ever happened to me was that my cousin abandoned a baby in a cornfield.
    I reached into my jacket pocket and retrieved the pair of sunglasses I had fumbled for on my way out