Nothing Could Be Finer

Caroline kept her nails perfectly manicured because she knew it frightened other women. Her mother grew up in a Catholic orphanage in Ohio; one morning when she was 14, she got on a bus for New York and got a job in the Ziegfeld Follies, some say because she was so tall. Later with her own kids, when money was tight, she'd drive from Brooklyn to West Palm Beach to play in the bridge tournaments there. Coming back they'd drive straight through, the car full of oranges, singing, "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum." Much later, Caroline's daughter remembered: Grandmother's lipstick prints on white coffee cups—on cigarettes held in her bright white hands; her toenails painted red; the milkman.

from Hand Over Fist