“There was another woman I looked after, down off Mockingbird, pretty close to here.  She’d been by herself for awhile.  Her last husband had died awhile back, the usual absentee kids” Tammy said.  “Anyway, this lady – she had over a hundred different shades of red lipstick, many still in the box.  Turns out she’d spent each afternoon for I don’t know how many years shopping the Neiman Marcus make-up counters, always looking for the perfect shade of red.  We spent hours every morning together going through her collections, trying to match her lips to her pajamas.  While we searched, she’d tell me beautiful stories, all about what life had been like for her growing up in east Texas, before Dallas.  A couple of times some of the girls from Neimans came to visit her.  Said they’d wondered where Mable had disappeared to.  Said they’d missed her stories.  They brought me some polish for her as a present one time, something to match her lips.  So I painted her finger nails and her toe nails red too.  You can see your aunt’s there, though she prefers orange.    I painted her nails last night while we were talking about the next vacation she wanted to take.  She swore when she felt better, we’d take a cruise down to Mexico, where we could find us some good tequila, top shelf.  I told her that was some crazy talk.  Me in Mexico.  I’ve never even left the South.” 

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