“A ghost resurrected from the altar of your remembrances, Loretta stands before you shucking mussels in a haze of practical ritual. A galvanized metal washtub perspires on the kitchen counter beneath her, its belly full of ice and mollusks steaming with cold. As if inured to the passage of time, she has remained the stubbornly plump, Italian matron of your boyhood. Her arms are still as doughy as unbaked loaves of bread, her bare shoulders still spotted with the same angry-red heat blisters that burst each May and pulse until late September. She still twists her hair into the pious white bun she’s had pinned to the base of her skull since you were an altar boy, while the same golden crucifix you once gave her for Christmas dangles like a showy carapace of grievance covering her heart...”