“Myrtle,” she says. She’s standing across the ping pong table from Myrtle, the two of them flanking a pile of garage sale miscellany in the garage-shade of the sunny early afternoon. Myrtle half looks at her, says “hmm.”

She’s holding a small pink stuffed elephant, six inches or so tall. The elephant is cartoonish, great big pink ears, its white hands held up on either side of it’s stubby snout. The stuffed pachyderm trembles in her liver-spotted hand.

“Myrtle,” she says. “Lookit here at this dog with this bone in ’s mouth.”