But she loved the story of her triumph over Grace. And he took one look at me, with my little white sandals and my toenails painted Kiss Me Pink, and I knew I had him. He was like a fish caught in the net. She didn't figure on him running to somebody like me. She and my father were married three months from the day they met, and I was born 11 months after that.
Grace wants to think that it was a dismal marriage.
But it had its perky moments, as I have told her. There were lots of laughs, games of Parcheesi and Go Fish, dancing in the living room after dinner. My mother kept her figure, and her toenails were always Kiss Me Pink, and her hair whipped up into a blond bouffant. She liked parties and playing the ukulele and staying up late and playing the stereo loud. I saw all this.