Marsha Temlock

Marlene Corby took down two cut-glass crystal bowls she and Al had gotten forty years ago as a wedding gift and filled them with assorted nuts and mints. She’d baked lemon squares that morning and arranged them diagonally on a Blue Willow cake plate crazed like a spider’s web.

I grew up in the Bronx where once a month my mother held a mah jongg game in our apartment living room. From the age of four, I was allowed to set up the walls of tiles around the four racks before the three other ladies arrived. Before I could read, I could decipher…