Without trees, there were no leaves to rake, no piles of leaves to burn. Winter snows continued to disappoint. We had no Lisbon girls to spy on. Now and then, of course, as we were slowly carted into the melancholic remainder of our lives (a place the Lisbon girls, wisely, it began to seem, never cared to see), we would stop, mostly alone, to gaze up at the whited sepulchre of the former Lisbon house.
