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“What do you do for amusement, Ellie?” asked my mother in that high-pitched, sugary voice she used for Aunt Mercy Marie. “Certainly you must get bored, too, once in a while, living way out in the sticks, having no friends. You don’t have a handsome husband to keep you warm and happy in your cold, lonely bed.”

“Really, Mercy,” responded my aunt, looking straight into those photograph eyes, “how could I possibly be bored when I live with such fascinating people as my sister and her stockbroker husband, who both adore fighting in their bedroom so much one of them screams. Truthfully, I feel rather safe in my lonely bed, without a handsome brute of a man who likes to wield his belt for a whip.”

“Ellsbeth, how dare you tell my best friend such nonsense? Damian and I play games, that’s all. It adds to his excitement and to mine.” Momma smiled apologetically at the photograph. “Unfortunately, Ellsbeth knows nothing at all about the many ways of pleasing a man, or giving him what he likes.”

My aunt snorted contemptuously. “Mercy, I’m sure you never allowed Horace to play those kind of sick sex games with you.”

“If she had, she wouldn’t be where she is now,” giggled my momma.

Vera’s eyes were as wide as mine. We both sat silent and motionless. I was sure both of them had forgotten we were there.

“Really, Mercy Marie, you do have to forgive my sister, who is a bit drunk. As I was saying a moment ago, I do live with such fascinating people there is never a dull moment. One daughter dies in the woods, another comes to take her place, and the fools give her the same name—”

“Ellsbeth,” snapped my momma, bolting upright from her slouched position, “if you hate your sister and her husband so much, why don’t you leave and take your daughter with you? Surely there must be some school somewhere that needs a teacher. You do have the kind of sharp tongue that could really keep children in their place.”

“No,” said my aunt calmly, still sipping her tea, “I’ll never leave this cluttery museum of junk. It’s just as much mine as it is hers.” She held her small finger in a crooked way I admired. Never could I manage to make mine stay like that for so long.

Odd how my aunt had such prissy manners and wore such unprissy clothes. My mother had very prissy clothes, and very unprissy mannerisms. While my aunt held her knees close together, my mother parted hers. While my aunt sat as straight as if she had a poker down her spine, my mother made herself into a rag and assumed sensual poses. They did everything to antagonize one another, and they succeeded.

During teatime I never contributed anything unless it was demanded of me, and Vera usually stayed just as quiet, hoping to hear more secrets. Vera had crawled around in back of a sofa, and there she sat with her lame leg stretched straight out, her other pulled up to her chin as she slowly leafed through that illustrated medical book that showed human anatomy. Just beneath the front cover was her cardboard man of many thick paper layers. In the first one he was just naked. When that cut-out man was turned over, he was shown with all his arteries painted red, his veins blue. Beneath that colorful plate was another man with all his vital organs showing. The last plate showed the skeleton, which didn’t interest Vera at all. There was also a naked woman who could be viewed inside out, too, but she never held much interest for Vera. Long ago she had pulled the “fetus” from the womb, and in her schoolbooks she used that tabbed baby for a bookmark. Bit by bit Vera began taking the naked man apart, untabbing his numbered paper parts and studying them closely. Each organ could be fitted back into proper position when the tabs were stuck through the right numbered slots. In her left hand she clutched his male parts, even as she plucked out his heart and his liver, turning them over and over, before she again took that cardboard thing from her left hand and examined it in great detail.

How strangely men were made, I thought, as she put the man back together and he came out right. Then she started again to take him apart. I turned my eyes away.

By this time both my mother and Aunt Ellsbeth were more than a bit drunk.

“Is anything as wonderful as you thought it would be?”

Wistfully, Momma met my aunt’s softened gaze. “I still love Damian, even if he hasn’t lived up to his promises. Maybe I was only fooling myself anyway, thinking I was really good enough to be a concert pianist. Maybe I married to keep from finding out just how mediocre I really am.”

“Lucietta, I don’t believe that,” said my aunt with surprising compassion. “You are a very gifted pianist and you know it as well as I do. You just let that man of yours put doubts in your head. How many times has Damian soothed you by saying you wouldn’t have succeeded if you had gone on?”

“Lots and lots and lots of times,” chanted my mother in a silly, drunken way that made me want to cry. “Don’t talk to me about it anymore, Ellie. It makes me feel too sorry for myself. Mr. Johanson would be so disappointed in me. I hope he’s dead and never found out I amounted to nothing.”

“Did you love him, Lucietta?” my aunt asked in a kindly way.

I perked up. Vera looked up from her play with the gross, naked man whose heart she was squeezing in her hand.

Mr. Ingmar Johanson had been my mother’s music teacher when she was a young girl. “When I was fifteen, and full of romantic notions, I thought I loved him.” Momma sighed heavily and rubbed at a tear that trickled down her cheek. She turned her head so that I saw her beautiful profile, and she stared to

ward the windows where the winter sun could only dimly filter in to pattern our Oriental with faded patches of light.

“He was the first man to give me a real kiss … boys in school had, but his was the first real kiss.”

Weren’t all kisses alike?

“Did you like his kisses?”

“Yes, Ellie, I liked them well enough. They filled me with longing. Ingmar woke me up sexually and then left me unfulfilled. Many a night I lay awake then, and even now I wake up and wish I’d let him go ahead and finish what he’d started, instead of saying no and saving myself for Damian.”

“No, Lucietta, you did the right thing. Damian would never have married you if he’d even suspected you weren’t a virgin. He claims to be a modern man with liberal ideas, but he’s a Victorian at heart. You know damn well he couldn’t handle what happened to Audrina any better than she could …”

What did she mean? How could the First Audrina have handled anything when they found her dead in the woods? Suddenly Momma turned to see me half hidden behind the fern. She stared, as if she had to readjust some thoughts in her head before she spoke. “Audrina, why do you try to hide? Come out and sit in a chair like a lady. Why are you so quiet? Contribute something once in a while. No one enjoys a person who doesn’t know how to make small talk.”

“What was it the First Audrina couldn’t handle any better than Papa?” I asked, getting to my feet and falling unladylike into a chair.

“Audrina, be careful with that cup of tea!”

“Momma, exactly what happened to my dead sister? What killed her—a snake?”