Aunt Mallie's Theories

she was looking for in the phrases and the mountains and the faces of children in the villages. But whatever magic she was seeking...whatever glory and adventure her ancestors had known in Scotland...they took with them. At Christmas—surely the bleakest time of year in Scotland, foggy and dark and cold—I Aunt Mallie's Theories "I hope Pa dies first," Aunt Mallie said as though her wishes altered fate. "Women could get along," she said, "but men—" her theory fell unfinished but understood. When Ma dies the problem is clothes. "I won't have her buried in that," Aunt Mallie says. "That white lace sweater looks like one she wore for years. I don't want her looking poor." She doesn't. Laid out for visitation in blue organza and lace, she is an angelic Helen Hayes with wrinkles relaxed from worry into wisdom. But what to do with Pa. "I don't want a new suit. No place to wear it," he says, sunken lips a tight, quivering crescent. "You'll need a burying suit, too, Pa. And Ma— she'd think you look so handsome." Muscles long-practiced at control jerk his blue eyes from corner to corner. Skinned-knee hurts he could heal with vocal bandaids: "Cry my hands full," he'd say to sniffling great-grandchildren and hold out two hands cupped for tears. Or "That much hurt I could put in my eye and never blink." He sits at her wake, those hands folded in the lap of a new black suit, those blue eyes shining mirrors. —Carolyn Reams Smith had a card from her. On the front was a snow scene of two deer standing in the shadows of a pine forest, and inside she wrote of her work, and people we'd known, and about how a possum had taken to stealing cat food from a dish she left on the porch. Nothing more. But I knew even before I opened it that I was going back. 31 ...