The Story

The Story by Laura J. Underwood '"Your brother Foley up and left rae!'" Mama said, imitating my late Aunt Velma to a tee. "That's exactly what she said, the old bat!" Mama's tirade broke my concentration just as I was about to display my literary talents on a piece of white paper begging for words. It never fails. At this rate, I may never make a name for myself as a writer. Every time I start a story, my Mama's got a yarn of her own to spin. As it is, she's told me this one half a dozen times since Aunt Velma passed on at the state instititution. I sometimes think Mama has a secret desire to be a writer herself. There's nothing wrong with that. I just wish she'd let me finish one of my stories. Mark you, she's never tried to discourage my efforts. Ever since I won that short story contest in senior high eight years ago, Mama has gone around bragging to all her friends about "my daughter, the writer." I went on to college and got a degree in library science, and now I work part time for the college library. It was the only job I could find that would allow me enough time to 46 write. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay enough to let me have what Virginia Woolf described as "a room of one's own." I still live at home with Mama and memories of Pap, who died last spring of a heart attack, and that means I get to listen to all her stories-especially the ones about Aunt Velma. "The day Foley married that woman, I knew she d bring him nothing but misery ." Mama went on. Her voice had an echo, bouncing off the high ceilings of the house and filling the dining room where I was trying to get my mind together to write something-anything! "I told him so right up to the day of the wedding. I said Velma Crutch ain't nothing but a saucy mouth on fire. She's wicked through and through, but Foley wouldn't listen to me-not once!" She never understood how people could be so insensitive, when all she was trying to do was give them the benefit of her sage advice. I had long ago quit trying to tell her so. I just laid my pen across my tablet and stared out of the dining room window at the East Tennessee foothills. The mountain laurel was starting to bloom. "Anyway," Mama said. "When Foley didn't call me on Tuesday night-you know he'd always call me every other Tuesday-I got worried about him. I called over there, and Velma said he wasn't in, and I told her to have him call me. She was mean like that." Mama was right there. Aunt Velma had possessed a temper like a rattlesnake , always lashing out at anything that dared to disturb her. I remember a few of her tantrums, like the Christmas when I was about six. Uncle Foley had sampled too much of Granny's eggnog and made some little comment about Aunt Velma's posterior taking a hike from a size eleven to a size fourteen, all in one summer. She was pretty tall to begin with, and the extra weight actually complimented her scarecrow figure, but that wasn't the way she took it. She actually threw her eggnog, cup and all, at Uncle Foley and left a right nasty cut on his mouth. What surprised a lot of folks was the fact that Uncle Foley sort of lost his color and muttered an apology to her. Later, I heard my Pap's brother John making rude cracks about who wore the pants in that family as Aunt Velma practically dragged Uncle Foley out of the door and shoved him into the car so he could drive her home. "Naturally, I decided the only way I'd get to talk to Foley was by going over there in person," Mama said. "So I did, and I want to tell you right now that I...