The summer I turned 13, the summer I spent at my Grandma Pixley's cottage on Indian Lake, I told everyone I met I was an only child.

It was a lie.

My mother feared my nonchalance for the truth was genetic. A defect passed down by her mother, Grandma Edith. I didn't quite understand the significance of that statement at the time, but what I did know was on too many occasions telling the truth had gotten me in trouble. Take for instance, when Connie Simpleton, twirling around her bedroom in a chartreuse chemise she bought at Lerners, asked me if the dress made her look like a hippo. Without blinking, having received, that very morning, a lecture from mother on the virtue of truth, I said, "Yep, sure does." Well, that truth got me uninvited to Connie's birthday sleepover and the next day someone with red nail polish, who, to this day, I am convinced was Connie, wrote inside the door of a stall in the girls' bathroom, "Sincerity Pixley sucks purple donkey dicks."

Sincerity Pixley would be me. Sincerity might be a good name for a TV evangelist, but it wasn't such a great name to grow up with. Apparently my parents didn't think of the shortened nickname version Sincerity…"Sin". Fact is I got that name because when I was born my eyes squinted, my lips pursed and my nose had a curious wrinkle. "There was a sincerity about you," mother said. Mother, a devout Baptist who believed all un-baptized babies would go to Hell, thought my facial expression was a sign from God. Hence, the name Sincerity. Sincerity Ash Pixley. My middle name is "Ash" because I was born on Ash Wednesday.

We lived in a Tudor mansion that looked down over a town called Paradise. Well, not really. It's just that back then Paradise is where I wanted to live, so in my mind, that is where I stayed. Paradise had wide open tree lined boulevards where ladies and gentleman ambled on sidewalks pushing baby carriages past houses with wide brimmed front porches, where the owners sat in Adirondack chairs, wearing friendly smiles, sipping lemonade, and when the street lights came on everyone retired to their homes to beds warmed by hot water bottles and sweet dreams. In Paradise there was very low unemployment and the air smelled clean having just come over a great range of mountains which were to the west. The ocean was only five miles to the east. There was no sulfur smell in the air that singed your nostril hair and made your clothes smell of rotten eggs because in Paradise there was no White 'N Write paper mill.

Children and parents were all well behaved in Paradise. Parents only drank in moderation and became just a tad more jovial than usual. No one was morose due to the drink or an inability to get a grip on life. At Little League games parents all said "well done" and congratulated even opposing players on good plays and after the games, after the parents told the coaches what wonderful influences they were in their children's lives, teams gathered at the Paradise Dairy Dell to sip chocolate sodas.

All of the kids in Paradise lived with a father and a mother who got along swimmingly. Siblings looked out for each other and greeted each other with kisses, albeit on the cheek. Mommies and daddies kissed goodbye and said, "Have a great day," and smiled whenever their children came into the room. No one ever got spanked or burgled or raped or was thought badly of because they were different. Relatives all gathered for holidays, one bringing a better dish than the other (no casseroles) and those in attendance were regaled with words of endearment. Yep, Paradise was wonderful.

But that's not where I physically lived.

Twinsburg was the real name of the town my family, the Pixley's called home. It was no where near an ocean and the closest mountain range was a good six and a half hours away. The only waves we had were, when in late summer, when the soybeans were bushy and full, and halos of gold tinged their edges, and the winds blew, the fields would move back and forth in a wave like motion causing my mother to wax eloquently on the beauty of the Midwest. Of course within five minutes she'd be complaining about how the whole Midwest smelled like one big hog farm.

Twinsburg had a main drag we called the "Pike," where we'd ride our bikes to go to the Plaza movie house where we had been warned not to put our feet on the floor because the rats would nibble on our toes. And woe to the person who accidentally placed their hand underneath the seat. It would be stuck forever on hardened gooey wads of Juicy Fruit and Bazooka. Johnny Brentworth told us his mother told him we could get crabs if any of our skin touched the seat. But she also told Johnnie he could get a girl pregnant if he touched her breast.

We had service stations where men in uniforms and dirty fingernails pumped our gas, got the dead dried bugs off our windshield and checked under the hood while we sat in the car watching the little red, yellow and blue marble-like balls in bounce around in a liquid filled window on the gas pump.

A good percentage of the population of Twinsburg had come up from Appalachia chasing jobs and dreams, bringing with them habits like chewing tobacco, living pay check to pay check, enjoying cock fights and spending too many afternoons at the Brass Rail. Some were ace pool players, betting big bucks at Benny's pool hall which I was never allowed to go to (but I did) above Neisner's Five and Dime. The men came to work at the White 'N Write Paper Mill which spewed a phlegm like substance into the air and turned the sky the color of a dead canary. A lot of people had bronchial and lung problems because of the vulgar air but whenever the union complained, Whit "N Write threatened to move their operation to Alabama. So people just choked on their own misery and hoped they'd be able to retire before they died.

A lot of the kids in my school were step-daughters or step-sons or had half-brothers and half-sisters in places they didn't know. They had daddies who somehow got lost on the way home from work on a Friday night and miraculously reappeared on Monday. On weekends, the roads headed south were busy with people from Twinsburg heading back home to places like Rabbit Hash and Corbin, Kentucky.

Negroes were afraid to venture into Twinsburg because people with the red necks didn't seem to like people with black faces. There was even an old abandoned factory just a block from the paper mill where rumor had it, on occasion, men dressed in white sheets gathered and burned a cross. Daddy said whoever was behind those white sheets were cowards. Mother, being the keeper of the religious code, was more upset about the burning of the cross. "Sacrilege," she'd say. "They'll burn in hell for doing that. I know they will." Daddy said negroes weren't that much less intelligent than the whites and that they made really great ribs but people should associate with their own like kind.

Mother and daddy thought it was swell that Twinsburg's Traffic Director lived on our street so when it snowed, our street was the first one in the town to get plowed.

My family lived in Twinsburg because, well, I don't know why. We just did. "Always have, always will," my daddy said when I asked him why we lived where we did. I didn't think that sounded like much of a reason but who was I to argue as I had a roof over my head for which I was constantly being told I should be eternally grateful. Amen. And most of the time I really was grateful I wasn't one of those starving children in Africa mother told me about whenever I left a pile of hominy on my plate. But every once in a while being a starving child in Africa sounded more fun than being bored in Twinsburg.

Our house "was built with love," mother said, but it appeared to me to be made of red brick and asphalt shingles. The best part about it was the front porch that spanned the width of the house had the smoothest concretes surface that was super duper for roller skating.

Daddy was a man of few words. He said he didn't have to do much talking because mother talked enough for the both of them. So he mostly nodded, rolled his eyes or did this sorrowful heavy sigh.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, I can't remember when or why, I must have gotten being imaginative and lying confused. Mother swears it was because I spent so much time with Grandma Edith who watched me after school on days when mother was at work at Big Daddy's Michelin Tire City. She said grandma had a bad habit of telling the truth only when it was convenient.

One day when Grandma Edith and I were using raisins to make happy faces on oatmeal cookies, she straightened her shoulders, adjusted her brassiere strap and said with authority, "Telling the truth is a coward's way out. Something people without imagination use because they aren't clever enough to color their world the way they want it to be." She offered me the last spoonful of cookie dough. How can you not believe someone who offers you up the last spoonful of cookie dough? After licking a nice hunk of the thick sweet dough off her index finger, Grandma Edith pointed at me and added, "A lie doesn't matter if it doesn't hurt no one." That sounded pretty reasonable to me.

That evening, while mother washed the dishes and I dried, making chit chat I told her what grandma said. The "V" veins began to form in mother's forehead indicating she was none too pleased with Grandma Edith's philosophy. But before she could say anything I changed the subject. That sure was good pot roast you made, "I said. And the "V" spot faded away.

Mother and Grandma Edith were so different that sometimes I wondered if mother had been adopted and didn't have a drop of Grandma Edith's blood in her. Take lying for example, since that's what we seem to be dwelling on right now. Lying was a virtue in grandma's book. But it was a sin in mother's. That was just one of the differences. Grandma Edith liked to swear, said damn and hell whenever she darn well felt like it. But mother never swore, not unless you counted a "hot damn" if the horse she picked in the family betting pool won anything in the Kentucky Derby. They both liked spirits. But grandma liked the kind that had a Jack Daniels label on them and mother's spirits had to do with Holy ghosts. Even at Grandma Edith's funeral mother took me aside and told me if I didn't stoplying, one of these days the lies would catch up with me and I would be sorry. She overheard me telling Rusty Adams, who had been dragged to grandma's funeral with his mother, that my family would be going to Paris that summer to visit relatives, descendents of the throne. Before she took her place in the receiving line, mother, who had obviously overheard my summer plan story, grabbed the fleshy part of my underarm and dragged me behind a Venetian urn filled with plastic palm branches and said, "You've got to put an end to your lying, Sincerity Pixley. I've prayed to God you wouldn't pick up grandma's habit. Don't you understand there's a power in lies, an evil power that weakens the soul and makes the devil dance? Every lie you tell is another pact with the devil." She loosened her grip on my arm. Her voice shifted its anger away from me. Looking towards grandma's casket she said, "Contrary to what Grandma Edith said, lies do hurt people." She took my hand and said, "People pay for their lies. There's always a comeuppance. It might not come right away, but it comes. God makes sure of it. Do you understand that Sin? Do you?"

I nodded yes.

But that was a lie too.

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For the record, that summer I turned 13, I had two sisters, one living brother and one brother who had died from crib death. My oldest sister was named Rose because of her rosebud shaped lips and a slight birthmark that was on her forehead when she was born. The birthmark faded eventually, but the rosebud shaped lips remained. She got to have her own room with a double bed that even had access to a sleeping porch like they had in those old southern plantations. She kept her room neat and tidy with photos of the football, basketball, and baseball team in silver coated frames on her dresser. She didn't know I knew this, but each night before she undressed, she turned the photos of the teams to face the wall, I suppose so they couldn't see her titties. I do believe she didn't want them to see that she stuffed her bra with nylons.

My second oldest sister Mauve was named Mauve because of her purplish complexion she had when she was born. It hadn't helped that the cord had been wrapped around her neck, causing the discoloration. "She looked sort of like an eggplant," daddy used to say after his Manhattan. To my way of thinking, mother and daddy cut Mauve more slack than they did us other kids because of her looking like an eggplant at birth. And although it was spelled Mauve, like the color, we pronounced it Maeve, like the Irish name.

Mauve and I shared a room. Not by choice, but by mandate. And it wasn't a big room either. The only good thing I can say about the room, which was painted a putrid pink because "Mauve" wanted it pink, was that it had cross ventilation and was near the bathroom.

We'd placed a line made of masking tape across the hardwood floor that divvied up territory. If one of our toes so much as touched the other person's territory, the battle began. There was a two foot wide neutral zone we could each use to get to the closet.

At first it seemed my younger brother got off easy. He was named after one of my grandfather's, not how he looked after his trip through the birth canal. Unfortunately the grandfather's name was Dudley. And of course, everyone called him "Dud." Which he hated. I'd say Dudley was lucky to have his own room, but the truth is, his room was haunted. Mother kept the crib my baby brother Earl who died from crib death in there. She insisted it stay in that room, complete with a baby blanket my Grandma Pixley and crocheted for Earl and a teddy bear he had received from the Ladies Auxiliary at the church. Once Dudley put his dirty tee-shirt and jeans in the crib and mother came in and saw those dirty clothes in baby Earl's crib and she didn't stop crying all night. Made Dudley a nervous wreck and that's part of the reason I think he got asthma. But that fact I don't know for sure.

Rose was four years older and than I was and Mauve had me by three years.

Dudley came three years behind me.

As you can see from the way we were named, mother was big on signs. Like the time we were all supposed to go Coney Island for a picnic on Twinsburg Day. It was the highlight of the summer when they had the parade of twins. Some were identical, wearing matching everything, and others were fraternal, barely looking related. We'd go swimming in Starlight Pool all day, our skin becoming crisp from the sun. Then we'd picnic by Lake Como. But right before we were supposed to leave, after the station wagon was loaded, mother got this pain in her back. She told daddy it was an pain like a bolt of lightening struck right through her. "One of those forked kinds," she said. "With wicked prongs." And so, she said we shouldn't go to Coney Island that day because it was a "sign". Daddy didn't know what to do.

Well you can imagine how much my sisters and I appreciated that sign mother got. Rose had used babysitting money to buy a new pair of pedal pushers and a madras plaid cropped top. Mauve had worked for three weeks doing leg lifts and an exercise machine with a belt on it that jiggled her innards to kingdom come. I had taken a bath even though I knew I'd be going swimming. And Dudley had invited Brent Buckwheat, his best friend, to go. But mother took daddy aside and we heard her say something about if we went and something happened to any one of us, she'd never forgive him.

Dad came over to us and with a hangdog face, told us we weren't going to go.

Mauve sighed and blew loud air out her nose. Rose grabbed her purse and said "I can't believe this family." Dudley and Brent shrugged their shoulders and asked if they could have a popsicle. I said some things that if mother heard, I'd be having Ivory soap for supper.

So instead of going to Coney we were all herded into the backyard while mother hurriedly covered the picnic table with a red and white checkered plastic covering. Daddy fired up the charcoal grill, starting it with a whoosh of kerosene. "You're going to burn yourself to death doing that," mother. Daddy ignored the comment.

Mother knew we were all angry so she tried to rally us by acting like a ringmaster at a circus, which only made us madder. "In the center of the table we have potato salad," she said, flitting around like a trapped goldfinch. "Now focus your attention on everyone's favorite, as reported in a survey in Reader's Digest, those glorious of the gloriest… baked beans with bacon." There was a synchronized eye roll from all those present. I thought for sure any minute she would start swinging around the tether ball pole. Rose muttered she hated baked beans, Mauve said she loved them and Dudley made a farting noise on the only part of his arm that had any flesh. "Dudley," mother said, looking at him as if this was just one more failure in her ability to raise civilized children.

I started to sit next to Mauve, only because the other seats were taken and she said, "You sit there and I'll puke."

"As long as you clean it up," I said smiling.

She nudged herself over as far to the side of the bench as far as she could. I thought about getting up and seeing the bench plop her upside the head but I was hungry so I just scooted closer to her while I grabbed a spoonful of beans.

"Girls," mother said. "Do you have to fight all the time? Can't we eat without you two acting like cats? M-E-O-W! You two act like you came from different planets and are of no relation. When are you going to figure out you need to get along? Harold, do you want some potato salad? Well, do you Harold?"

Dad nodded yes.

"Why do we have to get along anyway?" I asked, my mouth full of deviled egg. "We're just stupid old sisters. Besides, she hates me more than I hate her."

"I never said I hate you," Mauve said.

"Did to."

"Did not."

"Did to."

"Well, you do hate me, at least you act like it," I said.

"Do not."

"Do to."

"Do not."

"I don't hate you. I just think you're an idiot," Mauve said while piling beans on her plate.

"Well, it's the same thing," I said, "calling me an idiot is the same as hating me."

"It is not," Mauve said.

"Is to."

"Is not."

"Besides," I said. If you think I'm an idiot, I think you're a twit. And I'm sure glad I'm not gonna be near you this afternoon," I said, looking at the size of the serving of beans Mauve put on her plate.

"Why do you think I'm eating them?" she asked, sneering in my direction.

"Because you're a pig?" I said.

"Ok girls, stop it," mother said. "I can't take this cat clawing. Besides the hot dogs are getting cold. "One of these days, and I hope it is before too long, you two will realize siblings have a special bond and they need to get along."

"Do not," I said, pressing my luck perhaps more than I should have.

Mother gave me "the look." "You wait and see. I just hope you two find your peace before I'm pushing up daisies in Gate of Heaven."

Mother had a habit of using her demise to try to quell disagreements. Sometimes it worked. And sometimes it didn't.

Mother had put on a Mitch Miller album, stuck a couple of sparklers and American flags in the watermelon and passed around the potato salad that always had too much onion for my taste. Mitch sang "Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flowers are sweet". Mother thinking she was one of his backup singers, sang "And the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat." Daddy had his tumbler of Manhattan and by the time he lit the sparklers he had forgotten about the American flags being set so close and as the sparklers swizzled and swirled with fire and colors and sulfurous odors, the American flags began to blaze. Rose threw her glass of lemonade on the flags to extinguish the fire. Mother got in a huff and before the Mitch Miller album was finished she had excused herself from the table saying she had lost her appetite for the watermelon and for the strawberry shortcake and nobody should bother checking on her because her emotions weren't important anyway. Dad mumbled something about the flag reminding him of World War II. Rose cleaned up the sticky lemonade and Mauve told me I should quit picking my nose because it was disgusting. Rose walked with heavy feet back into the house carrying still mostly filled bowls of potato salad, baked beans and torched hot dogs. Mauve asked daddy if he wanted her to scratch his back and Dudley and I and Brent looked at each other and said "Let's go catch lightening bugs." I could see mother through the living room window. She was sitting inside on the plaid Herculon sofa watching Sissy and Bobbie on the Lawrence Welk Show. She looked like she was crying but at the same time I saw her tears, I saw the blinking glow of a lightening bug. The lightening bug captured my attention.

As it turned out, mother's lightening bolt backache could indeed have been a sign. As we found out on the 10 o'clock news, a summer storm had come up suddenly in the area and lightening had struck and killed two people who were in a canoe on Lake Como. Burned a hole right through the canoe too. They showed the charred hole on the news while they interviewed a stunned spectator who swore she saw and felt the whole thing.

Even including the Lake Como lightening strike though, mother's signs had only about a 10% accuracy rate. But you can see how they affected our lives.

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My sisters didn't like that I was taller than they were. It was quite apparent there were lots of things they didn't like about me. But I didn't think I was so bad. They thought I was nosy because I'd watch what they did, how they held their fork, painted their nails or applied lipstick. Mauve made exasperation an art. She'd whine and snort and sigh if I so much as looked in her direction. Sounded like a horse.

"Mom, Sin's breathing down my neck again. And her breath is hot and it stinks," Mauve said, blowing air down her nostrils. Pushing me away.

I was just looking over her shoulder, trying to see the Seventeen magazine. It had a picture of a girl wearing a great looking bikini with cups that made her have cleavage. The kind of suit I wanted to get for the summer. Something that pushed my little nubs into wonderful mounds of flesh that would attract boys of sixteen or seventeen, boys with cars that I probably wouldn't be allowed to ride in if I told the truth.

"You're so rude," she said.

"You're just a magazine pig." She didn't seem to appreciate the accuracy of my hog sounds as she stared at me through eyes squashed into slits about the size of the ones you find on parking meters.

"You must have been adopted," she said, "from a pig farm. You're dirty and smell just like the pigs."

Having not been able to come up with a snappy response, I simply said, "Tough titties" and took me thumb and middle finger and flicked a thump on her head, doubting she'd feel anything through her ratted bouffant hair.

"Mom, Sin just said titties," she said with her voice in a pinch.

Before mother could respond, I'd made some comment to Miss High and Mighty that she was just jealous because she couldn't wear such a suit, not with the thighs she had. I felt justified making the remark since she had just insulted my delicate sensibilities.

"I'll get Becky's copy of the stupid magazine," I said. "At least it won't have been drooled on." Becky was my best friend who had more magazines than Gribble's Drug Store, the store on the corner of Main and Waverly where they still sold penny candy.

"You're an ass," I heard her say under her breath.

"Up yours," I replied.

"Mom," she cried, Sin's being nasty."

I turned on my heel, made a couple of oinking sounds and raced out of the house letting the screen door slam shut for punctuation.

My oldest sister, Rose, wasn't quite so bad. She looked more like my mother with her auburn shoulder length hair and high cheek bones. She was also lucky she didn't have daddy's beak nose that Mauve had. She had a penchant for oxford shirts, carefully tucked into her pinch pleated shirts or Bermuda shorts. She seemed born with manicured finger nails, perfectly shaped and always polished parsimony pink. She liked boys with crew cuts and clean shaven faces, most often athletic boys who were captains of the teams. She loved making divinity and if she wasn't mad at me about something, she let me lick the bowl. More often than not she just simply found me disgusting and after a while it got to the point that I wanted to live up to her expectations of disgust. It took her years to get over the time she had to stay home and watch me because mother and father went to the Huxley's to play poker on a Saturday evening. She had her boyfriend Fred, you know, captain of this, president of that, over to keep her company as she earned her five bucks. Well when they were sitting on the davenport watching Dick Clark's American Bandstand, I decided to twist and gyrate and then finish the song with a backbend to show my flexibility. Rose tolerated my dancing fine but when I did the backbend my Brownie skirt flung over my face revealing my underpants which she said looked like they hadn't been changed for a week and she was "extremely humiliated." And when she reported it to mother and daddy, I got grounded and wasn't allowed to go out for a week. What made me mad was that she told me she wouldn't tell my parents if I promised to clean her room for three weeks. But that was a lie because the first words out of her mouth when mother and daddy got home were, "You wouldn't believe what Sincerity did."

Plus she was bossy and lorded the fact that she was the oldest over my head all of the time. She wouldn't let birth order rest. She said she read about it in Mademoiselle magazine. "You know Sin, birth order has a great influence on what a person may become. Take me, first born, daughter. Destined to be a leader, you know. Hard working, diligent. Hate to say it Sin, but I'm ahead of you already. But don't worry. Third born has a few good qualities too, although not as many as the first born."

Seemed to me she was putting me in my place just like you put a water glass above the knife when you set the table. It's just the way things are and where they go. So I learned early on not to try to get ahead of number one. Not that sisters would compete like that, I thought.

But I was wrong.

The summer I turned twelve, Rose, in one of her obligatory leadership roles as eldest daughter, decided she was going to make a lady out of me. "You need a haircut," she said. "You look like a sheep dog and it's about time you start looking like a lady." So she washed my hair, telling me not to be such a ninny when I screeched because the White Rain shampoo got in my eye. "Sometimes beauty is painful," she said.

Rose cut and cut and cut, almost like she was exorcizing demons from me, or from her. I wasn't sure and since she said she was doing me a favor, it would have been ungrateful of me to say anything. Besides, even though I was taller than her, I was somewhat scared of her. Although she only had the age of a sister, she possessed the power of a mother.

I looked in the mirror. I looked as if I should be in a barnyard giving wakeup calls.

"You look great," she said as she brushed the hair off my shoulders. "Short hair is in."

That's when I realized Rose must have gotten that same lying gene from Grandma Edith too. And I saw a little of how the sister game is played.

My brother Dudley was ok. He and I got along like a parent might want their kids to. He didn't complain about me wearing mismatched clothes or not taking a bath everyday. He wanted to be a soldier. Before I got breasts and periods and things we played for hours down the park with his plastic soldiers and tanks. We'd build forts with mounded up sand and twigs we'd picked up on the path down to the park. We got water in buckets from the shelter house and made moats around our forts. It was bizarre warfare, half medieval castles and half vintage World War II. I laughed when Dudley farted. And he thought I was pretty cool because I could belch on demand. Straight from the gut. Sounded like my throat got stuck on a hard "G".

I took care to make sure he didn't over exert himself as I didn't want him to end up in the emergency room on account of his bronchial tubes filling up with phlegm, causing him to wheeze and sputter. People assumed I had asthma because I carried an inhaler in my purse or pocket. But it wasn't for me. It was for Dudley. Back then I would have never admitted that I loved him, he was my little brother for pete's sake. But I did care for him. Cared for him more than I cared about most anyone else.

I never made fun of Dudley's stuttering like my sisters and other kids did. I think his stuttering had something to do with his asthma. I figured God just got a little lazy in Dudley's developmental process. All I knew was that Dudley's stuttering bothered me a lot less than Mauve's bossiness and Rose's penchant for making me look bad. Plus Dudley kept secrets. My secrets.

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Mother said part of Grandma Edith's comeuppance was the way she died. Publicly, choking on a fish bone at the Waynesville Auxiliary Fire Department's Good Friday fish fry. Three firemen and two paramedics who were up to their elbows in beer batter tried to save grandma, smacking her on the back and sticking tongs down her throat to try to remove the fish bone that had become lodged smack across her breathing tube. Finally, in desperation, when grandma's coloring began to resemble an eggplant the two fireman tried to turn grandma upside down to dislodge the bone. One grabbed her belt, a wide, crackle blue plastic belt grandma had used an ice pick on to make an extra hole in because she said her waist was her best feature and the manufacturer's predrilled holes didn't cinch her waist enough. But that didn't work either. The only thing that dislodged was her navy blue Swiss polka dot skirt which dropped over her upside down head revealing a tattered pair of grayish cotton underpants and some nylons that were tied in knots behind her knee. Even in 90 degree heat grandma wore those hose to try to pump the pooling blood from her varicose veins on the back of her calves that resembled hardened volcanic ash.

The episode cleared out tables 7-11, sending the fish eaters to the street where they stood admiring the fire department's new pumper. I didn't see the whole episode because as soon as the firemen turned grandma upside down, mother dispatched my older sisters Rose and Mauve and my little brother Dudley and I to wait outside by the family station wagon. Rose pleaded that she was old enough to be part of a family emergency but she was shooed away with the rest of us.

Mother mourned the death of her mother quietly. If Grandma Edith's death wouldn't have been so public, I would have told people she had died while on a trip to Paris. Perhaps after she had a heart attack while doing the Can-Can on top of a table at the Moulin Rouge. But since there were so many eyewitnesses, I had to adhere to the story about the fish bone, which was slightly embarrassing. Of course I embellished the events. In Mrs. Lykins' English class I wrote an essay where I said, "Our family was very grateful to the White House and President Johnson for the lovely call of condolence we received after the death of my beloved grandmother Edith. President Johnson said "Edith Plumstock was a credit to her country, especially as a nurse during the Korean War." I'm not sure where that part of about the Korean War came from. It just sort of rolled off my pen. But I purposely made sure I said it was a phone call and not a card we had received because I didn't want to be asked by Mrs. Lykins to bring the card in for verification.

At grandma Edith's layout, mother, having experienced my penchant for falsehood, took me aside and said, "You know, Sin, you really shouldn't believe grandma Edith when she said there is no harm in lying and that her life wasn't hurt by it, or that her lies didn't hurt others." Mother got a serious look on her face, her eyes glossed and the corners of her mouth drooped and I detected a slight tremor. I noticed little cracks coming from the corner of her eyes. "She hurt plenty of people with her lies. She just didn't want to believe it." That's when she told me that she hoped I'd learn living lies was no way to live at all and that maybe someday, when I was old enough to understand, she would tell me about how Grandma' Edith's lies changed the course of her life. I could feel the gulp of saliva going down my throat.

The Treadway Funeral Home was sedate as a funeral home should be. It smelled musty and reminded me of the house on the Adams Family. I walked around listening to whispered words exalting Grandma Edith's prize winning chrysanthemums, how proud she was of her grandkids, especially Rose, for being selected to go to Girl's State when she was a junior in high school. Two plump ladies who obviously were members of grandma's garden club, sprouting mum corsages on their chests, cuckolded that at least now Edith would be with her husband Earl. As I listened, I wondered what part of this was real and what was only in the memories of people who were here. Sure, grandma was dead. That was reality. An honest truth. But the rest, the kind words from people who grandma complained to me never gave her much never mind or asked her to go to BINGO or invited her to the movies, what part of what they were saying did they actually believe? I walked around being had careful not to trip over my own thoughts.

Mother and daddy and Rose and mother's sister Peggy and her husband stood in a receiving line, just like at my cousin Penelope's wedding. I supposed Rose was playing grownup, her favorite role. She wore one of mother's pillbox hats with netting over her eyes that I'm sure she thought made her look sophisticated but in reality, made her look like Betty Boop. Dudley and his friend Brent sat on a Victorian crushed velvet couch seeing who could crack their knuckles the loudest.

An oil painting of a heavily bosomed woman, Mrs. Treadway, stood sentinel over the fireplace that rolled around fake flames. Mrs. Treadway looked appropriately somber, mouth slightly pursed, eyes gazing out into the vast beyond. Her dress had a white lace collar that reminded me of a Pilgrim.

"Someone told me Mrs. Treadway chased her son up the street with a butcher knife," I heard a man standing behind me say to his companion.

"Really?"

"Yeah. She caught him selling her nerve pills to some of his friends. Told him if she ever caught him doing that again, she'd kill him."

"You don't say."

This was a conversation I shouldn't be listening to I said as I inched closer, opening a Gideon's Bible that was on the marble topped end table. The red satin ribbon bookmark opened to Psalms. Psalm 23. I knew that one. "The Lord is my shepherd," I mouthed silently so I could still hear the story being told next to me.

"Apparently she caught him no more than a week later, behind their tool shed and while he was doing his transaction she went into the kitchen, got a butcher knife, one of those kind that are also good for boning chicken, and went after him."

"Did she catch him?"

"No. He was fast. Ran hurdles on the track team. And she was wearing slippers when she chased him. The kind with the slick bottom. Plus it was early spring and there were still patches of ice…"

"And? Go on."

"Oh hi there Mr. Godwin" the man telling the story said. The lady he was telling the story said hello, but had a hard time hiding her annoyance from her face.

"And? And?" she said, ignoring Mr. Goodwin.

"Jack, how are you?" Mr. Goodwin, board member of the Citizens National Bank said. His white temples and gray suit matched beautifully. Even standing nearly four feet away, I could hear him breathe, mostly on the exhale. Sounded like a bit of a walrus.

"Fine, doing well. No complaints," Jack said. The lady Jack was with bit her lip. I could tell she was dying to hear the rest of the story. So was I. But I just kept reciting Psalms.

"Shame about Mrs. Plumstock," Mr. Goodwin said. "She was a dear. Not a mean bone in her body. When my wife Gladys was down with that case of shingles, Mrs. Plumstock brought the loveliest potted mum to the house. Even volunteered to plant it in the yard. Oh by the way, have you met my wife Clare?" A red haired lady with a sallow wrinkled complexion wearing a slimming A-line dress sidled up to Mr. Goodwin, slipping her arm through his.

She looks like she's a smoker, I thought. Probably no filter Camels.

"Nice to meet you," Jack said. Jack's companion nodded and held out her hand.

I didn't know who Jack was but I was as anxious as the lady he was telling the story to about Mrs. Treadway to finish telling it. Jack was a pretty big guy. Bigger than my dad. His head was only slightly larger than his neck so I assumed he was a football player, a "pinhead" my daddy would have called him. His hair was in a flat-top with the front part slicked up like a tailfin on a Cadillac. He wore a plaid sport coat and tie. His pants were too short, revealing white socks. White socks!

I found myself wishing Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin would take their leave. My curiosity was getting the better of me. And I was tired of reading Psalms. I flipped to Revelations but then remembered how that scared me to death when we read it in Sunday School Class. What with grandma choling on a fish bone, I really didn't want to read anymore about how the world was going to end. Besides, I was dying to hear the rest of this great story. I can't wait to tell Grandma Edith this story.

Then I remembered I was at her funeral.

"So what happened Jack? Finish the story before another interloper comes."

"Oh, where was I?"

"Knock it off. You know where you were. You're just stalling. Teasing. Just like you do in bed."

Huh, I thought to myself? Obviously that wasn't for me to hear. Just spill the beans Jack. Spill the beans. I looked over my back at Mrs. Treadway, who it now seemed was looking in our direction, giving Jack a dirty look.

"Ooh," Jack cooed. "You're turning me on."

"Come on Jack, I'm dying to know."

"Dying? Funeral home? Dying? Get it?" Jack could hardly contain his laughter at his own two plus two scenario.

"So what happened to Mrs. Treadmill?" Jack's girl said dropping her shoulders as if to give a sign that she was tired of playing this game. "I do have ways to make you tell, you know"

"Geesh, relax," Jack said. "She slipped on a patch of ice and tripped over a curb and fell on the knife. Sliced her heart open, right there on "D" Street. Died instantly. In the paper the doctor said it looked like she had tried to perform open heart surgery on herself."

"You're lyin Jack. That didn't happen."

"Sure did. Cross my heart." Jack took his pointer finger and did a real quick cross across his heart. Everybody in Twinsburg knows about it. Just ask."

"No, I'm not going to ask about a story like that. My gosh, that must have been awful. Besides, it sounds like the poor lady's nerve pills were a complete flop."

Taped violin music wafted from behind a velvet panel. I leaned against the wall next to an old tapestry woven with trumpeting angels surrounded by yellow light, floating towards an open gate and a large pair of open hands which I assumed were God's. I watched and listened to those passing through the receiving line. My stomach growled.

There wasn't much of a crowd as grandma Edith had told me she was rather selective in the friend department. So most of the people in attendance had come to pay their respects to my mother. Several of her co-workers from Big Daddy's Michelin Tire City came. Mother was secretary to Mr. Philpot, who sold huge tires to strip mining companies in Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Evelyn, the receptionist, one of mother's dear friends squeezed her hands and whispered something in her ear. Mother laughed. Evelyn moved toward daddy and gave him a peck on the cheek. Mother even smiled when her former boss Sis, who as far as we kids knew, had two heads and no brains, gave her a hug. Sis, according to dinner table conversation, was the reason mother got an ulcer and gave up five years seniority at the American Playing Card Company.

Iris, a neighbor lady who always kept Kool-aid popsicles for us kids in the freezer in her garage stood in line wearing a cherry colored shirtwaist dress with matching pumps and purse. She apologized to mother for wearing such a bright color to a funeral but said she was on her way to a wedding and couldn't decide whether she should wear funeral clothes or wedding clothes. She said she tossed a coin and the wedding won. "Please don't take any offense," she said. "I'll wear something black tomorrow when I bring over a lemon meringue pie."

"Oh Iris, you know what you're wearing isn't important. I'm just glad you took the time to stop by."

Was I hearing right? Mother telling someone what they wore wasn't important? Hum, that's not what she always told me. She always told me people would judge me by my appearance.

Others milled around and made their dutiful procession to the open casket. Most commented on how peaceful and lovely grandma looked and wasn't that a lovely dress she was wearing.

I moseyed around the funeral home, checking out the cards that came with the flowers, seeing who had valued grandma enough to call Josie's Posey to have flowers sent. Grandma would have done the same thing. She would have taken my hand and steered me around the room telling me who sent flowers because of love, who sent them out of guilt, and who was trying to climb the social ladder. Even though her eyes were closed and embalming fluid instead of blood ran through her veins, I imagined Grandma Edith knew exactly what was going on in that funeral home. She was still keeping count of who was there and what was said, her BS detector (as she called it) on high beam.

Mildred Arnold, grandma's best friend since grade school walked in front of me, blind with tears, howling like a coyote. She was dressed head to toe in black, the only intrusion in the mourning color was the beige Ace bandage she had wrapped around her ankle due to a trip over her cat Bitsy. "Edith gave me this handkerchief for my birthday, you know," Mildred said before blowing her nose with hurricane force into the already soaked cloth. "I just loved your grandma," she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. I watched carefully where she was placing that handkerchief, ready to jump if it got too close. "She and I were best of friends. Closer than sisters. Well, that didn't count for much in my book thinking about how Mauve and I thought about each other. We forgave each other all of our trespasses years ago. I wasn't sure what that meant but I wasn't about to ask. All I knew was evidence at this funeral was mounting that Grandma Edith had somewhat of a past that I wasn't privy to. "Grandma loved you too," I said, not knowing if I was telling the truth or not. I assumed she did since Mildred was so vibrant in her adoration. Besides, it just seemed the appropriate thing to say to someone willing to put on such a public display of mourning.

"Would you like some punch?" I asked, starting to move away, but hoping she'd say no.

I just wanted to get away from the fluid-filled hankie. "I'd be glad to get you some."

"Oh, that's sweet of you, but no. I just don't think my tummy could handle anything in its current state of upset. You go ahead. I'll just go over and talk to Edith." Yeah, you do that, I said under my breath. "That would be nice, I'm sure grandma would like that."

Rose stood by mother, being attentive like a good daughter. Mauve poured punch from a silver punch bowl that was surrounded with tea cookies the Ladies' Auxiliary from the New Hope Baptist Church had baked and brought over along with paper napkins and cups left over from the Bixley's baby daughter's Baptism gathering. Someone had spent a lot of time turning the napkins inside out so the pink baby buggy surrounded by ducks didn't show.

Whenever I looked, Mauve's mouth was full of tea cookies. I walked over to get some punch and a cookie. I took a paper cup filled with greenish punch with sherbet that looked like it had been scraped from the bottom of a churning sea. I reached for a cookie. Mauve stopped my hand.

"FHB," she said.

"Yeah, right," I said latching on to what looked like a Snickerdoodle.

"I mean it. FHB! Mother's orders."

"But I'm starving."

"Should've eaten breakfast," she said hissing through her overactive nostrils.

"I did," I said, crossing my fingers behind my back.

"Besides you've eaten tons of them. I watched you."

"Spy!"

"Pig!"

People started looking our direction.

"You're making up that family hold back stuff because you want all the cookies for yourself," I said in a mock whisper.

"Do not."

"Do too."

"Do not."

"Do too."

"Oh go ahead and eat one you big baby. At least I am helping out."

"Yeah, you're a real angel."

I took my Snickerdoodle and looked for Dudley.

Where I imagine most people at grandma's funeral just saw a drab, pasty funeral home, I saw the room as a large canvas, a work of art with grandma's casket being the focal point. Three pink tinged eyeball lights beamed down on grandma Edith. I strode over to the casket and peaked in. I thought for certain mother would insist that all us grandchildren march in front of the casket to pay our last respects, because after all Edith was our grandma, she didn't. Mother made it a point to tell us kids that we didn't have to peer into the casket as she knew that kind of thing sometimes gave even the best people nightmares.

If I heard it once that day, I heard it twenty times, "Edith looks so peaceful" and very "natural". But if those people had told the truth, they would have said Grandma Edith looked like she was dying to jump out of her gray skin. And whoever did her makeup should have been shot. They had purplish eye shadow streaming across her eyelids like Cleopatra. Her red rouge streaked like comets across her cheeks and somehow in this process, someone had lost her lips. Took them away.

I studied the brown spots on her crossed hands, gently folded as if she were at prayer, which was not natural for grandma at all. I wanted to cross them and nestle them under her armpits, the way she normally held them because she said she had poor circulation and her hands got cold. That would have been natural.

I wanted to grab a brush and comb from my purse and give grandma a part on the right side of her hair, the way she liked it. She never wore her hair slicked back like some sort of matron. It was always parted and pulled behind her ear and tied with a ribbon at the back of her nape. I wanted to change a lot of things.

But I didn't. I didn't know how. Not in the reality of the situation. Only in my mind could I do that. So that is what I did. I pictured a couple other people in grandma's place in the casket. One was Theodore King, my friend Becky's brother, who once threatened to stick a bicycle pump up or butts and blow us up like the Goodyear blimp. I would have been glad to close the casket lid on him. Whether he was dead or not.

And the other person I saw in place of grandma in that casket was Mauve.

You would have thought the words my mother told me at the funeral would have made me change my ways. But they seemed to come too late. The truth had already lost its patina to me. Little lies colored my gray world with fuchsia and parsimony and the loveliest of lime greens and blues that someone staring into the sea would never see. My lies gave me visions of a life I never thought I could have in a world whose predominant colors were black and white. Much of what I saw I didn't like seeing. Much of what I heard, I didn't like hearing. And maybe that was the difference between Mauve and me. She saw things in black and white and I saw the world with more colors than there were in a jumbo box of Crayolas. Just people painting their lives differently. She thought I was an idiot and I thought she was a twit. And I thought that's how things would always be between us.

------------

My grandma Pixley's cottage was on Indian Lake, about three hours from where we lived in southwest Ohio. I went to live with her that summer because things weren't going on well at home. Whether they got along or not, mother seemed to reel from Grandma Edith's death. Daddy's drinking had run amok although he denied it when I heard mother telling him his drinking was affecting the family. I heard mother whispering to Evelyn on the phone that she got so angry at daddy for drinking so much that sometimes she wished she'd never married him. Then at dinner instead of having pleasant conversation and asking about everyone's day like all of the women's magazines said was the way to household harmony, she'd sit with her lips locked, saying nothing. Some meals it was so tense that my peas got stuck in my gullet.

It didn't help that mother was going through some sort of change herself and Rose told Mauve and me that Dr. Toto had put her on some sort of nerve medicine and she might still have to get a hysterectomy and that we should cut down on our bickering because that was aggravating mother's nerve endings. So Mauve and I called a truce. But we still didn't like each other.

That summer, that one I turned 13, Rose was offered the opportunity to go to New York for the summer to work as an intern at the Louida Parker House of Design. She was thrilled as she was quite the seamstress even making a one-shouldered satin organza dress she wore to the prom. Mother bought her a ticket on the Greyhound and made arrangements for Rose to live at the YMCA in New York City. When anyone asked mother if she didn't think Rose was a bit young to be living in New York City on her own, mother delighted in telling them how mature Rose was, noting her adult performance at Grandma Edith's funeral where she not only stood as a grownup in the receiving line, but also made the plum colored dress with lace bodice that grandma was buried in. I thought her moving to New York was a great decision as it opened up more closet space and bathroom time.

Mother decided to send Mauve away to summer camp. She told everyone the camp was so Mauve could ride horses and learn the art of the pottery wheel, but the brochure I found on mother's dresser said Camp Firloin was a place for fat kids to go so they could lose weight. Dudley, because he was a whiz at math and was working toward his Eagle Scout badge, was awarded a trip to Ft. Benning, Georgia to participate in a month long "Soldier in Training" program put on by the U.S. Army. He had to get Dr. Toto sign a medical form saying Dud's asthma wouldn't cause a problem. Dr. Bunion was reluctant to sign it but Mother pleaded with him to just fudge a little on the medical waiver as Dud really wanted to go her nerves couldn't take his disappointment. And this little white lie wouldn't hurt anyone.

Knowing that the climate at home could be a little colder than I liked, I got on the phone and called my grandma Pickerall and asked if she minded if I might come and visit her that summer. She asked how long I was thinking of visiting. I said maybe all summer.

She laughed.

"I have stuff that needs to be done around the cottage, like painting the shutters and digging a new flower bed. You game to do a little physical labor?" she said.

"Sure, I don't mind."

"Won't your parents mind if you're gone all summer?" she asked.

"Nah, I don't think so. Actually I think a quiet summer might be good for them," I said

"Oh, Sin, is something wrong?"

"Nah," I lied. "I think they're both just tired. You know. They work a lot and I think us kids might have finally gotten to them and with Grandma Edith's dying and all." Grandma sighed that kind of sigh they do when they know something isn't quite right but they don't know for sure what. And how would she know anything was wrong anyway? She hadn't been to visit in five years, even though we lived only three hours away. Phone calls were reserved for the grand holidays, you know Christmas, Thanksgiving and Mother's Day. Those interloping holidays, as my dad called them, didn't rate a call. And even during the phone calls nothing was said. They were mostly weather reports. Years ago there had been a falling out. That's all I was told.

"Do your parents know you're calling?" she asked.

I didn't say anything.

"Sin, let me repeat that. Do your parents know you're calling me and asking me if you can stay the summer?'

"Well, not yet. I wanted to make sure with you first. I'll tell them when the time's right. You know how they are. It's all in the timing."

"Ok, well let me know. Love you."

"Love you too, grandma."

Grandma was used to making her phone conversations short and sweet. She wanted to be the one to hang up, to say goodbye, before you could. It seemed to hurt less if she was the one doing the leaving instead of the one being left.

Telling my parents could be tricky but if I played my cards right, I knew I could do it. I just had to figure out whether to wait until my dad had had his third tumbler sized Manhattan and when mother's Valium had taken effect. There is something to be said about knowing your parents' shortcomings. Because they certainly think they know yours.

"Woe, you look like you are staying for more than one summer," grandma said when I arrived and she saw my entourage of luggage. Mom and dad had an excuse about why they couldn't take me to the lake, but Uncle Tony had a truck and that worked out better than any of their excuses did. I did look like I was moving away forever.

Uncle Tony was my dad's younger brother. I had been told he was the sober son. Apparently, according to Rose, Tony was the only brother not to inherit the alcohol loving gene from his father. And that's part of the reason why Uncle Tony and grandma still got along. That son didn't remind her of her husband.

---------

I turned around and looked toward the back of the church to see if there was any sign of the bagpiper who was supposed to play after the minister said the benediction. But before my eyes made their way to the rear of the church, I noticed about five rows back, a tender looking lady wilted against the end of the church pew. The lady wore a purple polyester sheath with red and yellow hibiscus climbing a white lattice. Her straw hat with spring flowers and flesh colored netting draped down over her face, almost made her unrecognizable. But as soon as my eyes returned to the task at hand, and moved further down the pews, I remembered who the lady was. It was Iris. Iris Christman who had been their neighbor lady from when we lived on Dover Street, the one who always kept freezer full of Kool-aid popsicles, and who had shown up at Grandma Edith's funeral dressed in red. My mind drifted back to the other neighbors on Dover, and how even way back then they all seemed so old. And it wasn't just the neighbors, teachers too, Miss Crockwell, Miss Heffer, Miss Godby, the list could go on and on if I had remembered their names. Maybe it was their shirtwaist dresses and comfortable shoes and tight perms that made all of them look old. Or perhaps it was the permanent scowls most of them wore on their faces. Mother had called them "depression faces" with furrowed brows and serious looks that had left permanent cracks around the eyes. I remembered the ladies at the First Baptist Church we'd see every Sunday, waists thick like gravy, shapeless ankles and chins that hung like the valance in our living room. The women and many of the men had backs that looked like the handles of teacups. My thoughts returned to Iris. How long had it been since I'd had seen Mrs. Christman? Thirty years? Thirty-five? No must be forty years. But if it had indeed been forty years, and if Iris was 70 back then, well, that would make her 110. Even in this day of longevity, an unlikely age. Forgetting about the bagpiper, I tried to do the math. If I was 13 and mother was 38 when I was 13 and Grandma Edith died when she was 63 and Iris was older than mother but younger than grandma, that would have made her maybe, well, "hell, I can't figure it out," I said under my breath. "But Iris surely isn't 110."

What I could figure out is that Iris still didn't know how to dress for funerals. I remembered how Iris had come waltzing into Grandma Edith's funeral wearing bright red, claiming she was on her way to a wedding and had flipped a coin to see if she should wear wedding clothes or funeral clothes. Wedding clothes won. Maybe she's got another wedding after this funeral too. I felt the edges of my mouth rise into a smile but reality came calling when I heard the minister say, "May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord shine His countenance upon you. May…" Holy shit, the bagpiper. I whipped my head around to see if the bagpiper had shown up. Sure enough, a man in a tartan plaid kilt stood in the vestibule. His face looked like a blow fish, cheeks full of air, ready at any moment to burst forth with "Amazing Grace," one of Mauve's requests for her service. She and I had agreed how lovely the bagpiper sounded at mother's funeral. Mauve said, "Sin, will you promise me if I die before you, will you see to it that bagpiper plays "Amazing Grace" at my service? Oh, and I'd love for him to have a salt and pepper beard and be an off duty fireman. You promise me?" I couldn't quite promise but indeed I must have agreed to the request because in Mauve's funeral notes that she had penned herself, they said, "Sincerity will arrange a bagpiper…salt and pepper beadr, a long stubble will do if no fully bearded person can be found. Call fire station. They should be able to give you a name. See ya later. Cheers." Obviously Mauve had written those before the pain and morphine induced delirium set in.

"You leave now and go into the world knowing that Mauve Grace Pixley Carter O'Sullivan has gone to her eternal resting place and along with Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the angels in Heaven, our sister Mauve, her husband Teddy and their eternally young son Kieran, will look down upon us and bring us strength, peace and love. Amen."

"Amen," the congregation said.

I surmised that the minister included both of Mauve's married names because she had two children, one by each of her husbands. And Lord knows they would be in a tatter if each of their lineages wasn't mentioned.

Amazing Grace began billowing from the back of the church.

Upon hearing "God saved a wretch like me," I, who, as her mother used to say, "held up like a good perm," broke down. "They're all gone now," I said, seeming to be talking to the stained glass Christ who was surrounded by twelve disciples kneeling at his feet. "First Dudley, then Rose and now Mauve. God, Now I am an only child. I'm all alone." Even though I was sitting, I felt faint. My stomach seemed like it plummeted like it had been in an elevator on the top of the Carew Tower and someone snapped the cables, plunging it to earth.

"You all right, mom?" Sharon, my daughter who had accompanied me to the funeral asked. "Maybe you should put your head between your knees. That's what you always had me do when I felt woozy."

I shook her head no and patted Sharon's hand. "I'll be all right. I'll be fine," I said as if I were trying to convince myself of that as much as I was trying to convince Sharon.

I knew I wasn't really all alone. She still had my two children, Petey and Sharon although my relationship with Petey, Pete had become slightly strained when he married Paula after she became pregnant. On purpose, I was certain. And Sharon, well, contrary to what Sharon believed, she had grown up to be quite like me, and our heads butted like two rams fighting over a mountain side. Still, I did have my friends, Bebe and Constance and Grace. And if push came to shove, I could count on Steve, my ex-husband, as long as whatever I needed didn't require too much emotional response.

But although my kids were my blood, and I loved my friends dearly, none of them shared that common history like my siblings and I had, those years when life was full of promise and people you could count on and common enemies and summer evenings spent chasing fireflies and trapping them in mayonnaise jars covered with foil, with tiny air holes poked in so the fireflies could live happily ever after. At least until the next morning when mother said it was better to let Mother Nature take care of her own children.

It was Rose and Mauve and Dudley who shared summers with me playing Canasta on the front porch, the yellow light bulb trying in vain to keep mosquitoes at bay. It was the four of us, well, not Dudley because of his asthma, who, on honey colored fall days when bees lingered on the rims of glasses of lemonade, were sent to the backyard to rake leaves into piles and when the were finished with their "work"' we jumped into the piles of leaves crunching them like potato chips and rubbing them into each other's hair, giggling. I still have the black and white photo dad had taken that showed all four of us on a single sled, zooming down a hill in Grandma Edith's backyard. And I remembered the spring when, according to mother, it seemed all four of us shot up like tulips, outgrowing our clothes and sending her into a panic trying to figure out what each of us would be able to fit into for Easter.

As I stood, tears rolled down my face leaving tracks on my cheeks that looked like they were made by little downhill skiers. Not planning on crying, believing I had mastered stoicism after completing the "New U" seminar my boss suggested I attend, I didn't even bring a tissue. Between sniffles I remembered Tip Two, from the "New U brochure for Life Strategies" If you feel like you are going to cry, find the pressure point between you thumb and index finger. Pinch until your mind focuses on the pain instead of what is making you emotional. I pinched my hand, digging my fingernails into my skin until I found myself saying "Ouch!" and drawing blood. But the tears didn't stop.

The pinched hand method had worked so well when recently I'd had been called into my boss, Pinkston Shurgood's office to listen to him lambaste me for something he said I had done, that put one of my co-workers into a very uncomfortable position. How was I to know that I shouldn't ask Bill Shipley's wife, at the company Christmas party in the Antler room at the Marriott, how the trip to Cancun was? The one Bill had won for increasing his department's sales by thirty-four percent. "What trip?" Bill's wife asked, her face draining like a sink. "Oh the one, well, maybe it wasn't Bill after all, maybe it was Bob Heath, who one the contest," I said backpedaling like I was trying out to be a receiver for the NFL. My face glowed brighter than if a chef had used his mini-blow-torch to caramelize my face like a crème brulee. I even felt a bead of sweat form on my upper lip. Shipley's wife slurped the remainder of her parasol embellished drink, excused herself, saying she wasn't feeling well, and mad a beeline towards her husband who was holding court with Mr. Shurgood. Within three seconds, Shipley's wife, Shurgood and Bill were looking my way. Scowling. Next thing I knew, I heard a loud "How could you?" and the clap of a hand across a face. "Shit," I said to myself.

But Bill had come back to the office after a week off, I told Mr. Shurgood. He looked so nice and golden brown. He was so relaxed he walked through the halls whistling Broadway tunes. Plus, I added, I, myself had approved the cash advances he received. Certainly he had gone on his Cancun trip. Just not with his wife. But was that my fault?

As Shurgood peered down over his tortoise shell glasses that I was sure he supposed made him look like he should be on the cover of GQ, and as I felt the swell of tears forming in my eyes, I took my thumb and index finger and pinched the flesh between my thumb and index finger on my other hand. Instead of listening to him chastise me for blabbing out of school I drifted into thoughts of my own. Looking at him, while still pinching my skin, I thought, hum, apparently Shurgood's better half apparently gave him a makeover because before Christmas, prior to the holidays he came to work looking like Columbo. Now he looks like James Bond. New glasses, sleek new suits, "braces" and blue shirts with white collars were de rigueur. But unfortunately, I thought, now enjoying the time I was spending with my own thoughts, and ignoring what Shurgood was saying, the makeover didn't go far enough. It hadn't changed his personality, which in my mind was that of a bowling ball.

Not a tear was shed. But when Mauve and I had discussed the event later that evening, Mauve told me it probably wasn't the pinched skin that held my tears at bay, but my catty thoughts. Together we laughed and said, "M_E_O_W!"

The recessional began. I recognized only two of the pallbearers. One was Mauve's brother-in-law, Johnny O'Sullivan, her deceased husband's brother, who looked as though someone had carted him straight from an Irish pub, red bulbous nose leading the parade and the other was a younger guy, good looking in an outdoorsy sort of way, with tanned skin and streaked hair, who was, if I remembered correctly, at one time married to Kaitlin, Mauve's older daughter. "The Marlboro Man," I said under her breath. What was he doing here? Who were the other four pall bearers ? And who lined them up anyway? They certainly didn't do it according to height. And why the bow tie on the man wearing the lemon colored suit? And why the lemon colored suit? The guy complete with a pathetic comb-over looked like he had just been pushed off the Florida Express. The pallbearers were so disparate in height that Mauve's coffin drooped heavily at the rear left hand corner. My God, I hope they don't drop her, I thought, noticing the slight man who couldn't weigh more than 120 pounds if he had ten pounds of potatoes in his shoes, shifting the casket from one hand to another as they carried the coffin down the steps.

Mauve and I had turned to gallow's humor at our sister Rose's funeral. It was a welcome relief. We had learned by then that in order to survive our grief, our sarcasm couldn't be buried along with the body. At Rose's funeral, Mauve and I had sounded like Joan and Melissa Rivers on "E's" Oscar night commentary, dishing everyone. Even feeling awful as people came through the receiving line, Sincerity wanted to ask people, "Who are you wearing?" Most likely, I knew the answer would be J.C. Penny or Sears. "Not a Donatella Versace in the bunch," I'd say to Mauve, talking as though I was a ventriloquist. "Geeze, her breasts have lives of their own," Mauve might say back, whispering in my ear or, "Did you see the bowed legs on Ginny Vinson?" or "Gladys Perlite really needs to get electrolysis on her chin." It kept both of us from becoming permanently paralyzed in a grievous state. We were both thrilled that we had each other to share in our political incorrectness. Even at funerals. Especially at funerals.

But it hadn't always been that way. For the first thirty years of our lives, Mauve and I had no use for each other. We hated each other. Or so each of us thought. And that's part of the reason I have always felt so guilty. One by one I had worn black and sat in the second pew haunted by what I'd wished years ago, "I wish I was an only child." I felt culpable because not only had I'd wished I was an only child the summer I turned 13, the summer I spent with Grandma Pixley, but I went so far as to flat out lie and tell people I was an only child. Had my lies tempted the fates like her mother said they would? Were Rose's and Mauve's and Dudley's premature deaths the "comeuppance" mother kept warning me about? Mother had told me over and over that lies were the devil's work, bordering on witchcraft and they would always come back to haunt me. She had said it might not happen right away, but in time God would make me pay a price. And the price might be steep. I had laughed at mother and said, "Everybody lies."

Now I wondered, was there truth in what my mother had said? Was I responsible for my sibling's deaths?