By all rights Aunt Gretchen should have been a tragic figure. She'd been engaged three times, and had lost all three fiancés, the first in the Korean War, the second in a car accident, and the third to an undiagnosed heart ailment. Each time Aunt Gretchen had confronted the loss, grieved, and accepted. She said she would never consider marriage again — it was clear she wasn't meant to have a husband.

But Aunt Gretchen found all the fun she could out of life. She wore bright shades of coral and red, and always matched her lipstick to her clothes, and she wore jewelry on every appendage. Her hair was always teased and ratted into a puffy silver-white ball. When I was little, she had traveled a lot and nearly always brought presents for us.

Whenever Aunt Gretchen dropped in to stay for a week or so, it had never been a convenient time for Mother. Putting two strong-minded women in the same house was like setting two trains on one track and waiting for the collision. Mother would have liked to limit Aunt Gretchen's visits, but she hadn't dared. One of the few times I ever heard my father speak sharply to my mother was when she was complaining about his meddlesome sister.

"I don't give a damn if she turns the whole house upside down," Dad said. "She saved my life."

When Dad was still in grade school, his father, my Pappaw, had left the family for good, telling people his wife was the meanest woman who ever lived, and crazy too, and while he could have put up with a crazy woman, there was nothing worse than being married to a mean one. He disappeared from Conroe, where they had lived, and was never heard from again.

A person might have hoped Pappaw's leaving would have given Mammaw cause for reflection, and maybe inspired her to be a little nicer. Instead Mammaw went the other way. She wore her arm out on her two children, Gretchen and Churchill, whenever she was provoked. And apparently just about everything provoked her. She'd reach for kitchen utensils, garden tools, anything she could get a hold of, and she'd beat her children half to death.

Back then people were more tolerant of such things, so there was no public interference in what was viewed as the family's private business. Gretchen knew she and her little brother were in for certain death if she didn't get them both out of there.

She saved up money from taking in extra washing and sewing, and just after her sixteenth birthday, she got Churchill up in the middle of the night, packed their clothes in a cardboard suitcase, and walked him to the end of the street, where her boyfriend met them with his car. The boyfriend drove them forty miles from Conroe to Houston and dropped them off with the promise he'd visit soon. He never did. That was fine with Gretchen — she hadn't expected him to. She had supported herself and Churchill with a job at the telephone company. Mammaw never found them, and it was doubtful she had even looked.

Years later when they figured Mammaw was too old to do them any harm, Gretchen had someone check on her. They found out she was living in a pitiful mess, with piles of trash and varmints all in her house. So Gretchen and Churchill had her put in a nursing home, where she happily bullied the other residents and the staff for about ten years until she passed. Churchill never did go visit her, but Gretchen had from time to time. She would lake Mammaw out to the local Luby's, maybe off to Beall's to buy some new housedresses, and return her to the nursing home.

"Was she nice to you when you took 'er places?" I once asked Aunt Gretchen.

The question had made her smile. "No, honey. She didn't know how to be nice. Anything you did for her, she felt she was entitled and deserved even more."

"Well, why'd you go take care of Mammaw and visit her, after all he'd done? I'd have just let 'er rot."

"Well . . . " Gretchen had pursed her mouth thoughtfully. "I figured she couldn't help the way she was. She was broke when I got her.

The past few years had slowed Gretchen down quite a bit. She'd become a little forgetful, a little querulous. She moved as if her joints weren't banded together as tight as they should have been. There was a new translucent quality to her thinned-out skin, blue veins showing underneath like a diagram sketch that hadn't been fully erased. She had come to live with us since Mother had died, which pleased Dad since he wanted to keep an eye on her.

Bringing Carrington into the house seemed to have given Gretchen a much-needed jump start. No one could doubt the two of them adored each other.

Dressed in pink and purple, her pale golden hair caught in a high ponytail with a huge sparkly bow, Carrington was the picture of nine-year-old haute couture. She was carrying the bridal bouquet, the smaller version that had been made for Liberty to throw. "I'm gonna toss this," Carrington announced. "Liberty can't throw near as good as me."

Gretchen came forward, beaming. "You were the prettiest bride I've ever seen," she said, hugging Liberty. "What are you going to wear for your going-away outfit?"

"This is my going-away outfit," Liberty replied. "You're wearing pants?"

"It's an Escada suit, Aunt Gretchen," I said. "Very stylish."

"You need more jewelry," Gretchen told Liberty. "That outfit's too plain."

"I don't have much jewelry," Liberty said, smiling.

"You've got a diamond ring the size of a doorknob," I remarked. "That's a great start." I grinned at Liberty's wince of embarrassment over the engagement ring she thought was too big. Naturally my brother Jack had compounded her discomfort by nicknaming the diamond the "pet rock."