“I don’t think he ever really loved me.” Aunt Carla often exaggerated, but that day I believed every word.

She propped her tan legs on the railing and swallowed the salty air. The screen door slapped as my mother popped in and out to serve snacks and jars of sweet tea. 

Uncle Simon taught me how to jump rope and make scrambled eggs. He read Charlotte’s Web to me on summer vacations and even used funny voices.  Then he just left. He was no longer my uncle or part of our family.

“Is she pretty?” I asked.

Aunt Carla threw her head back, “Oh, honey…pretty doesn’t matter in times like these.” 

I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but she must be right. Aunt Carla had bright green eyes and buttery skin. Even the sun seemed a little shy in her presence. If pretty mattered, I knew Uncle Simon wouldn’t have gone looking elsewhere. 

“Do you miss him?” 

She shrugged, “I miss what I thought was real. You can’t miss something that doesn’t exist.”

Simon had a series of flings but eventually married a dance instructor named Felicia. My mother loved to tell people he preferred someone who didn’t own a hairbrush. Aunt Carla said her free spirit seduced him. Both of these things sounded a lot like “pretty doesn’t matter in times like these”.

In the nineties, women worshiped Slimfast and appointed Oprah as their priest. Pretty appeared to be the only thing that mattered. Aunt Carla and my mom lived off chalky chocolate shakes and fat-free microwave pasta. They did workout videos made by women in neon leggings. It seemed excessive and comical.  But when someone at Winn-Dixie confused Aunt Carla for Farrah Fawcett, that was all the validation they needed.

In college, when Jack Ellis dumped me for a girl majoring in Agriculture, I recited Aunt Carla’s words to my friends. They all nodded supportively, but we knew better. Agriculture Girl had red hair and long legs; she practically floated.  I didn’t defy gravity or get mistaken for celebrities in grocery stores. For some unknown reason, pretty mattered when it came to me.

I dyed my hair black and refused to wear dresses. I dog-eared the pages of Joan Didion books and played Bob Dylan on repeat. I decided those things should matter.

A few days later, I finally asked my mother about it. I didn’t mention their obsession with the chocolate shakes.

She paused, then tugged at the scarf around her neck, “Do you think this is pretty?” 

I nodded.

“Will it matter in fifteen years?” 

“Maybe?”

She sighed, “Sometimes people just want something different. Pretty matters until it doesn’t.”

Conversations with her usually felt like someone turned off the TV seconds before the movie ended.

In my mid-twenties, I obsessively jogged and religiously recorded my calorie intake. I loved blue-eyed boys who didn’t love me back. I cried on the scratchy brown carpet after all the weddings I attended alone. Occasionally, Aunt Carla called to live vicariously through the drama she assumed all young people had. Sometimes she gave me updates on Simon and Felicia. They vacationed in Belize, hiked in the Grand Canyon, and dared to wear matching tracksuits for a 5K. 

Just before turning thirty, I got the call. She gasped and shrieked between her sobs. 

Felicia and her unruly hair were nowhere to be found. My mother researched treatments, I picked up the prescriptions. Aunt Carla moved back home and learned to pray.

They watched reruns of Cheers and shared burnt toast and black coffee every morning. I visited weekly with lemon cake and magazines for us to dissect after Uncle Simon fell asleep. We complained about the sticky summer heat and hung new wind chimes. She often wore the same shabby linen pants and green blouse. I noticed she stopped hiding the gray in her hair.

I dyed my hair back to blonde and tried to fall in love with Owen Miller. He smelled like pine trees and introduced me to Electronica. I liked that he filled the gas tank in my Toyota and became my plus-one for weddings. He was the first and only person to ever call me pretty. On the nights I couldn’t sleep, I wondered if those things would always matter.

One Tuesday, Uncle Simon asked me to read Charlotte’s Web to him, and it took hours. I held my breath through most of it and tried to do the funny voices. We didn’t say a word at the end. Aunt Carla served us saltines and peanut butter on the screened porch, and he thanked her when she wiped the smudges around his mouth.  

Eventually, his mind blurred and his voice stuttered. Aunt Carla remembered every appointment and tracked every pill. A few times he called her Felicia. Her face always crumbled, but she rubbed his back and carried on. 

Days before he passed I suddenly noticed her patchy, dingy hands. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, “Why did you come back? He lived for years with someone else. He was so selfish, so ugly to you.”

The corners of her mouth turned upward, but her voice cracked, “Oh, honey…pretty doesn’t matter in times like these.”

 

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this post are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.