The Bag Her Aunt Left Behind

“Maybe when you lose some weight.”

My sister-in-law said it the way you would tell a child the pool was not open yet. Pleasant. A little sorry about it. She was still holding the tissue paper from the last shopping bag, and she folded it in half while she spoke, as if the folding were the important part.

It was Easter Sunday on my mother-in-law’s back porch, outside Fredericksburg, Texas. The bluebonnets were thick along the fence line that year. There was a ham on the table, a bowl of deviled eggs, a pan of peach cobbler made from last summer’s freezer peaches, and three glossy shopping bags with rope handles.

One for Katie, who was seventeen. One for Brooke, who was sixteen. One for Amy, who was thirteen and had gone pink to the ears with happiness.

None for Emily, who was fifteen and mine.

Dana is my husband’s older sister. She was forty-six that spring, sold houses down in Boerne, and drove a white Tahoe she traded in every other year. She had no children of her own, and she liked to say that made her “the fun aunt.” She said it often enough that nobody else had to.

She had carried the three bags in from the Tahoe herself, held high, so everybody could see the store name printed on the sides.

Emily was sitting on the porch step with a paper plate of ham on her knees. I watched her watch those bags come up the walk. I watched her count them. I know she counted, because I counted too.

Three bags. Four girls.

“Now, these are the real thing,” Dana said, and she handed them out like a woman on a game show. “Three hundred and eighty dollars apiece. Don’t tell your mothers.”

Their mother was sitting right there. My sister-in-law Kim, who is married to Mark’s brother Jeff, laughed the way you laugh when you are not sure you are allowed to do anything else.

The girls pulled out the tissue. The handbags were pretty, I will say that. Cream-colored, with a gold clasp and the designer’s initials stamped all over the lining. Katie put hers on her shoulder right away. Brooke took a picture of hers on the porch rail.

Amy held hers in both hands, and then she looked over at the step.

“Where’s Emily’s?”

Thirteen years old. She was the only person on that porch who asked.

Dana smoothed the front of her skirt.

“Well, sweetie, those don’t really hang right on everybody.” She turned and looked at my daughter, and she smiled, kindly, like a nurse. “Maybe when you lose some weight, hon. We’ll go pick one out together. Give you something to work toward.”

Nobody dropped a fork. I have thought about that a good deal since. In the movies somebody drops a fork. On that porch the ice shifted in the tea pitcher and a mockingbird went on in the pecan tree, and seven adults looked at their plates.

My husband Mark set his glass down very slowly. I saw the muscle in his jaw go. He is a quiet man who fixes well pumps for half of Gillespie County, and he had been managing his sister since he was four years old.

“Dana,” he said.

“What? I’m being honest. Somebody ought to be.” She waved the folded tissue at him. “I’m trying to motivate her, Mark. Y’all coddle her.”

I had a deviled egg halfway to my mouth. I put it back on my plate. I remember being very careful to set it yolk side up, which is a foolish thing to remember.