AUNT MARION. Aunt Marion is my dad s younger sister. She lives in Manhattan in an apartment

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1 AUNT MARION Aunt Marion is my dad s younger sister. She lives in Manhattan in an apartment that my dad says must cost a fortune. It s high up on the 27 th floor, with huge windows that look out on the East River. The elevator in her building is fast and silent, and I wish we went there more often, because the place is totally cool. My aunt lives by herself now, but she was married twice. I never knew her first husband. She divorced him before I was born. I barely knew her second husband, Uncle Tim, whom my mom says was a nice guy and could never figure out why that marriage didn t last. My dad says Aunt Marion has a big job that pays very well as a buyer of women s clothes for Bloomingdales, which, I guess, is why she can afford such a great apartment with this amazing modern furniture and modern artwork on the walls that is nothing like the stuff we have at our house and nothing like what you see in the houses of any of my friends. My mom says that Aunt Marion is stylish when she speaks about her to someone who doesn t know her. I m not sure if the word stylish includes pretty, but I think my aunt is pretty enough to be a model, even though she s old over 40, I think. Aunt Marion doesn t go to church. She said at Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago that the church is full of people who don t practice what they preach. My parents do go to church, and my father said back to her that the world is full of people who don t

2 practice what they preach, and some of those people go to church. She said that people who don t practice what they preach look worse when they go to church, and my father said that was praise for the church, which at least stands for something that makes the hypocrisy of the hypocrites stand out. I asked what hypocrisy means and my mother said it means not doing what you say you believe you should do. Both dad and Aunt Marion ended up at Thanksgiving telling stories about the kids and the minister and some of the Sunday school teachers in the church in which they had grown up. It didn t sound all that different from the church we go to now, and some of the stories were pretty funny. At the end of dinner, Aunt Marion surprised everybody by saying that she d give the church another shot and go with us to Christmas Eve services as long as she could stay over for Christmas day. My mom told her she most certainly could and she should bring her present boyfriend, Rolff, with her if she wanted to. But Aunt Marion said she was glad for a break from Rolff and would be coming alone. I was excited about Aunt Marion coming to church with us on Christmas Eve. She d be dressed great, and I wanted to show her off to my friends. And I was looking forward to having her with us on Christmas Day when people came to our house for dinner. Our family is small, and it s nice to have one more of us around. And as my mom says, there s never a dull moment with Aunt Marion. My mom is right about that. In the middle of Reverend Postlethwaite s Christmas Eve sermon, Aunt Marion stood up, shimmied down to the end of the pew after getting my father s keys to the car, and walked right out of the church, down the center aisle, her heels clicking on the slate floor. My mother and father looked at each other, raising eyebrows and shrugging their shoulders. I asked my mom where Aunt Marion was

3 going. She whispered that she needed some fresh air and not to worry, that she was fine. But even though we were singing some of my favorite Christmas carols, I really couldn t get into them, and for the rest of the service I kept thinking about Aunt Marion and wondering if she was okay. After the service was over, we said merry Christmas to everybody and went outside and found Aunt Marion sitting in the car listening to Christmas music on the radio. She got out and moved around to the back seat with me. Mom and dad got into the front seats, and we headed out of the parking lot. I asked Aunt Marion if she was okay. She said that she was fine, and I was glad to hear that. But why did you leave? I asked her. She didn t answer right away. My dad said, over his shoulder, Tell him. Marion. He wants to know why his Aunt walked out in the middle of the Christmas Eve service. I wouldn t mind hearing why you did it myself. Aunt Marion took off her seatbelt and slid over next to be. She put her arm around me. The car was dark, and I wasn t able to see her face. She didn t say anything right away. Then, quietly, holding me close, she began, I just couldn t stand listening to your minister talking about the young soldier from your church who was killed recently in Iraq, especially when he started telling us that the soldier didn t die in vain, that his life wasn t wasted in this pointless war. Correct me if I m wrong, but I thought the message for Christmas Eve in the church would be something about peace on earth and goodwill to all, you know, beating swords into plows, the kind of stuff they read from the Bible. But instead we get this business you always hear from people who support wars about how the death and suffering that is war are not done or

4 suffered in vain. I suppose those people need to believe this or the losses of war would be too much to bear, but it s hardly ever true, and it s certainly not true in the case of this war in Iraq, which is being fought for nothing. Nothing! Her voice was louder for that last word, which hung in the air in the car. She paused to catch her breath. The son of my best friend at work died in Iraq just a year ago, right before last Christmas. Remember, I couldn t be with you guys for Christmas dinner. I was with her then. She was a wreck. And she d tell your minister in no uncertain terms that her son, whom she loved with all her heart, whom she cherished as the most precious gift in the world, and who was blown to bits, that he died for nothing at all, not for democracy for the Iraqis, not to protect Americans from terrorists, because this war isn t being fought for anything like that. She d tell him her son died for no good reason, that his life was wasted, and she misses him so, misses what he would have done with his life if hadn t been wasted in war. She d tell your minister to his face, because she s an honest woman who refuses to lie to herself. A lot of what Aunt Marion was saying was going over my head, but I caught enough of it to ask her why her friend let her son go off to war in the first place if she thought there was no good reason for it? That s a good question, honey, she said. He was in the National Guard. He thought he d make a few bucks and be available to help people if there was a flood or some other kind of disaster in our country. He didn t think that he d be sent off to fight when he joined. She didn t either. Both of them should have thought about this, they should have realized what could happen, but they didn t. Anyway, I can t sit in your church on Christmas Eve with the preacher talking the kind of nonsense that might make

5 you, my dear nephew, whom I love, think it s not such a bad thing to go off to war. I want you to promise me that you ll never do that! Her voice had a little hitch in it, and I could see tears in her eyes reflecting the light of the streetlamps we were driving under as we went home. That night, after I went to bed, I could hear Aunt Marion and my parents talking down in the living room. I couldn t hear much of what they were saying, but I could tell they were still talking about the war and my Aunt walking out on Reverend Postlethwaite s sermon. I know mom and dad don t like the war, but I m not so sure what they think about Aunt Marion walking out. I don t know much about this war, but I have to say that I kind of like the walking out part. In fact, I m kind of proud of my Aunt Marion. It s never been easy for me to get to sleep on Christmas Eve. I get too excited. When I was a little kid, it was the thought of Santa and the Christmas presents that kept me awake. But this year it s my Aunt Marion that s keeping me from falling asleep. In social studies class at school, we talk a lot about wars. It seems that people have always been fighting them, and that this is how things work in the world, that wars are like bad storms you have to put up with and can t do anything about. We never talk about the people who actually have to fight the wars or why they go or what happens to them. But now I ve got this picture in my head of Aunt Marion, standing up and marching right out of church because she doesn t want me to be somebody who goes to fight in a war. Nobody else did that for their kids, let alone for their nephews. Everybody else just sat there listening to the reverend. She was the only one.

6 Ever since I can remember I ve been praying for family members before I go to sleep, for mom and dad, of course, and for my one grandpa and two grandmas. I always pray that God will protect them. But I never pray for Aunt Marion. I guess I always thought that she can take care of herself and doesn t really need my prayers. And she probably doesn t, but I m putting her on my list, starting tonight. It s the least I can do for somebody who d walk out of church for me. Christmas Day, 2006