The Children by Ann Leary

long dead, might be lingering. “It was a very different time. It would have been very scandalous for a young lady to be seen chatting with members of a band. ”
    Sally and I spent hours fantasizing about Aunt Nan and Winslow Hobbs, the one black man she had apparently ever known. And we suspected that she had known him a lot better than she let on. We had seen photographs of Nan when she was a teen and we knew she hadn’t always been plump and short of breath. Her hair hadn’t always been white. She was once a raven-haired beauty. Aunt Nan was entirely different in the photos, almost the exact opposite of what she was now, so we imagined that her personality might also have been in stark contrast to the one she now possessed. In our minds, young Auntie Nan had once been a voluptuous, sex-crazed nymphomaniac.
    Around the time we were in middle school, Sally and I discovered a treasure. It was a cardboard box filled with dirty paperback books—a thrilling collection of trashy, pornographic stories that we found in the woods behind old Mr. Finch’s house. He was creepy, old Mr. Finch, from then on. We read the books over and over again, and for quite some time we imagined that all the grown-ups in our world, especially the women who appeared to be the most polite and wholesome, were constantly throwing themselves, lusty-eyed, shuddering, and heaving of bosom, at their Peeping Tom neighbors, traveling salesmen, or, in the case of Aunt Nan, bandleaders. We loved devising stories about young Auntie Nan sneaking out, late at night, when old Mr. and Mrs. Whitman were fast asleep. We imagined her running barefoot along the lakeshore in a sheer nightdress, her long hair streaming behind her, her eyes darting this way and that.
    â€œHe would be waiting for her,” Sally would say.
    â€œAnd her panties would be moist,” I would chime in, giggling.
    â€œGROSS,” Sally would say. Then: “His cock was so hard that it ached. He would tear off her nightgown, even though she begged him not to.”
    â€œWhat? Why would she beg him not to?” I’d ask. I always got bogged down in the logistics, which annoyed Sally.
    â€œThe woman always begs the man to stop whatever he’s doing, stupid. It’s in all the books.”
    â€œI guess it would have been hard to explain all the shredded nighties to her parents. Okay, she begged him not to, but he ripped it off her body anyway.”
    â€œWith his teeth. Then he’d turn her over so he could see her ripe buttocks,” Sally would offer, and we’d both carry on, constantly interrupting each other, crying with laughter as we spoke.
    â€œHe would enter her, he would ram her,” Sally said.
    â€œFrom behind , he entered her from behind, and that’s when Aunt Nan started bucking like a wild bronco—”
    â€œShe was screaming with pleasure and he had to put his hand over her mouth so the people at the inn couldn’t hear them.”
    â€œSo she bit him, and then he gave her pert ass a spanking.”
    â€œNO! Aunt Nan’s breasts were pert. Her ass wasn’t pert, it was—” Sally could barely say the words, she was breathless with laughter.
    â€œIt was ripe,” I would say.
    You can see how it was impossible, some days, for us to look at Auntie Nan without collapsing in helpless giggles. But we adored her. Sally cried so hard at her funeral that our mother felt her forehead to see if she was coming down with a fever.
    â€œGood Lord, dear,” Joan had whispered to her in the church pew. “People can hear you.”
    Sally had wiped away her tears and took a few deep breaths to control her sobbing.
    In the car, on the way home, Joan said, “Sally, you’re so sensitive. Nan was old. She had a good life.”
    Sally and I remained silent in the backseat.
    â€œShe’s so emotional,” Joan said to Whit, who was driving. “I really worry about