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Show -85 Maybelle took his elbow and pulled him toward us. "I want you to meet Wayne Thorneberry," she said. "Buck, you'll be working for him as soon as you get back from the honeymoon. It's all arranged." And: "Where would we be if it wasn't for her?" Mary-Ellen asked me one Sunday evening nearly a year later. "You ought to be glad Aunt Maybelle took an interest in you." "Not in me. I'm just along for the ride. She would have taken an interest in the Hunchback of Notre Dame if you'd married him." She pulled out her handkerchief and began to sniffle softly. Mary-Ellen was a natural weeper; whenever I shouted at her or said something she could take as sarcastic, out came the tears. "If you truly loved me you wouldn't care about that," she said. "We'd be happy." "Happy isn't all there is to life." I spoke loudly so she would hear me over the TV and through the tears. "Pigs and snails are happy. For people it's more complicated. And for God's sake stop crying." She looked at me reproachfully over the top of her handkerchief. "Sometimes I just don't understand you," she said. "Your face gets all twisted and mean and I think you must hate the whole world." Behind her, thin gray images blew across the television screen and tiny voices played at being |