Old Maids & Other Parlor Games

Lips that touch liquor, Aunt May was fond of saying primly, will never touch mine. And Uncle Will would slap his knee and hoot back at her, Explains you still being single, my girl!

It was an argument that had been going on between them for as long as anyone could remember, this odd pairing of brother and sister so willing to snipe at each other but presenting an unassailable and unified front in the face of any outside criticism. Aunt May had kept house for her aging parents all her adult life, caretaking and tending seven days a week, getting one day a month off to herself and only when she could arrange for Will to step in. Her entire life had been lived within the walls of the old gingerbreaded house and she had not complained nor pined for anything more. Will, a carpenter by trade, had never married and after the long and lingering deaths of both parents, had moved back from the mainland to keep his sister company. He spent his days making repairs and puttering in the small workshop while May continued to maintain the house. They got along, Fair to partly cloudy as Miss Clara liked to say, bickering and quarreling about anything and everything but usually ending up on the old sideporch in the evening, playing checkers or gin rummy by lamplight - it was as much a concession to her strict Baptist upbringing as May was ever to make, Will never being able to convince her that a card game played inside the actual house wouldn't bring the Devil Himself down on her head.

Rabbits? May exclaimed on her 71st birthday when Will presented her with a pair of rust colored dwarf bunnies and unveiled the portable hutch he had discreetly built - carpeted, insulated, skylighted. Rabbits? she repeated, Lord have mercy, Will, what are you thinking? Will just smiled and handed over the shoe box - nestled inside and burrowed in straw, the two babies were mostly asleep, velvety soft to the touch, about the size of young kittens.
May's disbelief and confusion at this turn of events - I scarce knew whether we were to raise'em or eat'em, she confessed to Nana - turned instantly maternal, her normally austere expression softened. Wan't sure if she was gonna cry or shoot me, Will told my grandmother, But I had me a hunch she might come to like'em considerable.

The rabbits, christened Nick and Norah after "The Thin Man", a favorite novel of Will's, thrived. The hutch was expanded and remodeled over the years, moved into the kitchen during the winter and tucked into a corner of the sideporch during spring and summer, its door left open so that the two small creatures could come and go at their leisure. After several litters, Rowena was called upon to perform an emergency sterilization, both May and Will had realized that they would be overrun in record time if Nick and Norah were left to their own devices and neither could bear the thought of any of their babies coming to what they delicately referred to as "a bad end". There was a heated exchange about which rabbit was to fall under the knife, resolved when Rowena explained to them that a castration was less invasive, far more uncomplicated than a hysterectomy and thereby safer for the rabbit. Despite her assurances, Will had his doubts and made himself scarce when the time came. Never have known a man not to get restless 'bout takin' a creature's manhood, Rowena said with a shrug. May, either in a rare and forgiving mood or distracted by Rowena's quick hands and flashing scalpel, was equally charitable. Likely he wants to mourn in private, she suggested and Rowena nodded, stemmed the blood flow efficiently and put in a few stitches. Done and done, she pronounced, wiped her hands and pocketed her scalpel, He'll be his own self come morning.

Nick spent the night in an old milk crate that May had lined with straw and rags and by morning was indeed his bright eyed old self. Will had returned after midnight and he and May had kept watch over the sleeping rabbit until dawn, sitting side by side on the porch glider, silently swinging and waiting - a confirmed old bachelor who smelled slightly of whiskey, an old maid who had decided not to mention it, and a newly castrated rabbit.

We all have moments when we're wise enough to keep our thoughts to ourselves.