Uncle Bill picked a ripe tomato from the garden and rinsed the dust off under the garden hose. Then he sat down at the picnic table and surveyed our backyard. From the look of satisfaction on his face, Uncle Bill was getting great enjoyment from that fresh tomato. To my surprise, he took a large bite out of it, the way I would have bitten into an apple. I shivered, thinking about the acidity.

“Do you want some salt?” I asked.

“Nope, I like it just the way it is.”

I slid into the bench across from him and watched him closely, waiting for the tomato juice to dribble down his chin. It was so hot that afternoon, neither of us felt like talking anyway. We listened to the cicadas announcing the temperature with their clicking.

Languidly Uncle Bill took a second bite of the tomato, and then he took another. His short-sleeved shirt was spotlessly clean. By the time he finished that tomato, not one drop of juice had escaped his lips or stained his clothes. It seemed like a magic trick to me.

I was sure that my mother would have preferred to be outdoors like her brother Bill and me, but instead she was brewing tea for Auntie Anne. Two bone china cups and saucers would be on the table with a sugar bowl and a pitcher of milk. Auntie Anne would be chattering away like the cicadas while my mother listened and nodded politely.

Uncle Bill and his wife, Anne, were visiting us for a week. They lived in Toronto. Auntie Anne had grown up in England. She pronounced her words differently than we did. Mom said she was a “war bride.” I didn’t know what that meant.

“I can’t imagine what he sees in Anne,” my mother said after they had left. To my mother, Anne was an annoyance. When Auntie Anne unpacked her suitcase it contained several dresses, pointy-toed shoes and a hat decorated with artificial flowers. Mother thought Anne was superficial and vain. Anne’s appearance, religious beliefs and values were different from ours. “She’s not like us,” mother would say. For her brother’s sake, my mother kept this opinion to herself.

In February of 1964, Uncle Bill went out to shovel snow after dinner and died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 52 years old.

Five months later, Anne traveled alone to our house for a visit. Anne unpacked the hats and sundresses from her suitcase as usual. After supper she asked my father to bring out a deck of cards so we could play Bridge. Anne had met Bill, playing Bridge at the USO. Mom found it hard to imagine that her brother would have enjoyed such a pastime. It seemed foreign.

We were used to card games that were less complicated. We were in the habit of laughing and joking during a card game, not keeping track of what had been dealt and played.

None of us played Bridge; Anne said that didn’t matter. Patiently she instructed us in how to rotate shuffling the deck, passing it to another person to deal. She explained how to bid, name trumps, and lay out the dummy hand. Auntie Anne took Bridge seriously and in spite of our lack of interest, she insisted that we play each night together.

After that visit on her own, she would come and stay with us once each year. Since we only played Bridge when she was visiting, we needed a refresher each time. She tolerated our lackadaisical attitudes the way my mother had kept silent about her vanity. It seemed to me that Uncle Bill still had a hand to play and hearts were trump.