IT WAS IN THE Fire-cracking month of July that Aunt Polly and Uncle Jake would pay their yearly visit. And while they stayed, no matter how hellacious the heat, afternoon tea would be served in the sitting room without fail. For Aunt Polly loved afternoon tea as much as she loved Jesus Christ—and it was through constancy that she intended to prove her devotion to both. So, the day before Aunt Polly arrived, Eve’s mother would take the fine china from the back of the closet (where it belonged), so that Maisy could sweep the dead flies from the cups. And every afternoon at 2:00, the ladies would convene around the teapot as Eve and her sister were shooed out the kitchen door.

At least until 1928, when Evelyn turned fifteen.

That fateful summer, Aunt Polly announced that henceforth the privilege of tea would be hers. (Naturally, this privilege came with a floral dress, barrettes, and the manners befitting a lady.) Since Alice was only twelve, she was allowed to wear pigtails and overalls and stick out her tongue as she zipped out the door in search of bullfrogs and the rest of her kin. While Evelyn, hands on her knees, was left to return the stare of the grandfather clock.

Aunt Polly recognized the infallibility of her Deity in all respects but one: He had made summer days too long. So to complete the perfection of His plan, Aunt Polly was intent upon fending off their influence.

How does one fend off the influence of a summer day? You start by serving tea at two in the afternoon. Then, having thanked the Good Lord for His bounty and passed the biscuits, you talk about relatives long since dead. You make sure to dredge up some story that you’ve dredged up before (having come to the comforting conclusion that the world will welcome as many dredgings as you can muster.) And when the chitchat flags, rather than adjourn like hummingbirds into the waning wonder of the vernal afternoon, you pick up a magazine.

For Aunt Polly, this was preferably a Saturday Evening Post that she had read before. Turning through the pages, she would occasionally stop at a photograph—say, of a short-haired Amelia Earhart preparing to cross the Atlantic by plane—in order to remark with a mix of indignation, wisdom, and finality:

—Now, I’ve seen everything.

•

FOR GREAT UNCLE JAKE (a harmless old broker of crop insurance who once shook the hand of Herbert Hoover) the headshaking phrase of choice was If I had a nickel fer. As in, If I had nickel fer every time the papers called for rain.

So enamored with this phrase was Uncle Jake that an If I had a nickel fer might well be the only sentence he uttered over the course of a family meal. Which was all the more striking when you considered that his solitary statement would linger forever unfinished.