I thought Mama was beautiful. All boys think that their mothers are beautiful, but in my defence I have to say that mine had the Searing Smile, a superpower Stan Lee would have paid good money for. Whenever she knew she was in the wrong - like the time I asked her to give me back the birthday money she'd asked me to lend her - she would use the Searing Smile and something inside me would melt and I would suddenly feel too weak to resist. (Actually she never did give me that money back.) Papa said we were the lucky ones; he said that in the bedroom she used the Searing Smile for sinister purposes but refused to say anything more, leaving the details to our feverish imaginations.