A test post of a Thing That Might Turn Into A Series.
1/??
Ol’ Auntie Eunice always has some sort of pie at the ready. Summer time, it’s something sweet and light that’s sitting on the windowsill to cool. On the brighter, sunnier days, there’s some Coltrane or Sinatra or Fitzgerald on the old gramophone that sits on a white hand-crocheted doily that sits on an old oak stool that sits on an antique atlas, next to that window where the pie would be. You’d see it when you park out front between the tall grass and towering redwoods; in the window just to the right of the front door, so you know when you’re walking up those four rickety steps to the front porch what’s been making your mouth water for two minutes up that dirt road.
She’d be there in the kitchen, washing the morning’s dishes, humming to the music drifting through those open windows. The way her off-key voice mingled with the smell of a freshly baked pie made her dilapidated trailer feel more like a second-home by the time you gently pull the mostly-broken screen open to knock on the chipped and battered front door. It’ll open at the slightest touch and her sing-song words from the kitchen “Come on in!”.
She’d come shuffling out, wiping her hands on her apron as excitedly as women in her later years could be; her slippers tapping and dragging against the linoleum in the kitchen, then the painted wood flooring of the dining room, then the once-thick-now-worn-thin Persian carpet in front of the couch, then the painted wood flooring once again when she’d meet you just at the door with her arms open wide, and a big smile crinkling her face. Then, as she’s bombarding you with a thousand kinds of “how are you”, and “you ain’t eatin’ enough”, and “why don’t you let Auntie take care o’ you”, she’ll take hold of that now-perfect temperature pie from the windowsill and let the mouthwatering smell pull you to the little, rickety dining table five and a half steps into the cozy home. Before you know it she’ll somehow get a little fork and china plate onto that doily smothered table and be half-way through cutting you a heaping slice of pie, and you know then and there that you have to sit down. And you do, and you’re stuck with at least a dozen mouthfuls of the most delicious marionberry pie you’ve ever had, trying to answer questions and listen to aged advice at the same time, while ceramic cat shaped salt-and-pepper shakers watch your conversation from the table between you and Ol’ Auntie Eunice.
But, it’s fall now.
The cold, heavy mountain rain blanketing the sopping redwoods, muddy roads, and marshy tall-grass smothered any hope of smelling or hearing that slice of home two-minutes up the road. I’ve been sitting on my crusty 1970s Maico motorbike, staring at the bare windowsill for hopefully less than five minutes, because I know that she knows that I know that I’m too scared to get my ass off this torn seat. Everyone told everyone, so everyone knew about the barbecue the day-before-yesterday, and there isn’t anyone Auntie doesn’t talk to. She probably already knows the Gonzalez's brought their family’s fresh chorizo that everyone loves, and it was finished within an hour of the grill being lit. She probably already knows that Uncle Anglehorn gave a heartwarming speech that brought most of us to tears. She probably already knows I didn’t come over yesterday, because I was recovering from the worst hangover of my life yet. So, I didn’t have a doubt in my mind she knows why we had that get-together, too.
When Yeung came forward holding her better half’s hand at that barbecue years ago, Ol’ Auntie clasped her hands together with so much pride, and cheered through her teary eyes. The two of them were just into their twenties, but had been through so much, and Auntie would never let that go; especially when she sat the two of them down for three hours worth of old widowed wisdom and gave them both a hug and kiss and a big hand-woven basket of lavender for their troubles. She stayed the whole time, watching the young ‘uns and hootin’ and hollerin’ with the best of the party, and kept all the photos of the memories of those cherished moments in her favorite photo album in its special spot under the coffee table. I know this because she told me about it and has shown me and shared it with me since I was little. The happiest moment of those stories is when Auntie mentions – and she always mentions – bringing that photo album to Yeung and her wife’s wedding. So, my announcement at the barbecue shouldn’t be a problem. It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t. But, if it wasn’t then she would have gone to the barbecue day-before-yesterday.
I checked my watch. It’s definitely been more than five minutes. My leather jacket was doing little against the rain any more, and even less against the cold.
I watched my breath turn to mist in the rain. The fresh air wasn’t as comforting as I hoped it would be. The four sour cream, three margarine, and five cottage cheese containers filled with leftovers felt heavier than they should be in my arms. I tried to breathe again, setting the containers on my motorbike’s seat. Instead, I saw a half-day’s worth of deliveries in the soft panniers lashed to the back of my bike getting as water logged as my jeans. No more dawdling.
The gravel beneath my boots sounded louder than it should. The creaking porch complains much more angrily than it should. My shoulders shouldn’t feel this heavy, standing there in front of her door. The screen was open, clinging to the door-frame as much as I was clutching onto those leftovers.
The front door opened before I could raise a knuckle to it.
“Don’t let all the warmth out, now,” Ol’ Auntie Eunice stood in the doorway, as stout and severe as I’d ever seen her with a white-knuckle grip on the doorknob.
“Sorry, Auntie,” I fumbled in the doorway, trying to figure out how to untie and clean my boots and hold the leftovers at the same time.
“Tsk, girl,” She plucked the bins out of my hands and made her way into the kitchen.
Feeling my jacket and pants dripping all over the entryway, and my boots scraping mud across the floorboards dragged what little sense I had clear out of sight. I had time, it’d be okay – the fridge door only just opened, and I could still hear her rummaging around. Then, a gust of rain and wind kicked through the open door, and knocked the last of my hope with it.
“What’d I say ‘bout lettin’ all that cold an’ wet in here!” She didn’t have to be next to me for me to know how her face would be scrunched, staring into that fridge.
“Sorry, Auntie,” I shouted back as meek of a shout as I could make, no longer bothering with my shoes and making that awkward stretch to shut the door behind me; Christ, it’s just out of reach and I am not about to spread more mud on the floor. The rain felt like a slap to the face.
“Don’t you take that weak tone with me, Allie,” Auntie’s words clip and snap with each clattering thing being rearranged in the fridge, “Tryin’ to weasel your way outta this like some sorta thin skinned -”
The wind decided to slam the door shut for me.
“- Girl, what did I say!”
“Yes, Auntie Eunice,” I belted out as strong as I could, on my hands and knees trying to get to the rags in the back of the bottom cabinet of the oak nightstand by the door, nestled just behind Christmas Duck; he stared at me with his poorly painted beady eyes from his little shoe-box throne in his little cabinet. I never felt more shame in my life from a wood-carved animal.
The fridge door didn’t shut loud, and her slippers sounded more tired than angry across the linoleum, then painted-wood floors, then the worn-thin Persian carpet, then to me. “Just move him; he can take it,” her voice sighed and I could feel her waving her hands off at me, before she bent over and picked up my boots. I did as I was told, being as gentle as I could with the kitschy little guy, and finally got to the mountain of rags.
“Lord have mercy, Allie,” Another tired sigh. I nearly jumped up and took my boots back from her, but her arthritic fingers yanked my soaking tube socks off of my feet faster than my fear could launch me, “What’re we gonna do with you.”
“Clean up my mess?” I offered, trying not to laugh nervously at the stupid, stupid fact I answered an obvious non-question amid my panic; I prayed the dread would go away if I busied myself with putting Christmas Duck were he belonged, and making myself useful about those wet floorboards.
“You didn’t make no mess, sweetie,” Auntie’s voice drifted off with her footsteps.
I looked up to her from my spot on the floor.
She was kneeling in front of the heater. The cap was off of the foot of it, and I could hear the pilot light clicking and clicking. The flickering light looked so sobering in her eyes. The heater hissed and roared warmer under her touch, and filled the trailer with the dry sanctuary needed to fight the cold, cold rain. “Take your time,” she whispered to the flame, to me, to us, “you’re home now.”
We cleaned the muddied floorboards together, and listened to the groaning thank yous from the trailer for each soaked rag. With the rain safely behind the locked door and latched windows, everything but my underwear found their way to being hung-up right next to the heater. Auntie Eunice took care to pull and pick as many creases as she could out of them as I sat at the tiny dining table under the watchful eyes of those porcelain cat salt-and-pepper shakers. I could feel the itchy off-white antimacassar on the back of the chair through the stiff, solid bathrobe that barely hung on my shoulders and precariously cinched at my waist. Never could fit it, even when I was smaller, when I would swing my stubby legs to knock my heels against this poor antique chair. Always so impatient to wait for Auntie’s little slice of heaven after a day of misbehaving in the woods. Her lectures were easier to take when you had a mouthful of pecan or apple pie between each of her insults and pointed criticisms, each bit stinging more than the scrapes and splinters in my knees. Those days I came home sniffling and sobbing with blood dripping down my knees, elbows, or something I done wrong – always something – were filled with the worst of the lectures and the happiest moments.
But, she didn’t lecture me last time I wore this old robe. It was a muggy summer rain and rowdy teenagers that spoiled my last day out by my favorite corner of my favorite river with my favorite friend. My old mountain bike was forgotten somewhere in a bramble of poison oak, so I held my kayak over my head and hauled it all the six and a half miles along thin trails and empty fire roads back to Ol’ Auntie Eunice’s. I was such a short thing the stern of it was dragged the whole way. She heard it scraping up the driveway; hell, the way she huffed and puffed you would have thought she heard it the whole way up the road. The little sit-on-top got caught on one of the tall thistle weeds in front of the trailer, and I just tugged and tugged at the kayak until I started crying, and fell into a thick, muddy puddle of gravel and silt. Auntie Eunice didn’t care about the rain, but I felt guilty that her floral print smock got so soaked and dirty.
“Oh, sweetie,” Auntie lifted the banged up boat from my hands and forgot it on the ground, “What mess did you make this time?”
“They called us names,” I sobbed, wiping the back of my dirty hand across my face to stop the rain or tears or both.
Auntie pinched the skin of my jaw between her rough thumb and forefinger to get a good look at my split lip, swollen eye, and busted nose. “Yeah, and what did you do?”
“I made ‘em pay for it.”
She carried me up in her arms, mud and snot and blood and all. “They better be six feet under.”
“I tried, Auntie.”
And I wailed until we got through the front door, then was crying all the way through getting washed and cleaned up, then sniveling until I got that first bite of apple pie into my mouth. This bathrobe was softer then, before Uncle Anglehorn and his betters had me pack my bags and move away somewhere safer and then safer again, and then when that wasn’t safe enough. Seven years away from home, and never being allowed to settle into a new one. I wondered if my bike is still rusting under that bush.
A hefty slice of key-lime pie atop Auntie Eunice’s favorite china was sat delicately on a doily in front of me. She sat just as delicately, and stiffly, onto her favorite oak carved and antimacassar smothered dining chair across from me, watching as expectantly as those salt and pepper cats. I don’t remember her plates being this small, or maybe it was the size of the slice.
My nose scrunched.
“Don’t you go turnin’ your nose up at me, girl.”
“Sorry, Auntie. I just -… uh, didn’t think limes were in season.” I fiddled with the fork a little, eyeing its divots and designs; a little tarnished, but as pretty as I could recall.
“That Elwood girl’s been doing some conjuring work with Wynn at the greenhouse, and he was kind enough to bring me a bag full.”
I looked to her; so distant across such a small table as the off-white warmth of the dimmed kitchen light softened her dark, mountain-hardened skin enough to almost melt into the night sky behind her through the thin linen curtains. “I thought you took magic to be unnatural?”
“Well, it is,” she sipped from her favorite china tea cup, its faded painted roses and thorns looked gentle between her fingers, “but you know that it’s still good to talk to folks and your Uncle Wynn ain’t no exception.” She looked at me so pointedly.
A bite of that pie was heavenly and refreshing in all the ways I never associated with cold weather, but in every way that I needed. If these forks weren’t so tiny, it’d be half-gone by now. “Hey now, I see him and everyone else up at the Lodge every weekend.”
“Seeing them ain’t the same as talkin’,” I could see the smile behind her eyes as she hid it with another sip from her tea cup, “You should know that, Allie.”
My teeth clipped through another bite and scrapped against the fork, “You been doin’ lotsa talking lately, Auntie?”
“Chew your food before you speak.”
I swallowed hard, and let the ticking cat-shaped clock fill the room with the words I didn’t know how to say, with its swinging tail and batting eyes looking from Auntie Eunice, to me, and back again. I didn’t remember that clock being there when I was younger – too plastic.
“My talking is my business, and my business is keeping an eye on you, girl.”
“You could have just gone to the barbecue for that.”
“Then we wouldn’t be talkin’ here, now would we?”
“Yes, Auntie,” I couldn’t decide whether my words were a statement or question, so I let it sit in an awkward DMZ made of indecision and anxiety. The tea was sweeter than I thought it used to be, but the warm caffeine and cream washed down the pie as well as ever.
“And we’ve got plenty to talk about, Allie.” She pulled herself to her feet, and made her way to the coffee table.
“Whaddya mean?”
“Patience,” she sighed. I could hear her rummaging through that special nook under the coffee table – the stacks of pictures wrapped in rubber bands, the cracking leather binds of photo albums.
“Auntie,” I sighed right back, watching the slowly warming clumps of filling and melting whipped cream. The crumbs stuck to the back of my fork. What sounds like a wood panel clattered to the ground.
I turned around in my seat. The old, chipped coffee table was a simple thing: flat oak top, four legs, and then another panel of wood that spanned between all the legs just a few inches from the floor (forever crowded with photo albums and nick-knacks). But, a sliver of the table top was lying between the carpet and painted wood, and she’s there rummaging around, up to her elbow in the coffee table.
“Uh... That’s new.”
“Well,” Auntie pulled something large and rectangular wrapped in deep red leather and faded gold lettering out of the table, “It best be new to you.”