"Barbara so wanted to join me, but school is still in session," Aunt Rose said. "Taking time off is so difficult. The children become unhappy if she isn't there to greet them in the morning. The thought of a substitute teacher welcoming them to school upsets her."
"Completely understandable," I replied. "Responsibilities come first, but I would have loved to see her. Tell me, Aunt Rose, how are you?"
"I'm well. I love California, but I wish Willy was with me. Maybe you can take me to visit him while I am here?"
"Absolutely, I've been planning on visiting my dad and my grandma. We can go after the party on Sunday or Monday, if that's okay with you."
"Either day would be fine. We can spend a few hours alone together. Maggie, I'm so proud of you, graduating from law school. In my day, young women didn't even dream of becoming a lawyer." The smile on her face radiated pride.
The conversation halted as I paid the man sitting in the parking lot toll booth. I eased right on to Route 60 North.
I started the conversation back up. "It's so different for women now. We can be anything, if we work hard enough."
"If I had the chance, I would have been a baby doctor. I love the idea of bringing new souls into this world. What more glorious work could there be?" she asked in her gentle tone of voice.
I chuckled slightly. "I agree one hundred percent, except the blood part. Blood and I don't mix. I faint."
She mockingly shook her finger at me. "A strong woman like you faints over a silly bit of blood. I'm shocked."
"Instead of delivering the babies, I will protect their civil rights. How does that sound?" I asked.
It had always been easy to talk to Aunt Rose, even when I was a kid. My grandma was very sweet, but she spent so much time in the hospital. As for Mildred, she should have joined the Marines. Like the Three Bears, Aunt Rose was just right. Maybe it was the comfort of her serene presence or my lack of self-control, but I just couldn't wait any longer to bring up the subject of our family.
"Aunt Rose, speaking of women, I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about our family. If they upset you, just tell me to stop, okay?"
"What would you like to know about our family?" she asked.
I bit my bottom lip. It took a few seconds for me to form the question in my head. "Aunt Rose, a few months ago, I learned you had a brother named George. What happened to him and did I ever meet him?"
"Why would you think a question like that would upset me? I loved my brother." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her glance at my profile. "Wait," she said, "let me guess, Mildred."
"Yeah," I replied.
She stared out the windshield with a sly smile on her face. "Ignore her, Maggie. As the young people today say, she has power issues. My brother George was the love of my life. That was, until I met Willy. George was eighteen months younger than Mildred. After mother passed away, George believed that as the son, he should assume the role of the head of the family. Mildred, as the oldest sibling, believed it was her responsibility to run the household. Mildred and George fought from the day he was born, and this fueled the fire between them. George conceded defeat and moved to Cleveland to work in a mill. I missed him so."
"Mildred said that he was a drunk and a womanizer."
"I'm not surprised to hear she said something awful about him. George was not a handsome man, but there was a twinkle in his eye and charm radiated from his smile. On the dance floor, he moved like Fred Astaire. All the girls fought for a chance to dance with him. The women chased him, not the other way around. But, like many members of our family, George battled the sadness and drinking made him feel better."
"What does 'battled the sadness' mean?" I asked. The term sounded strange to my ears.
"When I was a girl, our family called it 'the sadness.' Today, it would be called depression."
"So, George drank to ease the pain of the depression?"
"I guess so. We didn't talk about it. He only spoke to me about happy things. He called me his Sunshine Girl. I cried for days when he left. However, he sent me a letter every week for years and years."
"Aunt Mildred said he had children."
"A child, Maggie." Her voice had become terse. "He and his wife had a son. What did Mildred say about his son?"
"Nothing really, she just said that his kids were probably like him," I said, shrugging apologetically.
"George's only son committed suicide when he was sixteen-years-old. George was devastated. His marriage fell apart, and he lost all interest in life. He died alone in his small apartment in Cleveland."
I couldn't ignore the moisture in her eyes. I reached my hand over and clasped hers. "Aunt Rose, I am so sorry. I don't want to upset you. Let's change the subject."
"No, Maggie. It's okay. When I talk about George, I can see him dressed in his best suit, gliding across the dance floor--doing what made him happiest. He never made much money, but he left enough for a nice funeral and proper burial. He rests next to his son in a cemetery outside of Cleveland. I hope if a member of our family ever visits Cleveland, they stop and put flowers on his grave."
"Mildred said that he would occasionally send money to help pay the hospital bill for Ella."
Her eyes became large, and she pinched her lips together. "Shame on Mildred." Her voice was filled with anger. "She said that, 'he occasionally sent money?'"
"Actually, Mildred said George only sent money if you asked," I replied.
A slight growl-like sound emerged from the back of her throat. "George sent money to the hospital, faithfully every month. He worried about Ella and once a month he traveled from Cleveland to New Castle to visit her. If it hadn't been for George paying the bulk of the bill, I don't know what would have happened to Ella. Don't get me wrong, Maggie, we all sent money, but George contributed the most. I don't understand after all of these years how Mildred could still say such awful things."
"Please don't get upset with her. I want this to be a happy family weekend. Forget I even said anything to you, please?"
"Now I can't help but wonder what other parts of the family history she misconstrued."
"Aunt Rose, I just learned that Ella existed a few weeks before I heard about George. Mildred said Ella didn't want to get better and she like living in the mental hospital."
The dignified little lady in the seat next to me suddenly looked really pissed off. I could see her knuckles turn white as she clutched her handbag. When her grasp eased, she spoke. "Ella had sad cow eyes and loose brown curls that hung low on her back. She moved ethereally around the house, ghostly and beautiful. She barely spoke, but George could make her laugh until tears streamed down her cheeks. Sometimes, on a really good day, she would dance with him on the back porch. She had no friends, but my mom dismissed it as shyness. Ella would swing for hours on an old tire my father hung from a tree in the backyard before he died. Only when my mom called her would she come into the house. In the winter, she would sit near the hearth of the fireplace and stare at the flames for hours. On good days, she drew lovely pictures of daisies. Ella loved daisies.
"My mother's death devastated all of us. Ella turned sixteen the month my mom passed. It didn't take long for us to realize she wasn't just shy. She cried continually--longer than I believed humanly possible. I still shudder when I think about her tears. All of us could feel the pain in her sobs. One day, something snapped and she became hyper and started seeing things that weren't real. Of course, we took her to the hospital. Medicine wasn't so great back in our day, so she never got better. I am not a psychiatrist, but I have read up on the subject over the years. If Ella was still alive, I believe that she would have been diagnosed as suffering from Manic Depression. Maybe George had it, too. It's hard to say. We didn't know much back then."
"Did you ever visit Ella?" I asked.
"After your grandma, Grace, married your grandfather, he drove us to New Castle every other week. The weeks he didn't drive us, your grandma and Mildred rode the bus to visit her.'
"Yes, she did for years and years. Only when your grandma was hospitalized did she miss a visit. Your grandma had the gift or maybe the curse, of being able to feel the pain of others. Grace was the most compassionate woman I've ever known. At one point, she wanted to bring Ella home to her house and take care of her. But your dad and your uncle Roy were still little boys, and your grandfather worried about her health. He feared she wasn't strong enough to take care of the children and Ella. When the boys were older, your grandma's poor health prevented her from moving Ella out of that hospital."
"Mildred said that Glenn Hill was an awful place."
"In hindsight, I guess it was. However, back then all mental hospitals suffered from lack of money, lack of knowledge, and lack of staff. A nurse named Millicent formed a relationship with Ella. She made sure Ella ate good food and was treated with respect. She continued visiting Ella, even after she retired. Millie was a good woman.
"But to answer your question more directly, Maggie, I still feel guilty for leaving Ella there. Maybe if we'd searched harder, we could have found a better place."
"Aunt Rose, where is Ella buried? Mildred refused to answer the question."
"Why, next to our mother and father, of course. Where else would she be?"
"I've been to their graves at least fifty times, and I never saw a tombstone that read Ella Mae Ingram. On the left of your parents, lies a woman named Nellie Miles and on the right side is an empty space. The next tombstone reads Ignatius Evans."
My eyes darted from the road to Aunt Rose. She gazed out the windshield with a Mona Lisa smile gently lighting her face, and her eyes focused on a distant spot. In front of me were the lines of the road, but something more than the dairy cows feeding in the pasture captivated her attention. Rose appeared to be enjoying a private landscape.
"Ignatius was my mom's baby brother, my uncle. Nellie Miles was my first cousin and best friend. The empty space is Ella's grave."
I sucked in my breath, and my gut constricted. "Ella has no marker at all? Why?" Sparks of anger rocketed through my brain. Wasn't her life insulting enough, not even a small flat marker with her name on it? She never lived and now we ignored her in death. My family sucked.
"At the time of her death, we were all struggling financially. Your grandfather, Uncle Willie and Uncle Max worked in the steel mills. All three lost their jobs before Ella died. It took a long time for them to find new work. The unemployment payments ran out quickly, and we all lived off our savings. There wasn't an extra dime to put into a tombstone. We all promised that as soon as times got better, we would purchase a beautiful marble stone and carve daisies around her name." Aunt Rose blinked hard to fight back tears. "Things improved financially for all of us, but until today, I forgot that we never purchased the stone."
Both of us wandered into our own reverie until we reached the small sign that read, Ellwood, established 1892. "Home, sweet home, Aunt Rose. Let's stop with the sad family stories. The focus of this week is new, good family times. You are going to adore Mark's daughter Kelsey. Her big brown eyes and smile melt me. She just started walking and doesn't want to be carried at all. Her chubby little legs are irresistibly squeezable."
"I know. I know. I'm not sure who gushes over Kelsey more, my sister or your mother. I get Kelsey updates at least once a week."
As we passed through the intersection of Fifth Street and Lawrence Avenue, Aunt Rose sighed. "It's a different place now. In my day, Lawrence Avenue bustled. Where are all the people?"
"Well, Aunt Rose, the population of Ellwood dropped. The people who stayed, after the steel industry collapsed, witnessed their children relocate to more exciting places. There are no jobs to keep anyone here. I think that another reason Lawrence Avenue looks empty is because people prefer to shop at the mall, more choices under one roof."
We crossed the Fifth Street Bridge, and Aunt Rose commented on all the billboards greeting us from the hillside at the end of the bridge. She used the word, "Tacky."
Aunt Mildred's white clapboard house perched on top of a high embankment. Reaching the front porch required climbing a flight of stairs with eighteen steps and seven more front porch steps. Today, I opted to park the car in the back alley and use her back door.
Aunt Rose's legs had stiffened during the ride, and she required assistance to get out the car. When I extended my hand to her, she weakly grasped it. I could feel the narrowness of the bones in her hand and the coolness of her thin skin. She swung her legs out, and I eased her slowly onto her feet. Once she was steadied, I grabbed her bag from the trunk. With her hand grasping my forearm, we navigated the long, narrow walkway that led to the back door. When we reached the half-way point, Mildred emerged from the back door and called out, "Pick up the pace, Rose."
I heard Rose softly snicker. "That's my sister, still crabby after all of these years."
I stood aside on the porch as the two sisters, one, a waltz and the other a military march, embraced. The facial expressions and body language of both sisters sang the same song, the joy of togetherness and family. As I watched that embrace, I overlooked Mildred's obnoxiousness and saw a young woman facing the task of caring for three younger sisters and an unruly brother. The moment exploded back into reality when Mildred opened her mouth. "Maggie, stop lollygagging and pick up your aunt's bags and haul them up to the guest room, right now."
Aunt Rose gave me a wink. "I would appreciate the assistance enormously, Maggie."
I lugged the suitcase up the steps, mulling over the differences between Rose and Mildred. Mildred appeared to belong on a tennis court, long limbed and athletic. A sense of strength and competitiveness oozed from her entire being. The irony was that I didn't believe she ever stepped a foot onto a tennis court or engaged in any other athletic event unless complaining about poor health qualified as a sport.
Then there was small, fragile Rose, who embodied her name, compact and elegant. In a soft, calming voice, she chose words and created sentences that exemplified the English language as it was spoken in a more genteel time. If Aunt Mildred was born to run, Aunt Rose was born to sip tea in a Victorian parlor. But her life was not one of tea and crumpets.
My uncle Willy had not been the most ideal of husbands. He suffered from "wandering eyes and roaming hands" syndrome. Aunt Rose knew, but she believed the part about "until death do we part." She held her head high, never said a bad word about Willy, cried for a week after he died, packed her bags, and moved to California with Barbara. Now she had a "gentleman friend," Walter. I was glad to hear he was a gentleman.
As I walked down the steps from the second floor, I heard them talking in the kitchen. I eavesdropped from the living room for a few moments. I heard Aunt Rose say, "Isn't the interest Maggie is expressing about our family wonderful? We had such a lovely talk on the way from the airport."
Mildred replied in her usual sharp tone. "What the hell are you talking about Rose? All she cares about is learning about George and Ella's craziness. Our family is not nuts, and I am not going to put up with this dragging us through the mud business."
"Mildred, how can you say such things?" Rose replied. "Maggie expressed genuine interest in learning about our history, and I believe her curiosity stemmed from her heart. Maggie is and always has been such a sweet child."
I crossed the threshold between the dining room and the kitchen, and watched as Mildred stifled the words that were about to exit her mouth.
Instead she said, "Are you staying for lunch, Maggie?"
"No, Aunt Mildred. As much as I would love to, I have to go home. Some of my classmates are getting together for dinner this evening, and I promised to join them. I have to get home, clean my apartment before Steph arrives, and shower. But I promise to spend time with you and Aunt Rose over the weekend." I planted a quick kiss on Mildred's cheek and then took both of Rose's hands in mine and kissed her sweetly on the cheek. "Aunt Rose," I said, "I am so happy you'
re here. I promise that as soon as the weekend stuff is over, I will take you to visit Uncle Willy."
"And, Maggie, we can continue our family history conversation if you would like," she replied.
I smiled and nodded.
As I left the kitchen and walked to my car, I thought about Willy. How could anyone hurt such a lovely woman? Men...
CHAPTER 18
Graduation, At Last
I'd driven the route from Ellwood to Pittsburgh more times than I could count and today, I navigated the entire distance on autopilot--definitely a freaky feeling. When Sam and I were together, he always drove. He adored being behind the wheel of a car, and I relished sitting beside him.
I wished Ellwood didn't evoke memories of Sam. The last time we actually spoke was in the Ellwood Giant Eagle. I almost pulled into their parking lot on the way out of town, but that just seemed so pathetic. Instead of turning the wheel, I rolled down the windows and silently wished my family would move out of that town.
The rolling hills of the road lulled me into daydream land. My brain shifted into the graduation party mode. I contemplated what to wear and mentally reviewed the guest list. Funny, for the first time in my life, my stomach didn't knot up over the prospect of being the center of attention.
The disastrous condition of my apartment smacked me in the face the minute I walked through the front door. Wow, I ignored more than the highway. Immediately, I began to gather up the dirty dishes strewn across my desk and living room coffee table and dumped them into the sink. I flung my socks into the laundry hamper and shoved all of my shoes back into the closet.
From the middle of my living room, I could hear my kitchen floor screaming for help. As I dug around in my coat closet that doubled as a broom closet, I thought about spending time with Aunt Rose and hanging out with Steph for the weekend. I attached my IPod to the speakers, cranked the up volume and lip-synced into an imaginary microphone--aka, my mop. Once the kitchen floor sparkled, I shifted from singing to dancing while vacuuming the living room. A fun, relaxed dance, not the frenzied out of control behavior of my pre-medicine days, a genuine sense of excitement, and not some bad brain wave induced euphoria. As I washed my dirty dishes, I thought, God, thank you for creating the person who invented these pills. Wallowing in the energized feeling of anticipation, I headed toward the bathroom to get ready for the evening.
Defective Page 16