by J. M. Snyder
“Laura’s son,” I say. When his expression doesn’t change, I elaborate. “Clara’s daughter?”
“Ah yes.” He nods again, goes back to typing in the product code on the milk. “Used to hang out with the Robichaud boy, didn’t you?”
“Used to,” I agree softly. Can’t I get away from that? Not here, my mind whispers.
Mr. Grosso looks at me again, gauging me. “You ain’t the one that got his hand caught up in my fountain one year, are you?”
Despite my reluctance to make small talk, I have to laugh at that memory—“That was my brother,” I tell him. The summer I was ten, Grosso’s soda fountain didn’t work all the time. You’d pay for a drink and then not get any ice, or the cola would be too thick, or the Sprite came out pink like the lemonade. After a few days, Ray thought he knew how to fix it, being all of thirteen, and he managed to get his hand halfway up the ice dispenser before it got stuck. I remember flashing lights and fire trucks blocking off the road outside, and my dumbass brother crying as all three police officers on the Sugar Creek force stared at him in disbelief. They finally had to cut him out. “Ray,” I tell Mr. Grosso now—heaven forbid he confuse me with him. “He’s older than me.”
“Always thought that one was a little touched,” the grocer says, and I laugh again. “Always told the wife how good your momma was for taking in a retarded boy. We all have our crosses to bear.”
I’m about to tell him that’s just the way my brother is when someone brushes against me in passing and I turn to catch a glimpse of the woman from the magazines as she swirls by on her way out. When she opens the door, it looks too bright outside, and I can’t see her face but I know she’s looking back at me. Then the door closes behind her, and it’s just me and Mr. Grosso in the store. He picks up my rose in the vial, turns it over in his hands, and grins toothlessly. “You hoping to get lucky tonight?” he asks me.
God. I shrug, well aware of the blush that heats my cheeks. He places the milk in a brown paper bag, hands the rose to me, and then hands me one of the coin-shaped condoms, as well. “On the house,” he says with a wheeze. “Just in case you do get lucky, kid. You tell your Aunt Billy to stop by here tomorrow before the service. I got a half dozen lilies in the back I want her to take to the viewing for me.”
“Yes sir,” I say, pocketing the rose and the condom. I take the bag with the milk in it, feeling like a wino when I tuck it under my arm, but I just want to get out of here. Jesus, a condom and a rose. Dan will really get a kick out of that.
“A shame,” Mr. Grosso mumbles again. He’s not looking at me, though, and I think that I’m already gone to him, he’s staring off into the past where I’m just a little kid again and Aunt Evie is still alive.
I duck outside quickly, hoping to put as much distance between myself and the store as I can. I skirt around the gas pumps, my shoes kicking gravel ahead of me, but as I’m about to cross the street, a car revs out of the parking lot and skids to a stop in front of me. The Saturn. Dread fills me as the passenger side window glides down.
Inside, the woman from Grosso’s leans over the seats to smile at me. Her hat is gone now, tossed in the back seat, and she’s looking at me with a face identical to Evie’s, if my aunt had been fifty pounds lighter. “Michael?” she asks, her smile widening. “Damn boy, is that you?”
I stare back, incredulous. There’s only one person I can think of that she could be. “Aunt Jessie?” I ask.
The door swings out towards me. “Get in,” she says. I’m too stunned to refuse.
Chapter 30: Aunt Jessie, In the Flesh
The resemblance between the woman in the driver’s seat beside me and my dead aunt is so uncanny that I can’t look at Jessie straight on. Instead I stick with glimpses from the corner of my eye, little peeks at her hair, her earrings, the collar of her shirt—never her face, or her hands on the steering wheel, I can’t bring myself to really see that part of her. She’s not much younger than any of my other aunts but like Evie, her skin is unlined and pliant despite her age, she has the same wide mouth, the same pouty lips. Eyes, too—it’s like looking back through the years and peering into every memory I have of my great-aunt. Jessie is thinner than Evie was, but she has the same hips, the same height, the same hair, for Christ’s sake. My fingers crumple the top of the paper bag rammed between my knees. I can’t handle this.
She pulls out of the parking lot and turns right, away from the house. “Why are you here?” I ask suddenly, sure that if anyone’s going to break the silence, it’ll have to be me.
The silk of her blouse rolls over her shoulders like the tide as she shrugs. “Same reason you are,” she says. She even talks like Evie, though the hearty voice is thicker, as if laced with smoke.
I feel like a child again, self-conscious and unsure. “You know?” I ask, before I can think better of it. Of course she knows—she’s here, isn’t she? At her slight frown, I stare out the window at the quiet houses of Sugar Creek that pass us by and fumble through my thoughts. “I mean, how’d you find out? Who told you?”
“No one told me,” she replies. With one hand on the steering wheel, she reaches between the seats for a newspaper behind her—Monday’s copy of the Sugar Creek Gazette. The page is folded open to the obituaries, and there’s a picture of my aunt in the center of them all, large as life. The photograph is recent, I don’t remember ever seeing it before, and there’s a hint of hair in the corner that has been cropped out, one of the kids sitting on Evie’s lap for the pose. My aunt is laughing in the picture, her cheeks dark and shiny like apples, her eyes gleaming even in black and white newsprint. She was a beautiful woman, I’ve always thought that. Everything inside of her heart shone through on her face when she smiled or laughed, all the goodness and amusement and joy she held, it all poured out as refreshing as a summer rain. I blink back hot tears and set the paper back on the seat behind me, out of sight.
Jessie glances into the rearview mirror as if to make sure the paper’s safe and says again, softly, “No one told me, Mike. It is Michael, right? Laura’s boy?” When I nod, she asks, “How’s she doing, anyway?”
I force a laugh. “You picked the wrong son to kidnap if you want the inside scoop on my mom,” I tell her.
“I didn’t kidnap you,” she points out. I can feel her looking at me so I keep my face turned studiously away, my gaze on the houses we drive by. “You got in the car willingly enough. I’m just giving you a ride back to the house, that’s all. Nothing to get excited about.”
“I’m not excited,” I lie, but my hands are sweaty and my heart thuds in my chest. Part of me is excited, very much so, and when I get back, I’m going to rub this into Caitlin’s face, guess who I ran into at Grosso’s, you’ll never believe it. God, my mom will shit, and when word gets out that Jessie’s in town and she gave me a ride home from the store, I’m going to be the center of attention. My aunts will be pissed, I’m sure, but my cousins? They’ll be climbing over themselves with envy. If Evie was the favorite aunt, Jessie is definitely the most notorious, and I have a feeling that I’ll be retelling every second of this car ride tonight to a room full of breathless, jealous kids.
I fist my hands tight around the bag holding the milk so Jessie won’t see them tremble. “You don’t get on with your mom?” she asks. Yeah, definitely related to me—everyone in my family is open and frank when it comes to being nosy. To them, if you’re blood, your life is instantly a topic for discussion, whether or not you want to talk about it. You can’t grow up staying at a house as crowded as Evie’s and retain any semblance of privacy. “What,” Jessie laughs, “are you the bad seed or something? Welcome to my world.”
“I don’t do it on purpose,” I assure her. “That’s my sister.”
“You have a sister?” she asks. “I’m out of the loop. How old?”
She wouldn’t know about Caitlin, would she? “Sixteen,” I say. The last time I saw Aunt Jessie, Mom wasn’t even pregnant yet, it was just me and Ray. “I have a brother, too
—”
Dismissing him with a wave of her hand, she wants to know, “So what have you guys told her about me? I’m sure she knows.”
I try to sound nonchalant and fail miserably. “No one really mentions you…”
“Bullshit,” Jessie says, surprising me. I see her reflection on the glass beside mine, watching me, and I meet her furious gaze in the safety of the window. I don’t dare turn around. “When I drove by yesterday, they were out there changing the locks, Michael. Don’t tell me they did that just for shits and giggles.”
“I mean normally,” I correct. With a halfhearted smirk, I add, “You’re sort of off limits, I guess. One sure way to get someone in trouble. Mom, Ray’s talking about Aunt Jessie again.”
She smiles in spite of herself. “That easy, huh?”
I give her a sideways glance—her eyes have softened, the anger gone from her face, and with that grin she looks so much like Evie that my heart hurts in my chest. “Ray’s never been mistaken for an honor student,” I say. “All I had to do was ask him something like what’s our aunt’s name? The one Evie doesn’t like? And he’d blurt it out, Jessie, just like that, and I’d go running for Mom.”
Her smile widens. “And you’re sure you’re not the bad seed?” she jokes.
“I’m gay,” I tell her. If it bothers or surprises her, she doesn’t let it show. She simply nods, almost encouraging me to continue, so I do. It’s nice to be able to say it out loud—up at the house no one’s really asked about it. Dan’s my boyfriend, they all know that, but it’s almost a novelty that they don’t want to discuss, as if it’s not real. “It’s nothing new to me,” I say, trying to keep Evie’s smile on her face, “and hell, Caitlin knew, but apparently my mom’s gaydar is broken, or something, and she never figured it out. So I come home this weekend with my boyfriend to share the good news, right? I mean, I’m twenty-five, it’s about time she knows. And not two seconds after I come out at the dinner table Saturday night, Penny calls about Evie.”
Jessie whistles low. “Talk about bad timing,” she says.
“Tell me about it,” I mutter. “I’m not exactly her favorite right now, as you can imagine.” We drive past the houses heading out of town and I ask, “Where are we going again?”
“Taking the long way home,” Jessie replies. “Don’t worry, I’m not snatching you away. So he’s here with you? Your boyfriend?”
I nod. “That’s another sore spot with her.”
“Yeah, it would be.” Jessie falls silent as we drive out of town. Between my legs, the paper bag has grown damp from the carton, and I wonder if the milk will sour. A five minute run down the street and now look at me, riding shotgun with a woman I almost thought didn’t exist. There’s a little voice inside my head that whispers I should put an end to this now, just tell her to stop the car and get out, I can walk back to Evie’s from here. But I squelch that voice, I don’t want to hear it. I’m already in deep with my mom as it is—anything she might say or do when she discovers I hung out with the elusive Jessie will be nothing compared to the shit she’s been given me since learning about Dan. I’m even going to enjoy it, I think. The look on her face will easily be worth anything she’ll dish out at me for this.
About a mile outside of Sugar Creek, Jessie slows the car down, does a three point turn in the middle of the street, and heads back. Thoughtful, her voice barely audible over the slight hiss of the heater, she asks, “Evie hated me?”
Did I say that? “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”
Jessie’s laugh is quick and bitter. “How would you put it, then?” she asks, clenching the steering wheel so hard that I swear I can feel the car shake in the grip of her emotions. When I don’t answer immediately, she prompts, “Michael?”
“Evie never mentioned you,” I say, thinking about it. Rumors of Aunt Jessie were relegated to the bedroom, whispered beneath the covers like ghost stories told in the dark to frighten each other. The few times someone managed to work up the bravado—or, in Ray’s case, the stupidity—to blurt out her name around adults, it was met with instant punishment, you were yelled at or slapped across the mouth or sent from the room. My mom was one for the proverbial washing your mouth out with soap, something I was never a victim of but Ray…she’d squeeze his cheeks together until his lips popped apart, no matter how tight he was trying to hold them shut, and squirt dishwashing liquid into his mouth. “Raymond Thomas Knapp,” she’d mutter—somehow it always made things worse, when she added that middle name. “How many times have I told you about bringing her up in this household? Don’t play dumb with me, open up. You knew it was coming—open your mouth right this instant.”
Come to think of it, she’s probably the worst. Aunt Sarah’s pretty bad, too, and Bobbie…even Billy’s usually placid voice will harden in warning if Jessie’s name comes up. The only one who didn’t get all bent out of shape was Evie. Once, a year or two after Jessie’s single visit, I sat at the kitchen table with Evie and Stephen—he’s in every one of my damn memories of this place. We ate bologna sandwiches and homemade potato chips, which I stuck on my sandwich. Penny stood at the sink, cutting flowers from the garden to put into a vase. I remember the sound of the water running as she held each stem under the spigot, snipped the end at an angle, tucked the flower carefully into the vase with the others before moving onto the next. When Aunt Bobbie came into the kitchen, she stopped to bury her nose in the blooms. “So gorgeous,” she sighed—even from where I sat, I could smell a cacophony of scents, gardenia and rose and mimosa, a dozen other flowers I had no names for. Fluffing the petals gently, Bobbie joked, “We should have a dinner party or something. Put these out in the middle of the table so everyone can see how beautiful they are. Who could we invite?”
“Aunt Jessie,” I said without thinking. Why not? She stopped by a few years ago, right? I opened my sandwich and placed a few chips on the bologna, covered them with the bread, pressed down with my palm to flatten them out. When I realized no one answered me, I looked up, surprised. Penny glared at me, Bobbie stared hatefully, and Evie…
Her face drained of color, white like the sundress she wore, her eyes as dark as the deep blue wooden fish on her necklace and so impossibly sad. She pressed her lips together, dropped her gaze, obviously upset. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, suddenly terrified. I had never see my aunt like this before, laughing and joking one minute, almost ready to cry the next. Reaching across the table, I covered her large hand with my small fingers and murmured, “Aunt Evie? I’m sorry, really, I didn’t mean—”
Penny dropped her scissors into the sink, the metal blades clattering against the steel finish. “Michael, go upstairs,” she said, curt, as she dried her hands on a dish towel. When I tried to protest, she shook her head. “Go on. You and Stephen both. Take your lunch up there.”
“She was here before,” I pointed out, but I slid out of my chair, gathered my napkin full of chips in one hand, my sandwich in the other. “I didn’t think—”
“She’s not welcome here anymore,” Aunt Bobbie told me. Her voice was brisk and cutting like a winter wind. “I don’t want to hear you talk about her again, do you hear me? Not one word.”
With a slight pout in my voice, I mumbled, “I said I was sorry.” I looked to Evie for reassurance, a warm smile, something, but she just fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth, her lower lip trembling as if she were struggling not to cry. “I’m sorry,” I said before slipping upstairs, and when I came down, I said it again, coming up behind Evie and wrapping my arms around her wide waist, pressing my face into her back to dry tears that threatened to fall. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. I didn’t mean to make you so sad.”
She turned and caught me in a massive embrace, her hands soothing on my hair, my neck. “It’s okay, Michael,” she sighed. “Just…please don’t…”
She couldn’t seem to finish the thought, but I knew what she meant. Don’t talk of Jessie. “I won’t,” I promised, and for all the
times I spoke of her in hushed whispers among my cousins, all the times I provoked Ray into saying her name just to get him in trouble, all the times I made up horror stories for Caitlin about our infamous aunt, I never once mentioned her again in front of Evie. I didn’t like the person she became when her thoughts turned to her sister, melancholy and almost depressed, not at all my Evie, the happy woman for whom I would give the world just to keep her that way. There was something between her and Jessie, something that drove a thorn so deep into Evie’s heart that she could never, ever pull it free. She couldn’t forgive, couldn’t move on, couldn’t get past whatever it was that kept the two of them apart. Just thinking of Jessie was enough to plunge her into a mood as black and depthless as the undertow at sea. It threatened to drag her down, to drown her in a past she couldn’t forget.
No, hate wasn’t something she felt for Jessie. A love so tattered and torn that it ached in her chest like a wound that wouldn’t heal, maybe, but not hate. “She didn’t hate you,” I tell my aunt. “She…I think she loved you too much, maybe? It hurt to think of you, or hear your name, and the others…well, I guess they just thought it’d be best not to bring it up, you know? Nothing to remind her about…” I shrug, helpless. “I don’t know about what, Aunt Jessie. No one ever talks about whatever it was that happened.”
She looks at me from the corner of her eye. We’re halfway through town now—there’s the Robichaud place, can we just stop driving by it already? Isn’t there another way to Evie’s? I wonder if Stephen’s inside…“You don’t know?” Jessie asks, incredulous. “No one ever told you?”
I shake my head and she falls silent again, stares at the road ahead, lost in thought. When she does speak, she lowers her gaze to her hands on the steering wheel, watching them as if they belong to someone else. “Clara was young,” she tells me, “when your momma came along. You know that.” I nod, yes, I know the story. Fifteen at the time, twenty when she had Penny, twenty-five when her unborn son took her life. “Margie never had kids, never had time, what with Ma and Dad like they were. You know that, too.” I nod again. “Some time after Clara passed, the others married off, Bobbie and Billy and Sarah, leaving the three of us at the house. Evie has always loved kids—”