“She was here?”
A small piece of me was finding May’s response to the news funny (I’d never seen her freak out like this), but mostly I was worried. “I’m surprised your family didn’t disown her.”
She hadn’t stayed, but before departing Aunt Sophie had introduced herself—and I mean really introduced herself. In her words, “I’m old, I don’t have time to be misunderstood, and in any case I had a complete background check run on the old you. You have a surprisingly light presence on social media, but no skeletons I could find.”
I hadn’t known how to respond to that, but she hadn’t needed one. She’d just rolled out her story.
May’s mother’s elder sister by three years, she’d learned that she was a “free spirit” early enough to not make a Big Mistake (her words). “I stumbled upon forbidden literature and was smart enough to listen to what my body was telling me.” After endless fights with their parents over what was “proper of a young woman,” she’d left home and put herself through college before finding herself a government job the next state over. “Close enough to be there if family needed me, far enough away they wouldn’t bother me much.”
When May’s mother Ellen lost her husband overseas (a US Marine, he’d died in a terrorist bombing), May had been as young as Steph was now. Ellen hadn’t coped well at all, and Sophie had brought them to live with her until May was six—at which point their parents had enticed Ellen back home with a well-paying job with the local school district. May had loved her Aunt Sophie, and after that had spent a few weeks of every summer with her until she graduated high school.
Sophie had described herself as a “guerilla feminist and not one of these modern feminists who subscribes to female superiority or the magical power of their uterus.” She’d lived a double life; by day a conventional if single woman of refined manners (she’d worked very hard on them) and impeccable dress and conversation, and by night a writer of, among other things, feminist prose and erotica (she called it lesbian smut). She’d also adventured, traveled to conventions under her nom de plume, and learned that she was bisexual and that both men and women could be pigs.
Apparently she hadn’t told May much about that—per her sister’s wishes—until her niece had left home for college. I was surprised to find out she still considered herself religious, but I could see where May got her convictions from.
“We’re all sinners, great and small,” Sophie had said. “So there isn’t any call to be condemning anybody for sins that don’t hurt anybody else.”
“Even the big ones?” I’d asked. “Thou shalt not commit adultery?”
Her face had turned stony at that. “That’s not just sex. There you’re breaking promises and hurting people even if they don’t know they’ve been hurt yet.” I’d nodded quickly with an “Okay, noted,” getting the distinct feeling she was passing stern judgement on her younger self.
But she had come, she’d said, to meet me and assure herself I wasn’t going bring harm to her niece or her family—and to make sure May didn’t fill my head with a bunch of nonsense about what it meant to be a woman. “She was influenced a great deal by her mama and grandmama, though I did my part to see that she heard other ideas.”
And she’d handed me a book, a slim hardback in a white dust jacket, titled A Pillow Book in silver calligraphy. “Every girl should receive one of these on her eighteenth birthday if not sooner,” she’d said. “I should know, I wrote it.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Taking a last sip of her second glass of sweet tea (without the bourbon), she’d made her departure, letting me know she’d gotten a hotel room and telling me to let May and that husband of hers know that she’d be back for dinner. I’d stood on the townhouse porch watching her cab drive away and wondering what had just happened and what Carl and May were going to say.
“Family is family,” May said now. “Chandlers will never disown you, they just won’t leave you alone. Why didn’t she call?” She jiggled Steph like an executive stress toy and the little lump started fussing.
Sighing, I took the munchkin from her. “I’m pretty sure she wanted to interrogate me alone.” In retrospect, I’d decided the interview had gone pretty well; Aunt Sophie had reminded me of more than one officious senior citizen I’d known, many of them my parents’ contemporaries, but at least she’d seemed clever and had a sense of humor about it.
(I didn’t think about the book she’d left with me; I’d taken one look inside its cover and stuck it in my dresser upstairs.)
“Well!” May said firmly. “She and I are going to talk about that! But first dinner! And Carl, she’s not staying in a hotel any longer than she needs to! The second bedroom—”
“We can move all the boxes to the basement,” Carl said as if that wasn’t going to be a chore and a half. “And I’m going to call the furniture store we got our bed from, they can deliver a double tomorrow. I’m going to order a full bedroom set, too. April, can you give me a hand? And we might as well get everything you need ordered at the same time.”
I almost laughed at May’s expression as Carl and I trooped out of the living room. On the one hand she’d wanted to make furniture shopping another big expedition, on the other hand we needed speed! Speed! Aunt Sophie must be hospitably housed with all swiftness! I climbed the stairs following Carl, Steph making happy noises at me, feeling a little guilty about leaving May to the meal prep. “Don’t be,” Carl said when I mentioned it. “I know she’s going to order the meat dish delivered prepped for the oven and when she’s like this she won’t let you so much as touch the prep for the rest. We’ll be back down to help dress the dining room.”
The next few hours were busy. All the boxes that Carl had moved from my new room to the second bedroom had to go, along with everything that had already been there. That meant lugging them down three flights of stairs to the basement, where room had to be found for them. I cribbed Steph and changed into a plain t-shirt and cargo shorts, carrying smaller boxes until it felt like my stick arms were going to fall off and then Carl had me mostly act as packer—figuring out where each new box he brought down needed to go.
The last box taken down, I vacuumed the carpet and we dusted the trim on the walls, getting a stepladder so we could dust the lights. Then I helped Carl measure the room and go online to order the double bed and accessorized furniture (paying extra for a rush delivery of course).
We also picked out bedroom furniture for me. I really wasn’t in a hurry, but Carl said May would stress over the possibility of Sophie poking her head into my room. He insisted on a new mattress and bedframe, not taking no for an answer, and after agonizing over it (my old bedroom was all masculine with dark woods) I chose an arrangement I could live with that probably wouldn’t look too odd as the bedroom furnishings of an eighteen-year-old girl.
We pushed BUY on an “antique white” bedroom set with a queen-sized bed, a dresser, a vanity table and mirror (Carl said knowing May I was going to need it), a full-length mirror, a single nightstand, a study desk, and a bookshelf. The wood-frame bed had a massive upholstered headboard in a white-trimmed blue that came close to matching the walls and a tall chest of drawers, matching wardrobe, and study desk and vanity table chairs rounded out the set.
Since the movers would move my current mismatched furniture out first, I started boxing the stuff in my drawers, stopping only when May texted a One hour! warning. Showering the dust and sweat off and getting back into my morning outfit—I wasn’t going to let Aunt Sophie think I’d changed for her—I dashed downstairs to help “dress the dining room.” That meant the Good China of course, a centerpiece, folded cloth napkins, etcetera, etcetera. I followed orders, only saluted once, and May got a chance to run upstairs and get ready herself before the doorbell rang and the dragon returned.
Dinner was going to be interesting.
