How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [49]
She looks surprised that I would let her stay while I’m out. Then she sits back on the couch, relaxes, and crosses one heavy ankle over the other.
Again I note the kimono picture hanging on the wall—that half-covered face of the woman, hiding—hiding behind the opened ornate fan. Suddenly, I’m hit with the thought that my aunt has been hiding from me her sorrow over the loss of her own father. How much like me she is. We really are from the same gene pool.
“Help yourself to cake,” I tell her, as I load the ingredients I need for today’s lesson—blueberry muffins—into my Whole Foods bag. “Jonas ate a slice earlier, but I think there’s a little left.”
“You’re a godsend,” she breathes as she rests against the quilt on the couch. “Did I ever tell you about the time Jo-Jen saved me from a depression?”
“No, you haven’t done that yet.”
She fingers her Minnie Mouse watch. “It was after my mother died. And now, you are helping me, Deena.”
“I am?” I can’t believe what she’s saying. Me? Not too long ago I was in a hospital bed, wishing I would have died in the accident.
“Your being here in this cabin has done wonders for me.
You bring life to this place.”
At times like these, I’m not sure what to say.
“I was married once,” my aunt says as she looks through the sliding glass door, somewhere over and beyond the edge of the visible mountain.
I make my voice soft. “I didn’t know that.”
“Men are… Well. Just make sure you know that no one can possess you.”
I do know that. “I know,” I say with force. I think of Lucas for a second and suppress the urge to scream.
My aunt glances toward the windows in the ceiling that are letting in an array of light. “Did you know that Katharine Hepburn said that plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do?” she asks the ceiling.
That, I didn’t know.
“My husband, Charlie—he appreciated gambling more than he did me.”
When she looks at me, I want to say something but no words come.
“He grew up in a home without hope. No one gave him any. I tried. I really gave it my best, Shug, but I guess it wasn’t enough.”
My sorrow is about to explode in my chest. Now I think I recall Mom saying something about how Regena Lorraine used to be married, but that her husband left one day for Vegas and never came back.
Her smile surprises me. “That which doesn’ kill us makes us stronger.”
That line I have heard many times since my accident. I wonder if my aunt would have preferred death to becoming a pillar of strength. My guess is that she might have looked around her and wondered why other women’s husbands stayed, offering happiness and fulfilling relationships. My guess is that she might have woken on many lonely nights to ask the age-old question, “Why me?!”
She catches me off guard when she comments, “You are like a lemon in the fridge.”
A lemon in the where? Could this be another of her entourage of quotes? Who said this one? “What about lemons?”
She lets out a slight laugh. “Ernest always believed that a lemon in the fridge is a good sign. He told me as a little girl that a lemon just sitting on a shelf in a refrigerator is a symbol of hope and contentment. It’s a long story. I know you have to go.”
I tell her I’ll see her later and head out the door.
My mother never cared much for Dad’s side of the family— this is true. Growing up, I recall that her parents, her siblings, and her siblings’ kids visited us often on our farm. As far as dad’s relatives in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, we rarely saw them.
Yet Grandpa Ernest didn’t let my mother’s coolness stop him from putting me in his will. Sometimes family has to persevere in spite of the obstacles in the way.
My aunt was thoughtful and parked her truck beside my Jeep instead of behind it, leaving me room to back out without much trouble. The driveway, being so close to the edge of the mountain, still makes me nervous, but I am getting a little more used to it and learning how to maneuver in and out.
I drive down the steep road, grateful for my father’s father. Sometimes life’s biggest blessings