A Comedy of Heirs (8 page)

“Yes.”

“Cool,” he said, his attitude changing abruptly. “I'll get my boy after all. I will no longer be outnumbered! I'll have somebody that will help me fight for the bathroom!” Evidently his head started throbbing or some kind of pain in his nose seized him because he winced, shut up and went back to moaning.

If he hadn't just busted his nose himself, I would have busted it for him.

Nine

“Aunt Sissy!” I cried. My favorite aunt in the whole wide world came walking up my front drive with her specialty perched in her very capable hands: red velvet cake. If it weren't for the fact that I might damage the red velvet cake, I would have jumped into her arms just like I did when I was a kid. I was so excited to see her, I stood there on my front porch giddy as a schoolgirl.

“I can't believe you're really here,” I said as she stepped up on the front porch. Aunt Sissy lived in Minnesota and rarely drove in for these functions. The reason she is called Sissy is because my dad couldn't say Felicity, it came out Sissity. So they just called her Sissy.

“I'm here, dammit,” she said. “With your favorite cake.” Aunt Sissy wore her characteristic jeans cut off at the shins, a sweater with different color patches all over it and her yellow Converse sneakers. I'll admit, that's who I learned to wear my Converse hightops from. She was the most unique and free-spirited person in the family. Well, other than Uncle Jed. He's so weird, we almost don't claim him, though.

“This is so cool,” I said. “You won't recognize my girls, they've grown so much since we were in Minnesota last.”

“I hardly recognize you,” she said. “When did you sleep last?”

“Where's Uncle Joe?” I asked, to avert her question.

“He's flying in,” she said. “Had business to attend to.”

We walked in the door and Rudy greeted us. His nose was not broken, but he sure banged it a good one. We spent two hours in the hospital yesterday during which they asked him all kinds of questions. I think they thought we'd been fighting and that I hit him with something. A swollen nose and slightly bruised eyes were the only damage. Well, aside from that pride of his.

“Egads, Rudy. Did Torie beat you up?” she asked.

“Yup,” he said.

“It's about damn time,” she said and walked right on by Rudy and into my kitchen. “Hello, Jalena,” she said to my mother. “Still as beautiful as ever, I see.” She spoke the words almost as if it were a sin for my mother to be beautiful. She had such a brusque and matter-of-fact tone to her voice and her manner of speaking that unless she was in her herb garden or, like all my other aunts, quilting, she always spoke like she was giving a business dissertation of some sort.

“Thank you, Sissy,” my mother said. “I was just going out on the porch.”

“Oh yeah,” Aunt Sissy said. “Go on. You can't wait to get away from me.”

My mother just smiled and went on out to the porch. This was typical for Aunt Sissy. I can't explain why I like this woman so much, I just do. I took the cake from her and put it on the counter next to the mincemeat pie that somebody brought. I couldn't even begin to remember who it was.

Wendy came into the room. “Aunt Sissy,” she said. She walked over and did one of those air kisses that you see in Hollywood. “I've missed you so much.” The syrupy sugar just dripped from her lips.

“Yeah,” Aunt Sissy said with about as much enthusiasm as one would have watching a snail crawl across the porch. “Missed you, too.”

“Torie, my mother said you had a blender we could use to make daiquiris,” Wendy said.

“Yeah, up there in that top cabinet. Be careful, though. The deep fryer likes to fall out on people's heads,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. She pulled a chair over and got the blender down, and sure enough the fryer came flying out, but she was ready for it and caught it and shoved it back in. “Thanks,” she said and put the chair back. She straightened her blouse down over her skirt so that there were no wrinkles, left the blender on the counter and then left the room.

“I hate that girl,” Aunt Sissy said.

I just smiled.

“So, Ike is here,” Aunt Sissy declared.

“Evidently,” I said. She was speaking of her brother Isaac who was Wendy's father. “I didn't see him arrive, but it would seem that he and Aunt Nancy are here, based on what Wendy just said.”

“And my other rotten no-good brother?”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

“Actually, they are all here. Or at least somewhere in town. The only one we are waiting on is Aunt Ruth, now that you are here.”

“So when you people gonna get some snow?” she asked.

“It snowed last night.”

“You call that snow?” She made some dismissive noise and then said, “That's just the clouds shaking off dust.”

“Well, up there in Minnesota things get a little ridiculous. Fifty feet of snow is a little overboard.”

“Well,” she said, “maybe since I'm here the snow will follow me and you people will get more than a dusting.”

“What's with all this ‘you people' crap? Did you forget you've only lived in Minnesota for ten years? We are
your
people.”

She made that noise again. “Oh, I brought you something.” she said. “I brought you a big box of scrap material so you can make a quilt.”

“Aunt Sissy, I don't quilt,” I said, even though I had checked a book out on it. She knew I didn't quilt. We'd had this discussion many times and it always ended with her being thoroughly disappointed in me.

“As much as quilting runs in your veins, you should quilt. I don't care if it's ugly and none of your points meet, you should be doing it.”

I took her coat that she had folded across her arm. Coat was not the word for it. It was more like a jacket. Guess if this wasn't real cold down here either. “Aunt Sissy—”

“Don't. Just hush,” she said and held up her hand. “I also brought you a box of stuff that was Mom's.”

I looked at her for a moment. Why would she bring me a box of Grandma's things when she had children of her own to give it to? “What things?” I asked, curious but cautious.

“It's just a box of things. Some letters, cards, a few old buttons, a handkerchief or two, some matchbooks. You know, the kind of stuff you'd get out of somebody's junk drawer,” she explained. “Let me go out to the car and get them.”

“Wait,” I said. “Why would you bring them to me?” She could cause some hurt feelings among the other cousins. She just looked at me. That look made me think that maybe she
wanted
to stir up trouble.

She escaped through the living room and out to her car. Wendy came back into the kitchen with a bottle of rum ready to make daiquiris. “I hate that woman,” she said about Aunt Sissy. I could have told her that the feeling was mutual but decided not to. She went to my freezer and got out frozen strawberries and the lime juice and went about making the daiquiris. I decided to meet Aunt Sissy on the way in, because I didn't want her to come back into the kitchen with the stuff and take a chance on Wendy seeing it.

Rudy smiled at me from his favorite chair as I entered the living room. He and a bunch of my cousins were watching some sport activity. It seems that after he'd had a chance to think about this baby thing, he is actually quite excited about it. Which not only worries me but scares me. I on the other hand, was still wrestling with the idea that I had a baby, a little creature that was going to grow up and scream at me, growing within me at this very moment. It just didn't seem real. We hadn't told anybody else. It's sort of hectic and we thought we'd just announce it at the dinner on Sunday when everybody would be in attendance.

I met Aunt Sissy at the door. She was carrying two boxes. “Let's take these upstairs,” I said and took a box from her. She followed me up to my office and the bedroom that Rudy and I shared. Our upstairs used to be just all one attic, but before we bought the house the owners sectioned it off. So the steps were the divider between my office and our bedroom with the bathroom directly in front of the steps. There was no real wall to separate my office from the bedroom.

I had just redecorated our room in blue gingham. My pinewood floors were the perfect accent against pale blue walls, with dark blue checked border and similar curtains. I set one of the boxes on the bed and Aunt Sissy sat her box in the floor.

“Where'd you get that quilt?” she asked, looking at the mauve Lonestar on my bed.

“Oh,” I said, “an old lady left that to me in her will. Only met her once, but she took a liking to me, I suppose.”

She pointed to the box that I was holding. “There are scraps in there that are twenty-five years old,” she said.

“Oh, good. So then I should have a lot of polyester and paisley.” I opened the box and was immediately struck by what she had said. I recognized pieces of fabric that my grandmother had used on the aprons she made for herself. I also noted a few fabrics that had been dresses my grandmother had made for me when I was about five or six.

“Some of Dad's old shirts in there, too,” she said. “Know how crazy you were about him.”

I was speechless. Not only speechless but touched. My throat constricted and I was surprised by the fact that this gesture nearly brought me to tears. It was as if she'd gone through her scrap collection and picked this stuff out just for me.

“I went through my scrap collection, which is about ready to take over the house, and picked those out just for you,” she said.

I love Aunt Sissy. There is no subtlety here. No guessing what she means or if she's sincere. She just lays it out there for you.

“I don't quilt, Aunt Sissy.”

“Now you can,” she said.

“What if I screw up on the scraps that you gave me? I would never forgive myself.”

“Then don't screw up.”

“I don't know what to say.”

“I don't want you to say anything. I want you to make a quilt.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll try.”

“Good. I'm going in to town. Gonna find that good-for-nothing brother of mine.”

“Which one?”

“Jed. Haven't seen him in years.”

“He's probably at the Corner Bar.”

“I know exactly where he is,” she said. “I'll be back in time for dinner.”

With that she just turned and disappeared down my steps and into the craziness of the room below. I went into my office and found the book on quilts that I had checked out at the library. I brought it back into my bedroom and sat down on the bed, next to the box of scraps. I flipped through the book and got to the part that had patterns especially for scrap quilts. Quilts that you could make with small pieces of material. There was one that caught my eye. It was called the Indian Hatchet. Part of the reason that I was struck by this was that in the middle of each square was a diagonal piece of white material that people signed. It was a signature quilt or friendship quilt.

What better way to get samples of people's handwriting to match to the note that I received with the newspaper articles? I would have everybody in attendance sign one of these squares. Then I could get samples of their handwriting and have a keepsake made out of keepsake material. I looked over at the box on the floor. I'd tackle that tomorrow. Right now it was enough to feel happy with my plan to find out who sent me those articles.

THE NEW KASSEL GAZETTE

T
HE
N
EWS
Y
OU
M
IGHT
M
ISS

by Eleanore Murdoch

Our Honorable Mayor, Bill Castlereagh, won the first-snow contest. He correctly predicted when we would get the first inch of snow. He wins four baseball tickets to the Cardinals game of his choice in the spring. Elmer Kolbe stated that the lake has been skatable for about a week now. Put on your skates and go on out to the lake for good clean fun.

In case you see Rudy O'Shea around town and wonder where he got the black eyes and swollen nose, they were the result of a serious skating accident. He swears that it was not the result of marital miscommunication.

And if you don't live in this town, please be respectful of other people's property. Elmer says if he finds out who stuck cigars in his garden nymphs' mouths, he's going to stick them up your nose.

Until next time,

Eleanore

Ten

“I found Hubert McCarthy,” Sheriff Brooke said. I held the phone in one hand and decorated sugar cookies with the other. Mary danced on one of the kitchen chairs, Uncle Jed ate the cookies faster than I could decorate them, and Aunt Charlotte stirred fudge over the stove. My mother had barricaded herself in her room around three in the afternoon and I hadn't seen her in about two hours.

“You're kidding,” I said in response to his news. “Dead or alive?” It would be just like the sheriff to call me up and say he'd found Hubert and that he was actually in a grave somewhere.

“Kinda in between,” the sheriff answered.

“What?” I asked. “Mary, get off the chair, you're going to fall.” She gave me that you-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about look and continued to dance. I came around to the side of the table to get her and my phone cord caught the can of sprinkle stuff and knocked it over. I now had two sugar cookies smothered in red sprinkles. It's a good thing I had the red tablecloth on the table. I shook the two cookies to try and get as much of the stuff off as I possibly could. “You're in so much trouble,” I said to her.

“I said I would find him and I did,” the sheriff said.

“No, I was talking to Mary,” I said and snapped my fingers at her. I tried my best to look menacing, but she knew I couldn't reach her and she just kept dancing on the chair. It's times like these you just want to say, Fine, go ahead and break your neck. But as a parent you'll never say those words because if it happened you could never live with yourself. So I tried to stretch farther across the table.