Ready or Not (Aggie's Inheritance)

by Havig, Chautona

Moments later, her “I’m overwhelmed” hymn wavered weakly from the depths of steam billowing from her half-closed bathroom door. Those who knew Aggie well could determine the state of her spirit by the songs she chose to sing. Some hymns were triumphant and cheerful; others she chose to bolster her spirits.

  “My faith looks up to Thee…” Aggie always sang the dear old hymn when she felt weak or fearful. Usually, by the end of the hymn, her voice rang out strong and sure. Aggie learned the habit of singing hymns as prayerful worship in the fifth grade, and years of singing had so ingrained the habit that her hymns became heartfelt prayers in times of rejoicing or distress.

  “O, bear me safe above, a raannsoommed soouuulll.” Yes, Aggie was now ready to greet the day.

  * * *

  Aggie dashed to answer the doorbell, arms full of laundry and dropping socks and stray towels in her wake. Doris Gantry stood at the door, laden with plastic grocery sacks. “I noticed the fridge was looking kind of sparse in the raw materials department, so I picked up a few things while I did my shopping this morning.”

  Forcing her lower jaw to reconnect with the upper, Aggie stepped back, calling for Tavish and Laird to come help bring the bags into the kitchen. Doris watched as Aggie struggled downstairs to the basement with her laundry burden. “Laird, honey, you boys put the refrigerated things in the fridge. If it’s frozen solid, should be, or can be, put it in the freezer.”

  Before she could return for a second load of clothes, the children filed downstairs, their arms full of dirty laundry. Doris shooed Aggie upstairs with strict instructions to stay out of her way. “But send Vannie down in a few hours with some water and a sandwich please. I think I’m going to get hungry.”

  Her protest died on her lips as the phone rang. Shaking her head as she thundered back upstairs, Aggie snatched up the kitchen phone with a breathless, “Hello?”

  “Agathena, the proper way to answer a telephone is to let the caller know who is speaking. You must provide a proper example for the children.”

  “Well, I--” her heart sank as Geraldine Stuart cut her off.

  “Do not interrupt me, young lady. I’d like to speak to each of the children.”

  Aggie, eager to get the children’s grandmother appeased and off the phone, grabbed Tavish as he walked by with another armload of clothing and swapped clothing for telephone. “It’s your grandmother.”

  She tossed the clothing to the foot of the basement stairs, feeling foolish that she hadn’t thought of that idea earlier. “Guys, your grandmother is on the phone and wants to speak to you. Tavish is talking to her now.”

  Jumping out of the doorway, she fully expected the children to stampede to the phone as she remembered doing when she was young. All she heard, however, were a few nervous shuffles and stage whispers of, “You first,” followed by, “No, you go!”

  Shocked at their reticence, Aggie glanced anxiously at Tavish. Tears streamed down the young boy’s face. He shook-- with either rage or fear-- which one, she could only guess. In a swift move, Aggie snatched the phone from Tavish’s hand, gave his shoulder a squeeze, and listened as Geraldine continued her lecture. At the first pause for breath, she pounced.

  “Geraldine, this is Aggie.”

  “I was speaking to my grandson, Agathena, and I don’t appreciate being interrupted. I was surprised that you didn’t send Vanora to the phone first. She is the eldest--”

  “Mrs. Stuart! I’ve taken the phone from Tavish because he is visibly distraught. The other children are busy, so I’m afraid you’ll have to speak to them some other time.”

  “I do not think you understand me, Agathena Milliken. I am the children’s grandmother, and according to the law, I have the right to visit with them anytime I please. Now--”

  Aggie interrupted for the last time. “Mrs. Stuart. Your so-called right to have visits with the children does not extend to unsupervised conversations that upset them.”

  For the next twenty minutes, she stared at the phone in her hand waiting for the irate voice to cease. She couldn’t bring herself to hang up on an older woman, but neither was she willing to listen to the continuing tirade. When she heard Geraldine shouting her name, Aggie spoke. “I’m still here, Mrs. Stuart. Will there be anything else?”

  Answered by sudden disconnection, she set the phone back on the receiver and sighed. Aggie rubbed her temple. A headache threatened to explode behind her eyes. In desperation, she reached for the coffee pot.

  * * *

  Once again, Aggie collapsed in bed physically sapped. Every muscle in her body ached, and she realized she hadn’t been off her feet for more than ten minutes at a time all day. Her mind zipped from one thought to another at a dizzying speed. The silky cotton sheets smelled of fabric softener, and the open doors of her closet showed washed and pressed clothing hanging where Allie’s clothes hung that morning.

  Doris left just after nine-thirty. Every scrap of clothing in the house was stain-treated, washed, dried, pressed, and put in their proper places. The towels in the bathrooms were luxuriously soft and neatly folded. Stacks of fresh sheets sat in baskets on the washer awaiting a massive bed-changing event. Somehow, she knew that had Doris not run out of time, every bed in the house would be sporting newly washed and dried sheets.

  Nestled in her freshly made bed, Aggie recalled the highs and lows of her day. The children seemed to be settling into the change of routine. Whereas their life had once been well-ordered and structured, now an incredibly loose routine was the best she could manage. “Geraldine would be appalled,” Aggie muttered.

  The thought of Geraldine Stuart brought a flush of anger to her face. Tavish, sobbing after the verbal assault by his grandmother over his inadequate mourning habits disturbed her so deeply that she’d called her lawyer and requested he return her call the first thing on Monday morning. This kind of emotional manipulation must cease.

  Aggie recalled the antics of Cari and Lorna. She had always wondered why it was that no one ever mentioned the identical twins as “Lorna and Cari.” Lorna was a full fifteen minutes older, yet Cari took definite precedence. However, they spoke of Lorna as an appendage and rarely mentioned her without both names linked together. Now, she knew why. Cari had enough personality and spunk for five toddlers. Lorna was often lost in her twin’s shadow but was never absent from Cari’s mischief. Somehow, the younger twin had learned to invent more kinds of mayhem than a young child should be capable of, and she was an expert at getting her less adventuresome twin to share the blame of her little escapades.

  The past week had been a trial for her. She was learning how to balance sympathy and discipline, and by Saturday, the children had discovered that their young aunt knew nothing about children and were taking great advantage of that fact. Cari seemed to know exactly how to get her way without being outwardly resistant, but Aggie was certain that abject defiance was just around the corner. She thought she wouldn’t care as long as she could learn to tell them apart. Anytime Cari wanted to exasperate her inexperienced new guardian, she suddenly became quiet and withdrawn, mimicking Lorna’s demeanor and mannerisms perfectly. The result was a complete inability for anyone, even for most of the family, to tell the girls apart.

  Five-year-old Kenzie was a sweet, impish darling. Apparently, everyone’s favorite, Aggie had already lost her heart to the endearing little cutie. Thick red pigtails and a bridge of freckles across her nose set off her blue eyes. The result was an elfin beauty that called to mind County Kerry rather than Scotland’s moors.

  Little Elspeth concerned her, though. Ellie was quiet, reserved, and almost unnaturally unemotional. Such a definitively placid child seemed strange. However, she was fiercely loyal, especially and quite naturally to her twin brother, Tavish. She expressed her love and affection through her actions, though often with an expressionless demeanor.

  Physically, Ellie was the odd child when compared to her siblings. Nearly black curls tumbled down her back on the rare occasions that she let it down from one thick
braid. Her eyes were a deep emerald green, and her pale face blushed prettily. To Aggie, Ellie looked like the picture of a stereotypical Diana Barry from Anne of Green Gables. However, no one would call Elspeth a beauty. She was attractive enough but too ordinary to be called beautiful.

  Her close relationship with Tavish made it easy for her to understand his unspoken thoughts and actions. When he disappeared into his little sanctuary under the stairs and their siblings teased him, Ellie defended him. She could make everyone leave him alone without a frown or a raised voice. Aggie was impressed.

  Laird, however, was quite the opposite of his younger brother. He drove first-born, type-A, brand-X Vannie crazy and was entirely oblivious to it. While Vannie tried to pick up the living room that evening, Laird tossed his dirty socks into the ceiling fan to “dust it.” Subsequently, dust flitted down to cover the freshly cleaned surfaces.

  Vannie finally threw the dirty socks at Laird, trying to show her indignation. It didn’t work. Laird promptly tossed them into the fan again. Before long, all the little ones raced around the room trying to catch the balled up socks so they could toss them into the fan and watch it hurl them across the room. The children were so engrossed in their play that no one but Aggie saw Vannie race upstairs in tears.

  The scene played again through Aggie’s mind, and her heart squeezed anew as she remembered it. She’d knocked gently and then opened Vannie’s door. “Sweetie? Do you want to talk about it?”

  Not sure how to handle her distraught niece, she’d kept talking, keeping her voice as light and conversational as she could manage. “What’s bothering you?” Vannie didn’t acknowledge the question. Instead, she sobbed and buried her face in her pillow. Aggie wasn’t certain if Vannie’s tears were from the frustration of her undone work, or if there was deeper pain surfacing. In desperation, Aggie finally said, “You just cry it out, and I’ll sit here until you are ready to talk about it.”

  Vannie’s response startled her. “He doesn’t care about anything! He is so laid back and irresponsible! He’s just like Daddy! If Daddy had been more careful and less immature they might be alive right now!” With that startling statement, Vannie dissolved into deeper and more heart wrenching sobs. Stunned, Aggie pulled Vannie to her and hugged her fiercely.

  “Vannie, listen to me. Your father didn’t do anything foolish or careless. The truck ahead of them had an accident. The most cautious driver couldn’t have avoided hitting him.” Looking deeply into the young girl’s eyes, Aggie continued. “They would not have died if it weren’t for the mix up at the hospital. They weren’t even in critical condition. They just lost a lot of blood, and the doctors ordered a transfusion as a precaution.

  She swallowed her rising need to deal with her own grief and focused on talking about the accident. “You see, a bus had a terrible accident in the rain and dozens of people were arriving, one ambulance after another. They were short staffed due to the storm, and the nurse just made a mistake.”

  “What kind of mistake?” Vannie’s wails sounded almost panicked.

  “Two nurses were there giving them blood, but when the ambulances started arriving, one went to help. The nurse that gave your parents their blood was tired, anxious to go help, and misread the bags or something. The hospital thinks the bags were actually mislabeled, but we don’t know. Anyway, your dad got your mom’s blood and vice versa. When you get the wrong kind of blood it can cause organ failure, and they’d lost so much blood already…”

  Finally, Vannie’s sobs quieted and she said, “No one ever really explained it. No one will talk about it. All we were told is that they died from complications from the accident.”

  She took a deep breath and continued, “I overheard Grandma Stuart say that Daddy had no business being out that late, and I thought she meant…”

  As she comforted her niece, Aggie wondered how a woman who loved her son as much as Geraldine Stuart obviously did could never say anything kind to or about him. Why couldn’t she simply keep silent when there was something unpleasant to say? A new resolve entered Aggie’s heart at that moment. She would heed her sister’s warnings. The children’s paternal grandparents could forget unsupervised visitation and have extremely limited access to the children. Geraldine was already criticizing her grandchildren, and it wouldn’t be long before they dreaded the sting of their grandmother’s tongue just as their father had.

  Remembering the discussion, Aggie snuggled deeper into her artificially sunshine-scented sheets, and the tears flowed. The grief she’d worked so hard to stifle with Vannie overwhelmed her, sending her into recurring waves of sobs. The line between consciousness and sleep blurred with each dropping tear until she finally sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Sunday, March 3rd

  As she cuddled with Ian and his bottle the next morning, Aggie fantasized about sleeping in and skipping church services that morning. The fact that she couldn’t fit everyone in her car tempted her to call the children and tell them not to dress for church. Just as she started to yell for the nearest child, the phone rang, startling both her and the baby. She soothed the baby with a quick hug and gave him back the bottle he’d dropped in his surprise, before snatching the phone from the charger.

  Minutes later, she dashed down the hall shouting orders into each room. “Get your shoes on, find the brush, where are the socks, and what did you guys do with my can of coffee?”

  As she rushed to button Kenzie’s dress and then braid the twins’ hair, Aggie felt like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off. Upon reconsideration, she changed her mind. “I’d imagine even half-dead chickens display more dignity than me in my current state.”

  Clutching four different shoes in one hand and a fist full of socks in the other, Aggie called up the stairs in desperation, “Does anyone have two matching shoes of the same size?” While she hurried to fill a bottle for the diaper bag, she muttered to herself, “Why Allie ever purchased identical shoes for identical twins is completely beyond comprehension! What am I supposed to do with two left white sandals and four feet?”

  Somehow, she managed to find matching shoes for all the little girls. “Allie is probably getting dizzy from the spinning in her grave over these things,” she muttered again. The ludicrous picture that her mind conjured as she spoke sent her off into a fit of giggles that rapidly melted into choking sobs.

  Mrs. Gansky found the children and Aggie huddled around the bottom step in the entryway, wiping tears and looking miserable. Kenzie’s nose ran, and Cari’s face held a look of impending doom. Little Lorna seemed to have withdrawn further into herself, while Vannie looked several years older.

  “We’ve had a bit of a sob fest, Mrs. Gansky. It’s amazing how lost shoes can become such a big deal when you have bigger hurts wanting to be noticed, isn’t it?”

  * * *

  Eyebrows rose as Aggie tore out of the parking lot from church and zipped down the road. She’d been so eager to be with the church and sing, listen to some encouraging teaching, and have a refreshing time of fellowship. After missing church the week before, she’d especially looked forward to the peaceful time of communion that always seemed to ground her and settle her spirit in ways that nothing else did.

  Today, however, fellowship with the church had been stress personified. From the moment she stepped out of her car, until the moment she pealed out of the parking lot, people had flooded her with condolences, offers of help, and more advice than ten mothers could have tried to follow in a lifetime. The hugs, pats, and knowing-smiles were more than enough. When followed by announcements reminding the congregation of all the help Aggie was going to need, that was almost too much to bear. Guilt nearly smothered her until she realized that everyone was merely doing what the church should.

  Aggie repeatedly p-mailed quick prayers, begging for patience and understanding with well-meaning people until she despaired of her prayers being little more than “vain repetitions.” P-mail was Aggie’s personal term for sending very quick, very s
hort prayers. Aggie considered it her way to live out the Biblical admonition to “pray without ceasing.” On days like today, she tended to feel like she’d abused her account, and that if she wasn’t careful, her p-mails would bounce, or worse, be sent to God’s spam filter.

  After the first stoplight and a deep breath of relief, she drove home slowly, enjoying the chatter of the little girls and Ian’s coos in the seat behind her. Remembering a drive-thru style convenience store, she drove out of the way, savoring the extra minutes before reaching home, and bought ice cream for the children’s dessert. Dessert on Sunday was a Milliken tradition and one Aggie did not want her charges to miss.

  Her car slowly puttered through elm-lined streets. Somehow, the Dutch elm disease hadn’t yet touched the old stately trees in Allie’s neighborhood. She snorted indelicately, amused at the idea of her little outdated Beetle hob-knobbing with the elegant homes of this proud and established neighborhood. As they reached the end of the street, through the tall junipers that lined the wrought iron fencing, she glimpsed a car. Pulling through the imposing (and in her opinion, pretentious) gates, Aggie managed to stifle an audible groan, although her mental mutterings were less self-controlled. Geraldine Stuart’s late model Mercedes sat parked in the middle of the driveway, blocking her usual parking place. She was forced to pull into an awkward corner of the driveway far from the door and with little room to maneuver out of the vehicle. Forgetting earlier notions of an exceeded p-mail quota, she quickly sent another zinger heavenward. “Lord, am I in trouble or something? Why today?”

  She rearranged her face into what felt like a pleasant smile and turned to greet her sister’s mother-in-law. “Good morning, Mrs. Stuart! We didn’t know you were coming, or we’d have invited you to church with us. I see you managed to get in just fine!”

  Aggie jotted, “ensure all doors are always locked,” on her continually running mental task list. Mrs. Gansky pulled up to the front of the house and diverted her attention for a moment as the older children spilled out of the Gansky’s car and raced up the driveway to greet their grandmother. The look on Mrs. Stuart’s face discouraged her from any more forced brightness. She stuffed down the feeling of impending doom that followed Geraldine Stuart like a cartoon cloud, and led the children into the house.