by Libby Klein
I said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” but it was too late.
South Jersey seagulls, it is not commonly known, belong to the Teamsters Union. They’re like pit bulls with wings. Within five seconds, about fifty seagulls were reenacting the telephone booth scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, making the tourist drop her plate of fries and run screaming for the door.
As omens go, this was not a good one.
Figaro was hissing and spitting and swatting at imagined birds in his carrier and I had to use two hands to wrangle it back down to the car. His fur was still standing up when we docked in Cape May and disembarked.
I went into desperate-prayer mode: Please, God, don’t let Aunt Ginny launch right into me about how long it’s been since I’ve been home and how I’ve let her down. Oh, and P.S., please help me find Spanx to look twenty pounds thinner before the reunion. Amen.
I crossed the bridge onto the island and into the historic district. Shady streets were lined with colorful Victorian houses built in 1879 by a real estate developer from Philadelphia. There was a building boom going on to restore Old Cape May, as many of the buildings had been destroyed in the Great Fire.
My great-great-grandfather bought our house to use as a summer beach cottage. It’s been in my family ever since although it’s rumored that a great-uncle almost lost it to Henry Ford in a poker game.
When I pulled up in front of the gingerbread Queen Anne, I knew right away that something was horribly wrong.
I rubbed my eyes.
The House of Dracula did not vanish. Aunt Ginny’s place looked deserted and . . . creepy. The once-grand Victorian glared back in a woeful, “What are you looking at?” state of disrepair that I had never seen before. The buttercup yellow paint was peeling, exposing weathered bare wood, some of it gray with mildew from the constant damp air of being one block from the Atlantic Ocean. The gingerbread trim and spindles of the balustrade had faded and become so drab you could no longer make out their vibrant “Easter egg” pink and purple colors. Thick morning glory vines had grown up covering the once quaint wraparound porch. Bare, climbing rose vines were gnarled and twisted out of control making the house look like the backdrop for Little Shop of Horrors. Boxwood bushes were overgrown and blocking first-floor windows. What looked like at least two seasons of dead leaves lay in piles around the yard and the grass was so tall there had to be snakes hiding underneath. Pythons, at least.
Figaro—as if sensing doom—flicked and thumped his tail against the carrier, and his eyes darted back and forth as I unbuckled it and removed him from the car. He jumped inside the carrier when the lighthouse weather vane squealed as it swung in the wind. I rested the carrier on my hip to force the lopsided wrought-iron gate open, with much protest from the rusty hinges, then leaned a rock from the yard against it to keep it from slamming back into us.
As I trudged up the uneven walk toward the porch, the front door creaked open. A little old lady with bright orange hair peeked her head out.
“Poppy? Is that you?”
Aunt Ginny is a bit of a free spirit. Her age is estimated at around eighty. No one knows for sure how old she is because she won’t tell.
“I mean—it looks like you but then it’s been sooo long.”
Oh boy. Here we go.
Figaro rumbled out a cat growl.
Looking at Aunt Ginny was a vision of my future. If I had her emerald green eyes I’d be the spitting image of her at forty-two. Her I-Love-Lucy-red hair may have been from a bottle now but most of her life it was homegrown. My blue eyes and broad shoulders come from my German grandmother on my mother’s side, but my porcelain skin and freckles come from Aunt Ginny’s Scottish heritage.
I clomped up the front steps to give her a hug. “It’s nice to see you, Aunt Ginny. I missed you so much!” Then I pulled back to see her better. I didn’t know it was possible for someone to shrink this much in just a few short years.
“What happened? You’re a hobbit!”
“That’s what happens when you don’t come home for twenty years. People change.”
I could almost hear Figaro gloating at me.
“Really? We’re going to do this right now?”
She blew me off. “After you get settled in we need to have a talk about something. Something important.”
Oh boy. I wasn’t even in the door. “What’s going on?”
She waved her hand in dismissal. “Not now. Wait till you get your stuff unpacked and rest up a bit.”
Oh. My. God. I need to be rested up for it.
Looking around, it was obvious something wasn’t right.
The care of the garden had been abandoned and weeds dominated every corner. This would be the perfect hideout for a Disney villain. On the other hand, if Aunt Ginny was preparing to enter a “Best Halloween House” contest, she’d outdone herself.
The yard had been full of wisteria and roses when I lived here. It was beautiful. Now it looked like the old girl had been abandoned. Gulp.
A sense of dread spidered its way up my spine. But once Aunt Ginny made up her mind, I knew only too well, a buffalo stampede couldn’t make her change course. I would have to wait until she was ready to talk.
She stepped out onto the porch, looking wiry as ever. If only I’d inherited those genes. At this range, she smelled of Bengay, Polident, and Oil of Olay. I hoped it was okay to combine all those without causing nerve damage.
“I see you’re still full of spit and vinegar!” she chortled. She scrunched her face up to the cat carrier. “What in the world is that?”
“That’s Figaro. I told you about him. I even sent you pictures. Don’t you remember?”
“I don’t know, I’m old. It’s hard to say what I remember.”
She screwed up her face and peered back in the carrier. “It looks like a dust mop.”
Aunt Ginny was laying it on thick. “I’ll take it, whatever it is, while you get your bags.” She snatched the carrier from me and gave it a vigorous shake. “There. That’ll either shake whatever it is out of its bad mood or make it really angry. No pouters around here.”
Dear God, take me now . . .
From inside, Figaro gave a distressed moan and threw me a vengeful look.
I left them to whatever bad mojo they were creating and scampered back out to the car. Now that I’d let myself be dragged here I had to face the truth:
I’d avoided coming home, even though Aunt Ginny had been begging me to visit for years. There were too many bad memories in this old house. I had made a lot of bad choices when I was younger, and had locked the shame away in my heart. I still had visions of my mother driving away when she abandoned me. I took a lot of my hurt out on Grandma and Aunt Ginny, who didn’t deserve it. They were so good to me.
I rewarded their generosity by cutting all the hair off Grandma’s dolls. When I got older, I was always getting detention for smoking and suspension for cutting school. I still hadn’t gotten over the look of disappointment on their faces when they caught me sneaking out with Tim in the middle of the night to do God-knows-what. Okay, everybody knew what—especially Grandma and Aunt Ginny. It was all so disgraceful. I especially tried to tamp down the painful memories of Tim and what happened between us, but they were escaping like sewer rats from the now-opened manhole cover of my soul—just as I’d known they would, and I wasn’t ready to face them yet. Guilt washed over me as I heaved my suitcase out of the trunk.
“What’s this doohickey for?” I heard Aunt Ginny say from the front porch.
I turned to see her messing with the door of the cat carrier.
“Aunt Ginny. I wouldn’t—”
With a flip of the latch, Aunt Ginny opened Figaro’s carrier, and he took off like a cheetah flying through the Serengeti, launching himself into the dark interior of Aunt Ginny’s haunted mansion.
“Whoa! It just shot right out of there.”
Aunt Ginny peered innocently inside the carrier, as if Figaro would magically reappear. “Oh,
dear. I sure hope it doesn’t break anything irreplaceable.”
Inside the house something crashed.
I dropped my suitcase, ran back up the sidewalk and inside the house to find him. It’s never a good sign when a family visit begins with destruction and mayhem.
Bounding up the front porch and into the main foyer, I saw ahead of me the grand staircase that led up to the second level. Dust motes were swirling in the air from the clearly un-vacuumed treads. This seemed a good indication as to which way Figaro had rocketed. Faded portraits of McAllister ancestors lined the walls and a potted spider plant lay like a washed-up dead octopus on the marble floor. I would have to come back for it later.
I was about to rush upstairs but changed course at the sound of thumping on the piano in the front parlor to my left. It sounded suspiciously like a furry little terrorist racing across the keys. My ill-fated piano lessons in here as a child probably didn’t sound much better.
Peering into the parlor, a room with wraparound bay windows and crown molding, I saw no sign of His Royal Destructiveness. I’d loved this room as a kid, because it was round and it was the first floor of the three-story tower with the pointy witch’s-hat roof. Now it was all graying wallpaper and smelled like mothballs.
The sound of glass breaking in the next room told me he was on the move.
“Figaro!”
I ran through the parlor into the main formal dining room and scanned for smoke-gray fur. We used to eat Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners next to the cozy fireplace at the long mahogany table that now had a bunched-up table runner and two broken candlesticks rolling toward the edge. There was another crash in the distance.
Oblivious to the terror she’d unleashed, Aunt Ginny hollered from the kitchen, “Come on in here and make yourself at home. Would you like some lemonade?”
“Yes, please!” I hollered back.
I straightened the table and picked up a silver picture frame that was lying on the floor next to the hearth and looked around to see if anything else was clawed, bitten, or otherwise damaged. To the left, the dining room exited to a screened-in porch—a must in South Jersey where the state bird is the mosquito—leading out to the wraparound porch running along the side and front of the house. Through the door I could see the once-lovely white wooden hanging swing on the porch where I used to daydream instead of doing my homework. The swing was now in ruin, hanging lopsided on a rusted chain, a tetanus shot waiting to happen.
At the back of the house I could hear what sounded like a miniature moose galloping over hardwood floors.
“Figaro, come here!”
“You want some madeleines with your lemonade?” Aunt Ginny called.
“Sure, that’s great! Thanks!” Whatever. Where is that cat?
Through the dining room was the kitchen and butler pantry, a sort of walk-in closet for dry goods and canned produce that were put up the summer before. Just off the kitchen was one of my favorite features of the old house, the secret stairs leading to the second and third levels, the third level being the old servants’ quarters. Of course, no one in my family had had servants for many years. (Unless you count all the chores I had to do growing up, which I counted.)
“Did you see Figaro come through here?” I asked Aunt Ginny, who was in the kitchen loading up a silver tea tray with a plate of madeleines, a pitcher of lemonade, some floral napkins, a vegetable peeler, a pack of birthday candles, a pair of champagne flutes, a bottle of aspirin, a pint of farmer’s market cherry tomatoes, a pack of double-A batteries, a pair of chopsticks, a whistle, and a lottery ticket.
“I think he went that way.” She pointed a pair of silver sugar tongs toward the sunroom on my right.
I eyed the tea tray for a moment, then gave a quick look back at Aunt Ginny before I picked up a box of tea bags from the floor and set the trash can upright again.
To the left of the kitchen, in the back of the house, was a great room that had been converted into Grandma Emmy’s bedroom and bath a few years ago when she declared that she was “too old to traipse up and down all these blasted stairs anymore!”
I was heading toward the sunroom when I heard several thuds coming from the front of the house. And there, finally, I found Figaro innocently taking a bath in the dark-wood-paneled library next to a pile of books that had mysteriously fallen off the floor-to-ceiling bookcase next to the stone fireplace. His rampage appeared to be over so I put the books back on the shelf, pointed a warning finger at him—which seemed to amuse him—and went out to retrieve the suitcases.
I put our bags next to the grand staircase and set up Figaro’s litter box and food and water bowls in the mudroom off the kitchen.
I hadn’t really had a chance to get a good look around, what with the mad chase and all, but I now realized there was some sort of dark cloud over the house. Everything was in the right place, but it all seemed a bit dreary—like the life had been drained from it.
Despite my desire to spend a little time with the woman who raised me, the gloom of the house only reinforced my one true goal: Get the reunion over and make tracks home like a kid with a bagful of Halloween candy.
Aunt Ginny exited the kitchen carrying the tray and announced, “Violet lemonade and lavender madeleines. Shall we go into the sunroom?” The room was in the back corner of the house, occupying the other tower room with curved windows, which made it bright and warm and inviting, although today there was quite a curtain of dust dancing in the sun’s rays.
“That sounds wonderful!” I took the tray from Aunt Ginny and set it down on the tea table, and we positioned ourselves next to each other in the comfy, overstuffed chairs. “Why so formal?” I teased, gripping a madeleine. I was tempted to down them two at a time, to regain my composure, but refrained. “When I lived here as a teenager, I drank out of the Flintstones glass we got from the gas station.”
“Bamm-Bamm is worth more than the crystal now.” Aunt Ginny took a flute of lemonade and placed a little flowered napkin on her knee. “And I don’t get to entertain much anymore. It’s such a shame to see nice things collecting dust on the shelf.”
You’re telling me. I’ve heard of dust bunnies, but this room could be under a fog advisory.
I took a long look at Aunt Ginny and thought about how lonely she must be, in this big house all by herself. Maybe that’s why it seemed so dreary. It was the pervasive atmosphere of loneliness.
“Why you looking at me so queer?” Aunt Ginny narrowed her eyes at me as she took a bite of a madeleine.
“What? I’m not. I was just thinking that you must be getting tired of taking care of this big house all by yourself.” I grinned. “Maybe I should find you a man.”
She swallowed and cocked her head to look at me with raised eyebrows. “What are you, some kind of nut? I need another man like I need a hole in the head. I’ve had enough of that foolishness in my life.” She smoothed an imaginary crease in her apron and looked away from me.
“Have you been keeping yourself busy without Grandma?” I tried to subtly pry a bit to get Aunt Ginny to spill it. Something was amiss here, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Sure, you know. This and that. I’ve got my routine.”
She gave me a halfhearted smile but wouldn’t meet my eyes. Oh, she was a crafty one. I would have to sneak up on her conversationally—warm her up, then trick her into answering.
“So what’s been going on?” I tried again.
“Nothing. I thought you weren’t coming up to this shindig. What made you change your mind?”
I let out a little groan and rolled my eyes.
“Ah, Sawyer,” Aunt Ginny answered her own question. “I had a feeling she was behind it.” Then she sniffed. “I guess coming home was not a big draw.”
My heart broke for her. “I should have come up a long time ago. I haven’t seen you since Georgina’s stunt at the reading of John’s will. And before that I was so busy taking care of him that I didn’t have time for anything else.”
&nb
sp; Aunt Ginny shook her head. “You got that right. A person could be lying dead in a ditch before they’d get a visit from you. But that mother-in-law of yours is a piece of work. You shouldn’t let her push you around like that.”
Apparently, that privilege and duty was saved for Aunt Ginny herself.
“I remember my second husband, Virgil, had a mother that made Satan look like Snow White. You need to forget about Georgina and get back on your feet. Take care of yourself for a change.”
“I don’t have the energy to take on Georgina.”
Aunt Ginny nibbled another madeleine while she listened and watched me with those sharp green eyes. “I had some of that depression after my fourth husband, Cecil, ran off with the tramp that pulled the lottery balls out of the air tank on Channel Two. I didn’t want to be around nobody.” She gave a definitive nod.
Aunt Ginny had masterfully blown through five husbands. When I was little, I overheard my uncle Danny say, “Being married to Virginia is like being strapped to the back of a tiger. You know it will eventually kill you but it’s so exciting you just want to be along for the ride.” He left over twenty years ago to buy a Baby Ruth at the drugstore and never returned. That’s when her sister, my grandma Emmy, moved in. Grandma passed on about three years ago so it’s just Aunt Ginny now.
“It’s no wonder you look a wreck.” Aunt Ginny clucked her tongue at me in sympathy.
“What?” I choked on my lemonade.
“Well, you’re a mess with a capital M. Just look at you. Face all swollen, bags under your eyes.”
I wiped at my T-shirt self-consciously, feeling like a schlub. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“What you need is some companionship. Why don’t you stay with me for a few weeks instead of going back to that empty house? You could be my alibi.”
Say what now?
“Your thingamiebob is shaking.” Aunt Ginny pointed to my iPhone. I picked it up and checked the screen.
“It’s a text from Sawyer saying that it’s important that I make it to dinner tonight so she can tell me something. A text is like a note that she typed on her phone and sent it to my phone for me to read.”
