It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  I laugh. That’s the understatement of the year—to my aunt, there was nothing more wonderful in all the world than a child, who could do no wrong in her eyes. How could you not love a woman like that? Who spoke to you at eight with an uncanny ease that most adults seem to lack, with respect and dignity that didn’t condescend? To a child, that’s a priceless gift. “She was great with kids.” I hate talking of her in the past.

  Jessie smiles sadly. “She couldn’t have her own,” she murmurs. “A childhood illness—she knew she wouldn’t be a mother. I think that’s why she took to Laura so well, and Penny. She practically raised them as her own, and you and Ray, your sister too, she loved you like her own, you know?”

  I never thought of it that way, but pride swells my chest, closes my throat. Like her own…not nieces and nephews. Somehow that means more.

  We pass Grosso’s. Another few minutes, that’s all we have together before we reach the house and she’ll be gone. “So what happened between you guys?” I ask.

  “I was young,” Jessie explains. “Not married, not really looking. Evie cared for the kids, Marge had our parents, and me?” With a wry grin, she says, “Hell, Mike, look at your sister. Youngest kid, striving to break out on her own, you know what I’m talking about here.”

  I think of Caitlin and her Goth girl phase. I know exactly what she means. “There was this boy over in Union City,” she tells me. “I thought it was love. I liked the attention, you know? And Evie didn’t like him, so that was fuel to the fire, I had to have him. One thing led to another…” She trails off and gives me a knowing look. “Three guesses.”

  “You got pregnant,” I offer. It’s the only thing I can think of.

  She nods. “Bingo.” We round the last curve—the house is up ahead. I feel like I’ve been gone for years. “I didn’t want a baby,” she says. “Didn’t want that responsibility—I saw what Evie went through with Clara’s kids. So I went to her. Told her look, this is how it is. She wanted me to keep it.”

  “But you didn’t,” I whisper. It’s not a question.

  “I couldn’t,” she replies. A tear courses down her cheek which she doesn’t bother to brush away. “She gave me the money for an abortion because I couldn’t afford it, and she told me never to come back when it was done.”

  Chapter 31: Forgiveness

  Jessie’s voice is as distant as the past she speaks of. “I was young,” she tells me, as if she feels the need to explain herself to me. “I didn’t want a kid, you know? I didn’t want to get married or settle down—and if you got knocked up, that’s what you did back then. I just couldn’t see myself as a wife, a mother, not at that age.”

  “How old are we talking?” I ask softly. I’m guessing somewhere around my own age, and I can’t imagine a child of my own, not at this point in my life, no matter what my mom wants for me.

  “Twenty-six.” With a sad smile, Jessie reminds me, “Clara passed not five months before I missed my first period. Five months. Can you imagine what that does to someone? Seeing your little sister die giving birth? I didn’t want that to happen to me.”

  I nod—that makes sense. “So Evie loaned you the money—”

  “Gave me,” she corrects. “She didn’t want it back. Hell, she didn’t want me back, let alone the money. Blood money, she called it. I want you to know what this is doing to me, she said as she counted out every single twenty dollar bill. Crisp, too, because she went to the bank and got them out just for me.” Jessie grimaces at the memory. “I can still hear the sound they made as she pulled them through her fingers, I’ll never forget it. Fifteen of them, three hundred dollars in all. She counted them out and told me that each one was a knife in her heart. You remember this, Jessie, she said, when you’re on the table and the doctor does whatever horrors it is they do to kill the unborn. You think of me then, because I’m going to die with that baby you carry.”

  I whistle low. “Damn.” I can’t imagine Evie, my Evie, saying something like that. “Talk about a guilt trip.”

  Nodding, my aunt gives me a knowing glance. “Tell me about it.”

  Curious, I ask, “So what did you do?”

  Jessie shrugs. “What could I do? I took the money. Packed as much of my stuff as I could fit in an old suitcase and left. The guy I was with picked me up and I stayed with him for awhile, until he lost interest and just never came home from work one night.” Forcing an insincere laugh, she tells me, “Jesus, Mike, what do you think I did? I got by. Isn’t that what you do when there’s nothing left? You get by.”

  We’re still about a block from the house but Jessie slows the car down, pulls over to the side of the road. I can see the front porch through the bare branches of the trees. I wonder how long it’s been since I left for Grosso’s. I can’t imagine the depth of Evie’s love for her sister if she actually paid for an abortion—Evie, of all people, a woman who valued children more than anything else in the world. Of course thinking of her sister would bury her in sorrow—she’d remember the infant she helped abort, and she would die all over again. Not just once but every single day, a new sunrise that child would never see, a new pain in her heart. Thinking back to the year that Jessie did visit, I remember Evie stayed in her room most of the time, sick with a migraine or stomach flu, something like that. The memory made her ill, I’m sure, festering in her soul until she couldn’t bear the sight of her sister. No wonder she surrounded herself every year with as many children as she could, all her nieces and nephews, great-nieces, great-nephews, her sisters and their kids and their kids’ kids, their friends, everyone. Maybe she hoped our laughter and tears would drown out the cries of Jessie’s baby that she surely heard reverberate in her soul.

  My other aunts must have known what happened. Jessie’s pregnancy, Evie’s help in the abortion, how a part of her died in that doctor’s office with the baby. Of course they wouldn’t want to speak of Jessie around her—she was the family matriarch, she meant too much to everyone and with Jessie gone it was easier to pretend she never existed. I don’t remember ever hearing her name before she simply showed up that summer, all those years back. I have a feeling that if she hadn’t stopped by, I might have never known of her at all.

  But Evie is dead. “Why don’t you come in with me?” I ask. When she shakes her head, I point out, “It sounds to me like Aunt Evie was the only one keeping you away, Aunt Jessie. Now that she’s not here—”

  “Michael,” Jessie sighs. The car idles beneath us, a steady purr like a contented cat, and when the wind blows outside, I can feel a faint puff along my arm where it rests by the window. My aunt closes her eyes, leans her head back against the headrest. “Michael,” she says again. “Michael. It’s not that simple, honey. You can’t erase forty years just like that. Too much has happened to me, without me, I can’t…” She shakes her head, her mouth a tight, sad frown. “Just because Evie’s gone doesn’t mean I’m instantly absolved, Mike. God might forgive but relatives never forget.”

  I laugh. “Especially ours,” I kid. I already know that I’ll never, ever live this weekend down with my mom. For as long as she draws breath, I know she’s going to find some way to blame me, as if my coming out at dinner Saturday was what did Evie in, not her weight or her heart. “My mother alone—”

  Jessie holds up a hand and grins. “No need to say it. I lived with her growing up, lest you forget. That woman invented grudges, I’m telling you.”

  “I know.” My smile lingers as we both grow quiet, lost in our own thoughts. Suddenly I’m all too aware of a cold dampness between my legs, the milk sweating through the paper bag. I should go. I open and close the bag, nervous. “So you’re coming tomorrow?” I ask softly. To the funeral.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I don’t want to cause a scene and between Sarah and your mother…” She trails off, rubs at her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose in quiet desperation. “I just don’t know, Michael. I was hoping to feel you out and sort of test the waters, but they changed th
e locks, you know? How sad is that?”

  “Yeah,” I agree, “I know.” Who am I kidding? It wasn’t just Evie, it’s all of them. Through the years, they stood behind Evie for so long that they barricaded Jessie out, and she’s right, there’s no way in. They’ve been closed off to her for so long that it would be almost impossible to open up now. As long as Evie was alive, there was some hope of reconciliation, however slim, but now…“But you’re here,” I remind her. “You drove all this way. From New York, right? For what? Just to turn around and head back with no closure at all?”

  “I just got in,” she tells me. “I’m thinking I’ll head on over to the funeral home—Morrison’s?” I nod and she laughs. “Who else, right? Sugar Creek’s too small for more. I’ll stop by and see what they suggest. Maybe I can still see her one last time before the funeral, or they can warn the others that I’m here, just to keep things from getting messy. I mean, this is what they do. Families have these types of issues all the time, Michael, you know that.”

  Sure, but our family doesn’t. I can only imagine what will happen if Jessie walks in at the viewing. Aunt Sarah will faint dead away, my mom will go off…I don’t even want to think about it. I’m tempted to beg Jessie not to show up, I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it if she does. I have a tenuous grip on everything at this moment as it is—I feel like a little boy lost at a carnival, a handful of helium balloons in one hand and a cone of sticky cotton candy in the other. I’m looking around, wide eyed and scared, trying not to give into the panic that eats away inside of me, and my stomach churns with the sugary sweetness I’ve been gorging on while my arm is tugged up up up by the balloons. Every step I take, my feet threaten to leave the ground, and I’m so sure that before I find where I’m supposed to be, I’ll just be pulled into the air to float away over the crowds. That thought terrifies me. I have to find something to hold me down or release the balloons but I can’t, they’re tied to my wrist, I can’t let go.

  I don’t know what to say so I bite my lower lip and wait. Through the trees ahead, the house looks foreign to me, the home of a stranger, a woman I didn’t know. I try to picture Evie in her twenties, counting out money into her younger sister’s open palm, her face a mask against whatever turmoil tore her up inside, but I can’t do it. The Evie I knew and loved never had a bad word to say to anyone, never raised her voice in anger…what had it taken for her to banish her sister from her heart forever? I don’t know.

  Finally Jessie sighs and, reaching across the gap between the seats, she pats my knee almost as if she’s the one comforting me, when it should be the other way around. “Thank you,” she says.

  When I look up at her, she forces a smile for my sake. “For what?” I want to know.

  “For talking to me,” she explains. With a laugh, she adds, “For not running screaming from the car when I stopped you outside of Grosso’s. Even though you knew who I was—”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Shit, Aunt Jessie,” I say, grinning. “I grew up thinking of you as some kind of bogeyman or something. Just saying your name was enough to get me grounded for life. Of course I’d jump at the chance to meet you after all this time. I mean, really. You’re so damn notorious, who wouldn’t?”

  Her smile widens. “And you’re the good one, right?”

  “You should really meet Caitlin,” I say with a wink. “She’s trying to rival you as the black sheep. If you’re at the viewing, I can introduce you—”

  “I might not come,” Jessie sighs. Her smile fades and she looks out the windshield at the house, her eyes glazing over with memories. “I don’t want it to be ugly, Michael. Evie was a wonderful person—I know, I kept up with her through the years.” She gestures behind us at the newspaper on the back seat, the Gazette. “She deserves a quiet ending. What would the others say if I showed up?”

  “Who cares?” I counter. “You’ve come to apologize, right? You’ve come to say goodbye. Not to any of them—to Evie. She’s the only person you have to think about right now, Aunt Jessie. You’re doing this for her.” I let my words sink in before I add, “And for yourself.” She doesn’t answer. “If you don’t see her one last time,” I say, “then you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

  Quietly, Jessie murmurs, “Maybe I can see her today. I don’t have to go to the viewing. At the cemetery I can watch from the road.”

  “Will that be enough for you?” I ask. Why can’t I shut up? Just nod and say yeah, you can do that and let the matter drop? She doesn’t want to face her sisters, fine. I don’t know if I want her to, either. But part of me thinks that maybe if she does show up at the funeral, maybe I’ll find some strength in her to help me get through it, myself.

  I can tell that she’s wavering. “Maybe it’ll have to be,” she whispers. “I just don’t know, Michael, okay?”

  “Okay,” I concede. I grip the top of my bag in my hand, the crinkling noise a signal that I’m ready to leave. “I better go.”

  She leans over and gives me a motherly kiss on the cheek. “Thanks,” she whispers again. I dig into my wallet for one of my business cards and hand it to her without a word—anything I say might make this more awkward than it should be, but when she looks at the card and smiles at me, I know that she gets my drift. Keep in touch. She nods as if I said it out loud and slips the card into her purse. “Take care,” is her reply.

  As I climb out of the car, I say, “See you tomorrow.”

  “Maybe,” she corrects. I’ll be looking for her, though, craning my neck to see the people lining the back of the funeral parlor, turning every now and then at the graveside to look at the road. I’m going to expect to see her—I’ll be disappointed if she doesn’t show. I close the door on her final words. “Bye, Mike.”

  Taking a step back from the car, I raise one hand in farewell, the other holding the soggy bag of tepid milk against my chest. Silently the silvery mauve Saturn pulls away from the curb, slips down the street, past the house and around another bend and out of Sugar Creek altogether. I watch the brake lights through the trees until I can’t see them anymore. Aunt Jessie. I almost can’t believe it now that it’s over and she’s gone. Was she even here? Will I ever see her again?

  The conversation we had in the car turns over slowly in my mind, like a rotisserie chicken on a spit, turning over an open flame. I was hoping for something…I don’t know, sensational? A torrid love story maybe, Evie and Jessie fighting over a man who drove them apart. Or a secret so terrifying that neither of them wanted to see the other and remember it, like poisoning their parents or something. As children, we used to make up shit like that, reasons why Aunt Jessie wasn’t welcome at Sugar Creek. A murder or bank robbery and she was on the run. A mobster marriage turned sour, and now she was in the Witness Protection Program. An alien abduction, and she hasn’t been seen since. We had a million answers, as many as our imaginations could conceive.

  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned growing up, it’s that the truth is never that glamorous. It was nothing that reeked with drama and angst, nothing spectacular, nothing out of a Steven Spielberg film. Two women, that’s all, one with child and one who would never be able to bear her own. One who simply saw a way out of a bad situation, the other who would do anything for her sister, anything at all, even if it ripped them asunder. The others caught in the middle, torn between two loyalties and in the end choosing the easiest, choosing Evie’s side simply because Jessie was gone. And Aunt Jessie is right—Evie’s death isn’t going to change that overnight. If anything, it’s managed to solidify the rift dividing this family, because Evie was the one who opened it, only she could have built a bridge to cross over and welcome her sister home.

  And she can’t.

  Absently, I kick at small stones in the road as I head for the house. Nothing I can say will be enough to open the hearts of my aunts and uncles, nothing I do will make them see the Jessie I just met and welcome her at Morrison’s. So I won’t mention it. I won’t brag about meeting her, I
won’t recite what we said, I won’t tell a soul. Well, maybe Dan, but only when we’re alone, and only after he’s sworn to secrecy. I always thought it would be exciting if I ever met up with her, an epic tale worthy of endless repeating, but there was too much pain in her eyes, too much hurt in her words—I can’t revel in that. I won’t.

  I take the porch steps slowly, one at a time, listening to my sneakers shuffle over the wood. Halfway up the stairs, I hear heavy footsteps inside the house, angry thuds that make me stop where I am and look up as the door swings open. “Just down the street,” Caitlin is saying, though it’s my lover I see first—he’s shrugging into his jacket, a scowl on his face. One of his hands snags in the sleeve and I resist the urge to rush up there to help him straighten it out. When he steps out onto the porch, my sister is right behind him. “Not even five minutes, Dan. You round the corner that way and you see it—”

  She stops when she sees me. Dan struggles with the jacket for a few more seconds before he realizes she’s not talking anymore and then he looks up, sees me, too. His scowl grows deeper. “Where the hell have you been?” he wants to know.

  His voice is hard, his eyes stonier. The distracted way he settles into the jacket tells me that he’s waiting for an answer. Everything about him is mad and suddenly I’m on the defense—what have I done wrong? Nothing, not a damn thing. I feel my own mouth pull down into an angry frown as I mutter, “Well, hello to you, too.”

  With his hands on his hips, Dan gives me that knee-buckling stare he’s perfected, the one that floors even the strongest of men, but it doesn’t work on me. I’ve seen the kitten behind the lion’s roar, I know he’s mad but not savage. Before he can ask again, I raise a hand to ward off the argument. “Don’t, okay? Just don’t. I went to the store—”