I bounded over to Aunt Aggie and she wrapped me in a smothering hug, then she pulled back to nail me with a painful pinch on the cheek. It was so painful, I felt myself stirring in my dream state, almost waking from my sleep. No, I thought, just a minute more with her—and, like magic, I was back with my Aunt, hugging her hard, not letting her go, smelling the dust and tomato scent of her house that clung to her clothes.
Aunt Aggie said, “Christ, Marie, let go of me. Might be your idea of heaven, but not everybody’s a lezzie like you!” And then she laughed, her deep and raspy-cruel laugh that I’d had no idea how much I missed, until right then.
“Are you OK?” I asked. It was all I could think of to say.
And she answered, “Of course not, I’m dead!” and she laughed even louder into my ear and finally, I could let go of her, because anyone who laughed like that, had to be OK. She winked at me from behind her glasses, the only pair I had ever known her to wear. “You still need glasses here?” I asked.
“Nah, they’re for you. The clothes too.”
“Thanks for that,” I said, and this time she laughed at me.
“I love it here except for the food,” she said, “because there isn’t any fucking food! I’m afraid I might be losing weight.”
“No worries,” I said, and she cackled and pinched my cheek even harder. I’d awake from this dream with a bruise, I thought, but as I was thinking this, I doubted something this real could ever be a dream.
“Who the fuck would be afraid of a skinny ghost? I don’t know how I’m staying this way with no food, but thank Jesus. He’s here too, by the way, he says hi.” She winked at me. “Hey, I can’t stay long, so tell your mother to be good or I’ll keep haunting her boney ass. Can you imagine how much fun it is being a ghost chasing your mother around? And she knows I’m there, too.”
I had to laugh with her. That explained why Mom was acting so strange lately, asking for Lisa and I to visit more, not wanting to be alone in the house!
Aunt Aggie said, “Once I figure out how to do some real tricks, I plan to move all her kitchen stuff, piece by piece, so she can’t find anything and I just figured out how to make a tomato roll off a counter and splatter on her foot! I’ll get your sister Lisa, too.”
Just when I was thinking how I wished Lisa and Vince could see her right now, Aunt Aggie got weirdly quiet and surprised me more than a vision of a ghost ever could.
She softly said, “Tell your Uncle Freddie I love him. And tell him I’m glad someone else is bossing him around until I can have him back.” I thought I heard her voice crack then, making my own tears come, but then she waved me off with her hand, as if I was annoying her, her doughy arm never looking so lovely in the bright white light.
“You don’t get it, honey,” she said. “You can’t understand how happy I am, how happy you all will all be someday. Tell everyone, OK? I guess even your Mom.”
“But, I have so many questions,” I said. “You used to think Lisa and I would never get into heaven, you know, because of the whole gay thing.”
Aunt Aggie said, “Oh, there are tons of homos here. Turns out just because some assholes down there post a sign that says ‘Keep Out,’ doesn’t mean those are the rules. It was the first thing I checked on when I got here, since I wouldn’t want to be in a club that didn’t allow you and Lisa as members.”
“And what about the argument that it’s in the Bible?” I asked.
“Marie, don’t be an idiot. Jesus was a carpenter, not a publisher. You may learn just as much standing on a roof. It’s closer to God, with less men standing in-between.”
“True,” I said.
“Guess who else is here,” she said.
I was thinking Elvis, but braced myself, since the expression on Aunt Aggie’s face was the happiest I had ever seen, on any face. Ever.
Her lower lip was quivering with joy as she said, “My twin sister Etta is here.”
“I’m sorry Aunt Aggie, I didn’t know she finally passed—”
She laughed at me again, “No, no. She’s not dead. She just gets to spend time with me while she’s in her coma. Great deal, actually. She’ll get to see both sides when they send her back.”
“Send her back?”
“Word up here on the clouds is that she’ll be waking up one day, so this is just a visit. Of course, everyone will think she is nuts when she says she saw me up here in bright lights, but that’s earth for you. Of course, in the end, I’ll see you all up here.”
“So, one other question,” I said. I was talking fast, instinctively knowing our time was ending soon. “What’s the point of life, anyway?”
What the hell, she was making so much sense, I just thought I would throw it out there.
“Love,” she answered, without hesitating, and because it was Aunt Aggie, who’d never spoken of love in my presence before, I was strangely embarrassed for her. In contrast, I could see she wasn’t embarrassed at all; in fact, she flew into one of her rants I had so sorely missed.
“So, now that you know that you know the secret of life, I’m counting on you to tell that silly brother of yours to treat that new girl of his right. I know he’ll be the best dad to that little boy, so tell him to marry that woman quick and tell him that I forbid him to fuck it up. Tell him I said being a man is the easiest job on earth, so there’s no friggin’ excuse. For Christ sakes, they make Valentine’s cards that say ‘Sorry I take you for granted’ and, ‘I know I’m a dipshit and never show you I care, but you know I love you!’ For fuck’s sake, they even have TV commercials reminding fathers to ‘Take time to be a Dad today.’ Can you imagine some organization paying to remind women to ‘Take time to be a mother’? I didn’t see this so clearly when I was down there with the morts, but women are programmed to be thrilled by the simplest God-damned gesture from a man.”
Aunt Aggie realized she said God-damned, but it only slowed her down for a second before her rant returned, at double speed.
“A handful of cheap carnations will get a man out of the dog-house after weeks of acting like an ass. But tell him never to buy his girl carnations because it’s the only flower God makes fun of, and, between you and me, it’s the fault of the gay guys. They were the ones that realized you could dye them all different colors. Tell Vince that. Tell them he has it made. Also, when it comes to sex, to get pleasure all a man has to do is stick their pee-pee in a hole, so he better take his time to do that right. And men aren’t that bright, so have that crass sister of yours remind him of which hole.”
I let myself laugh at that one. Up till now, I was afraid I would miss a word.
“But seriously, Marie, tell Vince he’ll have to deal with me if he fucks this one up. It’s the easiest thing in the world to love a good woman.”
I nodded, but I said, “It’s not so easy, sometimes, but I’ll make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.”
“Don’t you fuck it up either,” she said.
I nodded again. “If I can find her,” I said.
“And tell that sister of yours she needs to just love one woman or she’ll never be happy. One. That’s the secret for her.”
I said, “Go figure, all this time it was just a math problem. I’ll tell her, but she seems pretty happy.”
“Then just mess with her and tell her I said the big guy upstairs says she’s actually straight, and that’s her problem. She’s repressed and she needs some dick.”
Aunt Aggie roared at her own joke as the sunlight grew intensely bright behind her, turning her floral housecoat back into a round silhouette. I knew then without a doubt she was in a good place, the best place, and I felt Aunt Aggie’s joy and peace in my heart. I also knew it was just a glimpse of her happiness. Still, it was more intense than any a person could handle in the waking world . . . and it was right then that my dream ended.
My dreams had let me down so many times, but this may have been the hardest fall. I wanted to go with Aunt Aggie, instead of waking with the same emptiness in my chest and a damp pi
llow flecked with tears. The dream was barely fading, and already the idea that I had been with my Aunt Aggie didn’t seem as believable as it had been only seconds before. I wondered if, over time, I wouldn’t believe it happened at all, and maybe seeing my Aunt had been just a sad dream, though it hadn’t been sad, not at all.
As my eyes adjusted to the morning light, I remembered there was one great difference to waking up on this particular morning. I was in Italy, in a charming old bedroom, splintered with bright shards of sunlight from the shutters in need of repair. Had the bright morning sun shining in my eyes created the entire dream?
Even though there was a heavenly scent of bacon and polenta pancakes wafting up from the stairway, I was drawn instead toward the shutters, and pulled them open to reveal a small, sun-drenched balcony. The cracked plaster was so picturesque and uniform that it appeared like an expert faux finish. Except unlike the faux plaster finishes Erica had taught me to do back in LA, this was the real deal.
I felt the sun through my thin nightgown as I leaned on the railing, my arms tickled by the tendrils of ivy, which had climbed up the house and grasped onto the rail like two hands perfectly spaced. The very tips of the ivy fingers seemed no longer growing, they were dry and curled upward into delicate spirals, as if they were thanking the heavens for giving it the strength to get where they wanted to be. It wasn’t getting onto the balcony that was the point; it was the journey.
I breathed the air, and I told my heavy heart that even if I never found her, maybe this was about my journey, to be here with Lisa and Vince and our new cousin Frederica. Maybe something in my DNA had sent me to be here to heal, maybe it was to have a moment with Aunt Aggie. If only the hammering in my heart would quiet. And if it did, I was left with a question: if I was here for my heart to heal, why had the faint sound of Erica’s hammering followed me from my dreams?
I knew what I was here for—fuck the journey!
I spun around, holding the rail to steady myself, the familiar hammering now syncing up my heart. Bang-bang-tap—bang-bang-tap. The hammering becoming a pounding in my chest when I saw, far in the distance, a beautiful half-stone and half-wood home, and the unmistakable dotted silhouettes of my Uncle Freddie and Erica perched on the roof, while a small crew attempted to hammer along to Erica’s signature beat. I only paused one second to make sure it wasn’t the heat, or another cruel dream.
Then, I ran.
I ran across the room, not stopping to change my white flimsy nightgown, and flew down the stairs, skipping several, nearly plowing over my brother, who was heading up the stairwell. “Jesus!” he said, pressing himself to the wall, so I could fly past him. “Like you’ve never smelled bacon before.”
I ran through the living room and into the kitchen, nearly knocking over Lisa, making her fumble her handful of tomatoes, sending one rolling off the counter to splatter dramatically on top of her bare foot. I howled with laughter as I ran through the rest of the kitchen, backward, pointing to her tomato-splattered foot.
“Aunt Aggie did that!” I screamed at her.
“No, you did it, you fucking idiot! Why are you running in your friggin’ nightgown, blaming your klutziness on your dead aunt?”
I yelled back, “Erica!”
Frederica was at the stove and shouted back, “Si, si, Erica!” as she pointed out the window, toward the house in the distance. My sister spun around to the window as I blasted out the door.
I ran up the dirt road toward the house, barely aware of my braless and barefoot state, and I stopped running only when I could clearly hear Erica’s voice, chastising the workers as she always had—only Erica was shouting one insult at a time and Uncle Freddie was translating in Italian—and the sound of her teasing the men was like music to my ears.
“Rocky and I could have had this done hours ago!” she yelled, “Come on girls, learn from the old guy and pick up the pace before the rain comes! This roof is getting done today, or I’ll toss you off it one by one!”
I let myself walk the rest of the way to the house, breathless, knowing that I had her cornered; she would not get away from me. I could hear Uncle Freddie’s “heh, heh, heh” laugh as he came down a ladder, and he didn’t spot me until he reached the last few steps.
“Marieooche!” he called out, as he hopped the last two steps like a young man. I looked for Erica over his head, but I was too far under the roof to see her now.
Uncle Freddie spread his arms as wide as he could before clasping them around me in a bear hug. “She said you were here!” he shouted into my ear.
I looked up for Erica again. “She knew I was here?”
“No, your Aunt Aggie! She was in my dream last night, asking me why you were here. I told her you weren’t here, and she called me a ‘stupid tool.’” He cackled and joy spread across his face at the fresh memory. “Did you or Vince teach her that word?” He laughed again, and I realized how much his laugh had become my aunt’s, or maybe her laugh had become his over the years. I kissed him a proper hello on both cheeks.
“She came to me too, Uncle Freddie. She told me to tell you she loves you.”
“Hmm. You sure it was her?” he laughed, but he was touched by the message.
“She also said she was glad someone else was bossing you around until she could have the job back.”
He smiled and nodded, “That’s your aunt.”
“I came for Erica,” I said.
He nodded again as if he had already known, and he said, “It’s all or nothing, with that one, too,” he cautioned me. “So much like your Aunt Aggie, only she’s a hottie, heh, heh. Don’t tell your Aunt I said that. Even now, she seems to know everything I do.” Then he gently patted the house with pride, and seemed to look at me for approval.
I said, “My uncle is finally a carpenter. You’re living your dream.”
“Except Erica won’t let me forget I’m a stone mason. She insisted we build the houses half and half like this. Our signature style. She might be right. People love them. She calls me Rocky to remind me that I’m still wet behind the ears as a carpenter.” I felt him watch me as I stared up to the roof looking for her.
“Seconda opportunità,” he whispered.
Second chance. He told us this so many times as kids when we made a mistake and we were given one more chance. Then he pulled me close to repeat the secret he had told Vince, Lisa, and me what seemed thousands of times. “My father used to say, In life there are only two things: I o fuori?’ Because in life, either you’re in, or you’re out.”
I nodded, hoping I would get the chance to hear him say that a thousand more times. “I’m in,” I said. “I just hope she is.”
He nodded back at me. “I’m in, until they take me out, heh, heh. Then Aggie can call me all the names she wants.” I saw a tear glint in the corner of his eye, but I knew by the bounce in his step when he walked back to the ladder that he was happy.
Uncle Freddie called out to the crew in Italian and all but one hammer stopped, and the crew began to climb down the ladder one by one, the few youngest hopping off the side of the roof to the porch railing below.
“Rain is just starting,” Uncle Freddie said, “we have to call it a day soon, anyway. Erica hates that, she always wants them to keep working.”
Just then I heard a loud scraping sound, and I ducked my head instinctively, thinking the ladder was falling. But the ladder wasn’t falling. My back was to the house, but I could tell from my Uncle’s face that I wasn’t in danger; he just looked surprised. He called up to the roof, “Erica, what are you doing?”
Erica was pulling the ladder up on to the roof and I turned in time to see the last few steps disappear over the edge. Then I heard the ladder make an angry thud onto the roof, a thudding Erica would have yelled at her workers for, for taking the chance on damaging shingles, especially, a beautiful terracotta roof like this one.
Uncle Freddie gave my cheek a good luck tweak filled with love and maybe a pinch of pity. He of all people knew what it w
as like to be outmatched by a strong woman. He walked away to rejoin his crew as I heard hammering begin again on the roof.
I carefully avoided stray nails as I walked around to the porch. In one smooth movement, I easily hoisted myself onto the porch railing and when I straightened up, I hopped hard once with my bare feet to pull myself up onto the roof with the strength of my arms. Erica was crouched at the far end of the roof, her back to me, hammering roofing nails at double her usual speed, a speed fed by anger. I also knew she would have several nails in her fist and a few between her lips.
“Erica.”
I had surprised her by getting on the roof without the ladder and she stopped nailing for a moment, but she didn’t turn around. Instead, she shook her head no, her back still toward me, continuing to hammer away.
“Erica,” I said, louder.
She finally turned, as she spat the nails onto the clay. She spat her words, too. “Why the fuck did you come here?”
It had been so long since I had seen her face, I was equally startled by her anger as I was by her perfection, so much I had forgotten about her. Her face was reddened and I wondered if a few of her tears had hit the roof along with the raindrops that were now pelting us both.
Erica yelled, “Answer me! Why did you come to the one place where I finally stopped thinking I’d see you everywhere went? Now you ruined that. Why?”
“Because I love you,” I said.
“You think I didn’t know that, Marie? That’s why I left!”
“What you don’t know—”
“No! What you don’t know is that I can’t hear any of this!” Then she said to herself, “I did the stupidest thing imaginable.”
I said, “Running away to Italy—”
“No! I kissed you on a rooftop in the middle of a storm. I came to that campground for you and kissed you, knowing I couldn’t ever have you. Running away was the smartest thing I ever did! Until you followed me here, and now I have to start over again.”
I moved toward her and she stood up so quickly near the edge of the roof that she startled me. Gently, I said, “Erica, listen to me—”
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