Dear Aunt Myrna

by Kit Duncan

Aunt Myrna was staying with us for a week. There were a hundred marvels I wanted to show her, and things I wanted to talk with her about, and I was sure a single week would simply not be big enough a bag to cram everything into.

  The day after she arrived Leon and another man showed up at the house with Papa just before lunch. After we had eaten, Aunt Myrna went to her room and brought back the keys to Grandpa Wilhelm's truck, and Leon and the other man drove it away, sputtering and firing all the way up Thistlewood.

  "Myrna," Papa scolded my aunt playfully as he put his sport coat on. "You have got to let me get you into a new?."

  "Walter," Aunt Myrna interrupted him with a tiny peck on his cheek. "If you want to sell cars, go somewhere else. I'm not in the market." She smiled at Papa, and he shrugged his shoulders in defeat.

  "Well, all I'm saying is?."

  "Papa's truck is fine. A new tail pipe, and it'll be good as new."

  "It's going to take more than a new tail pipe for that beat up old?."

  "Walter."

  "Yes, Myrna?"

  "You're just about to get insulting."

  "Yes, Myrna."

  "Now, you go play with your new little cars and be a good boy."

  "Yes, Myrna." Papa kissed his sister, kissed Mama, and kissed me, and when he was done kissing everyone he left the house and went back to work.

  Danny, Timmy, and I spent the afternoon painting the go-cart bright red. We were careful not to get our brushes too near the engine. Harry couldn't help because he had another doctor's appointment.

  "What's wrong with Harry, anyhow?" I asked Danny.

  "What d'ya mean?"

  "He goes to the doctor all the time."

  "You're exaggerating, Katie," Danny said. "Timmy, don't let it run down the side like that." Timmy slapped more paint on the errant drip and smeared it around, and it ran worse than before.

  "Well, he goes a lot, anyhow," I said.

  "Mom says he has asthma," Danny said.

  "Oh," I nodded my head slowly as if that explained everything. "Asthma," I repeated.

  We waited excitedly for Mr Watson to get home. He had left strict instructions that we were not to drive the go-cart unless he was home. When finally the old woodie pulled into the driveway, we met Mr Watson with incessant screams and pleas. He laughed at us as he pulled the go-cart to the front of the house.

  Harry joined us after his doctor's appointment, and the four of us took turns racing back and forth between the Dodson's nearly completed house and the intersection of Reidling and Thistlewood.

  Janey and Harry's little sister whined because Mr Watson wouldn't let them drive the go-cart, and they went into the back yard and played with their silly dolls until Harry's mother called her two children in to eat.

  Supper at the Morgenstern and Watson homes was late that evening.

  Papa helped Mama with the dishes, and Aunt Myrna and I sat on the Adirondacks on the patio under the deck. She was reading a Steinbeck novel, and I was on the fourth page of The Wind in the Willows. I had my dictionary on the table next to me.

  "Aunt Myrna," I said, "What have you been through?"

  She finished reading her paragraph before she asked, without looking up, "What's that?"

  "Mama said you've been through things. What have you been through?"

  She read another paragraph, turned the page, read some more.

  "Aunt Myrna?"

  "Yes, Kate," she kept reading.

  "Are you listening?"

  "No. I'm reading."

  I read another paragraph of my book, and I only had to look up three or four words.

  "He's as bad as Hilton," I mumbled.

  "Who?" Aunt Myrna looked at me.

  "Grahame and his long paragraphs," I complained.

  "Don't read it, then," Aunt Myrna said, then returned to Steinbeck.

  "Well, I can't help it now. I'm all interested in the silly old thing."

  Aunt Myrna closed her book. "What's so interesting about it?"

  "Mole. He leaves his spring cleaning and starts out on an adventure, and now I want to know what adventures he's going to have." I paused, and added, "I want to know what sort of things he's going to go through. I want to know what he's been through." I looked intensely at my book as if I had lost all interest in Aunt Myrna. I could feel her looking at me, and I read more slowly, consulted my dictionary, and kept reading.

  "Kate," Aunt Myrna interrupted me, and I looked over at her. "When a person has lived over half a century they've been through many things."

  "What have you been through?"

  "You're a little bit nosey," she smiled.

  "I'm a whole lot curious," I said. "Like Conway."

  Aunt Myrna sighed. "Well, being curious is one thing, but it's not polite to pry, you know."

  "I'm not prying," I argued. "I'm just interested, that's all."

  "Well, it's not all that interesting," Aunt Myrna said under her breath, and she started to read again.

  "But it's about you," I objected. "Doesn't that make it interesting?"

  "Kate."

  "Yes?"

  "Just read."

  I read, and Aunt Myrna read, and after a little time it was getting too dark to read, and we put our books on the little table between us. We watched the fireflies come out, and we watched the bats dart across the purple glow of sky.

  "I had a little girl once," Aunt Myrna said without looking at me. "Or nearly so."

  "How does someone nearly have a kid?" I asked.

  Aunt Myrna didn't answer me right away. When she did her voice cracked a little. "She died right before she was born, three weeks before she was due."

  I didn't say anything. I only looked at my aunt looking out across the back yard, across the dry creek bed, and up the hill.

  "It's not polite to stare, Kate," she said without looking at me.

  "I'm not staring. I'm only looking."

  "You're staring, Kate."

  "Sorry, Aunt Myrna." I turned my head way over to my right and looked at the dirt mounds in what was soon to become the Dodson's back yard. I looked through the growing darkness into the woods, and told myself I needed to go check on my dead log soon to make sure no one had taken it over. My neck was beginning to get stiff, and then I heard Aunt Myrna stand up. Before I had time to turn around she was bending over me, and she wrapped her big arms around my tiny shoulders. She held me for a long time, then grabbed her book and snapped opened the sliding glass door. I heard her heavy feet climb the basement steps.

  Papa came down to the patio a few minutes later and sat where Aunt Myrna had been sitting. He didn't say anything for awhile, and I didn't, either.

  "Squirt-handle," he finally said.

  "Yes, Papa?"

  We looked at one another for a long, long time.

  "Nothing," he said, and he reached over and held my hand, and looked into the darkness. I squeezed his hand.

  "Well, it's getting late, Katie-doo," he said, and he stood up. I stood up with him, and we walked upstairs together.

  CHAPTER 19