Jane. Read online

  How long did it take her to make this mess? Is this what our place is going to look like?

  Meanwhile, except to discuss toileting and cow worship, Aunt Rose has not taken her attention off of her beloved cockatoo since we entered her hovel. "Hey, Rose, we really gotta go," I say, eager to find a working washroom. She looks up at me and nods but does not say anything or make any kind of move; she just stares at me as if still waiting for the point. "It doesn’t look like you’re packed . . . are you bringing anything with you?"

  She shakes her head. "Darla said you’ve just got a little sports car, so Carl’s gonna come in and grab everything, haul it down in his truck in a couple days."

  Everything? A shudder travels through my muscles, from my head all the way down through my toes. There is nothing here with any use value left in it. What, are we going to scrape the grime off of the furniture with razor blades? Or scrub the coffee table until all the grunge veneer has been worn away?

  "Maybe a couple of changes of clothes at least?"

  She crinkles up her nose and surveys the room. "Everything here is dirty and smelly. I’ve got a few bucks. I’ll just pick up some clothes at Goodwill tomorrow. You wouldn’t mind taking me, right?"

  With that, Aunt Rose walks out on her old life, eager to start a new one in the capital city. Her belongings never follow her. Mother tells me later that her husband Carl took one look at the place, turned around, and walked away. "Let the super deal with it," he said. She went in a couple of days later to retrieve the bird’s mite-infested corpse and delivered it to Rose for her to grieve over and bury.

  5

  The drive back to Salem is uneventful. My aunt sleeps, and I try not to. When we finally pull up in front of our new home, she is impossible to wake. I am tempted to leave her in the car for the night, but just as I am about to give up and go in by myself, she finally begins to stir.

  "Huh? Wha . . ." She shakes her head back and forth, her eyes still tightly shut. With a hearty nudge she startles, wide awake now. "Oh, oh shit," she murmurs to herself and bats at the trail of drool on her chin.

  "Sorry Auntie, you sleep like a rock." The apology is as hollow as it sounds, my patience paper thin.

  Inside, when I explain the bedroom situation, she protests, "No, no, you take it. I don’t want it." Her decision is surprising, her objection almost fearful, but I am too tired to press the issue.

  Sleep comes easy, but it is also over as quick as it begins. Then, all there is are four bright white walls in an empty room. It takes a moment to remember where I am as the events of the past forty-eight hours flood back, and it feels as though someone has flipped me upside down and given me a good, vigorous shake. The world looks different somehow, and it is both better and worse at the same time. There is a twinge of loss mixed with loneliness. A whisper of guilt turns out to be freedom instead. Such an elusive dynamic in the battle for love among the sexes, being on the losing side so long I can barely recognize it; now that it is securely in my grasp, the enormity of it is almost overwhelming. I am truly free to do WHATEVER I want without someone else judging me and my decisions! I am free to determine what happens next.

  And yet I have no idea what that should be! One thing is for sure, a wild ride stretches out ahead of me. I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling while a thousand thoughts run amuck inside my head. There are so many, and they are so loud that they all melt together into a dull static. That static lulls me into daydreams of non-existence where nothing is real—certainly not me lying here, certainly not this life. It is all a farce. This reality is simply the fantasy life of a psyche afloat in a giant void. Until my stomach growls and pulls me back into the here and now of my basic human needs.

  But there is no food or coffee here, no sustenance to speak of. If I want to eat, then a trip to the store is in order. "Rose?" I call, opening the door that leads to the living room. "What would you like for breakfast?"

  No answer.

  "Rose?"

  She should be curled up in one of the corners, still under the Trazadone rock, but the living room is empty. So are the kitchen and the laundry room and the washroom. Where could she be? Where could she have gone? Shit. Shit! How much supervision does she really need? Not even twenty-four hours and I have lost her already!

  Except it is not really my fault. Mother did not warn me; she did not give me any specifics about my aunt’s care needs. Instead, she sang of Rose’s stability, of her newfound balance. And even though her apartment screamed a very different tune, and I probably should have figured it out on my own, it still would have been nice to be warned, to be given a heads-up that I am really here to babysit so that I would not make the mistake of letting my charge out of my sight.

  Then, a wave of relief. There is a note on the kitchen counter. Dear Jane, it reads, In case you wake up before I get back, I went to get some grub. I’ll bring you some too. The note is signed smiley face, backslash, and then—instead of her name—a hand-drawn rose. Cute.

  God, I hope she gets coffee.

  With nothing to do but wait, I traipse into the empty living room and plop down on the hardwood floor. I wonder what it must be like to find the cold hard floor suitable. Preferable even! My aunt is an interesting character, true, but she must have been through something truly awful these past few years. What could have blunted her sense of physical discomfort so? What had caused such dramatic changes in her mode of operation that instead of being the clean freak who could not sleep at night knowing there was a single dirty dish in the sink or a speck of dust on the furniture, my aunt is now perfectly content to live in a squalid mess? She used to fuss over perfectly placed pillows and matching duvets; now, she stocks up on filth and volunteers to sleep on the floor.

  That Aunt Rose has always done things a little different—been a bit strange, a bit unpredictable, a slave to the whims of her mind—this is no secret. As a child, I always admired her for it. She never cared what anyone thought of her, and she did whatever she felt like doing whenever she felt like doing it. Her doctor said that she lacked impulse control. My mom disagreed and said that her sister could control herself so long as she wanted to; the real problem was that Rose had no desire to do so. Of course the real, real answer was probably somewhere in the middle. Growing up it seemed to me that impulses were like a drug to my aunt. Whenever she got an idea or an impulse, it would instantly energize her, like the first hit of the day for a crackhead on the heels of a long, drawn out fiend. Whatever the idea was, it would not leave her alone until she had thoroughly analyzed, and most likely acted upon, it. There were times when she would be absolutely devastated by the failure of an idea, such as when her brilliant plan to build a tree house in our backyard was dashed by the fact that there were not any trees back there. On most occasions, however, Rose found a way to bring her ideas to some sort of fruition.

  6

  It all started with a beer commercial. I was eleven, maybe twelve. Girls danced around our television screen in their bikinis, hands wrapped around ice cold cans of domestic lagers . . . in the snow. I was too young to understand the whole marketing ploy, and it all just looked silly to me, but it gave Aunt Rose one of her "greatest ideas ever" (of course every new idea was her greatest ever). Since it was winter and there just so happened to be a few inches of snow on the valley floor (a rare thing in this part of the state), my aunt convinced herself that it was a sign from Them. She must put on a bikini and head to the store to buy some beer. Immediately. They and Them sent Rose constant messages through a variety of sources: the weather, patterns in nature, billboards, books. But the best, the best ones were delivered straight to our living room by the television set. It was imperative that she act on those.

  So here my aunt was with this impulse to make a fool out of herself and me as well in the process. Could she have ignored it? Probably, as Mother claimed, but it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort, and Aunt Rose was always a woman with far more impulses than force to beat them back. Doing so always to
ok a lot out of her, and it was never a pretty sight. On the rare occasion that she did, it was like watching a child throw a fit: she would shake and rock back and forth and yell and argue with thin air. Afterwards, exhausted, she would crawl straight to bed. Sometimes, when the struggle was particularly intense, she would fall asleep on the floor in the midst of it. It really is no surprise that she did not subject herself to these battles very often; most of the time she just went with whatever came to mind and enjoyed the high that followed. The struggle she saved for violent impulses—the messages that told her to do harm, the ones she knew were unequivocally bad ideas. But the bikini beer situation hardly met the criteria for the struggle.

  By the time Aunt Rose donned her favorite polka-dot bikini, paired with fuzzy calf-high snow boots and a matching parka (which she left unzipped and slung low on her shoulders) the sun had long since set and the earth was frozen stiff. Meanwhile, I covered myself in layers, otherwise unconcerned with my aunt’s determination to make an ass of herself. To a certain extent, I had already been desensitized to her antics, grown used to her craziness, so much so that her attitude of not giving a shit had already started to rub off on me enough that I just went with it.

  We braved the bitter wind from our front door to the curb. There, my aunt’s old rusty Chevelle sat quietly on the side of the street under its blanket of snow. I watched as the gooseflesh prickled around her belly button and she tugged at the frozen passenger door my childish muscles were too weak to pry open. Once the door finally cracked then crunched open, sending a sheet of ice crumbling to the ground, she climbed in and slid over to the driver’s side, oblivious to the cold of the vinyl on her bare rear.

  It took a few tries, but Aunt Rose was finally able to coax the old engine over. The inside of the car was dark and cave-like, all the windows covered in snow. Once she was satisfied that the car would not die, she got out and shoved the snow from the front windshield with her bare hands.

  "What about the rest?" I motioned towards the rear and side windows as she climbed back in, the job less than half done.

  Aunt Rose giggled at my naïveté and hit the gas. "We don’t need those. We just need to see what’s in front of us." Spinning out onto the street with the confidence of a Minnesotan transplant, born to drive in the snow but none of the experience, she yelled, "Put your seat belt on!" At that moment, I was literally afraid for my life; I am not exaggerating here. We swerved and skid the entire mile and a half to the store. Thankfully, there was no one else out on the road.

  Now most people would probably assume that if they showed up at the grocery store in their bikinis, especially in the dead of winter, people are going to stare at them. But not my aunt. No, Rose was completely surprised by the leers and glares that started in the parking lot and culminated at the checkout line. She soaked it all up as best she could, reveling in the gawks of perverted old men and using the incredulity of pear-shaped housewives as an excuse to be a smart-ass. "Ah, keep your eyes to yourself," she said with a triumphant grin more than once, "You don’t need to hate. Not my fault I look like this and you look like . . . thaaat." She punctuated her taunts with the hand model gestures of a showcase showgirl and beamed the whole way to the cash register. All of the attention was just about enough to say, "Mission accomplished!"

  That is, until the cashier refused to sell her an eighteen-pack.

  "What the fuck do you mean you won’t sell me any beer?" she demanded. Her voice echoed throughout the store.

  The cashier was young, a splatter of freckles on her nose and wavy blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked scared, intimidated, like she had never experienced that kind of confrontation before. She shook her head, tried to compose herself, and quoted straight from the manual: "It is against the law to sell alcohol to visibly intoxicated persons."

  "Are you calling me drunk?" Aunt Rose was shrill, her smile turning to venom. "I am not drunk! How dare say such a thing! I am over twenty-one, and I am legally entitled to buy alcohol!"

  "Ma’am . . ." the girl tried to raise her timid voice, but my aunt plowed over her.

  "Don’t fucking call me ‘Ma’am’! I ain’t no fucking ‘Ma’am’!"

  The cashier reached for the intercom, her hand shaking, and paged the store manager to the front. "Aaron, we have a hostile customer at checkstand five. I repeat we have a hostile customer at checkstand five."

  "I am not fucking hostile!" she yelled before the cashier had released the intercom button, which in turn broadcast her outburst across the store.

  7

  The front door swings open, snapping me out of the memory.

  "Hey there, sleepyhead. About time you got up!" Rose exclaims as she stumbles through the door with a paper takeout sack and two Styrofoam cups. "What are you doing down there?"

  "Just remembering the time you got arrested at the grocery store for disorderly conduct," I chuckle.

  "And menacing!" she huffs. "Oh yeah, and public intoxication, or some other crap like that." She pauses to put the coffee and doughnuts down on the real-wood floor before continuing on, "Which is complete bullshit since I passed the sobriety test . . ." She begins to count off her list of grievances on her fingers, "And not only did I pass the Breathalyzer, but I had zero percent alcohol in my blood! Then," she grabs her third finger, "they even made me pee in a cup, and I passed that test too!"

  I nod. Aunt Rose had been done a grave injustice by the Salem Police Department. A little yelling and an obnoxious outfit earned her ninety days in the pokey, and she is still bitter about it well over a decade later.

  "I would do it all over again," she laughs, her mood reminiscent of her many triumphant ideas.

  I shake my head with amusement. "I know you would Rose; I know you would."

  "I’ve missed you, Janie," she says and hands me one of the white cups.

  "I’ve missed you too." I smile and ask her what she has been up to lately.

  "Oh a lot! A lot . . . yeah," she trails off into her own little world, her voice and eyes distant, then just as suddenly perks back up. "So this is exciting . . . you and me, roomies." Roomies, hmmm, interesting way to put it. I wonder if she knows that I am here to keep an eye on her. She sees me eyeing her paper bag and offers up a breakfast pastry. "Boston cream!" she announces as she pushes the bag forward.

  The thing about Boston cream is that the first few bites are fucking amazing! But then it quickly becomes too much: too sweet, too creamy, too filling. And the thing about my aunt and doughnuts is that she will only pick out one flavor. Now that flavor may be plain or chocolate, maple or frosted with sprinkles, jelly filled or, like today, Boston cream, but there will never ever be any kind of variety. Doughnuts, I contest, require variety. So Rose wins with coffee but fails at breakfast pastries. Yet another life activity surrounded by superstition in her head, another task impossible for her to complete in a normal and efficient manner.

  After the first delicious doughnut, I force myself to eat a stodgy second—each bite followed by a generous gulp of coffee. Once my hunger is sufficiently staved off enough for me to carry on a conversation, I ask my aunt the obvious: "Why Salem?"

  She laughs, no more than a nervous tremor, and then, with a little too much confidence, answers, "Starting over." I cock my head to the left but do not say anything. After a few moments of silence, she finally elaborates, "I just got a little tired of life in the big city. Time for something a little more homey."

  There is more to it of course, the underlayer beneath the filthy apartment and ragged appearance, the real reason she cannot be trusted to live alone any longer. But I do not push the subject; instead, I ask, "So what do you do these days . . . you know, to keep busy?"

  "Well," she takes a bite of doughnut and chews slowly, as if deliberately trying to buy time. "I was thinking about going to college." She looks at me and waits for a reaction. When I don’t give her one, she continues, "You know maybe get a degree in something exciting, like economics."

  Silence. Bu
t just for a second, and then we both burst into laughter. "You know you aren't studying any fucking economics."

  She changes the subject off of herself. "So what brought you to Salem?"

  "I’m starting over too." It is only a third true, but there is no need to elaborate and pour salt onto my own fresh wounds or admit that I am there to watch over her (which she either does not know or is in complete denial of).

  Rose frowns and leans towards me, takes a drink of coffee, and bores into me with those eyes of hers that scream, Give me more information! That look worked on me as a kid, and it does not seem to be doing such a bad job even now. "What are you starting over from? Where were you before here, anyway?"

  I take a breath and try to pace my answers. "I was in Eugene. Remember, I moved down there for college?"

  "So what was so terrible about Eugene? Why did you come back?"

  "Oh nothing, nothing was wrong with the city." Has she left me an out? I try to change the subject. "The city was great actually! Like one of those last bastions for us leftist commies. Hippies everywhere. Great hikes too. Cute boys at the college. Oh, and the pot is amazing! World renowned actually!"

  "World-renowned pot?" she laughs. I nod, a bit overconfident in having dodged the hard questions, but then she is completely serious and throws out a zinger that hits a little too close to home. "So what are you running from?"