Chapter 42
Aunt Lisa blew in from New York the morning after a helicopter crashed into a passenger plane over the Potomac River.
I watched the taped collision on my phone, a bright sun-like flare, disintegrated gray parts falling sideways.
My city’s river, I thought. My river. We were two weeks into the new administration; my dad said you couldn’t ask for an omen clearer than that.
My mom, who’d taken off work to scrub the bathroom tiles to death, yelled at me to get the door when my aunt arrived.
My mom was back in the office five days a week now and was in a bitter mood about it.
Three people had already been fired for leaving their IDs in their computers to use the bathroom.
There weren’t enough desks. Every day she had to sign up for one or else wander around the building, searching for somewhere to sit.
My aunt swept through the foyer with two big suitcases, a Japanese fan under her armpit.
She shrugged her coat off in my hands and fanned herself.
“… And you know I cannot stand people yapping on their phones. I was thisss close to slapping that thing out this woman’s hand, and tell me: How come it’s always Black people? ”
I hung her fifty-pound coat in the closet. “Hi, Auntie Lisa.”
“Hi, sweetpea.” Looking me up and down, “Aren’t you grown? I was a blonde in 1989, too, you know.” She stood at the bottom of the staircase and shouted, “Little sister! I like what you’ve done with the place. Is this a new paint color? It’s a little dingy but if it works for you, it works for me.”
The walls had been that pale green for over twenty years.
My dad heaved himself from his armchair and into the hallway. Anderson Cooper was on TV behind him looking like a serious elf. “Lisa,” he mumbled.
“Joel. You look good. You look old and tired. But good.” She wasn’t looking at him but fluffing her hair in the hallway mirror. “Someone should’ve picked me up from the train station, but I won’t say anything about it,” she said.
My mom came downstairs in yellow rubber cleaning gloves. My aunt looked like a bird when she spread her arms for a hug in her flowing caftan. They rocked from side to side, my dad defecting to the kitchen.
Aunt Lisa gently cradled my mom’s elbows. “Dori, baby, you look terrible.”
“Oh, shut up.”
My aunt laughed, leaning into me, breath smelling of hotel lobby peppermints. “Don’t get married or you’ll die before your death.” Then she followed my mom into the kitchen, the hem of her caftan sweeping around the corner.
I was exiled to the downstairs sofa while Aunt Lisa took my room. On my way to the bathroom, I caught her burning sage and moving my shit around. She had turned my bed sideways and was sitting on it. “Catherine, come here for a second.”
I came to sit beside her. She smiled at me, her hair stuffed inside a scarf. She’d removed her makeup, but her eyebrows were tattooed on and couldn’t be removed.
“What’s ‘rizz’ mean?”
“Like, charisma.”
“Hm. I accidentally read your diary.”
I didn’t understand how you could accidentally read someone’s diary.
“I’m not going to lie, it was a liiiittle boring.”
“I didn’t know anyone would read it, so.”
She grinned. Her dimple looked like someone had dug their finger into one side of her face until the skin collapsed. “Who’s T and N?”
I rubbed my eyes. “No one.”
“Well, you know I know who J is.”
I didn’t say anything, praying she didn’t bring up the twenty pages I’d written tormenting myself over what to do about Jay.
Paragraphs: debating myself, lacerating myself, praising myself, a Choose Your Own Adventure map involving several paths, two of which lead to my death, one ending in marriage, and another with me fucking off to Mexico City.
In my chicken-scratch cursive, it must’ve read like a portrait of someone going insane.
Instead, she said, “When I was on Broadway, we were all sleeping together. This was before AIDS ruined it.” She frowned, looking off into the distance. “Are you protecting yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Now, what’s this novel stuff?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We’re artists in this family, you know. Before she got married and died, your mommy used to sing. We made hundreds of little musicals together. I haven’t heard her voice in years. What a shame.”
I knew my dad sang in his church choir as a teenager, but I never knew my mom sang.
“Would mom ever have an affair? I mean, like, cheat?” I asked. “That’s not like her, right?”
Aunt Lisa took a nail file from the cosmetic bag on the window ledge and began filing her toenails. On my bed. “Not like her? She’s done it before. Not with your father. Years ago.”
My stomach dropped. “When?”
“Oh, it must’ve been in college. She had this little high school boyfriend, you know how that goes. When she met the college boys…” She said, “You know, sweetpea, I always thought you were a lesbo.”
“Auntie!”
“I’m just happy to know I wasn’t wrong.” Pointing her file at me, “You were something.”
I stood, feigning a yawn. “Can you not tell my mom, please? About any of this?”
She hooked her pinky around mine. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”