May 2003
Have you ever done something so bad, so colossally wrong, I mean so spectacularly awful it made the evening news, and you didn’t think you would ever live it down? Well, I have. And when you come from a small town like I do, that often means that no matter how much time passes, or how successful you are, or how much good you’ve done in the world, people are always going to think of you as that girl who did that thing. This is why I avoided returning to Haverhill, North Carolina for eight years. I snuck in occasionally for holidays or family events, but I have stayed away from places where folks are prone to gossip like the Winn Dixie, hair salon, or church. Then I got the call that Aunt Ralph was in the hospital.
I was in London pitching a marketing plan for a diabetes drug to the UK’s fastest growing pharmaceutical company who were looking to break into the US market. Actually, I was in my hotel room curled up in bed with Colin (at least I thought that was his name) because the call came around two in the morning London time. Expecting my boss with one more tweak to the slides for our presentation I answered the phone by groaning. “Chris, the deck looks perfect.”
“It’s not Chris.” My mother’s voice sent chills through me, and not for the usual reasons. She sounded tired and her calling in the middle of the night couldn’t be good news.
“What is it?” I sat up, Calvin’s arm slid off me, landing on the mattress with a soft thud.
“Aunt Ralph had a heart attack.” Mom got straight to the point. “She’s in the hospital. The doctors don’t think she’s going to make it.”
My heart sank. Goosebumps raced over my skin. It was the strangest feeling, the sudden expectation of grief like having a heavy weight dropped on you while also feeling electrified with anxiety. “Okay,” A million things ran through my head. I scrubbed a hand over my face and took a deep breath reining in my spinning thoughts. “Okay. I’ll be on the first plane I can get.”
“Good.” Mom snapped. “She doesn’t have much time, and I shouldn’t have to call halfway around the world just to figure out where you are.”
“I’m sorry, mom. I’m working.” I wasn’t going to argue with her right now. No doubt she was scared and tired, and I was an easy target.
“You could have told me where you were going?” It was rare for her to be this short with me. Her recriminations were usually delivered in the Southern way with a spoonful of sugar and a backhanded compliment. Her uncharacteristic directness told me everything I needed to know about the seriousness of Aunt Ralph’s condition.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be on the first plane home.” I hung up the phone and took the quickest possible shower.
I was in my robe when I woke Connor. “Connor. Hey, Connor”
“Carson.” He sat up groggily rubbing his eyes.
“Right.” He really was attractive, and if memory served, a software engineer from Chicago. At least that’s what I thought he’d told me when we met in the bar downstairs. “Listen, I would not normally kick you out of bed at this hour,” He stretched, and the sheet slipped from a shoulder revealing some obscenely toned abs. “Or any hour, but I have a family emergency back in the States and I have to get out of here.”
He looked confused for a second and scanned the room as if just realizing it wasn’t his hotel room. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay.”
“I’m really sorry.” I stepped back and grabbed my clothes from the closet shoving them into my carryon bag.
Carson put his clothes back on and slipped into the hallway with a mumbled, “Thanks. Hope everything turns out okay.”
“Thanks.” Throwing on some clothes, I decided to give my boss a heads-up before I left for the airport. Predictably, he was awake and going over our presentation for the umpteenth time. He was also very understanding. Chris and I had worked together closely for a few years now. As a fellow southerner he understood a great aunt might not be immediate family to some people, but she was as good as to me. I was, at least, confident I wasn’t going to get canned or demoted for ditching him in London for a family emergency. He wasn’t that kind of boss.
The first plane to the US was at 6:45 AM, which I thought was perfect timing, until we hit turbulence caused by a storm at our destination in Boston. After fishtailing and skidding to a stop on the runway, I disembarked to find my flight to Raleigh, along with all the other flights out of Boston had been cancelled for the evening. I contemplated renting a car and driving, but in stormy weather, it would have taken the same amount of time as waiting to catch the next morning’s flight.
When I called my folks to give them an update, my father told me Aunt Ralph had died. I don’t even remember the words he used, only that everything stopped as if the Earth’s rotation suddenly paused. All the adrenaline of scrambling for a flight, or car, or hotel drained out of me, and I melted into a puddle of stunned grief and disappointment on a bench across from Dunkin’ Donuts at Terminal E. After a good half hour of catatonic bench-melting while tendrils of soul-shaking misery snaked their way under my skin, I trudged to a taxi stand. An hour later I was alone in another hotel room crying over a room service salad and drowning my grief in a bottle of chardonnay.
***
“What’s the matter, baby?” Aunt Ralph took a seat on the bench in the turret room. She and Uncle Will had given me my own room the summer before when I had spent most of my days at their house. The turret on the third floor was my sanctuary, and that day I needed it. I had run the four blocks from my house to theirs and up to my room without even stopping to say hello. She had let me enjoy the peace of my room for half an hour before coming to see what was wrong. Ralph got me. She always knew the right approach.
“What isn’t?” I groused from where I lay on the floor, not taking my eyes off the stars painted on the ceiling. I’d had another argument with my mother. “I got a C in Algebra. She bought me pants that are a size too small, and she’s insisting I try out for the tennis team.”
“Since when do you play tennis?” Aunt Ralph huffed.
“Since she thinks all the running around will help me lose weight, of course.” If I’d been sitting up my head would have hung in shame. My mother had been hounding me about my weight for the last year. It seemed like as soon as I hit puberty, I started to put on pounds. My mother would try to incentivize me to lose weight by forcing me into activities I didn’t want to do and buying me nice clothes in the size she thought I should be. All any of that did was make me feel worse about myself and powerless to change anything.
“Don’t you let it get to you.” Aunt Ralph said, “Everyone’s body is weird in one way or another at your age. There’s too much change going on for you to worry about it. By the time you’re grown, you’ll settle into a size. And if you don’t like it then, you can change it. But it’ll be your choice.”
“Maybe you should tell her.” I said.
“Maybe I will.” Frustration sharpened her tone. This was a conversation Aunt Ralph had had with my mother before. “Now, why did you get a C in Algebra?”
“Because exponents are hard, and equations with fractions,” I rolled onto my side and propped my head on my hand, “And my teacher never gives us enough time on quizzes.”
“If you had enough time, or more practice, do you think you would do better?” She asked.
Just like that. She asked. My mother had just been mad and told me I needed to do better. She hadn’t asked if I needed help or what I thought the problem was. She just took away my TV time and told me to study more.
I thought about my answer. “On exponents, yes. I can find the answers, just not fast enough for Mrs. Renault. On equations with fractions, I don’t know. I get confused.”
“What if Uncle Will helped you?” Aunt Ralph asked.
“How?”
“You come over here two afternoons every week, and he’ll take some time to tutor you.” My Uncle Will was a mechanical engineer, who probably had seen more than a few equations.
I was unsure, but Uncle Will would be more patient than my teacher. “Okay.”
“Last item,” Ralph shifted topics with her usual direct style. “Do you want to play tennis?”
“God, no!” I sat up crossing my legs in front of me. “Even if I liked tennis, most of the girls on the team all go to the country club together. They’re such snobs.”
Aunt Ralph hmm’d in thought before her red lips curled up in a mischievous smile. “Then I think Uncle Will’s tutoring availability will just have to occur on the same days as the tennis tryouts. We’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
I laughed, “You think she’ll believe he’s only available those days?”
“She will if I tell her,” Ralph said with confidence. “I love you and I love your mama, but you girls are like oil and water sometimes. I was the same way with my mama. Sooner or later y’all will get on the same page.”
“It’s the later I worry about.”
“Now, come on downstairs. You can help me cut the pieces for the quilt I’m working on. “She held a hand out to me and pulled me up from the floor. Throwing her arm around my shoulders, she walked me down to her sitting room where we drank tea, and cut hexagons out of old clothes, distracting me from the argument with my mother.
When Mom called to say it was time to come home, Aunt Ralph talked to her about our plan. I didn’t hear what was said, but Uncle Will became my algebra tutor and I never did have to go to tennis tryouts.
