He nodded. “You’re right.”
“Pretend if you have to, but don’t attract any attention we don’t want. It could get back to your parents and then maybe my father.”
“Understood.” He looked around and then straightened his posture and smiled. “Back to Kane Hill.”
“Good.”
He did make an effort during the day, and between the last two classes of the day, he spent some time joking with his buddies. At the end of the day, we made plans for when we would see each other over the long holiday weekend. We decided to plan on something for Sunday. Our teachers were merciful this time and didn’t assign a great deal to be done before we returned.
I went off to the airport to greet my aunt Barbara. I spotted her instantly as she came through the entrance to the gate. She was an inch or so shorter than my father and had hair just a shade darker than mine. She kept it cropped short around the edges of her ears but held on to her bangs. At forty-one, she still had what my father called “her girlish figure,” because she was “Lauren Bacall slim.” She had dainty, diminutive features, highlighted by exquisite hazel eyes. Maybe she knew that because most people don’t look so directly at you when they speak to you or when you speak to them. My father said she always had that New York arrogance, that look that said, “I can survive well in the city that never sleeps. I can hold my own on subways and on crowded streets. I can deal with the traffic and the noise, so just don’t mess with me.”
When my father told her all that to her face, she simply replied, “So? Don’t mess with me.”
There was a part of me that envied her and wanted to be more like her, but there was a stronger part that demanded that I be softer, more demure, closer to how I remember my mother. Aunt Barbara always looked like she had something t
o prove. I knew about her failed love affairs and thought that a woman like her had to find a man who was so self-confident that he was never threatened by her or one who was so weak he’d permit himself to be broken and trained like some wild horse. Somehow, I thought, Aunt Barbara would not want either kind, and therein lay her doom when it came to romance.
“Look at you!” she screamed, rushing toward me to kiss and embrace me. “You look like you’ve grown years since I last saw you, Kristin.” She held me out at arm’s length and loaded her face with suspicion. “Have we—what did you once tell me you called it?—crossed the Rio Grande?”
My face grew so flushed that I thought even the most anxious-to-be-home passengers would pause and look. It was just like my New York aunt to get right to the bottom line. It was why my father had thought of her immediately when he concluded that I had to learn the facts of life quickly. My father said everyone in New York City lived at twice the normal speed. They didn’t stroll in New York, he said. “They walk those sidewalks as if they believe the city might roll them up at any moment.”
“I’m sorry,” Aunt Barbara said immediately. “It’s none of my business. You’re entitled to your secrets, as entitled as I am to mine.” She scrunched up her nose. “When your father’s not looking, we’ll get drunk, and you’ll tell me anyway,” she said.
I laughed, but I wondered if I would.
“Speaking of him, how is my Captain Queeg of a brother?” she asked. I picked up her carryon, and we started out of the terminal. I had seen The Caine Mutiny and knew that Queeg was the no-nonsense captain who went off the deep end, chasing down missing strawberries and clicking steel balls in his hand.
“He’s a pussycat, Aunt Barbara.”
“We know that,” she said, hugging me, “but never let him know we know.”
After we got into my car and started for home, she became more serious, wanting to know how my father really was.
“I’ve known widowers and widows,” she said, “but I’ve rarely seen any who took the loss as hard. He buried a large part of himself with your mother. If it wasn’t for you . . .”
“He’s okay. He’s strong. Really,” I said. “We both are. We know it would wrong her to be anything else.”
“That’s very wise, Kristin. I’m so proud of you. And you’re going to be valedictorian!”
“That’s not for sure yet, Aunt Barbara. I’m neck and neck with someone.”
“I’m betting on you, but you’re already valedictorian in our family,” she said. She asked who was coming to Thanksgiving dinner, and I told her about Mrs. Osterhouse.
“I’d like to get to know the woman who thinks she could live with my brother,” she joked. “Last time I was here, I put a fork in the wrong slot in the drawer, and he was ready to ship me out.”
We both laughed. This was going to happen, I told myself. I was going to be able to step outside the attic for days.
My father arrived a little less than an hour after I had helped Aunt Barbara settle into the guest room, so I knew he was anxious to greet her. The three of us sat in the living room, and I listened to them catch up on their lives and their contact with Uncle Tommy, whom I could see they both really wished was with us. My father decided to take us out for dinner. His favorite restaurant besides Charley’s Diner was a Mediterranean-themed restaurant that emphasized Italian and Spanish cuisine. It had four or five stars on all the Internet sites, and I knew from the start that my father wanted to prove to Aunt Barbara that there were restaurants just as sophisticated in Charlottesville as any in her precious New York. Before the night was over, she had to admit he was right.
He gloated, and she and I covered our smiles and winked to each other when we thought he wasn’t looking, but my father was always tuned in to what was going on around him.
“All right,” he said. “All right. I know when I’m outnumbered and outgunned.”
It was a wonderful first night of my Thanksgiving holiday.
“I’m so glad I could do this,” Aunt Barbara told me before we went to sleep.
“So am I,” I said, “and so is Dad. Very much.”