Anyway. It was early July and hot the day I reported in, the sort of hot you carry in your lungs. I knocked on the glass door and, as I did so, caught a glimpse of my own tired reflection. Let me just say, carving out sofa real estate with a flatulent dog does nothing for one’s complexion. I peered beyond theCLOSEDsign and saw Auntie Rita sitting at a card table in the back, cigarette dangling from her bottom lip as she examined something small and white in her hands. She waved me in. “Edie, luvvie,” she said over the welcome bell and the Supremes, “lend me your eyes, will you, poppet?”
It’s a little like stepping back in time, visiting Auntie Rita’s shop. The black-and-white checkerboard tiles, the bank of vinyl chairs with lime-green cushions, the old-fashioned cone-shaped hair dryers on retractable arms. Posters of Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross and the Temptations framed behind glass. The unchanging smell of peroxide and next door’s chip grease, locked in mortal combat.
“I’ve been trying to thread this blasted thing through there and there,” Rita said around her cigarette, “but as if it’s not bad enough that my fingers have turned to thumbs, the bloody ribbon’s upped and grown a mind of its own.”
She thrust it towards me and with a bit of squinting I realized it was a small lacy bag with holes in the top where a drawstring should be.
“They’re favors for Sam’s hens,” Auntie Rita said, nodding at a box of identical bags by her feet. “Well, they will be once we’ve made ’em up and filled ’em with goodies.” She dumped the ash from her cigarette. “Kettle’s just boiled, but I’ve got some lemonade in the fridge if you’d rather?”
My throat contracted at the mere suggestion. “I’d love one.”
It’s not a word you’d normally think to associate with your mother’s sister, but it’s true so I’ll say it: she’s saucy, my auntie Rita. Watching her as she poured our lemonades, rounded bottom stretching her skirt in all the right places, waist still small despite four babies more than thirty years ago, I could well believe the few anecdotes I’d gleaned from Mum over the years. Without exception these had been delivered in the form of warnings about the things good girls didn’t do; however they’d had a rather unintended effect: cementing for me the admirable legend of Auntie Rita, rabble-rouser.
“Here you are then, luvvie.” She handed me a martini glass spitting bubbles and harrumphed into her own chair, prodding at her beehive with both sets of fingers. “Phew,” she said, “what a day. Lord—you look as tired as I feel!”
I swallowed a glorious lemon sip, fierce bubbles singeing my throat. The Tempations started crooning “My Girl” and I said, “I didn’t think you opened Sundays.”
“I don’t, not as a habit, but one of my old dears needed a rinse and set for a funeral—not her own, mercifully—and I didn’t have the heart to turn her away. You do what you must, don’t you? Like family, some of them.” She inspected the bag I’d threaded, tightened the drawstring, loosened it again, long pink fingernails clacking together. “Good girl. Only twenty more to go.”
I saluted as she handed me another.
“Anyway, gives me a chance to get a bit of work in for the wedding, away from prying eyes.” She widened her own briefly before narrowing them like shutters. “That Sam of mine’s a nosy one, always was, even as a girl. Used to scale the cupboards looking for where I’d stashed the Christmas goodies, then she’d dazzle her brothers and sisters by guessing what was wrapped beneath the tree.” She drew a fresh cigarette from the packet on the table, said, “Little beggar,” and struck a match. The cigarette tip flared hopefully then settled. “How about you then? Young girl like you oughta have better things to be doing with her Sunday.”
“Better than this?” I held up my second little white bag, ribbon in place. “What could be better than this?”
“Cheeky mare,” she said, and her smile reminded me of Gran in a way that Mum’s never does. I’d adored Gran with a might that belied any suspicions I’d had growing up that I must surely be adopted. She’d lived alone for as long as I’d known her, and though, as she was quick to point out, she’d had her share of offers, she refused to remarry and be an old man’s slave when she knew what it was to be a young man’s darling. There was a lid for each pot, she’d told me often and soberly, and she thanked God she’d found her lid in my grandfather. I never met Gran’s husband, Mum’s father, not that I remembered: he died when I was three and on the few occasions I thought to ask about him, Mum, with her distaste for rehashing the past, had always been quick to skim the subject’s surface. Rita, thank goodness, had been more forthcoming. “So,” she said, “how’d you get on then?”
“I got on very well.” I rummaged inside my bag for my notes, unfolded them, and read out the name Sarah had given me: “The Roxy Club. Phone number’s on here, too.” Auntie Rita wriggled her fingers at me and I handed her the paper. She puckered her lips as tight as the top of the little drawstring bags. “The Roxy Club,” she repeated. “And it’s a nice place? Classy?”
“According to my sources.”
“Good girl.” She refolded the paper, tucked it into her bra strap, and winked at me. “Your turn next, eh, Edie?”
“What’s that?”
“Down the aisle.”
I smiled weakly, lifted a shoulder to flick away the comment.
“How long’s it been now, you and your fellow—six, is it?”
“Seven.”
“Seven years.” She cocked her head. “He’d be wanting to make an honest woman of you soon else you’ll be getting the itch and moving on. Doesn’t he know what a fine catch he’s got? You want me to have a good talk to him?”
Even if not for the fact that I was trying to conceal a breakup, it was a scary thought. “Actually, Auntie Rita”—I wondered how best to put her off without revealing too much—“I’m not sure either one of us is the marrying kind.”
She drew on her cigarette, one eye narrowing slightly as she considered me. “That right?”
“Afraid so.” This was a lie. Partly. I was, and remain, most definitely the marrying kind. My acceptance, throughout our relationship, of Jamie’s sneering skepticism towards wedded bliss was at complete odds with my naturally romantic sensibilities. I offer no defense other than to say that, in my experience, when you love someone you’ll do just about anything to keep them.
On the back of a slow exhalation Rita’s gaze seemed to shift gears, from disbelief, through perplexity, arriving finally at weary acceptance. “Well, maybe you’ve got the right idea. It just happens to you, life, you know; happens while you’re not watching. You meet someone, you go riding in his car, you marry him and have a batch of children. Then one day you realize you’ve got nothing in common. You know you used to, you must have—why else would you have married the fellow?—but the sleepless nights, the disappointments, the worry. The shock of having more life behind than in front. Well”—she smiled at me as if she’d given me a recipe for pie rather than the desire to stick my head in an oven—“that’s life, isn’t it?”
“That’s glorious, Auntie Rita. Make sure you put that in your wedding speech.”
“Cheeky thing.”
With Auntie Rita’s pep talk still hanging in the smoky haze, we each engaged in private struggle with a tiny white bag. The record player kept spinning, Rita hummed as a man with a molten voice urged us to take a good look at his smile, and finally I could stand it no longer. Much as I enjoy seeing Rita, I’d come with an ulterior motive. Mum and I had barely spoken since our meeting at the patisserie; I’d canceled our next scheduled coffee date, pleading a backlog at work, and even found myself screening her phone calls when she rang my machine. I suppose my feelings were hurt. Does it sound hopelessly juvenile to say so? I hope not, because it’s true. Mum’s continued refusal to trust me, her adamant denial that we’d visited the castle gates, her insistence that it wasIwho had invented the whole thing, caused a small spot inside my chest to ache and made me more determined than ever to learn the truth. And now I’d skipped the family roast again, put Mum’s nose even further out of joint, ventured across town in shoe-melting heat: I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, Imustn’tleave without some gold. “Auntie Rita?” I said.
