Aunt Amy draws me a hot bath.
With bubbles.
Because, clearly, I am a child. A child who just threw a tantrum. And now needs his bubble bath.
But I don’t want to turn my nose up at the hot water with Avon bubbles, so I get in. I hear Aunt Amy down in the kitchen, and I have a sudden ache in my chest for her. She would know more than anyone what it’s like to be left behind. She had to watch all her friends get picked, like flowers being plucked from the garden, and walk down the aisle with their fathers. Daisy, Iris, and Rose. Nobody wanted Aunt Amy, large with misshapen petals, and she endures this. Before I showed up with my problems and the cops, asking her to shelter me, she endured it alone.
As I let the hot water relax me, I wonder if I’ve dreamed this too. I wonder if I’ve dreamed everything into life, including my own family and what a cruel thing the mind does. When I wake, will my mother be alive? Will Pops be by the bedside, worried? Will Aunt Amy be married, and I’ll have cousins that come to my birthday parties because I’m neither too young nor too old?
I sink into the water until it covers my head, the sound of it rushing in my ears.
Then nothing but my own heartbeats, counting…
Waiting.
I pick up the broken decorative plate off the carpet.
It looks like something my grandmother had, and it might well be. It’s broken in three places. I find some craft glue and carefully begin putting the plate back together. I sit on the floor, concentrating, until Aunt Amy appears above me, smelling like oregano.
“Don’t worry about that right now, Paul.”
“I’m almost done.”
“I made some soup for you.”
I glance up at her.
“Come on. Before it gets cold.”
I abandon the plate and sit at the kitchen table. Even though it’s near ninety outside, the sight and smell of chicken vegetable soup makes me feel chilled — and a foot smaller and ten years younger. There’s even a plate of buttered bread.
“I’m not sick,” I say. “I’m just —”
“Just have some. You’ll feel better.” She takes a seat across from me with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese and crackers.
After two spoonfuls of soup, I feel comforted and sated. We both eat in silence for a time, and I realize the soup isn’t canned. She made it. She made it just for me. And she didn’t burn a thing.
I wipe my mouth on a napkin. “I was thinking I should pay you rent.”
She sips her wine. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to.”
She nibbles on a cracker. “No. Save your money.”
“For what?”
“For whatever you want.”
“I want to pay you rent. Something. Help with the electric bill. The telephone.”
She looks at me curiously. “Why would you want to do that now?”
“Because you helped me.” I pause. “Are helping me. I want to help you. Not” —I clear my throat— “break your things.”
She says nothing for a minute or so, finishing her cheese and crackers and the wine. I finish the soup and bread. I feel warmed inside and out, as if I’ve been cuddled and petted by hot water and hot food.
Aunt Amy takes our dishes to the sink. I watch the back of her, her apron tied in a neat bow in the same way my mother’s was. I feel my throat tighten. Then she sits next to me and brushes my hair off my forehead, an unthinking gesture, in the way my mother would do. My eyes sting.
