“Was anyone with her?” I asked. Aunt May had lived such an isolated life, the thought of her dying alone was unbearable.
“A neighbor found her.” My mother put her head in her hands. After a few moments she took a deep breath and seemed to pull herself together. “Your father and I will take the train to Rockville tomorrow. We’ll have a few days to take care of her affairs,” she said. “The funeral is on Saturday.”
“What about the boys?”
“George will stay with Junior, make sure he gets to school.”
I nodded. It really should be me helping out.
“I thought you’d want to know.”
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry for whatever happened between you and Archie. Isensed from the way you were acting in the Adirondacks that there may be some trouble looming. Of course I have no idea what that might have been.”
“It’s my fault,” I said. I knew she was waiting for more, but it was all I could manage. She deserved more of an explanation, she was my mother, after all, but I was devastated to hear the news about Aunt May. I simply couldn’t begin to talk about Archie.
My mother stood up and put on her coat. “I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for you.”
That night I went to the club early. I couldn’t sit around at the boardinghouse. I kept thinking about Aunt May, how I’d thought of her so fondly over the past two years but had never really let her know how grateful I was to her for helping me. We’d exchanged only a few letters, and I regretted that now. But there was more—her death seemed to seal another regret. I’d always wanted to know if she’d ever received word about the baby, if she knew whether she’d been adopted by a local family or one from another state. It would be impossible to demand such information from Birdhouse Lodge after I’d signed those papers, but I couldn’t help wondering. I hadn’t asked her, though. Instead, I’d sent the occasional bland letter about my shows, wishing her a Merry Christmas, telling her we’d love to pay for the train ride to the Adirondacks, saying I understood when she’d written that it was too far to travel.
Why hadn’t I asked about the baby, my baby? Maybe I’d been too scared to revisit that time in my life. Giving her away had seemed the only choice I had back then, but was it really? Looking back,I wondered if it had been decided too quickly, too hastily, without much regard for the permanence of it all.
Now, when I thought back on those months with Aunt May, despite the urgency of the situation, I realized they’d actually been quite enjoyable, hidden away, just the two of us talking, reading and gardening, nurturing the baby growing inside me. It was easier to think back on it now and appreciate it. Though I’d been purposefully pushing it out of my mind, there was so much I still wanted to say to her. She was the only other person who’d known me in that way, and I’d just assumed that she would always be there.
“Hey there, girly,” Texas said, swinging the dressing room door wide open as she marched in. “The early bird gets the worm, except there’s nothing but snakes out there, girly, and don’t you forget it.” She laughed. I tried to smile back at her. “Why the long face? Who died?” she said, laughing again.
“My aunt, actually. My mother just told me today.”
“Oh, doll face, I’m sorry. I’ve got to work on my punch lines. Were you close?”
“Not always, but a few years ago I went through something…” I looked up at her. Hell, it was Texas I was talking to, she must’ve been through just about everything. “I got pregnant and stayed with my aunt in Minnesota to wait it out, then I gave the baby up for adoption.”
“Oh, honey pie, that’s a tough one.”
“I had to hide the whole thing from my family,” I said, strangely relieved to tell someone. “My aunt took such good care of me, never batting an eye in judgment. I just wish I’d spoken to her again, I wish I’d thanked her better, let her know what it meant to me.”
“She sounds like a good lassie. You going to her send-off?”
“I can’t.” I sighed. “It’s this weekend, I’ve got this,” I said, motioning around the club, “and I can’t afford the train ride.”
“How much is it?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. A train to St. Cloud, then another to Rockville, probably fifty dollars at least.”
She pulled a roll of bills out of her bustier and started counting.
“Don’t you worry about the show. The show will go on, it always does. You go and you pay your respects,” she said, placing a wad of bills on the table in front of me. “And when I’m pushing up daisies, you do the same and show up for my funeral. I want everyone I ever knew to be there. Nobody wants to be forgotten.”
I pulled up to Aunt May’s house in a taxi a little after noon on Friday. It had taken me three trains and forty-seven hours to get there. When I walked through the gate and up the pathway to her home, it hit me—this had been her whole world, this little house.
I had one small travel bag that I slung over my shoulder before I knocked on the door. I could hear people inside, so I knocked again.
“Coming,” came my mother’s voice. She opened the door almost absently, as if she were expecting it to be a delivery of flowers or something. And then she swung back around and stared at me. I, too, stood frozen, staring—not just at my mother, who’d seemed so fragile just days earlier and now seemed flushed, youthful, but at the little girl she was holding on her hip.
The girl, no more than a toddler, looked at me curiously with widegreen eyes, her wispy dark hair falling in all directions against her milky-white skin. She reached out a hand toward me, then pulled it back, quickly hiding her face in my mother’s shoulder.
“Olive!” my mother said finally.
