Tears well in my eyes. “You really want to know?”
“I wouldn’ta asked if I didn’t, now would I?”
“I’m pooped, bummed, and corroded.”
“Come again? What’s that corroded bit supposed to mean?”
Time to fess up. “
You
know. After all this time working in the diamond district, I’ve figured out that I’m not really a Type A after all. I’m more a leisurely southern-speed kind of girl. All I have to show for those years is three—count ’em, three—ulcers.”
“Ulcers! Andrea Autumn Adams. How could a bitty little thing like you get herself three ulcers? Why have you not bothered to tell me about even one a’ them? And you’re most certainly one a’ them Type-A types. Why, just look at your initials, sugarplum. AAA.”
One must navigate a minefield of choices when responding to Aunt Weeby. “What’s there to tell?”
“You do sound a mite peckish, now you mention it.” She clucks. “That’s what happens when a body moves to that scandalous Apple a’ yours. Why, I hear say they don’t even eat their greens there.”
I smile. “No. Not as a rule, they don’t.”
“What you need is a good mess a’ turnip greens and some a’ Great-Grandma Willetta’s favorite cod liver oil. That stuff’s so good they still make it even after all this time. It’s not smart to mess with success, I always say.”
The shudder rips through me, hard and heartfelt. Over the years, while staying with Aunt Weeby, I’ve been a frequent victim of Great-Great-Grandma Willetta’s health doctrines.
Not that she’s done the dosing herself, since Willetta Wither-spoon went to her Lord many decades before I came along. It’s just that Aunt Weeby doesn’t hesitate to lubricate at the slightest sneeze, limp, blush, blanch, or general peckishness, as she calls it.
“That’s okay. I did see the doctor recently.” Never mind that I didn’t understand a Chinese word the lovely lady said. “I’m doing just fine. And my trip to New Delhi should be . . . good. Yes, good. And productive too.”
I ask the Lord’s forgiveness for that one. I prefer not to fib, but when it comes to Aunt Weeby—even over a phone line—skating on the outer edges of the truth is sometimes for the greater good.
“What you also need—”
“For goodness sake, Olivia Adams Miller!”
The rich alto voice in the background sets off my suspicion-o-meter. Before I can comment, however, a tussle for the telephone ensues.
“Give me that thing already,” my auntie’s flea-market buddy, Miss Mona Latimer, demands. “You’ve been chewing the girl’s ear off for an eternity and still haven’t told her—” “Don’t pay no never mind to Mona, sugarplum. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about—”
“Of course I do. Andie knows that, don’t you, dear? But I’ve not been able
to
talk. Livvy here’s the one who’s hogged up the phone this whole time.”
“Have not.”
“Have so.”
If my ears don’t deceive me, the wrestling match for the receiver resumes.
“She is my niece, you know.”
“And that’s why she has to know—”
A loud
KLUNK
in my ear reveals the fate of the phone.
I’ve heard enough. “Aunt Weeby!” I try to count to ten but give up at three. “What is going on? I’d begun to wonder about the superlong call, but now Miss Mona’s made it clear something’s not right.”
Instead of Aunt Weeby, Miss Mona responds. “It’s that medicine they got her on for the pain, dear. It gives her the runs . . . of the talking-too-much kind. I wish we were calling you for a better reason, Andie, but this old fool here won’t get to the point even if you lead her right up and stick her on it.”
“So what
is
the point? Is Aunt Weeby okay? Are you?” Then I draw a sharp breath. “Oh no. Is it Mom? Dad? Did something happen at the mission?”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry we scared you. Your mama and daddy are fine as frogs. You know the good Lord watches over them and their naked natives all the time. And I’ve never had me more fun than I’m having these days. It’s your auntie here that’s got herself in a fine kerfuffle.”
Their antics tell me the circumstances can’t be life threatening. Even after Miss Mona won the phone fight, my aunt seems her usual wacky, lovable self. Which might, of course, be the problem in the first place. I don’t want to ask.
But I have no choice. “What’s wrong with Aunt Weeby?” “She broke her left leg.”
“Say
wha-ut
?” Under stress, my southern roots show up and multiply the syllables in my words.
“You heard me, Andie. Livvy broke her leg.”
The possibilities are endless. Still, I have to know.
“How?”
“Well . . . you see—it’s like this . . .”
Miss Mona isn’t given to hesitance, so I know what’s coming has to be good—or bad, depending on how you see things. “Go on,” I urge.
“Yes, well, it’s like this—”
“You gimme that phone right now, Mona Latimer.”
After a chorus of grunts and groans, Aunt Weeby wins this latest scuffle. “It wasn’t no big deal, sugarplum. I just took one of them Day-at-a-Horse-Farm tours. You know, you go and do what-all them horse farmers do every day.”
Visions of mayhem dance in my head. “And how did the tour lead to your broken leg?”
“Let’s just say that it did.” She sniffs. “It’s not the kinda thing a lady likes to talk about.”
Now she has my curiosity in a headlock. “Come on, Aunt Weeby. Tell me what happened.”
“Fine! I wrassled me a stable hand for his pitchfork, and lost on account of that big, nasty horse standing up for his human pal.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what I said. I had me a close encounter with the business end of a horse’s snout. He didn’t like that I wanted to . . . what do they call it? Oh, that’s right—muck out his stall. Silly thing.”
I still don’t get it, a common occurrence around Aunt Weeby. “Did the horse spook? Did he trample you?”
“Pshaw! ’Course not, Andie. He just lowered his big fat head and . . . ah . . .”
“He shoved this busybody’s butt out of the stable hand’s way!” hollers Miss Mona.
My mind conjures up myriad images—all ridiculous, none flattering. “Okay. Let’s get back to what really matters. How are you? Really, now. No goofy stories. I want the truth.”
“Oh, all right. I didn’t want to worry you, but this big galoot here wouldn’t let me be until I called.”
My aunt’s sudden seriousness tells me the situation isn’t quite as good as she would have me believe. “Go on, Aunt Weeby.” I make my voice super gentle and extra reassuring— no trouble at all. I love her. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Well, sugarplum, the doctor’s operated already and he stuck one a’ them metal plates in my ankle. It looks like something outta that Frankenstein’s monster kinda movie. There’s all these metal gizmos what stick outta the plate right through my skin. But the cast he put up the rest of the leg’s a real pretty purple color.”
My torn-up gut chooses a belly dance for this occasion. Surgery, plates, pins,
plus
a cast—multiple fractures, you understand—are bad, very bad. And Aunt Weeby lives alone in the Adams three-storied family mausoleum . . .
er
. . . home.
“Is Luke in this hemisphere?” I ask.
“Not right now.” Aunt Weeby’s voice shakes just a touch. “My boy’s somewhere out in the Middle East, sugarplum.” Cousin Luke is a career military officer—Special Forces, no less. His deployments are never to peaceful hamlets populated by happy folks.
“How about Mom and Dad? When’s their next furlough?” “Andie! Did you forget already? They were home over the summer. They won’t be back for another two years.”
Sure, it slipped my mind. Keeping up with Aunt Weeby doesn’t leave much leftover mental nimbleness. But before I can come up with a comment, Miss Mona regains the phone.
“What your aunt’s trying real hard not to say is that she’s all alone right now, and she needs help. She’s mule stubborn too. I told her to move in with me while her leg heals, that it’d be fun, like a running pajama party, but noooo. She has to stay right in her own home, no matter what.”
I know where this is going. And I waver . . . oh, for all of about a nanosecond. You see, when your perforated digestive system starts in on a samba with a touch of rumba, you know you have to seize the moment.
“Roger can go to New Delhi himself. I’ll see you both bright and early tomorrow morning.”
Between Aunt Weeby’s objections and Miss Mona’s thanks-filled effusions, during the exhausting call to my now former boss, and through all my haphazard packing, I find myself reaching for assurance—I no longer have any visible means of support, you see.
Lord? Have I done the right thing?
Since he doesn’t answer right away, much less out loud, I squash a twinge of unease and accept reality: I’ll have to find out as I muddle along.
With Aunt Weeby in a cast and pins.
Oh, and armed with my BS in rocks and that paper from the GIA. Not to mention in
Louisville
, of all places. No Mecca for the gemstone trade, our lovely Louisville.
Sure, sure. Is this my wisest career move or what?
Nine whirlwind days later—I couldn’t get it all done overnight, like I’d told Aunt Weeby—find me staring at a hospital room door. I pause, take a deep breath, knock, and enter after Aunt Weeby’s “Come in.”
Medieval torture equipment attached to the bed from one end to the other makes me hit the brakes. “Whoa! Those are some fancy toys you have there.”
“Sugarplum!” The shiny metal quivers and rattles. “You’ve just brought the smile to my day.”
A rectangular, inverted chrome U rises from the headboard across to the footboard of the bed. I maneuver around the triangular trapeze thingy that hangs from it over her middle, and lean down for a hug. In spite of where she is, Aunt Weeby, as always, has her lipstick and eyebrows on, and the classy floral scent of
Joy
gives me the feeling of everything right with my world.
I chuckle. “You are too much. A broken leg, surgery, all those . . . those . . .” I wave at the shocking hospital bling. “And you look ready for a gala night.”
Aunt Weeby pats the perfect champagne knot on her crown. “I’ve told you since you were little, Andrea, my girl. A lady’s always gotta look good. You never know who’s going to see you, and that first impression . . . it’s awful hard to change, sugarplum.”
I plop her another kiss, this one on her forehead, and then drag the slime-green vinyl chair over to the side of the bed to collapse into its not-so-welcoming embrace. “What’s all that stuff for?”
“You just try to sit yourself up when your leg’s been crunched into bitty pieces—and honey? They get you up on your feet right after they’ve patched you back up around here. No mercy at all.” Aunt Weeby reaches up and waggles the trapeze triangle at me. “This is what I need to help myself sit.”
“Okay. So that explains the fixed metal bar over the bed. What’s the other one all about?”
“That one’s kinda fun, you know? They used it with the nicest woolly slings to hold my leg up, and now . . . well, I see it like it’s some kinda award. On account of my surviving all the other, you see.”
I see no medal of valor; I see a free-arm chrome rod with a chain that ends in a bar that separates a wicked pair of open-ended, bent metal rectangles. Each thick wire end curls up onto itself, and I can see where something can be hung from the hooks they form. I shudder.
“It’s been rough, hasn’t it?”
Although Aunt Weeby tries to hide it from me, the slight wince tells me more than her words. “Oh, it wasn’t so bad.
It broke and had to be fixed. But let me tell you. Once I get my hands on that farmer boy . . .
whoo-ee!
I’m fixing to give him a good piece a’ my mind.”
Poor guy. “Maybe stables, pitchforks, and farm hands aren’t your kind of gig. I’d stay away.”
“Pffft!”
She crosses her arms. “Enough of that. Now that you’re here, mind telling me about that corroded gut a’ yours?”
I take a second to check in on its current condition. The dumb thing surprises me. “It’s an ulcer. It’s there. But not so bad today.”
“Humph!” The blue eyes never leave my face. “If you say so.”
I rattle my purse. “Never fear. Have pharmacy, will travel. I’ll be fine.”
A dark-haired guy in maybe his mid-twenties, dressed in khakis and a cream polo shirt with the hospital’s logo embroidered on the pocket, walks in right then. “Knock, knock!”
Aunt Weeby preens. “Timmy. Aren’t
you
just in time? Here’s someone I want you to meet.” She points at me. “Andie, sweetheart, this is Timmy Holtz, my physical therapist— or rather, my torturer and taskmaster.”
I smile and shrug.
My irrepressible aunt continues. “And Timmy, this is my darling
unmarried
niece, Andrea Adams. She’s a New York gemologist. Poor thing.” Aunt Weeby tsk-tsks better than anyone. “Andie plays with fabulous diamonds all day, but, wouldn’t you know? She’s still looking for the man who’ll put one on her ring finger. I think she needs help”—she winks—“therapy, in a sense.”
Swallow me, earth.
“Looks like the pain meds KO’d her loose tongue’s internal editor. Forgive her.”
The therapist laughs. “It doesn’t run in the family, does it?”
“
We
are nothing alike.”
Aunt Weeby’s torturer laughs way too much for my comfort.
“That’s not what I hear,” he finally says, winks, and then goes to the broken-leg side of the bed. “Okay, Miss Olivia—”
“What’s that?” I shake my head, pat my ear, gape.
He looks at me as though I’ve grown another head. “I just said Miss Olivia. Isn’t that her name?”
I stare at the too-innocent senior in the bed. “Sure, but no one’s called her Olivia since I began to talk. I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose, but she hasn’t heard that name in—” Ooops! This guy doesn’t need to know about the upcoming three-oh, does he? And I’m no fool—I’m not about to tell him. “I didn’t think she even remembered her real name by now.”
Aunt Weeby blushes, thrashes around, and grabs her trapeze. “Now, don’t you pay her no never mind. She just has this pet name for me, and thinks everyone should use it—” “’Morning, Weeby!” A nurse in a black top with Pink Panthers and pink hearts all over crosses to the wide windows. “How’s the pain? What number are we if zero’s none and ten’s the worst torture you’ve ever endured?”