It's All Relative

Chapter 5: Aunt Jessie

Chapter 5: Aunt Jessie

Dan wakes before my parents or Ray—it’s the military in him. He can’t sleep in even if he doesn’t have to be on base before dawn. When I hear him in the kitchen, I give Caitlin a quick grin and hurry in to kiss him good morning. “Hey,” I sigh, coming up behind him and wrapping my arms around his waist. He stands at the sink, pouring himself a glass of orange juice, and he looks something close to amazing in his gray ARMY t-shirt and PT shorts. They’re tight around his ass and hang loose on his thighs—whoever designed those things knew just how to show off a soldier’s best assets. I’m glad the t-shirt hangs low enough to hide what Dan’s packing from Caitlin’s young eyes and sarcastic mouth.

He half-turns in my embrace and kisses me in greeting. “Did you sleep well?” he asks. I nod in reply. With him beside me, I slept like a baby.

“I can make you breakfast,” I tell him, just because that’s what I do in the mornings, I cook for him. Mostly eggs, though I saw some pancake mix in the cabinet, if he’s up for that. Since we’re alone in the kitchen, I run my hands up beneath the bottom of his t-shirt and rub his taut stomach. Kissing his shoulder, I murmur, “I love you.”

He sets the orange juice aside and turns to hug me close. His hands smooth the bangs away from my forehead, tuck the wavy hair behind my ears, but the strands fall back into place on their own accord as he cradles my chin to kiss me again. “Love you,” he purrs, and between us I feel faint stirrings of interest at his groin. “We can head back to bed, if you want,” he suggests. “Breakfast can wait.”

“My eyes!” I frown at Caitlin as she stumbles into the kitchen, eyes closed, cereal bowl in one hand and the other thrown out in front of herself dramatically to feel her way. “Jeez, boys. Take it upstairs, why don’t you? What will the neighbors think?”

I kick out at her as she passes, but she’s quick—she dodges my foot and still manages to sock me in the arm with one small fist. I slap her shoulder and she hits me again. Damn, she has good reflexes. When I’m about to try a third time, though, Dan catches my hand and folds my arm between us as he holds me tight. “Don’t,” he admonishes. “No fighting.”

I’m well aware that I’m suddenly Caitlin’s age again, picking with her the way I am, but she doesn’t seem to mind. “You’re just jealous,” I tell her. I stick out my tongue and marvel at how I can go from twenty-five to two in one minute flat. “I’ve got a hot boy to freak and you don’t.”

Caitlin flips her hair over her shoulder and gives me a look that simply says, puh-leaze. “You don’t know my hot boy,” she says. “I ain’t jealous of yours, trust me.”

Intrigued in spite of myself, I let Dan slip free and lean against the sink. “You have a boyfriend?” I ask as Dan pours himself a bowl of cereal.

“Of course,” Caitlin snorts. As if she might not. “I’m not Ray, Michael. I date.”

“Who?” I want to know. I realize that I don’t know anyone her age here—hell, I don’t know most people in this town anymore, but maybe the last name will sound familiar, maybe she’s seeing someone related to someone I went to school with. This is a small place—not as backwater as Sugar Creek, but close. Not D.C., that’s for damn sure.

Rolling her eyes, Caitlin takes the box of cereal from Dan and refills her bowl. “No one you know,” she says.

My lover leans beside me to eat, his hip resting against mine, and I give him a wink over my shoulder. “Who?” I ask again. “I’m just curious, is all. Unless you’re lying…”

“I’m not lying,” Caitlin sighs. “Jesus. He’s the captain of the football team, okay? Shaun Donnigan. There, you happy?”

I almost don’t believe it. My Goth sister dating…“The captain of the football team?” I ask, incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”

With a mischievous grin, she says, “That’s what his girlfriend says.”

That gets a laugh out of Dan. “Hey!” I cry, turning to tickle him. He laughs again and squirms away. “That’s not funny. He’s seeing someone else? Caitlin—” She shrugs and returns to the dining room, leaving Dan and me alone. With a withering look, I tell him, “Don’t encourage her.”

The smile slips from his face. “She’s cute,” he says.

I’m glad they’re getting along so well—Dan’s an only child, but I know he always dreamed of having a large family one day. I can’t imagine what it was like for him, growing up by himself. Ray might not be one of my favorite people in the world, but at least I had someone to play with when I was a kid, someone to share secrets with, someone to fight with. And every summer, there was the rest of the family at Aunt Evie’s…we easily doubled the size of Sugar Creek when we rolled into town. There are five great-aunts altogether—four, now that Evie’s gone. Aunt Bobbie has two boys, both married; Aunt Sarah has two boys, two girls; Aunt Billy has three girls. Add in their children, some of whom have children of their own by now, and my head starts to spin at the thought of them all. It’s going to be a madhouse over the next few days, everyone showing up at Aunt Evie’s to pay their respects, where will they all stay?

At the house, of course. Evie always said there was room enough for family.

Then there’s Aunt Jessie. But she won’t be there.

As Dan finishes his cereal, I rest my head on his shoulder and sigh. The mere thought of all those people crammed into Evie’s house makes my head hurt—maybe I should get a hotel when I get up there. I don’t know if Dan’s ready for that much of my family yet; I’m not even sure if I’m up for it. “You know,” I say softly, stroking the hairs on his arm, “Mom’s probably going to want to head on up to Sugar Creek today. I can drop you off at the house if you want—”

Dan looks at me sharply. “Why?” he asks.

I shrug, which settles my body closer to his. “Somehow I don’t think hanging out with my wacky relatives is how you want to spend your leave.”

“I want to spend it with you.” He sets his empty cereal bowl in the sink and eases an arm around my waist. I don’t like the way he’s frowning at me, like he’s suddenly not sure who I am anymore. “Don’t you want me there?”

“I do,” I assure him. I don’t know how I would get through the next few days without him. “It’ll be crowded, though. There’s a lot of us.”

“A lot of them, maybe,” Dan says, kissing my forehead. His hand traces up the curve of my spine to rub at the back of my neck. “Only one you.”

I laugh—he’s so sweet sometimes, when we’re alone and he doesn’t have to hide himself behind his soldier’s mask. I can just imagine what my aunts will say, they’ll love him, how could they not? The only one I’m really worried about is Aunt Sarah, who’s a little bit ultra-Christian, but last I heard, she simmered down some after her oldest son knocked up his girlfriend a few years ago. God, I can’t even imagine these kids, my nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, people my age who I spent my summers with horsing around at Sugar Creek, I can’t imagine them grown now with children of their own. It almost makes me think I should be in their shoes, I should have a family underway.

But I knew long ago that I wouldn’t be able to have that. I love men, I love Dan. I won’t have children. My mom will have to learn to accept that the same way I have. Unless she’s going to let it come between us…

I think of my Aunt Jessie. That’s one relative I’m quite sure won’t be at Sugar Creek this week. I’ve only met her once, and I was just a little boy at the time, I don’t remember much about her beyond long black hair and thick eyeliner that made her look like a raccoon. In my memory she wears all black, but I think I’m confusing her with Caitlin. As I recall, Jessie had a smoky, sultry voice and a lazy way of looking around the room as she talked, and there was something so overtly s****l about her that even as a child, I was drawn to her the way a moth is to a flame.

Something happened though—I don’t know what, I’m not privy to the details. Despite the fact that I’m an adult myself, the fallout between Aunt Evie and Aunt Jessie is still something no one will tell me about, and I’m too afraid to ask. My mom won’t even discuss it. Something happened, something so horrible that it wedged itself between Evie and Jessie and kept them apart the rest of their lives…or the rest of Evie’s life, at least. I don’t know whatever happened to Aunt Jessie. I don’t know if she married or died or what. Family rumor has her running away to join a cult, marrying into the mob, joining the Witness Protection program, being abducted by aliens—when we gathered at Sugar Creek, the youngest of us would swap horror stories, each one worse than the last, trying to one-up each other with what really happened to Aunt Jessie. Truth is none of us know, and if our parents even suspected what we giggled over when the lights went out, we would’ve been spanked and sent to bed.

When I tell Dan what I know of my Aunt Jessie, he just raises an eyebrow and smirks. “Aliens?” he asks, amused.

I have to admit, the stories do sound far-fetched. “We were just kids,” I tell him, but I’m almost embarrassed to admit that part of me still wants to believe something exotic happened to the dark, gypsy-esque woman in my memory. I think my lover realizes this, though, because when I duck my head, he tucks his thumb under my chin and raises my face until I look at him again. “For all I know she’s not even alive anymore,” I say. “And if she is, she won’t be anywhere near the house, I’m sure of it. I don’t know what happened between her and Evie but my mom once said Jessie wasn’t welcome in any house in this family ever again.”

With that smirk still in place, Dan says, “I think your mom’s the type to say a lot of things when she’s mad.”

Silently, I agree with him. The comment had been made when I was about to graduate from high school, and I sat at the dining room table with my mom’s address book and a pile of invitations in front of me. Pen in hand, I flipped through the book, looking for anyone I might even remotely know, just to send them an invite in the hopes of soliciting money from them. I started at the back of the book, because my mom’s maiden name is Yates and all of the aunts are back there, married names in parentheses. That’s the way Mom’s mind works—put everyone under the name she knows them as, which is good because Aunt Bobbie was married four times before she finally settled on her current husband, and I’m not sure if Mom could keep up with all those name changes if she tried. Both of Bobbie’s sons have a different last name, from each other and from her, but when I was still in high school she was only on husband number two. I filled out cards for her and her sons Douglas and Craig, who were both in their late 20s at the time. Then Aunt Sarah because she came next in the book, then her children, Ruth and Judith and Thomas and John, all Biblical names. Aunt Sarah scares me, to be honest. If anyone has something to say about Dan, it’ll be her. I almost see my mom teaming up with her once we get to Sugar Creek, the two of them ganging up on me in an attempt to cure me from sinful living. But Tommy’s girlfriend had a baby at sixteen, and I think my mom said she had a second child later on, and I know they never married, so Aunt Sarah can’t say too much about my living in sin. I remember she sent me a Bible as a graduation gift. At the time I wondered if I could possibly return it to the local Christian bookstore, even without a receipt. My mom wouldn’t let me.

If I had known I’d get the Bible instead of money, I might not have bothered to send her an invitation at all. But I did, and I sent Aunt Billy one, too, and her three daughters, as well, Ginger and Lenore and Sylvia. I always thought Aunt Billy should’ve held back on the kids and just had cats instead, naming her daughters the way she did. Aunt Marge was already gone by then, and I never met my Aunt Clara, but I had a few extra invitations left. “Can I send Aunt Jessie one?” I asked, glancing through the address book. I couldn’t find her listed.

But my mom snatched the book from me and snapped it shut. “She won’t be needing one,” she told me. When I started to argue, she asked, “You don’t really think she’d come, do you? She barely knows you’re alive.”

I wasn’t vain enough to think that everyone I was sending an invitation to would show up to see me get a diploma. This was all about getting gifts, getting money. Somehow I thought my mom was missing the point. “She might send me something—”

“She won’t,” Mom said with a finality that scared me. “You send her something, she’ll think she’s welcome here and she’s not. If you want to get rid of the extra cards, mail them to random names in the phone book. You’ll get about the same response as you would if you sent Jessie one. Don’t argue with me.”

I’ve learned better than to do that. Even when it comes to Dan, I’m not going to argue with her. When she comes downstairs fully dressed, make-up already on and every hair in place, she glares at the two of us cuddling by the sink. Dan eases me away because he sees her first, and when I turn, she’s already frowning. “Michael, really,” she starts. “In front of the window where the neighbors—”

From the dining room, Caitlin calls out, “Did she mention the neighbors?” I laugh at the look of consternation that crosses my mother’s face. “Did I call that one or what? I told them you’d b***h about the neighbors.”

“Caitlin!” My mom’s voice lashes out like a whip, and I cover my mouth with one hand to hide the smile I can’t stifle. The look Mom gives me suggests that she thinks my kid sister has learned such language from me.

Then she busies herself with the coffeepot, and I blow Dan a kiss. He grins and starts to wash his cereal bowl—how can she not love him? But she’s not watching us anymore, thank goodness, she’s scooping sugar into her coffee with nervous fingers, I can hear the clatter of her spoon against the side of her mug. “I guess you’ll want to bring him with you,” she says.

She talks of Dan as if he’s a pet and acts like he’s not even in the same room with us. I touch his arm and can almost feel the anger that hums through his body at that slight. I’m not going to bother to answer her.

The side door opens by the basement and Ray comes into the kitchen, scratching the back of his head. His hair stands up in a punkish hairstyle, and he still wears the boxers and t-shirt he slept in, even though he had to walk across the driveway to get here. And Mom thinks I’m going to embarrass her in front of the neighbors? Has she looked at him lately?

He sees me, sees Dan, and with a mighty yawn, he asks, “So dude, did you guys do it last night?”

Beneath my hand, Dan’s fingers curl into a fist. “Raymond,” my mom warns, before I can answer him. “I’ve told you kids before, no s*x in this house.”

My clueless brother nudges me with his elbow. “You should stay in my room,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “It’s not in the house.”

Caitlin can’t let that one slide by. I don’t know how she hears us, but from the dining room, she calls out, “Oh yeah, Ray. Like you have a harem up there, or something. You’ve never even been laid.”

“Caitlin!” My mom’s on edge, it’s in her voice.

My sister hears it, too, and can’t resist. Coming back into the kitchen, she pushes right in between Dan and me to drop her bowl in the sink, and in a childish voice, asks, “Mommy?”

Mom glances over at the three of us, distrustful. “What?”

With a sweet smile, Caitlin says, “Since Michael gets to bring his boyfriend to Sugar Creek, I was thinking maybe I could take—”

“No,” Mom replies. When Caitlin tries to finish her sentence, Mom shakes her head. “I’m not listening, Caitlin. I don’t condone this…this…”

She’s searching for the right word, and I know just where she’s headed. “Go ahead and say it,” I mutter, growing angry myself. “This phase, isn’t that the word you want? Well, I have news for you, Mom. This isn’t a phase. This isn’t something I’m going to grow out of.” Dan places a hand on my shoulder to quiet me, but I shake him off. “I’m with Dan,” I tell my mother. “I love him. So you better get used to it, because I’m not going to exclude him from my life just because you don’t condone this. I love him.”

Before she can respond, I storm past her, past Ray, out of the kitchen and up the stairs. I don’t have to turn to know that Dan is right behind me. He catches up to me at the door to my room, and just the touch of his hand on my arm is enough to stop me. I turn and find myself in a sudden embrace, and I cling to him desperately. “If you’d rather I not go,” he begins, his voice low in the darkened hall.

“You’re going,” I say, clenching my fists in his shirt. “I need you with me, Dan, you know that. Don’t make me face them all alone.”

He rubs my back in a soothing, caring gesture. “I won’t,” he assures me.