Camptown Ladies (44 page)

I asked Vince, “Ever wish you could cook?”

He gestured over at Lisa and answered, “Thank God, no. It would be like wanting to be an actor and being Meryl Streep’s brother.”

Back inside, the unmistakable smell of Lisa’s roasted red pepper boats with goat cheese filling mingled with the smell of spicy sausage searing on a cured pan. We gathered in the kitchen, making a chorus of “mmm” sounds, well understood in any language. For now, we wouldn’t worry about communicating beyond the languages of our stomachs.

Later, much later, when we had eaten what Vince and I agreed was the best meal of our lives, Frederica kicked us out of the kitchen
with playful shooing motions and demanded with various other hand signals that we settle in for the night into two small guest rooms, Vince in one, and Lisa and I in the other. With our bellies full, we were too tired to protest, and after using the washroom (located outside the house, adjoining a fairly well-kept chicken coop) we collapsed on our guest beds and fell asleep.

Thirty-Six

Bang-Bang-Tap

Despite being in the birthplace of my ancestors, and one of the most beautiful places on earth, my recurring dream took me back to a cabin nestled in a pine-tree-filled wood in Rhode Island. The cabin was near a playful little campground, and on most summer evenings it smelled very much like Frederica’s kitchen. In the dream I’d been searching for Erica, night after night. I always convinced myself she was nearby, but most nights I couldn’t find her. I would find a note she’d left on a bureau I’d purchased for the cabin, a bureau she had never seen.

Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of her in the woods, before she disappeared again. Other times, if I was lucky enough to catch her, she would shake her head no and her voice would grow faint as she explained to me as if I were a child, “You can’t love me, you need to let me go now,” and before I could tell her things were different, that Vince had found love, she would disappear again and I would awake with a hunger that ran so deep for her, I could feel nothing else.

Tonight, the dream was a little different. Instead of being at night, it was the full heat of a summer day, and throughout the dream I could hear the tapping of Erica’s hammer on a distant roof. It started as a sweet sound, a sign that she was near—was she signaling to me? But as the dream went on and I searched from roof to Camptown Ladies roof with no sign of her, the tapping became maddening.

Then a beautiful woman was approaching me, the sun blazing behind her. Was it Erica? No, she was much too large to be Erica,
much, much too large, a quite rounded silhouette, so dark I could not see from the bright light around her, and so familiar and beautiful to me. I loved her, though not in
that
way. Who was this?

When she spoke, there was no mistaking her.

“Marie, what the fuck are you doing in Italy?”

I bounded over to Aunt Aggie and she wrapped me in a smothering hug, then she pulled back to nail me with a painful pinch on the cheek. It was so painful, I felt myself stirring in my dream state, almost waking from my sleep. No, I thought, just a minute more with her—and, like magic, I was back with my Aunt, hugging her hard, not letting her go, smelling the dust and tomato scent of her house that clung to her clothes.

Aunt Aggie said, “Christ, Marie, let go of me. Might be your idea of heaven, but not everybody’s a lezzie like you!” And then she laughed, her deep and raspy-cruel laugh that I’d had no idea how much I missed, until right then.

“Are you OK?” I asked. It was all I could think of to say.

And she answered, “Of course not, I’m dead!” and she laughed even louder into my ear and finally, I could let go of her, because anyone who laughed like that, had to be OK. She winked at me from behind her glasses, the only pair I had ever known her to wear. “You still need glasses here?” I asked.

“Nah, they’re for you. The clothes too.”

“Thanks for that,” I said, and this time she laughed at me.

“I love it here except for the food,” she said, “because there isn’t any fucking food! I’m afraid I might be losing weight.”

“No worries,” I said, and she cackled and pinched my cheek even harder. I’d awake from this dream with a bruise, I thought, but as I was thinking this, I doubted something this real could ever be a dream.

“Who the fuck would be afraid of a skinny ghost? I don’t know how I’m staying this way with no food, but thank Jesus. He’s here too, by the way, he says hi.” She winked at me. “Hey, I can’t stay long, so tell your mother to be good or I’ll keep haunting her boney ass. Can you imagine how much fun it is being a ghost chasing your mother around? And she knows I’m there, too.”

I had to laugh with her. That explained why Mom was acting so strange lately, asking for Lisa and I to visit more, not wanting to be alone in the house!

Aunt Aggie said, “Once I figure out how to do some real tricks, I plan to move all her kitchen stuff, piece by piece, so she can’t find anything and I just figured out how to make a tomato roll off a counter and splatter on her foot! I’ll get your sister Lisa, too.”

Just when I was thinking how I wished Lisa and Vince could see her right now, Aunt Aggie got weirdly quiet and surprised me more than a vision of a ghost ever could.

She softly said, “Tell your Uncle Freddie I love him. And tell him I’m glad someone else is bossing him around until I can have him back.” I thought I heard her voice crack then, making my own tears come, but then she waved me off with her hand, as if I was annoying her, her doughy arm never looking so lovely in the bright white light.

“You don’t get it, honey,” she said. “You can’t understand how happy I am, how happy you all will all be someday. Tell everyone, OK? I guess even your Mom.”

“But, I have so many questions,” I said. “You used to think Lisa and I would never get into heaven, you know, because of the whole gay thing.”

Aunt Aggie said, “Oh, there are tons of homos here. Turns out just because some assholes down there post a sign that says ‘Keep Out,’ doesn’t mean those are the rules. It was the first thing I checked on when I got here, since I wouldn’t want to be in a club that didn’t allow you and Lisa as members.”

“And what about the argument that it’s in the Bible?” I asked.

“Marie, don’t be an idiot. Jesus was a carpenter, not a publisher. You may learn just as much standing on a roof. It’s closer to God, with less men standing in-between.”

“True,” I said.

“Guess who else is here,” she said.

I was thinking Elvis, but braced myself, since the expression on Aunt Aggie’s face was the happiest I had ever seen, on any face. Ever.

Her lower lip was quivering with joy as she said, “My twin sister Etta is here.”

“I’m sorry Aunt Aggie, I didn’t know she finally passed—”

She laughed at me again, “No, no. She’s not dead. She just gets to spend time with me while she’s in her coma. Great deal, actually. She’ll get to see both sides when they send her back.”

“Send her
back?
”

“Word up here on the clouds is that she’ll be waking up one day, so this is just a visit. Of course, everyone will think she is nuts when she says she saw me up here in bright lights, but that’s earth for you. Of course, in the end, I’ll see you all up here.”

“So, one other question,” I said. I was talking fast, instinctively knowing our time was ending soon. “What’s the point of life, anyway?”

What the hell, she was making so much sense, I just thought I would throw it out there.

“Love,” she answered, without hesitating, and because it was Aunt Aggie, who’d never spoken of love in my presence before, I was strangely embarrassed for her. In contrast, I could see she wasn’t embarrassed at all; in fact, she flew into one of her rants I had so sorely missed.

“So, now that you know that you know the secret of life, I’m counting on you to tell that silly brother of yours to treat that new girl of his right. I know he’ll be the best dad to that little boy, so tell him to marry that woman quick and tell him that I forbid him to fuck it up. Tell him I said being a man is the easiest job on earth, so there’s no friggin’ excuse. For Christ sakes, they make Valentine’s cards that say ‘Sorry I take you for granted’ and, ‘I know I’m a dipshit and never show you I care, but you know I love you!’ For fuck’s sake, they even have TV commercials reminding fathers to ‘Take time to be a Dad today.’ Can you imagine some organization paying to remind women to ‘Take time to be a mother’? I didn’t see this so clearly when I was down there with the morts, but women are programmed to be thrilled by the simplest God-damned gesture from a man.”

Aunt Aggie realized she said God-damned, but it only slowed her down for a second before her rant returned, at double speed.

“A handful of cheap carnations will get a man out of the dog-house after weeks of acting like an ass. But tell him never to buy his
girl carnations because it’s the only flower God makes fun of, and, between you and me, it’s the fault of the gay guys. They were the ones that realized you could dye them all different colors. Tell Vince that. Tell them he has it made. Also, when it comes to sex, to get pleasure all a man has to do is stick their pee-pee in a hole, so he better take his time to do that right. And men aren’t that bright, so have that crass sister of yours remind him of which hole.”

I let myself laugh at that one. Up till now, I was afraid I would miss a word.

“But seriously, Marie, tell Vince he’ll have to deal with me if he fucks this one up. It’s the easiest thing in the world to love a good woman.”

I nodded, but I said, “It’s not so easy, sometimes, but I’ll make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.”

“Don’t you fuck it up either,” she said.

I nodded again. “If I can find her,” I said.

“And tell that sister of yours she needs to just love one woman or she’ll never be happy. One. That’s the secret for her.”

I said, “Go figure, all this time it was just a math problem. I’ll tell her, but she seems pretty happy.”

“Then just mess with her and tell her I said the big guy upstairs says she’s actually straight, and that’s her problem. She’s repressed and she needs some dick.”

Aunt Aggie roared at her own joke as the sunlight grew intensely bright behind her, turning her floral housecoat back into a round silhouette. I knew then without a doubt she was in a good place, the best place, and I felt Aunt Aggie’s joy and peace in my heart. I also knew it was just a glimpse of her happiness. Still, it was more intense than any a person could handle in the waking world . . . and it was right then that my dream ended.

My dreams had let me down so many times, but this may have been the hardest fall. I wanted to go with Aunt Aggie, instead of waking with the same emptiness in my chest and a damp pillow flecked with tears. The dream was barely fading, and already the idea that I had been with my Aunt Aggie didn’t seem as believable as it had been only seconds before. I wondered if, over time, I wouldn’t
believe it happened at all, and maybe seeing my Aunt had been just a sad dream, though it hadn’t been sad, not at all.

As my eyes adjusted to the morning light, I remembered there was one great difference to waking up on this particular morning. I was in Italy, in a charming old bedroom, splintered with bright shards of sunlight from the shutters in need of repair. Had the bright morning sun shining in my eyes created the entire dream?

Even though there was a heavenly scent of bacon and polenta pancakes wafting up from the stairway, I was drawn instead toward the shutters, and pulled them open to reveal a small, sun-drenched balcony. The cracked plaster was so picturesque and uniform that it appeared like an expert faux finish. Except unlike the faux plaster finishes Erica had taught me to do back in LA, this was the real deal.

I felt the sun through my thin nightgown as I leaned on the railing, my arms tickled by the tendrils of ivy, which had climbed up the house and grasped onto the rail like two hands perfectly spaced. The very tips of the ivy fingers seemed no longer growing, they were dry and curled upward into delicate spirals, as if they were thanking the heavens for giving it the strength to get where they wanted to be. It wasn’t getting onto the balcony that was the point; it was the journey.

I breathed the air, and I told my heavy heart that even if I never found her, maybe this was about my journey, to be here with Lisa and Vince and our new cousin Frederica. Maybe something in my DNA had sent me to be here to heal, maybe it was to have a moment with Aunt Aggie. If only the hammering in my heart would quiet. And if it did, I was left with a question: if I was here for my heart to heal, why had the faint sound of Erica’s hammering followed me from my dreams?