Terri nodded and pointed to the refrigerator. “Terri?” she heard. “Hello, darling!”
“Aunt Vivian!” She hadn’t heard her aunt’s voice for a year, but she would have recognized it anywhere. Aunt Vivian was tiny, under five feet, but there was nothing tiny about her voice. “Hello!” she said, gladly. “It’s my Aunt Vivian,” she told Shaundra.
“Terri, darling, I’m coming to see you soon. Will I recognize you, or have you grown up entirely?”
“I’m still me, Aunt Vivian. Taller, I guess. It’s so good to hear your voice again.”
“Darling, have you got a piece of paper? I want to give you my flight number and the date—”
“Wait, Aunt Vivian—Shaundra, give me some paper,” she said. “Okay, I’m ready, Aunt Vivian.” She wrote down the information. “Daddy and I will be at the airport to pick you up.”
“I’ll be standing on tiptoes.”
Terri laughed. “You still remember that?” Once, when she was small, waiting with her father in the airport, she hadn’t been able to spot her aunt in the crowd. She had been on the verge of tears. “She isn’t here! She didn’t come!” A moment later her aunt had appeared, and Terri, half-furious, half-relieved, had cried accusingly, “You better stand on your tiptoes next time!”
“I wish I could see you right this moment,” she said, now. “What are you wearing? Is it hot in California?”
“About seventy degrees. Very nice. How is it there?”
“It’s beautiful. It’s fall. Where are you calling from, Aunt Vivian? Work?” Her aunt clerked in a shoe store.
“No, darling, I’m calling from a phone booth.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She half laughed. “What is this, twenty questions? I don’t have a phone in my, ah, apartment. Terri, did I tell you I love you?”
“I love you, too, Aunt Vivian.” She glanced at Shaundra, wondering why her aunt had sounded so funny about the phone booth. Uneasy. Or maybe, embarrassed. Because she didn’t have the money to have her own phone?
“Terri, it seems your father is impatient for my visit.”
“We both are, Aunt Vivian.”
“Yes, but there’s something new, isn’t there? A young woman Phil wants me to meet—”
“Nancy? How did you know about her?”
“When your father called, he mentioned her.”
“Daddy called you?” Terri said, in surprise. Why hadn’t he told her?
“This young woman, Nancy—she’s a widow, Terri? She’s all alone?”
“No, Aunt Vivian, she’s divorced, and she has a little boy, Leif.”
“Leif? What an odd name. How do you feel about her? Do you like her?”
“Yes, I do. I like her a lot.”
“That’s good. That part is good.” She fell silent. Terri wondered which part wasn’t good. “So it’s serious?” she said, in a moment. “Well, I thought so when Phil called.” Her voice trailed off, then came back strong again. “Well, we’ll talk about everything when I’m there. Good-by for now, darling.”
“Good-by, Aunt Vivian.” She didn’t hang up until she heard the phone click on the other end. Then, just as she put the receiver into the cradle, she thought of something and said, “Aunt Vivian? Aunt Vivian?” The connection was broken. She hung up, thinking that her aunt had said she was calling from a booth because she didn’t have a phone in her apartment. But then how had Terri’s father known where to phone her? It didn’t make sense unless Aunt Vivian had called him first and arranged with him to call her back. But why would they do things in such a complicated way?
Then she thought how, once a year, there was Aunt Vivian’s phone call to say, “I’m coming.” And then she was here—wherever the here was for Terri and Phil—for a few days. And then she was gone. And then, no word until the next year, the next call, the next visit.
They weren’t a letter-writing family. She couldn’t remember ever seeing a letter to or from her aunt. But then how did her aunt always know where they were, even though it was always somewhere different from the year before? Did her father write her without Terri’s knowledge? Had he called Vivian more than this one time without telling Terri? Did he, in fact, telephone his sister regularly without telling her? The whole train of thought was really upsetting and uncomfortable for Terri.
Then something else she had almost forgotten flashed into her mind. The year before at Christmas she had told her father she wanted to send her aunt a card. He had said, “Sure thing,” but about a week later when she asked for Vivian’s address, he had said, “I thought you wanted me to do it, Terr. I sent her a card the other day.”
Standing there now, staring at the mute phone, Terri remembered exactly how casually her father had said that. And how equally casually she had said, “Oh, sure, that’s okay.” She’d put the card away and forgotten about it. Forgotten, too, how in some tiny, almost hidden-from-herself part of her mind, she had known that her father had not wanted to give her Vivian’s address.
“That must have been your favorite aunt,” Shaundra said.
Terri started. She’d nearly forgotten Shaundra, who was sitting on the edge of the table, swinging her legs. Barkley was lying on the floor at her feet. “She’s my only aunt.”
“Your only? How can she be your only? I have ten aunts. You have anything to eat in this house? I’m starved. Can I have an apple?”
Terri polished two Macintosh apples on her sleeve and explained to Shaundra that Vivian was her father’s only (and older) sister, and that her mother had had no sisters, or brothers either. “And I’m an only. And probably when I get married, I’ll only have one child, too.” Was she talking too much? Better than listening to the disturbing thoughts in her head.
“Just one aunt and no uncles? How about greats? You know, your parents’ aunts and uncles?”
Terri bit into the apple. “I don’t have any of those, either. You talk, Shaundra, as if you expect everyone to have an enormous family like you.”
“I do?” Shaundra’s eyes opened wide. “No, I don’t. Where does your aunt live?”
“California. Isn’t this apple good?”
“My Aunt Lucille and Uncle Dave live in Encino. Where exactly does your aunt live in California?”
“I don’t know,” Terri said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean, I don’t know? Just don’t,” Terri said, but it occurred to her that not knowing where her aunt lived was either very dumb, or something else awfully strange. “I suppose, Shaundra, you know where all your many aunts and uncles live?”
“Well, not all of them. But I have a few more to keep track of than you do, Terri Mueller.”
Terri threw her apple core into the garbage. “What should we do? We’re just hanging around.” She scrubbed potatoes and put them in the stovetop baker. “Barkley, get out from under my feet!”
“Why are you yelling at Barkley? Are you getting mad?” Shaundra said. “You sound mad.”
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