Scene 1

“No.”

“But Maggie girl, it’s only one little bag. And you might need a purple feathered boa.” A purple boa? Had she lost her mind? 

“No, Auntie Winnie!” I stamped my boot. Aunt Winnie fluttered her badly glued pink eyelashes at me. A tiny growl escaped my fleeing restraint.

Aunt Winnie was a good foot shorter and wider than me.  I was taller, lanky, long arms, long hands, long nose. It worked for me. I liked to dance when I performed, skirts and hair flaring spun and leapt. A purple boa? Not my vibe.

“At least take the pink fedora? It was mine when I was a girl.” Aunt Winnie held out the pink fedora. Her eyes pooled with tears. Her signature tightly curled silver-purple hair making her look like the sweet old granny she wasn’t. Foolishly I glanced down at the fedora. Soft, worn and in pristine condition. It was divine.

“Well, maybe,” I started. My hand inched towards the brim of its own accord. Aunt Winnie’s eyes sparkled, and I snatched my hand back. Singer and Sea! She’d nearly gotten me. I pointed one long finger in the old snake’s wrinkled face. “No.” I backed against my beloved, perfectly packed station wagon, arms spread protectively. “I’ve packed. I’ve unpacked. And I’ve repacked this car every day for three weeks. Back off!” I’m embarrassed to admit I shouted that last bit. But blast it all enough was enough.

Aunt Winnie smiled. I relaxed, just a fraction. She’d finally seen sense.

Aunt Winnie dashed for the hood of the wagon.

Like a girl a fraction of her age she slid across the hood. Her demur ankle length skirt hiked up and I saw more of Aunt Winnie that I ever wanted too. Gah!

I raced around my station-wagon. Body slamming the passenger door as Aunt Winnie opened it. If only Giga, my cousin and best friend, had kept better track of her keys.

Our aunts had made so many copies that Giga and I had given up collecting or destroying all the copies they’d squirreled away. We’d tried to change the locks. But the aunts made copies of the new key before we finished installing the new locks. After that incident we’d been taking turns watching the wagon from the old vultures.

Aunt Winnie turned the key in the door, determined to get in. I swatted at her and the pretty pink fedora went flying. Aunt Winnie gasped and glared. “You didn’t!” She shrieked. I didn’t fold. It was my car. It was my stuff. It was my turn to ride the road. Enough was enough.

“Stop it, Aunt Winnie!”

 “Just a few more things.” Aunt Winnie cooed.  I looked down at the gargantuan bag she clutched to her chest. Where had that even come from? Aunt Winnie did her best impression of a puppy at the dinner table. Red veined, pink lashed eyes open wide, lip protruding past her nose, every lipstick smeared crevice trembling. A muscle in my right eye began to twitch.

I snatched the bag out of her hands. Lifting it above my head I marched towards Mom’s trash can perched on the curb in front of our house.

“Margaret Luthier! You wouldn’t dare!” Aunt Winnie screeched. I lifted the metal lid and summer ripened cabbage washed over us.

“Oh, I would,” I hissed.

“I’ll tell your Nan!” Aunt Winnie warned.

“Not if I tell her first.” I snapped back. We glared. A distinctive crunch interrupted us. It was accompanied by clucking voices. Aunt Winnie grinned. I lowered the bulging bag towards the trash can. As Aunt Winnie tried to pry the bag from my hands, I leaned around her to look up the lane.

“And just what do you think you’re doing!” I shouted up the lane.

Aunt Delores and Aunt Midge fluttered around a wheelbarrow overflowing with stuffed bags, blankets and. Singer and Sea, was that a rug?

They needed to stop. They had to stop. I was packed. Finished. Check list complete. Done. But the meddling old bitties would not give up. Fussing and barking they herded my cousin Finn, like a wayward cow.

Poor Finn. He was drenched in sweat, panting and near collapse but he kept on pushing the teetering mountainous wheelbarrow.

“No, no, boy to the left, to the left. You’re going to drop the shoes!” Aunt Delores directed.

“No, to the right. To the right, boy,” Aunt Midge worried. Her hands fluttering like moths around a candle, all clumsy frantic flapping.

“I know those bags an’t mine!” I hollered at them.

The aunts jumped. Their heads slowly turned in tandem. They blinked big guilty eyes at me.

“We thought,” Aunt Midge started. Her hands rubbing one over the other, her eyes jumping back and forth between me and Aunt Winnie.

I snapped my head around and caught Aunt Winnie franticly trying to shove that stupid bag into my car. When had she gotten the bag away from me? How had she gotten it away from me? She was several decades older than me and a whole head shorter.

“Aunt Winnie!” I snatched the bag out of the wagon.

“But” Winnie protested. “You might need more boas, and I packed all my best corsets.” Aunt Winnie’s corsets? Shivers of horror danced down my spine. I shoved the bag at her. She shoved it back.

“And shoes,” Delores insisted. Coming up behind her sister. “I know you haven’t packed enough shoes, girl.”

“No.” I snapped. I took a deep breath, scraping together the last of my patience. “We’ve been through this, Aunties. I’m packed and I’m leavin in the mornin. And I’m not unpacking and repacking this car, again!” I’d bellowed that last bit. Aunt Winnie and Aunt Delores took a step back from me, hands fluttering at to their chests to do their best impersonation of wounded grandmothers. I growled at them and spread my arms out blocking the restored ancient water powered station-wagon.

 A small part of me felt guilty for snarling at my Aunts. They weren’t my aunts. They were my great aunts. But all of us cousins called them Aunt or Auntie and in turn they fussed over all us cousins. I loved them dearly. But if they didn’t stop I was going to strangle each of them with their neon colored boas.

The Aunts deflated, like chickens depuffing and shaking out their feathers. Finn sighed in relief and collapsed in beside the wheelbarrow.

Poor Finn. Auntie Midge had decided that her youngest grandson wasn’t “keeping himself busy enough.” Whatever that meant. The Aunties in mass had badgered my younger cousin into becoming their personal errand boy. Ever since the crocus had bloomed, the mountain’s omen that spring and clear roads were on their way, Finn had been running packages back and forth between Auntie Midge, Aunt Delores, Aunt Winnie and my Granny’s houses. Asking him to lift anything heavier than a milk jug, fetching down every box they could think of from their attics and yank out every odd gadget from their overfilled sheds and basements. Finn had done more work in the last three weeks as I packed and repacked than he had in his previous fourteen years combined. I was certain he would be relieved when I left.

The Aunties meant well. It had started with them handing me a warm sweater, a set of leak proof water jugs, a few pieces of their old stage jewelry. I’d been overwhelmed by their generosity. But eventually I had to prioritize what I could and couldn’t take with me. The wagon would only hold so much. But as soon as they noticed that their beloved but two sizes too small dresses or three sizes two large shoes weren’t in my bags in the wagon, they had gone a-little insane. As Nan would say, that’s when the sneakin started. First, they added a couple of blankets. Then they started trading out my clothes for their old garments. I’d been kind, at first but things had escalated a bit when one night they had emptied the entire wagon rearranged, everything, and stashed my clothes in Aunt Winnie’s attic.

How Finn had gotten all my stuff up into that attic without breaking his neck I still didn’t know. But that’s when Nan stepped in. She’d told them to mind their own, but the Aunties were still showing up with “useful” items. Even though, it took an entire week for Giga and I to dig out all the things they’d hidden in the nooks and crannies of the wagon. Giga and I had spent and entire afternoon trying to pry bras out of the driver’s door panel. Neon green bras. Who packed bras in a door panel? Why?

I’d been unpacking and repacking the wagon every morning. Two weeks ago, I’d been tired. Last week I’d been frustrated rounding on angry. Now? Now I was good and righteously pissed.

“Auntie Midge, Auntie Delores, Auntie Winnie, I appreciate all your help. Really, but you must stop. If the wagon’s too heavy she will get stuck in every pothole, and I will be eaten up by some monster while trying to fix a flat tire. Is that really what you want for your favorite niece?” I demanded.

“Favorite?” Asked Aunt Delores. Aunt Winnie jabbed an elbow in her ribs.

“But that’s why-” Aunt Midge started.

“Enough!” A booming gruff voice cut off Aunt Midge and made us all jump. “Leave the girl alone.” Grandad ruffled my hair. My eyes met Finn’s, we both smiled and heaved out relieved sighs. “Girls got enough to get her by. Leave it.”

The aunties huffed. But kept their puckered lips pressed tightly together. As their brother-in-law, they didn’t respect him one bit. As the best sting instrument craftsman on the the west coast, they gave him a deference they showed no one else.

“But what about?” Finn asked, looking at the heavy wheelbarrow.

 “Oh, bring it back to my place,” Aunt Winnie ordered.

Finn and I shared a look. He sighed and turned the mountain of bags around. He teetered and tottered away, the Aunts behind him, arguing and nattering conflicting directions as he trudged back up the lane.

“Thanks Grandad,” I said, looking up. His skin was sun stained. His beard white and neat. That was my Grandad. Kissed by time, wood, glue, stain, and sun and as neat and as organized as a anyone who had ever worked wood and time into instruments.

“Hmm,” Grandad murmured. “Well come on Maggie girl, got something you’ll be needing.