Ginny Aiken: Priced to Move

“Hello?”

“Where you been these last ten days, sugarplum?” My Aunt Weeby’s homey southern-flavored voice flows over me like a balm.

I drop my Coach bag on the floor, then I wince. That bag didn’t cost me chump change. But my daddy’s sister trumps Coach any day. “Hang on. I just walked in.”

I throw the deadbolt, slip the doodad into the chain lock’s slot, then turn the tab in the regular doorknob before I feel safe enough to relax. That’s when I flop back on my diminutive armless slipper chair—all I could fit in my “living room” after I placed a love seat against the one wall—and finally smile. “Aunt Weeby!” How come when a two-year-old dubs a relative something too cute, it sticks forever? “It’s so good to hear you. How’ve you been?”

“No, no, no. That’s not how we play this game. I asked first. You tell me, and then I’ll tell you. So where you been?”

“Hong Kong, remember? It’s almost the end of June. The gemstone show ended only day before yesterday.”

“That’s right. My, my, my. Time plumb flies by too fast when you move into the Metamucil and Centrum Silver lane.” She clucks her dismay. “So, tell me now, did you get yourself any a’ them chopstick thingies? You gonna teach me to use ’em? How ’bout any pretties? You get yourself anything special?” Aunt Weeby is a world-class shopper.

“Nope. Prices were outrageous this time around. I didn’t even buy a whole lot for Roger. He wasn’t any too happy with me, but there was nothing I could do with the budget he gave me.”

“So what’s the hottest stone a’ the moment?”

I shrug and toe off my classic black pumps. Aaahhh . . . “It depends on who you ask. The big four are always . . . well, big.” My mind ticks off the list: diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds.

“ Phhhht! I know that, sugarplum. I don’t wanna hear about the usual. I’m after hearing about new and fabulous finds.” I tell her about my trip, which, to anyone but me, sounds exotic and exciting. Me? I just relive the exhaustion. But Aunt Weeby’s Aunt Weeby. So while I describe the goods I saw in exquisite detail, I leave out all mention of my adventures with the cab driver who hit another cab on the way to the hotel from the airport, the subsequent argument—midstreet, mind you—my lost suitcase, the emergency room visit for my torn-up gut, and my overall sense of burnout.

Aunt Weeby tends to worry about me. I strive to prevent that worry.

“So why don’cha tell me what kinda fun things you gonna do tonight in that Big Apple a’ yours?” she says when she’s had her fill of gemological tidbits.

Fun things? Me? “Uh . . . I’m about to wash my underwear so I have enough clean, since Roger’s sending me to New Delhi. I leave tomorrow.”

Dead silence.

Then, “You sure that’s wise, Andie?”

“I happen to like my undies clean.”

“That’s not what I mean! It’s that deli thing. Is it wise?”

“Hah!” I say before I can stop myself. “Wise doesn’t enter into my job. Wisdom’s not why Roger pays me, as he says, the big bucks.”

More silence.

Uh-oh. I know my father’s much older half sister and my dearest friend in the whole world too well. My little outburst has plunked me square in the middle of trouble.

“Aunt Weeby? You still there?”

“’Course I’m here, Andrea. I’m not the one Roger’s sending to some new deli. Can’t that boy get hisself his own lunch? And you really should have enough clean undies to get ya through a week. I’m sure that mama a’ yours taught you much better’n that. Besides, where else would I be but in good ol’ Louisville?”

“It’s New Delhi, India , Aunt Weeby.” What am I doing, trying to explain? Somewhere in that brain of hers she knows what I mean, but she plays the ditz when it works in her favor. What I have to do is change the course of our typically loony, hopscotching conversation. “And you could always be off somewhere junking with Miss Mona.”

“Now, Andie, you know better’n that. We don’t go junking at all. What Mona and I have done is refine the art of flea market shopping. You have no idea what kinda treasures some stump-dumb folks are so blind they can’t even recognize. Why, the last time Mona and I took off, we found a . . .”

And now she’s on a roll. Aunt Weeby’s descriptions have even more detail and far more color than I’ll ever manage to put in any of mine. And that’s just fine.

But then, “So now we’ve talked out all that other hoo-hah, how’re ya doing, sugarplum?”

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.