Driving to
the Graveyard
with Auntie

A short story
by Janet Loftis

“Turn here . . . no . . . left, not right."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, we need to get on Center Street and head west." I paused. "This would be a lot easier if you'd just let me drive."

The clackety-clack of the turn signal—we were riding in a '72 station wagon I thought had been totaled years ago—finally went silent after Aunt Meg made her slow turn onto Center.

"You know I can't let you drive me. I have to do this myself." She reached over and patted my cheek. "There's no Charon here; you are your own ferryman." She blinked, scrunching her eyes up behind those old-fashioned glasses she liked to wear. "I guess that should be ferrywoman."

"Ferry? I don't understand."

"Yes, you do. You're a smart one, always were. You were always just too shy to show it off. Like me. That's why you were always my favorite niece."

I was named after her too. Named after a woman who was now driving a wrecked Chevy through town, despite the fact that she had died two months ago, the ravages of diabetes finally haven taken their toll. I was secretly thankful that the legacy of her name did not include the legacy of her disease.

"But. . . ."

"But what? Just say it."

"You're dead."

"Yes."

"What am I doing here?" This had to be one of the weirdest dreams I'd ever had. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't as weird as the one where I picked up what looked like a really big hairball only to discover that it was a severed part of my cat's tail.

"It's no dream."

"Are you haunting me? For not making it to your funeral? For not seeing you before you died?"

"I don't blame you for wanting to remember me in better health." Indeed, as she sat next to me she looked just like the last time I saw her, well before she died, before all those micro-strokes had incrementally robbed her of mind and body. Her hands, although knobby from a touch of arthritis, gripped the steering wheel as ably as she used to hold a bowling ball. Her brown hair was permed to hide the family curse of straight, thin hair. And speaking of family curses: that nose. Thank god I hadn't inherited that either. I had my mother's dainty little nose. About the only thing we physically had in common was our nearsightedness.

"Then what am I doing here?" I repeated.

"Because you're the only one I can trust, the only one smart enough to figure out the truth. . . ." She paused, looking hesitant to say her next words. "Or to tell me the truth."

"The truth about what?"

"My husband."

Uncle Gene of the mile-long stare. "What about him?"

"Charon may not be here, but there is coinage to be paid for my journey. Not silver, but a sliver of truth . . . a family secret."

I tried a joke. "We're too boring to have any family secrets."

"Well, maybe your father and mother are too boring. . . ."

At first I didn't recognize that she was trying to joke too. We shared a short laugh. She adored my father, her elder brother, especially his tendency to tell really awful jokes. Bad or not, his jokes did make family members laugh. I remember many silly moments around holiday tables, helmed by Dad.

There was silence for a moment as the car traveled silently—well, as silently as a '72 Chevy station wagon can—through the outskirts of town. Definitely a dream, for the landscape was as I remembered it from ten years ago, not reflecting the never-ending sprawl of the suburbs I'd heard about.

Then, "Did he?"

"Did who what?"

"My husband. Did he ever touch you?"

Uncle Gene? "No." Yeah, he was kind of weird, what with that stare. I never liked him as much as some of my other uncles, but not for any particular reason I could identify.

Aunt Meg stared straight ahead.

"You seem disappointed," I observed.

"Maybe you were the wrong one to accompany me. I can't cross to the underworld until the secrets are told."

"Why would you think he ever did anything to me?" Then I answered my own question. My cousin, four years my junior, suffered a host of mental and emotional illnesses—including a suicide attempt. Despite counseling, she never seemed to make progress. We were all expecting worse in the future now that her mother was gone. "You think he did something to Clara."

"She swears he didn't. I begged her to tell me the truth as I was about to die, but I don't think she understood me."

Clara had mentioned how her mother babbled incoherently before death. Babbled like she was some other person entirely, not the woman who had raised her.

"What about the neighbor? You didn't believe Clara's story?" Clara had said, years after the fact, that a neighbor raped her when she was just a teenager. An alleged crime that could no longer be proven.

Aunt Meg shrugged. "I don't know what to believe." She gave me a long look. "I was so certain you might be the one."

"Why?"

"Because of the way you ran off after high school, never came home again."

"I ran off because I'm a dreamer, looking for bigger things, not because I'm running away from something." Looking for something, not running away from it. Looking for a connection, looking for . . . I didn't know what exactly.

She nodded. "Yes, I knew you for a dreamer. Another reason you were always my favorite. I never followed my dreams."

"I'm still trying."

"As long as you do keep trying. Never quit. Don't be me."

The car came to a stop, the engine idling roughly. Before us were the gates to the cemetery, the same cemetery where her parents—my paternal grandparents—were already buried. And, I guess, Aunt Meg also lay within. Didn't she? I'd heard all about the service from my siblings: how my cousin broke down as her mother's coffin was lowered into the grave; how Uncle Gene just stared, his eyes empty. But she certainly seemed solid—alive—enough as she sat next to me.

I didn't think we'd driven nearly far enough to already be at our destination.  A huge, unfamiliar padlock barred the way, as unfamiliar as the cemetery.  It didn't look like the open, park-like space with neat rows of headstones that I remembered from childhood, more like the cemetery you see in horror movies . . . or weird dreams.  I only recognized the place because of the name in corroded metal across the top of the gate: Green Lawn Cemetery.  There was no green lawn, no scent of perpetually fresh cut grass one encounters in a cemetery.  Only dead grass and windswept leaves, even though it was early summer.  I realized there were no scents at all in this dream except for the carbon monoxide stink from the old wouldn't-pass-a-smog-test-in-a-hundred-tries piece of junk we rode in.

"What will you do? If you can't get in?"

"The secret must be told. It's the price of passage."

"I don't have it." We were silent for a moment. "I'm sorry."

"Someone must have it."

"Did you ask Gene?"

"I couldn't bring myself to ask him when I was alive; I still don't have the courage." She looked about to cry. "You probably think I'm a coward."

"A lot of people are afraid of the truth. They hide from it."

"Until it's too late. I've already been in limbo for two months; I don't know if I can take much more of it."

Aunt Meg wanted to be at peace.

"Maybe I can get the others to talk."

"Really talk, you mean?"

I nodded. That was the one shortcoming of our family: we weren't talkers. Not in that way. A lot of talk, but not much really said. We were a family of superficiality, a family who didn't really know one another because no one was brave enough to ask real questions. We were all cowards, not just Aunt Meg. And I was perhaps the biggest coward of all, living thousands of miles away, looking for that family connection everywhere but where I should look for it. At least I wasn't a pretender, living in the family fold, pretending that everything was peachy keen, laughing at a joke rather than wondering why we felt compelled to communicate only through humor.

"I could find the truth for you. Is that allowed?"

"I don't know." She patted my cheek again. "But I know you'll try."

I woke up to an annoyed cat. She'd been contentedly sleeping on my chest until I caused her to slide off by sitting up. Swishing her tail—her intact tail—she stalked off in search of more peaceful digs. It was some wacko dream, two wacko dreams: a severing of life and limb. I was merely being haunted by the guilt of not seeing my aunt before she died. If the loss of a beloved family member couldn't get me home, what could? At that very moment, I wasn't sure even the death of a parent would be enough pull to get my feet back on home soil. It was a sad testimony to the lack of ties, the lack of communication in our family.

I laid back down and rolled over, trying to get comfortable. But the moonlight streaming through the uncovered window was too distracting, and it reflected off the coins laying on the night stand. A handful of quarters I'd left there the night before; I'd meant to do laundry last night, but couldn't drag myself to the Laundromat.

Dirty laundry. Coinage. Aunt Meg's passage.

I sat, rubbed the coins between my hands. Maybe I was hoping for some sort of psychic connection, but I'd never really believed in that kind of thing. So I opened the nightstand drawer and made to throw them in the bowl of loose change inside. But then I sat there staring at the jumble of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.

Coins. A collector. Aunt Meg's passage did have a price. My brother collected coins. I'm not sure he ever did anything with the collection, but I know he had it. It was a part of his childhood that had been innocent and enthusiastic— before he became more fascinated with pot, acid, and booze, and ended up going in and out of county jail. My brother, the sensitive boy turned troublemaker. Mostly petty troubles until those DUIs added up.

I hadn't spoken to him in years. We had nothing in common except our bloodline.

But now, even though it was still the middle of the night, even back east, I picked up the phone and dialed.

At first he didn't understand who was calling or what I wanted. He seemed to think I had some family tragedy to report. . .but then he'd be the one with that kind of news because he lived in the same city as the rest of the clan, not I.

And then my question sunk in. "Did Uncle Gene ever molest you?"

His voice dropped to a whisper. "How did you know?"

Copyright 2007 by Janet Loftis