[These two kids first show up here.]
“Is that Auntie Claire?”
“Keep your feathers on,” Lina said. “She’s just anchoring the foreground.”
“Why is she screaming?”
“Art joke. Want to color in the mice?”
I scrunched down next to her on the carpet. “Is this a new project?”
“We’re gonna fix Victorine’s problem.”
***
Victorine was Grandma’s cat. Grandma was dead, she was gone before we got here. Victorine’d been mad about it and she still looked awfully peaky.
Auntie Claire had looked awfully peaky too but she had us now. Cats are trickier. They hate change.
“I’m making her a goddess instead of a queen. We’ll get to wear better costumes.”
So far there were only two mice. The full offering wasn’t in the picture yet. Victorine on her throne still looked thin and crabby but you could tell by her ears she was interested in what was happening. Lina handed me the drawing and started on the next sketch.
***
“Huh. No way. That’s Grandma's sewing lamp.” Cousin Staci’d put it down to get her keys out and Lina grabbed it. We were just in time.
Staci had a big bleeding scratch on her hand and yowling was coming from inside the house. It sounded very energetic.
“Stealing our precious precious memories,” I said. “How low can you go?”
“You never even met her.”
“Grandma made all our baby dresses,” said Lina. “Must’ve taken her ages. All covered with—”
“—smocking,” I said. “In three different colors of thread.”
“We were the prettiest babies ever.”
“Like two little daffodils. She was so proud when we won that contest…”
“You’re some pair of liars,” Staci said, just as Auntie Claire came up the drive and pulled in next to Staci’s big red SUV. She got out of her car, still wearing her scrubs, looking wiped as usual.
“What’s going on?”
Lina took the lamp back inside the house and returned in a sort of slow-motion lope, draped herself around Aunt Claire and smiled.
It wasn’t affection, exactly.
Sweat trickled down my back, just a little bit.
“Look at you knocking yourself out,” Staci said. “Are these even Remy’s kids?”
“Fuck sake, Stace!” Auntie Claire wasn’t usually a curser.
Serlyn was here with us too. Now she started laughing. It was her monkey wrench move. Throws people right off their game.
“Who the hell are you?” Staci asked.
“Our number three,” I said.
We made antenna-waggle hands at Staci.
“You should be in an institution.”
“Au contraire,” Serlyn said.
Meanwhile Auntie Claire was starting to go a really bad pale color. “You’re still running with this crap? That you can come here and let yourself in without asking?”
“You know—”
“What I know is,” said Auntie Claire, “you are really seriously confused if you think you have any rights to even an inch of this house and anything in it, or talk to my nieces like that.” Her voice had gone low with fury.
Staci wasn’t the kind to feel bad about making someone angry, but we were still waggling our hands at her and she’d already said the worst things she could think of at the moment. She got in that SUV and left.
“C’mon guys,” I said. “Let’s make Auntie Claire some coffee.”
***
“I sure like the idea of some serious confusion,” Serlyn said.
Auntie Claire’d fallen asleep on the living room sofa and Victorine was curled up with her, all nice and cozy.
The three of us were down in the rec room. It was still full of tons of old guy stuff. This’d been the family house for a pretty long time. A couple of those old guys hadn’t bothered to write their wills but nobody’d had problems till now.
All the drawings of Victorine’s Restoration were taped to one of the walls. Serlyn’d been very admiring of the talent and the results.
“Of course for this you’d be working from the opposite direction,” she said. “And see how things go. You don’t want your aunt to feel bad about anything that happens. Too bad, I mean.”
“Want to help with the coloring?” Lina asked.
“Sure,” Serlyn said. “Let me just find out if I can sleep over.”
-- “I sure like the idea of some serious confusion,” Serlyn said.
Priceless.