Ever After. William Wharton

They’re Catholic, although the only one who’s actually religious is my little sister. We don’t need to have a church wedding, but they’ll feel peculiar if we have our baby without any kind of wedding at all.’

      Finally I give in. It’s also my parents. They tell us we can have the wedding on the houseboat with a big dance afterward. My parents have a two-story houseboat they put together – a wooden boat on top, with a metal hull underneath. The downstairs is fifty feet long and is almost all one room. The boat looks like an ark and is perfect for parties. This could be our personal Halloween party, to chase away all the ghosts. This was before I knew there are no ghosts, not the way people think, anyway.

      So that’s what we do. Nobody in Bert’s family has ever been to Europe, but the whole passel of them say they’re coming. We decide, because we have a five-day holiday for All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day, to celebrate the marriage on November first. That day will also honor my Aunt Emmaline, Mom’s sister. It’s her birthday.

      I have two aunts, Aunt Emmaline, and Dad’s sister, Aunt Jean. They were girlfriends in high school. In fact the two of them brought Dad and Mom together when they were all teenagers. Aunt Jean married a PE teacher in a junior high school and has had five kids, all by Caesarean. Aunt Emmaline was an actress. She got married on her fortieth birthday. It was her first and only marriage. It lasted five years even though she was married to one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.

      I adored Aunt Emmaline when I was a little girl. She lived in gorgeous apartments and wore fancy clothes. She was always on TV in some series or another and was in several films. She was glamorous. She bleached her hair, which normally was sandy-colored like mine, so she looked like a real blonde, and wore heavy make-up. She had a great figure.

      Aunt Emmaline was the dream aunt for a teenage girl, a fairy godmother. She’d take me out to eat and buy me clothes. She was as different from my mother as anyone could be. Mom is the same size, but with dark hair and dark eyes. She doesn’t dye her hair. She has the same beautiful figure but you’d never know it from the way she dresses. Mom has always been quiet. In fact, I can’t remember Mom ever once raising her voice.

      But before Aunt Emmaline was fifty, she was a drunk. She’d call us on Christmas Eve almost every year and give what Dad called her ‘goodbye-goodbye’ speech. Dad made it a rule that nobody was to answer the phone on Christmas Eve but him. We could always tell from his face who it was. He’d just listen and nod his head. Normally my dad isn’t a great listener. Then he’d say, ‘Is that all, Em?’ He’d pause. ‘Well, I hope you have a happy life and Merry Christmas. Take care of yourself.’ Then he’d hang up. It was always the same. We never knew what she was saying. When I finally asked, he told me she was threatening to kill herself because nobody loved her.

      My last dealings with Aunt Emmaline were sad ones.

      My younger sister, Camille, and I were living in California. I was in Venice, and Camille in Culver City. Mom’s mother, our grandmother, was living in Santa Monica. Emmaline was living in West Hollywood. Grandma was more than eighty at the time.

      Grandma called Camille and said she’d been trying to phone Emmaline for three days and nobody answered. She’d taken a cab over to her place but it was all locked up. She wondered what she should do. She was crying.

      Camille phoned me. It was evening and Danny was home so I asked him to watch Wills. I drove over to Camille’s and from there we headed to Emmaline’s. Neither of us was particularly concerned. It wasn’t the first time Emmaline had gotten so far out she didn’t answer the phone. But we weren’t looking forward to it, either.

      From previous visits, we knew how to climb through the bathroom window. We parked the car, walked up the hill to her apartment. We knocked several times and rang the bell, but nothing happened. We went around to the back. We promised each other this was the last time we’d ever do this.

      I pushed Camille through the little window and she came around to open the front door for me. It was dark, and we turned on some lights. We called out, then saw that the light was on in her bedroom, coming out from a crack under the door.

      When we went in, I almost fainted. Even Camille, who’s pretty tough, turned her back and screamed.

      Aunt Emmaline was stretched out on the floor beside her bed, practically naked. There was shit and piss on the bed, on her and on the floor. We could see right away she was dead. Camille turned back around and stared.

      ‘We’ve got to phone somebody, the police or somebody.’

      But the phone was beside the bed, just in front of where she was spread out. We stood there. Then Camille went around the other side of the bed, reached across and gathered in the phone. She sat down on the floor. I tried to move close to make sure Aunt Emmaline was really dead. She was. She was beginning to stink and it wasn’t just the shit and everything. I slunk around and scrunched down on the floor beside Camille. She had the phone on her lap and looked at me.

      ‘I think we ought to call Mom and Dad. They’d know best what to do. What time is it there?’

      We figured it had to be about seven in the morning. Camille made two mistakes dialing but finally got it. Her hands were trembling.

      She explained the situation as carefully as she could. Dad was on the phone and Mom was on the extra ear-extension they have on French phones. We could hear Mom crying. Dad wanted to know how we were, what we’d done so far.

      Camille told him. There was a long quiet pause; we figured he was talking to Mom.

      ‘OK, first look around and see if there’s any kind of a note, anything like that.’

      We put down the phone and started looking. Camille found a bunch of insurance papers all spread out on the desk. It was good having something to do. I kept trying not to look into the open eyes of Aunt Emmaline. We came back and told Dad what we’d found.

      ‘Put them back into the drawer of the desk, sort of spread around. Don’t touch anything else. Just make sure there are no notes.’

      We did that.

      ‘Now call the police and an ambulance. Stay there till they come. Then, as soon as possible, go home and, if you have any, take a sleeping pill. I’m sorry you kids had to do this, but it was bound to happen. Just remember, it’s what your aunt wanted.’

      We did all that and everything went off fine. They put it down that Aunt Emmaline had died of a stroke or something; a friend arranged this with the police so Aunt Emmaline could be buried in holy ground, and so Grandma wouldn’t know. It seems this kind of thing is always happening in that part of the world. West Hollywood is sort of the place where failed actresses and actors wind up their careers, one way or another.

      I don’t know if there’s any way I can contact Aunt Emmaline now, I’m not sure I want to, but I chose Aunt Emmaline’s day for the wedding: I guess because I’m the closest thing to a child she had. One good thing that came out of the experience was my determination never to drink or fool around with drugs, and I never have.

      After the wedding, I return to working at the school, but I begin having trouble with bleeding. I’m sick every morning and feel terrible all day. I’d had an emergency Caesarean with Wills in Los Angeles and the incision was done vertically, both through the stomach wall and the uterus: not exactly what you’d call a ‘bikini cut.’ I want this one naturally, but the doctors in Germany say it’s probably impossible. However they also say they’ll try.

      I’ve found a Frauenklinik nearby, right on the Starnberger See. The baby seems to be growing nicely, but the contractions and bleeding continue. The doctor says I must stay in bed or I could very easily lose the baby.

      I tell them at school and show them the doctor’s certificate that I should stop teaching. Stan is very sympathetic, and comes several times to see how I am. Ruth, his wife, comes regularly to help keep the place up. I’m surprised how the faculty and parents all help. I knew I had some really good friends, Ellen, Pam, Cindy, Dallas, but I never expected they’d dash into the fray so willingly.

      Bert