Aunt Grace didn’t miss a beat. “Ethan, don’t you be gettin’ her any sweet tea. She’ll have ta use the powder room if she drinks any more.”
“Ethan, don’t you listen ta Grace. She’s got a mean streak a mile long and ten powder rooms wide.”
I looked at Lena, who was holding a plastic pitcher of sweet tea in her hand. “Was that a yes or a no?”
Amma slammed the door shut and held out her hand for the pitcher. “Don’t you two have some homework to do?” Lena arched an eyebrow and smiled back, relieved. Since Aunt Prue had gone to County Care and the Sisters had moved in with us, I felt like I hadn’t been alone with Lena in weeks.
I took Lena’s hand and pulled her toward the kitchen door.
You ready to make a run for it?
I’m ready.
We rushed into the hall as fast as we could, trying to make it to the stairs. Aunt Grace was bundled up on the couch, her fingers hooked through the holes of her favorite crocheted afghan, which was about ten different shades of brown. It matched our living room perfectly, now stacked floor to ceiling with brown cardboard boxes full of everything the Sisters had made my dad and me haul out of their house last week.
They hadn’t been satisfied with the things that had actually survived: almost everything from Aunt Grace and Aunt Mercy’s bedroom, a brass spittoon that all five of Aunt Prue’s husbands had used (and never cleaned), four of the spoons from Aunt Grace’s Southern spoon collection and the wooden display rack, a stack of dusty photo albums, two mismatched dining room chairs, the plastic fawn from their front yard, and hundreds of unopened miniature jelly jars they had swiped from Millie’s Breakfast ’n’ Biscuits. But the things that had survived weren’t enough. They had henpecked us until we dragged the broken stuff out, too.
Most of it had stayed in the boxes, but Aunt Grace had insisted that decorating would help ease their “sufferin’,” so Amma let them put some of their things around the house. Which was the reason Harlon James I, Harlon James II, and Harlon James III—all preserved thanks to what Aunt Prue called the delicate Southern art of taxidermy—were staring at me right now. Harlon James I sitting, Harlon James II standing, and Harlon James III sleeping. It was the sleeping Harlon James that really disturbed me; Aunt Grace kept it—him—next to the couch, and one way or another, someone stubbed a toe on him every time they walked by.
It could be worse, Ethan. He could be on the couch.
Aunt Mercy was sulking in her wheelchair in front of the television, clearly agitated she’d lost this morning’s battle over the couch. My dad was sitting next to her, reading the paper. “How are you kids doing today? It’s nice to see you, Lena.” His expression said, Get out while you can.
Lena smiled at him. “You, too, Mr. Wate.”
He had been taking a day off here and there when he could, to keep Amma from losing her mind.
Aunt Mercy was gripping the remote, even though the television wasn’t on, and waved it at me. “Where do you two lovebirds think you’re off ta?”
Head for the stairs, L.
“Ethan, don’t tell me you’re thinkin’ a takin’ a young lady upstairs. That wouldn’t be proper.” Aunt Mercy clicked the remote at me, as if she could put me on pause before I made it to my room. She looked over at Lena. “You keep your cute little fanny out a boys’ rooms, Chickadee.”
“Mercy Lynne!”
“Grace Ann!”
“I don’t want ta hear that kinda dirty talk comin’ from you.”
“What, fanny? Fanny fanny fanny!”
Ethan! Get me out of here.
Don’t stop.
Aunt Grace sniffed. “’Course he’s not takin’ her upstairs. His daddy would roll over in his grave.”
“I’m right here.” My dad waved at her.
“His mamma,” Aunt Mercy corrected.
Aunt Grace waved her handkerchief, the one that was permanently glued to the inside of her curled hand. “Mercy Lynne, you must be goin’ senile. That’s what I said.”
“You most certainly did not. I heard you clear as a bell, with my good ear. You said his daddy’d be—”
Aunt Grace tossed the afghan aside. “You couldn’t hear a bell if it crept up behind you and bit you in the sweet—”
“Sweet tea, ladies?” Amma appeared with a tray, just in time. Lena and I snuck up the stairs while Amma blocked the view from the living room. There was no getting past the Sisters, even without Aunt Prue. And there hadn’t been for days now. Between getting them settled in our house, and getting everything that was left out of theirs, my dad and Amma and I had been doing nothing but waiting on them hand and foot since they moved in.