CHAPTER # 14


“Hold your horses, I’m coming,” a husky voice announced. I heard at least three locks clicking open. Then the door opened a crack. “Why are you bothering me?”

“I’m your niece Morgan, you know me as Marty or Martina.” I paused. “They call me Morgan these days.” She didn’t say anything. “You sent a message to me in Seattle,” I said.

“Why didn’t you say so?” she growled. “Come on in.” And she opened the door just wide enough for me to slip through. I listened to her relocking the door. “Sit,” she said, and disappeared into the next room.

I sat in the chair closest to the door, and looked the living room over. The furniture was old fashioned. Actually everything looked more like thrift store rejects than anything that had been planned. And there was something wrong; it took me maybe five minutes to see what it was. Every piece of furniture was tilted. A few, including the chair I was in, had been more or less leveled with some sort of shim. The rest looked as if they were on a downward slide. If I had dropped a marble it would have quickly rolled to the southwest corner

Aunt Fern wandered back into the room. She seemed to be a little surprised to see me sitting there. “So, what do you want?”

“I thought you had wanted to see me,” I said.

“What about?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “My friend Katherine in Seattle said you called her and asked to talk to me.”

“Maybe I wrote it down somewhere,” she said, and wandered out of the room again. I wondered how old she was – maybe somewhere between 75 and 85. Her face was lined, her clothes mismatched; she had a man’s flannel shirt on over a long flowered skirt. She looked like an unrepentant hippie; vanity obviously wasn’t her problem. I wondered if senility was. Or was she just a garden-variety example of Asberger’s Syndrome?

“Is your father still alive?” she suddenly asked having popped back into the room. “Martin was an alcoholic, you know.”

“I know,” I said, “and he died three years ago.”

“Good riddance,” she said. Then, as if noticing the shocked look on my face, she added, “My father was an alcoholic too, you know. And when he died I missed him anyway.” I guess that was her way of saying she understood the ambivalence of living with an alcoholic. She certainly was one strange bird. I wondered why I had come, and wondered how quickly I could get out of there.

“What do you want for lunch?” she asked, and before I could answer, she asked more questions. “Do you drive? Could you go to the grocery store for me?”

“Anything except tuna fish is okay for lunch, but I like eggs best. Yes, I drive, and I could go to the store for you.” I figured maybe if I did that I could politely leave afterwards. Her abrupt manner and dictatorial attitude exhausted me. I never knew what she was going to say or do next. She seemed to have the attention span of a five-year-old. I wondered what kind of consulting she could possible have done.

“I’ve got a shopping list started in the kitchen,” she said, moving towards the back of the house. “Come along,” she ordered. The kitchen was old and shabby, but not untidy. She grabbed a list off the refrigerator and sat down at the scarred wooden kitchen table. “Sit,” she said.

And I sat. I watched her add eggs and bread and ice cream to her list. “You can buy anything else you want.” She pulled a fifty-dollar bill out of a shirt pocket and handed it to me along with the list and a ring of keys. “My R V is right out back,” she gestured towards the kitchen door. “Do you know where the food market is?”

I shook my head and she gave me clear directions. I opened the door, crossed a small back porch, and went down the steps into the backyard. Sure enough, there was a small R V, like a pickup truck with a wide cabin attached. I hoped it wouldn’t be too hard to drive. Away from her I felt like I could breathe again.

Driving the R V, which had an automatic shift, proved to be no problem. It was wider and longer than anything else I’d ever driven, but I was able to take it easy and traffic was light. On the way back I saw a flashing red light behind me. Damn! My heart rate increased as I pulled over to the side of the highway. A deputy sheriff got out of his car and came up to my window. “Isn’t this Miz Albright’s rig?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m her niece visiting from Seattle. I’ve just been doing some shopping for her.” I pointed to the sacks of groceries on the passenger seat.

“Very good,” he said. “Drive safely.” I wondered why he hadn’t asked for my driver’s license, but was glad he didn’t since it was a California license. Why had I said I was from Seattle? Truth was I wasn’t sure where I was from anymore.

Back at Aunt Fern’s place I parked carefully and carried the groceries inside. I sat and watched as she efficiently put some eggs on to boil, stowed things away, and made some tasty egg salad sandwiches.

“Thank you,” I said after I had helped her clean up. “Before I leave I just wanted you to know how much I appreciated the books you sent me every year when I was young.”

“I was working in a bookstore back then and I enjoyed choosing them for you guys,” she said. “But why are you leaving? You just got here. We’ve hardly had a chance to get acquainted.”

“I thought I’d go back to the hostel downtown where I stayed last night,” I began.

“Nonsense, you can stay here with me if you don’t mind sleeping in the R V out back.” Once again she caught me off guard and I found myself feeling trapped. We stayed in the kitchen and she fixed some tea. As she sat down across from me she said, “Tell me about yourself.” And so, I gave her the Cliff’s Notes version of my marriage and my children and a little about Vern. I said it hadn’t worked out so I’d been doing some traveling.

“Now I’d like to hear about your life,” I said.

“Don’t ask me anything you don’t really want to know,” she said with a sly smile. “What do you think of my R V?” she asked. I said I thought it seemed like it would be a comfortable way to travel. “Would you like to have it?” she asked.

I thought for a moment. “Maybe. I’d have to think about it,” I said.

Then, abruptly, she said, “I’m done. I need a nap. There are sheets for the R V in the linen closet. I’ll see you at four.” And she was suddenly gone again.

I noticed she hadn’t told me anything about herself. I thought about the idea of living in an R V while I made up the bed that was on a wide shelf over the driver’s area. Not all that easy to do. I could see that it might be too difficult for her to crawl around to accomplish. I checked the rig out: a small table with padded benches, a complete kitchen, and even a bathroom. Very cramped quarters, but spacious and positively luxurious compared to the tent I’d once lived in.

At four o’clock I was sitting at the kitchen table reading through the half dozen manuals on the many systems of the R V when she popped into the room as promised.
“What do you think?” she asked.

“I’m still thinking,” I answered. “Why would you want to give me your R V?”

“It’s too much for me to handle these days. And it seemed as if you could put it to good use now that you’re traveling. I used to enjoy traveling, but not any more.” I asked what she would do for transportation. “I have a small car in the garage out back.”

“What would it cost me,” I asked.
“Just for gas and maintenance. But it only gets twelve miles per gallon if I’m lucky. There are lots of places you can stay overnight for free. Not as many as there used to be, however. There’s a campground directory in the vehicle.”

I wasn’t ready to commit myself. Aunt Fern seemed to sense this. “How about I let you borrow it for a couple of months, see how you like it, and if you do, then you could pay me a dollar and transfer registration?”

“That might work,” I said. “By the way did you ever remember why you called me?”

“Yes,” she said, “You were on my list of nieces to catch up with. And the hardest to locate,” she added. “I talked with your cousins weeks ago.”

“What did you want with me and my cousins?” I asked.

“Maybe I was looking for someone who might want my R V.” Her tone of voice suggested she might be toying with me.

I decided a change of topic was in order. “I’ve been wondering what kind of work you do,” I said.

“Computer forensics,” she said, her face lighting up. “Bring me a computer and I can tell you where it’s been, what it’s done, and who it’s done it with.” Then she smiled sweetly and added, “Computers are so much easier for me to deal with than so-called real people.”

I smiled back. “I can understand that,” I said.

“Come and see my workroom,” she invited. I followed her into the room off the living room. There was an array of at least seven computers lined up against a wall. Several boxes seemed to contain spare parts: cords and keyboards and extra gizmos. What seemed to be her main computer sat by itself at the far end of the room. A stack of cardboard boxes completed the tableau.

“Wow,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

“Hard to believe I could get data out of some of these, right?” she challenged.

“I use computers, but know very little otherwise. You must be some kind of a geek-wizard,” I said.


“Thank you for noticing. “I’ve been doing it for a long time now.”