Compass

Aunt Aveline

"She's dead,"

Jack was standing in her grandmother's kitchen staring at the carroty-colored toaster oven on the counter.

"Honey, are you okay?"

Jack didn't look at whoever was speaking to her. She didn't know how many hours she remained there, how many tears she held in. She just stared at that toaster oven until it was a carroty-colored blot in her vision.

"Let us know what you need,"

She decided she would associate that color with death from now on. She'd never loved it anyway, a fair enough sacrifice.

"Jack!"

She broke off her gaze and fixed it on the interruption. It was her Aunt Aveline, now standing directly in front of Jack with her elegant hands clasping the younger girl's cheeks. Every inch of Aunt Aveline was elegant; from her lengthy floral dress to the pretty tears escaping her lashes. Her voice was tinged with a french accent that was a new acquisition since the last time she had visited.

"Talk to me,"

But what was there to say. Nan was dead, gone, forever. Jack had known it would happen but that didn't remedy the feeling that she had been wronged, by someone or something.

"Well, I'll in the other room if you need me,"

Jack watched her aunt turn and swish into the living room. It filled with a mixture of relatives and old friends of Nan's whom had cared enough to come to the house after the funeral. Though most of them hadn't seen Nan in years. Jack couldn't banish her grubby thoughts that said she was the only one who deserved to be here. She was the only person who was with Nan everyday for the past seventeen years. The only one who knew what she was like in the end.

...

Jack was skating between sleep and consciousness when her door creaked open and soft footsteps made their way for her bed. Someone sat beside her for a while, before placing something on her nightstand. Aunt Aveline's exotic perfume wafted over her as Jack veered back to sleep.

Aunt Aveline had always been a subject of intrigue. Jack could never figure out how she fit into the family picture. She would try to imagine her mother and Aunt Aveline playing in Nan's house as children. But in these daydreams her mother was always a faceless question mark and her aunt a miniaturized version of herself; in a auburn pantsuit and smelling of spicy roses.

Jack knew very little about the "family picture" at all. There were no pictures in Nan's house except for a couple black and white photos of herself as a young woman with a man Jack presumed to be her grandfather. In these pictures Nan looked like an entirely different person, she had a wild look in her eyes and a wide, hopeful smile. Her hair was long and dark like Jack's, in a disarray that surely rebelled against the housewife curls of the 50's.

Sometimes Jack would ask Nan about her life in this pictures, or about Jack's mother and Aunt Aveline, but Nan's answers were always vague and distorted. Since Jack had turned ten, their roles as caretaker and "taken care of" had begun to switch. She could never be sure what was fact and what was a figment of imagination.

That night Jack, dreamt in black and white. She was a little girl again dressed in her frilly church dress. She holding Nan's hand in the back garden looking down at a freshly tilled patch of dirt. They had just buried Mr. Jerry, their cat, who had been around longer than Jack herself. She was crying, sobbing really, and Nan plonked right down in the dirt and pulled Jack into her lap.

"It's alright Jack, my sweet and sour Jack. It was simply his time to go." Nan said in her low, serious voice.

"Why? Who decides that?"Jack howled. 

"God does."

"Well, then I hate God." She pounded the earth with her tiny fist.

Nan just looked at her, her eyes weighing Jack. "No you don't. Without God, none of us would be here. We wouldn't even get a chance to live. I wouldn't be sitting here right now holding you, we wouldn't be together."

"Really?"

Nan nodded. "All life comes to an end. It is as natural as the sun rising every morning, or the morning glories blooming every spring." She reached out and picked a morning glory from the bunch next to Mr. Jerry's resting place. She tickled Jack's nose with it, producing a round of giggling, and then tucked it behind her ear. "Its not a bad thing."

"Will he decide when it is your time to go?" Jack peered up at Nan, clutching her blouse tightly.

Nan nodded again. "But don't worry, I've lived a very full life, every twist and turn of it. Just like Mr. Jerry."

Jack began to sob again and Nan shushed her soothingly, brushing her fingers through the little girl's hair. "Don't cry my sweet and sour Jack, I won't leave you for a long, long time."

...

Jack woke up choking on tears. Her dream was still fresh, replaying whenever she closed her eyes. She wasn't sure how much of it was true memory of that day and how much was black and white mind games.

With a shaky sigh Jack pulled the covers back over her head. The morning light was too cheerful to face. Then she remembered Aunt Aveline's visit last night, and wondered for a split second whether or not that was a dream as well.

Nope. Resting on her nightstand was an creamy envelope. Jack changed into her near daily uniform of a white tee-shirt and overalls. Then grabbed the envelope and took it downstairs.

"Hello, anyone here?"she called out.

"Aunt Aveline?"

Silence.

Jack took a deep breath before she could begin to hyperventilate. She made coffee with the french press, realizing too late that she had made two cups-worth when she only needed the one. Then she sat down with a brimming mug and tore open the envelope. Inside was a note, which Jack carefully read and reread.

Aunt Aveline had written, quite elegantly, that she had had to go and take care of a couple things, but she would be waiting for Jack to join her in Bordeaux, France. She said she had gotten Jack a ticket, contained in the envelope.

Jack shook out a ticket, dated for a flight in three days to Bordeaux. France. 

"What?!" she cried, her breath coming quicker. 

Now, was as good a time as any, to hyperventilate.