Poor Aunt Clara -- An Aunt / Nephew Story
Fake Flower Stories
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IMPORTANT NOTE:
Hey.
Do you like reading porn?
Would you like to keep porn legal so you can continue to read stories like this?
In the United States, there’s a group of people fighting to take away your right to look at sexual media. I don’t want to name too many names, but I do want to make you aware of Project 2025, a long running initiative by evangelical conservatives to conform all law to their perception of Christian morality. One of the many changes they want to make is to make all pornography, and anything else they deem indecent, illegal to purchase or produce.
It would mean I would be breaking the law by writing these stories and sharing them with you. It would mean you would be breaking the law just for buying them.
If you would like to fight for your freedom to read what you want, then please vote in all of your state and local elections, and not just the presidential ones. I don’t want to bash any of the candidates, but I do want my readers to be aware that Donald Trump, despite his claims, supports Agenda 2025, and has even been a keynote speaker at the Heritage Foundation where Agenda 2025 was created.
I understand that this is just smut, but if Agenda 2025 is fully enacted by a new wave of conservative politicians, you will no longer be able to read my work. You will no longer be able to read any of your favorite erotica authors. Nor will you be able to look at pornography at all. Your internet providers, if they somehow allow you to look at pornography, would be shut down.
If you look into Agenda 2025, you will find many other things they wish to enact that will destroy the freedoms and rights we have taken for granted. Please consider the freedoms that you want to keep, and please, please, vote.
You can read a summary of Agenda 2025 here on Forbes: and you can find the part on pornography by pressing Ctrl F, and typing, “porn”.
INTRODUCTION
A reader once asked me if I had a muse—a certain somebody that inspired a lot of the writing within this specific incest kink. I can say that I’ve had a couple. Nobody related to me, but women I’ve been close to, and wished I was related to, if you get me. The kind of gorgeous older women who, at first sight, drum up that primal kind of lust that makes you tense up, that makes your body prepare itself for the hunt, regardless of social convention. This is a dedication to them, and to rich, milfy aunts who are down on their luck, all over the world.
As always,
Enjoy.
Without exception, all characters in all of my stories are over the age of eighteen.
CHAPTER 1
Mom dropped her spoon into her soup and it made a tiny tomato-red splash onto the table. “Clara?” Mom then said a curse word under her breath as she tried to get her bearings. Her eyes were wide and she had the same look that she would get whenever Dad would reveal his latest adventure in the stock market. “Clara? My Clara?”
“Your Clara!” said dad as if it were good news, fake and cheery. His own gaze was focused on his soup, and he stirred it with enough intentionality to mark him as guilty.
Mom’s voice was louder now. “My sister is coming to stay with us? Says who? When did – did we even talk about – you invited my sister to stay with us?”
“Well,” dad shrugged, struggling to stay stoic. “She did say it was urgent.”
“Urgent?” Mom almost stood up. She was panicking. “How soon is she coming?”
When dad told her that Clara was at the airport in New York and that she was going to be here the next day, somewhere between the morning and evening, and that Clara was so, so excited to see them, Mom just about exploded. “Tim – I – What the fuck! You should have talked with me about – God damn it, this is my sister, you don’t just let her come over without talking to—”
“I know, honey, but—” Dad tried to cut in but Mom had already lost it.
I excused myself from dinner while mom loudly adjusted to the fact that her little sister, the one who actually finished her degree and then got a bunch of fancy internships, then started a great career in New York City, was still unmarried, and was definitely hotter and more successful than her, was now going to show up here, at our house, in our semi-rural neighborhood in the middle of flyover America.
For mom, Aunt Clara was probably the least desired person in the family as far as who was welcome in the house. Not that Clara was actually banned; family was welcome if they really needed it, but mom made it extremely plain that Aunt Clara made her feel bad, and that her Christmases were better without her. This wasn’t Aunt Clara’s fault, exactly. Mom got married to my dad, settled down with a sort-of middle-class lifestyle, and her life turned into a revolving door of mortgage payments and dishwasher loads. While that kind of life was perfectly fine for mom for a while, it wasn’t until word started coming in from the family that Aunt Clara got a VP position at some charity, that everyone realized she was doing a hell of a lot better than the rest of us. And that’s when mom started to get jealous of her younger sister. A little overly jealous.
It’s not that she hated being a mom and a wife. It was more that mom saw herself as always being the more responsible one – the one that took care of her family without complaints, while her sister was off enjoying the big city lifestyle with a flashy career and a series of boyfriends. It so happened that the flashy career didn’t stop and that Clara just did better and better for herself, eventually helping lead a non-profit that provided aid to single mothers up and down the East Coast. Talk about responsibility. Made being a stay-at-home mom with a grown-up kid look like summer vacation.
Aunt Clara also had the advantage of being prettier than her sister. Both brunettes, both lithe from sports (at least during college), both with dark eyes that shimmered everywhere they looked. But mom’s nose was a little larger, while Clara had a tiny button nose. Mom’s posture was a little off from all the self-imposed responsibility, right from the beginning. You could see it in all the photos – mom appeared just a little shorter than Clara, her standing a little more strained. And now that mom had been a mother for almost twenty-one years, she looked very, very different from Clara. While Clara only grew sexier and shapelier while retaining her tight waist, mom’s body went through more extreme changes. Motherhood does that. Childbirth does that. I don’t need to tell you how much that change weighs on a woman’s mind.
Though, maybe I do. My dad definitely didn’t get it. One night, my dad drunkenly admitted to me that Aunt Clara had a ‘certain way’ about her, and that she was ‘a fucking bombshell’. I think we were both pretty lucky that mom didn’t overhear that, even though it covered up a bigger problem.
When my mom and Clara were in college, the boys gravitated in a certain direction. When my mom and Clara met my dad, guess which sister he was interested in first? And after dad was rejected by the younger, hotter sister, which one do you think he was ‘interested’ in next? I had a feeling mom wasn’t about to let that go. Especially now that dad had taken it upon himself to allow Aunt Clara to invite herself over, I imagined mom had that top of mind.
The next morning, mom and dad weren’t even talking with each other. I sat down to breakfast and tried not to let it bother me, except that it’s really hard to enjoy the bacon when it’s burned black. “So,” I ventured, guessing at what happened. “I’m guessing you guys worked out some stuff this morning.”
Mom immediately spoke up. “Junie, you know how important it is to never, ever invite yourself over, right?”
“Sure,” I said. Dad rolled his eyes.
Mom continued, ignoring dad. “And you know that when you’re married, you shouldn’t be making big decisions by yourself, right? You’ll talk to your wife first,” mom’s eyes raked over my dad. “Especially if you promise to let somebody stay in your house without paying rent, right?”
Dad, more interested in the news on his phone, gave a superficial nod. I nodded too, figuring it was best to let mom draw up some boundaries, or something.
“Where’s she going to stay?”
“Well,” mom said carefully. That didn’t sound good. “We’re considering giving her, well, your room. And we could move all your stuff to the basement, and we could set up an air mattress for you, just for a bit, until we can get you a bed down there. It’d be quieter, you’d have a lot more room to study, and it’d be cooler in the summer, and I could really use the space when she’s gone for my—”
“That’s fine, mom.” Then I realized we were making plans the exact day of her arrival. “So, I guess we’re moving a lot of furniture tonight.” My heart sank as I realized that it was going to take a while, and worse, I didn’t have the chance to clean my room. That was a can I didn’t want to open. “Look, I really, really need to clean my room before we do any moving.”
“My son? Offering to clean his room?” Mom sighed audibly, relieved that I wasn’t fighting her about this. “Maybe some good will come out of this.”
“Who’s picking up Aunt Clara?” I asked.
“You are, thanks bud!” said dad, a little too quickly.
“You don’t mind, right?” Mom asked. “I know you’re a little busy.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I graduated high school a couple years back, and was doing part time work while going to the local branch of my state university, but all the school was online, and it wasn’t like I had any expenses other than gas, a gym membership, and the occasional booze bottle. With my ex recently out of the picture, I had even more time and money. “Yeah, I got it.”
Mom looked at me a little too long. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
I nodded, not sure what she was on about.
“Honey… I’m just… I’m worried about you. I know we’re asking a lot of you right now.” mom reached a hand across the table and touched mine. “Are you feeling alright? After Alyssa?”
Alyssa. Damn.
She used to be my high school sweetheart. Blonde, tiny, cheerleader when she was in high school, currently finishing up her own degree and making ridiculous amounts of money in tips at the restaurant she waitressed at. Tightest pussy you’d ever dream of, electric blue eyes, a cute, firm little ass that shook in spasms whenever she came on my dick. She was both my longest running relationship and the worst breakup I have ever experienced. I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you about it yet. I really don’t have the heart for it.
“I’m good,” I lied. I didn’t feel like telling her I was still reeling, and worse, that I was going through a latent case of blue balls. It had been more than a week since she and I broke up, and only a little longer since we had fucked. The breakup really messed with my mood, so honestly, I didn’t even jerk off since that time. Not that I even wanted to, but despite that, the way I was backing up was making me a little crazy. Mom seemed not to pick up on the lie and patted my hand with a worried smile before returning to her breakfast.
“Clara’s landing at eleven,” mom said a few minutes later, getting up and grabbing a pen from the counter. She wrote a number down and then handed it to me as if it were toxic. “This is Aunt Clara’s cell.”
“You can just text it to me, you know.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “Smartass. Do you need gas money?”
I nodded, thinking it would probably turn into a new bottle of gin under my bed.
Mom excused herself. “Ask your father.”
Dad sighed and pulled a wad of bills from his wallet. “Thanks, son.”
Mom and dad dispersed shortly after that. Dad went off to work and mom lost herself in chores until she was just a blur through the house. I went up to my room, figuring I could clean, or do some school before driving out to pick up Aunt Clara. But you know how the best of intentions go with studying. I opened up an accounting textbook and ended up on Instagram.
Clara’s Instagram hadn’t been updated in a couple weeks. Before that, there were sporadic posts of photo albums, going over some vacation here or there, lattes in New York, the occasional photo of her dressed up and in some fancy restaurant. Her personal, day to day life was absent from her page; she mostly kept to herself. She didn’t use stories or reels or any of the other short form media, so I didn’t even know what she sounded like, and I didn’t really remember what she was like in person. It would have been a little easier to remember if she had anything where she even used her voice. I figured it had to do with the generation she was from, just not keeping pace with the tech, or just not caring. Not that she was old.
Clara was thirty-nine. She was a couple years younger than her sister, but if you looked between the two, you could guess, maybe five years. Mom spent a chunk of the family grocery budget on skincare and fought to keep her skin smooth and bright. But Clara? My gorgeous aunt, I imagined, living in New York City, immersed in the art show, high fashion, wine collector social life, probably had a budget for stronger stuff. Mom, being a mother, fought a giant battle against her weight despite not actually being overweight, while Clara seemed effortlessly smaller. Another key difference was the whole childbirth thing. A woman’s body changes, irreversibly once a woman has a baby, so mom’s hips were wider, and even the way she walked and stood was different than before. Clara, never having had kids, was in her prime, as far as I could tell from the photos. Women in their thirties seem to go through a second puberty; their hips widen in a different way, making them infinitely sexier; their skin softens and glows. To me, it’s like they develop an aura that just screams ‘fuck me’ and to be honest, my aunt wasn’t an exception at all. From what I could see, she would be a fucking dream in bed. Maybe the way she looked was a fertility/hormonal thing. Maybe I just needed to fuck and I was getting so desperate that I was ogling my aunt on insta. What did I know?
I did know that Clara looked fucking fine. I could feel my cock hardening as I looked a little too closely at the pictures of my aunt. She had soft, pouting lips. A cute, angled jaw, thick eyelashes that made her eyes seem darker. She liked to wear dresses, and with the summer months the dresses got shorter and shorter, and the neckline dropped further and further.
There was even a photo of her in a bikini, hanging out on some beach in the Bahamas. God. That one was insane, not because the bikini was immodest or anything but because her body was even more sexy than I thought. Her hips had these cute dimples and her breasts were firm, perky, and her skin was just fucking flawless. Her hips were wide, her waist was tiny. And with her short hair, I don’t know, it made all of her proportions that more noticeable. She could have modeled. The pervert in me thought she would be a dream in the nude.
I kept scrolling through her insta and stopped at a photo from a few months ago, of her and the guy I assumed was her boyfriend. He was a rich looking guy. Great hair, whiter teeth than a toilet. He had his arm around her while they were on a ferris wheel in Japan. A million different lights behind and around them made them look like a great couple.
Who the fuck am I kidding. The guy looked like a douche.
Aunt Clara, however, looked incredible. She had to have been wearing contacts in that photo – her eyes were clear and warm; her cheeks had a light pink to them. They were smiling. Dimples poked her cheek. She had a tiny black jacket covering her shoulders, but underneath, she wore a tiny black dress. Her neck, her upper chest, her legs… her skin looked so smooth.
The dress was low cut. I couldn’t help but salivate a bit. Her breasts pushed up, were smooth and full. I’d guess C’s or D’s, though it’s not like I studied breast sizes. What kept me enraptured was how her dress cradled them and pushed them up. Consider me a perv for liking how she looked, but I really was fixated. Her tits were perfect.
If we’re being honest here, I wanted to pull down her dress and see if her nipples were the same bubblegum pink as her lips.
“Junie!” I heard mom call from downstairs. “You need to get to the airport!”
I ignored her. Based on the time, I figured I had another hour to stop procrastinating and to start cleaning.
“Junie!” Mom’s voice floated from downstairs again. A minute later, there was a knock on my door. “She’s waiting at the airport,” mom said impatiently through the barrier.
“What?” I got up fast. “I thought she was landing at eleven?”
Mom jiggled the locked handle. “She’s already landed. Your dad got it wrong, her flight left at eleven last night and she landed at some point early this morning.” Her voice was thick with a mixture of embarrassment and resentment. “I don’t know how your father could mix that up—” As she walked down the stairs, I realized that I was a little screwed. No homework was done this morning, and my room was a fucking disaster. I’d need to clean it somehow before we started moving my stuff out, but there wasn’t any time to think about that.
In a few minutes, I was dressed and on the road. I took the phone number and programmed it into my phone while I was driving (dangerous, I know, don’t lecture me), sent a little text saying it was me, Junie, her nephew, and I was coming to pick her up. An hour later, after hills and forests and winding roads and a sudden mid-sized city welcome sign later, I was at the airport.
Even for our region, it was busy as hell. I’m pretty sure I almost hit somebody trying to steal a spot in the overcrowded parking garage. When I made it to the baggage claim and arrivals area, I had to press through a miniature crowd. I checked my phone. There still wasn’t a response from Clara, which was a little weird since she was supposed to be waiting for me. I pulled the phone number out of my pocket again and carefully studied it, making sure I didn’t enter it incorrectly. But there it was, exactly as written. I sent another text. The bustle of the airport was like an oceanic tide.
For a few minutes, there was no response.
“Well, shit,” I said out loud.
After wandering the area and pushing past another surge of travelers, I made it to a seating area. There were some people who were waiting on their families to arrive and to pick them up, sitting or lying down on the upholstered benches that lined the arrivals section. After a glimpse around, I couldn’t see her.
I pulled out my phone and called her, wondering if perhaps she had either taxied her way to our house or something.
A ringtone chimed from a sleeping form on the bench. It was covered by a large tan coat, and beneath, a pink leather suitcase acted as a pillow. A pair of feet covered by an expensive looking pair of shoes poked out of the bottom, and gently stirred as the coat slipped down.
Then I saw her.
Dark, luscious brown hair, cut in a short bob, loosely curled. It was a mess, but any woman’s hair would be a mess after sleeping in the airport, and she had a soft imprint of the leather of her suitcase on her cheek. Soft brown eyes, bleary and tired. Lips pink like coral, full and soft, parted as she tried to get her bearings. She slowly sat up, not registering where her phone was.
She was wearing a silky dress, styled a bit like a robe. It clung to her body, revealing how soft, curved, fertile, she looked. The shape, held by a decorative belt that wrapped tightly around her slim waist, hinted at her body’s shape from her position on the bench. Her hips were an open curve. Her smooth legs gathered, her dress was slightly pulled up from the movement, and one of her hands pulled her skirt down like a reflex, covering pale, toned thighs. She felt around until she found a pair of glasses and put them on, and then went searching for the phone that kept ringing with a high-pitched chime.
Her glasses were put on crookedly – they were now lopsided, sitting on her little nose, and she struggled to find the phone. I hung up from my end to stop embarrassing her and went up to her.
“Hey,” I stammered.
She looked up and toward me, squinting, readjusting her glasses. Once they were in place, she looked at me, gave me an up-and-down look. The cheeks that had the imprint from her leather suitcase turned a gentle blush pink. She looked a little flustered, one hand going up and moving the tangle of loose curls behind one ear, gorgeous brown eyes glittering behind her glasses. “I’m sorry, I was just – I just got off of a red eye flight and – did you need the bench?” she asked quickly, her voice sounding so… refined, as if it were perfectly practiced, and just smudged by the hoarseness of sleep. She looked at me with a shy smile, expecting me to talk, but I couldn’t say anything at all. I’m sure I looked like a fucking idiot. Then, her eyes widened in recognition. “Junie?” Her face fell. The pink on her cheeks turned into a rich red. “Oh. Oh my god. It’s you, Junie, isn’t it?” She started to laugh, embarrassed. Her voice, only just scratched by her waking up, was full, soft, rich. Almost musical, with a feminine alto. I figured it was how a singer in a jazz club would sound, the kind of place I imagined she’d hang out.
Her eyes went down. Immediately, they went back up. Then down again, flicking over my chest. It was so fast that I wasn’t sure I even saw it, but I was sure, something happened with her eyes.
“Wow, Junie…” Aunt Clara said, much softer, her voice sounding a little strange. “You’ve really… grown up.”
My heart went into a rabbit-like patter.
CHAPTER 2
I took her luggage for her and led her out of the airport. She looked so exhausted that I didn’t bother to ask her much or to engage her. She looked like she was about to fall asleep just walking out. “It’s good to see you,” I offered as we left the baggage claim. “What’s it been, like, ten years?” Aunt Clara’s reply was an exhausted mumble that sounded a little like a friendly affirmative. I figured the best thing to do was to give her some space. Once we got to the car, I opened the trunk and tossed her luggage in there, and then opened her door to let her inside. Her arms were wrapped around herself, clutching her coat to her waist, her hair messily tangled in front of her eyes, and she half sat, half fell into the passenger seat.
Damn. She really was beat. “Do you need a blanket?” I asked.
“No, no,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I’ve got my coat… it’s fine…” Her eyes closed. “Can I lean this back?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Just pull that handle.”
Immediately, the seat descended all the way back and the coat went up and over her shoulders.
We hit the road. Before I saw her, I hoped that maybe the duration of the drive would allow us to catch up. I’d get to talk with her about why she was here, get some cool stories about New York, but within thirty seconds, she mumbled, “I’m sorry… I’m just going to…” and fell right back to sleep. She clearly had the worst kind of redeye flight out here, so I didn’t push her at all.
The drive home was silent except for her soft snoring. Occasionally I’d glance her way. She looked so tired. One of the things I noticed more and more was how dark the circles under her eyes were. Her eyes were closed and her brows were furrowed. She looked stressed. She mostly covered herself with her jacket, using it as a blanket. Occasionally she’d pull the jacket up and lift it over her face, shielding it from the sun as it filtered through our forests, and over the next minutes the jacket would slip down and uncover her face. As time went on, her face relaxed. Her shoulders dropped. After a time, she settled into a deep sleep.
As we went through the hills, the winding road gently rolled her to one side of her seat and then the other.
The jacket slipped down.
I didn’t mean to stare at her. I mean it.
The jacket caught some of the silk, pulled on one of the sides of her dress and gently pulled it down over her shoulder. It bared her collarbone, pulled down and bared the side of her arm.
It slipped a little further down and revealed more. Exposed the soft flesh of the top of her left breast, right where it departs from just being skin, where it turns into the most imperceptible curve before the round of her breasts begin. I tried not to look to closely. Tried to keep my mind on the road and off the rising sensation in my pants, and started to panic over what the hell I was going to do if it showed any more.
I struggled with the dilemma. Should I carefully move the edge of her dress up and over her shoulder again? Would she think I was perving on her and trying to catch a look while she was asleep? Or if I decided to do nothing and it fell further, god, was she going to accuse me of looking? Or worse, of having been the one to pull it down?
Situations like these called for decisiveness. I decided to risk it. As fast as I could, as gently as I could, sweating bullets, I reached over and pulled the jacket up and over her shoulder, covering her. I prayed it somehow caught the edge of her dress and pulled it up, too. She didn’t even stir as I slid it up and covered her chest. Her breathing didn’t change, and when I finally pulled my hand back, I let go of a huge sigh.
An hour later, we pulled into the driveway. Aunt Clara only started to wake up when I turned the car off and opened the door. Her eyes were a tired squint. “Oh,” she said, trying to get her bearings.
Aunt Clara hadn’t ever been to our house. We had her over when we lived in a smaller place with a lot less land, but since we had moved in here, we hadn’t even really had anyone over except for my late grandparents. From what I could tell, our place wasn’t what she was used to – she looked around with a little bit of bewilderment as she took in all the green. I’m sure she’d already seen where we lived on my mom’s social media, but for where we lived, it took actually being here to appreciate what we had.
Our house was built on the gentle rise of a small hill, with a gravel driveway leading up to the garage. Our house was large, more thanks to the low cost of living of the area and not because we were rich. We definitely weren’t upper class, or even upper middle class, but between mom’s insistence on keeping up with the neighbors, a little creative financing, and dad’s knack for bullshitting his way into a slightly better job every year, we were outwardly doing just fine and had even just built a patio, complete with a fire pit and water fountain in the backyard. Otherwise, we had the kind of place that screamed flyover semi-suburbia, straddling the edge between rural space and civilization.
A forest lay just down the hill behind our house, and wrapped up and through the rest of the neighborhood. Our closest neighbors, thank god, were far enough away to only be seen and not really heard, so I guess we had the perfect balance of privacy and space. Not bad as far as homes go.
But for Aunt Clara, I figured it was the polar opposite of New York.
Mom came out of the house, dressed up, makeup on, hair freshly curled. “Clara!” She squealed, holding out her arms and doing that ridiculous little walk/run women do when they’re wearing heels. Clara, having just gotten out of the car, tried and failed to return the glee, and pretty quickly saw that mom was about as genuinely welcoming as an over-socialized grocery store greeter. As I made my way to the front door, I could hear mom’s overly friendly, sickly sweet chatter while Clara stammered and mumbled and apologized for the inconvenience as she tried to get her bearings. I bolted into the house and up the stairs to get cleaning before dad got home to help move the furniture. Of course I was a fucking slob. What kid isn’t?
First there was my desk, littered with wrappers, dishes, and dusted with crumbs, the floors that were caked with dust and god knows what else, laundered and unlaundered clothes lay strewn without any logic. I did my best, really, and was able to vacuum and tidy faster than I ever had before. A little stack of dishes formed on the desk. The windows were opened, the blinds got a quick swipe with a paper towel to dust them. I felt a little ashamed. God forbid Aunt Clara see the kind of mess her nephew lived in. I started to think that maybe mom was totally justified in badgering me to clean my room, and as I struggled with a particularly sticky ring on my desk, I started to knock myself for being such a slob. I shoved anything that couldn’t be thrown away into available space in my closet and closed the doors, hoping Aunt Clara would get the hint and stay out of the maelstrom of stuff.
Surprisingly, I made great progress with cleaning the rest of the room, even finishing up a vacuum around the perimeter as I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
Then I remembered what was underneath my bed.
Oh, fuck.
Under my bed, I had a lot, and I do mean a lot of booze bottles. Also, there were a lot more condom wrappers and cum tissues than I thought. Can’t help that – they just naturally fell under the bed. I pushed away the thought of the girl I used all those condoms on and gritted my teeth as I dropped to the floor and swept them all out from under the bed frame, scrambling to get the garbage and the clinking glass all shoved into a trash bag. At some point my hand hooked onto a pair of Alyssa’s old panties. Lacey. Deep red.
Then the door opened.
I turned to see mom opening the door, but not looking inside, while Aunt Clara leaned to the side and looked in. She made eye contact with me. Then looked at the floor and the bottles around me. While mom yammered on about how we were going to be moving some of my furniture downstairs to give her some room, Aunt Clara stared with a bit of shock at all the emptied gins and vodkas and rums, surrounded by multi-colored condom wrappers that decorated them like sprinkles, and at the pair of panties that sat atop the pile like a little bow.
Mom finally turned to look and saw me, guilty as hell, with evidence I had been underage drinking, and not only that, but surrounded by all the sex-themed trash. She made a noise of surprise, and slammed the door shut, trying to pretend nobody saw anything, “SO, we’re just going to get all that ready for you – and hey, you probably haven’t had breakfast yet – let’s go downstairs and –” The last thing I saw before the door closed completely, was Clara’s face, struggling to suppress a laugh.
Mercifully, mom made sure to leave me alone so I could actually get everything in the room cleaned and deodorized. I snuck down the stairs with a few bags of trash and made it back up to grab some of my clothes to bring to the basement, and got a text from mom.
You are so busted mister. Booze????? In my house?? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GETTING IT???
I was sure she’d go ballistic if she actually learned where I was getting it from. Dad only asked for a little finder’s fee and made me swear that I wouldn’t do hard drugs, so it was a fairly easy trade off, but now that mom was onto me, I figured I’d have to wait until I was twenty-one. Which was in a little more than a week, incidentally.
I told mom that it wasn’t going to be happening again and got some mercy in the form of a long, long warning and the threat of eviction.
But that took second fiddle to getting the room clean for Aunt Clara. Just to be safe, I spent an extra-long time in my room, going over it to make sure it didn’t look or smell like a dumb kid lived there. I even flipped the mattress, changed the sheets, and dusted. Crazy, huh.
Dad arrived a few hours later, and we got to work bringing my dresser and my desk downstairs. While we worked together to figure out how everything was going to be carried and how to go down the stairs safely, mom and Aunt Clara were just downstairs, talking in a slightly dampened tone. All of mom’s sentences began with the word, “why”. When we got to the bottom of the stairs and prepared ourselves to go down into the basement, I overheard bits of Aunt Clara’s explanations. “—just needed to get away from it all for a while—” “—when they fired me, they didn’t have any cause for—“ “—that fucking asshole. I just… I just need to be with family, people I can feel safe trusting—” “—no, I don’t need financial help! I never asked for that. Can’t I just come visit my own sister when—" Clara’s words were drowned out by my dad’s huffing and puffing as he struggled with his end of the dresser.
We passed in front of an open doorway that led to the living room, where mom and Aunt Clara could see us from where they sat on the couch. Mom looked a little stressed, no doubt by her sister’s story. Clara, freshly showered, wearing short shorts and a large T-shirt that hung low on her small neck and obscured her torso, looked more at peace, if not a little embarrassed for being so dressed down. Her bare legs were crossed on the couch. Her tired eyes flicked up to look at my dad and me, and then her gaze lingered on me, just for a second, before turning back to my mom. Or maybe that didn’t happen. Maybe I was imagining it. But there was a vain part of me that thought that maybe I looked pretty damn good manhandling the dresser, especially compared to my out of shape dad. I suspected going to the gym and working a physical job had something to do with it. I kept making glances her way but didn’t see her turn to look at me anymore. So there went that little dream.
The fuck was I thinking, anyway? Nobody fantasized about looking good for their aunt. Not jerking it was really starting to affect me.
On the way back upstairs to get my desk, I overheard mom ask in what almost passed for a hushed tone, “listen… Clara… you can tell me. I won’t go to any authorities, or anything. Were you…” she paused as if she were about to ask the most difficult question of her life. “…embezzling?”
Aunt Clara sputtered and laughed, surprised by the ridiculousness of the question. “Oh God, Susie, no!” Her laughter sounded like the mirth of a nymph.
CHAPTER 3
Aunt Clara had her dinner upstairs while the rest of us awkwardly sat around the kitchen table. “She’s tired,” mom tried to explain. “And, well, she’s going through it.”
“What exactly is she going through?” Dad asked.
Mom shrugged dismissively. “Maybe you should have asked her that when she invited herself over here. I didn’t get too much in the way of answers, but it sounds like the company she worked for fired her.” Her lip curled in a faint sneer. “And there’s a few other things, too. I guess she’s been having problems with her relationship with—oh, whatever his name is. That rich guy in New York. Anyway. We’re all going to be hospitable, aren’t we? We’re all going to be nice to her and we’re definitely,” mom said with unusual emphasis as she looked at dad, “going to give her lots and lots of space.”