A Shimmer of Red by Valerie Wilson Wesley

Author:Valerie Wilson Wesley [Wilson Wesley, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2023-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

That unturned stone felt like a rock by the time I got to Aunt Phoenix’s house for dinner. The sight and sound of Terrence Davis had brought back insecurities and uncertainties I thought I’d buried long ago. I wondered if my aunts might have some extrasensory solution—balm, incense, herb—that could be rubbed, burned, swallowed, anything to erase that painful time and get this uninvited man out of my life. That was my first thought when I walked into my aunt’s unlocked house. The second was why the heck she hadn’t locked her front door.

My aunt lived in a neighborhood once considered questionable, but now, thanks to the booming housing market, it had become highly desirable. Fixer-uppers, in dire need of a slap of paint or new gutters, were selling in the mid–six hundreds. Even my aunt had been offered a ridiculous sum for her neat, well-maintained Cape, which she quickly, rudely refused. “At these prices, where else can I afford to live? I’ll stay where I am, thank you,” she wisely observed. Yet still I worried about this forgetful senior woman as stubborn as she was self-reliant.

“Aunt Phoenix, someday soon an undesirable, uninvited person is going to walk through that unlocked door, and it will be the end of you!” I called out as I entered the living room even though I couldn’t be sure she heard me. My two aunts sat next to each other like reigning queens on the paisley-covered couch, the only burst of color in an otherwise spotlessly white living room. They were sipping gin and tonics and communicating silently as they were occasionally known to do.

Celestine, finally noticing I’d entered the room, looked up and grinned. Aunt Phoenix, not one to waste a precious smile, bowed her head in silent greeting. I sat down across from them on the uncomfortable ancient bentwood rocker and began to noisily rock, my childish way of entering their voiceless conversation. Studying them intently but lovingly, I contemplated what was left of my precious, dwindling family.

Except for distant cousins, unknown yet often mentioned for their heralded gifts far greater than my own, Celestine and Phoenix were the only blood relatives I knew and a striking study in contrasts. Phoenix was wearing one of her blossomy, oversized kaftans that made her look twenty pounds heavier than the lightweight she was. It was a dark green number generously dotted in white roses with magenta stems. She had slipped on her favorite house slippers, the ones made from alligator skins, which I suspected were chosen to irritate Celestine, a self-proclaimed animal rights activist. Phoenix’s fingernails were painted a startling hot pink, and one of her many wigs had been abandoned. She was hatless, soft white hair encircling her walnut-brown face in a glorious halo, though angel she was not.

Celestine was camera ready as usual—rouge, lipstick, perfectly shaped black eyebrows (a la Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest). She was decked out in a classic green shirtwaist dress, the identical color of her sister’s, topped off with pearl stud earrings.

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