Movement by Valerie Miner

Author:Valerie Miner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

Aunt Victoria

My Aunt Victoria came back from Moscow tonight. She is my favorite aunt, of all my mom’s sisters, even though I have hardly ever seen her during the fifteen years of my life.

“Victoria is a dancer before and after everything else,” my mother was explaining to my father, who doesn’t like dancing, on the highway to JFK Airport. It was just mom and dad and me in the car because we knew Aunt Victoria would be tired after flying for so long. My mom was in a bad mood because she had just had a terrible fight with my sister Marie who had to stay home and babysit the younger kids.

“How come she gets to go?” Marie yelled, meaning me.

“Because she actually takes the time to write to your aunt,” mom said.

Marie doesn’t see much use in writing anything. She’s seventeen and engaged to Kevin Cagney. So she called me a prima donna, and thinking I wouldn’t know what it meant, she also called me, “teacher’s pet.” Of course I told her she was just jealous. Then my mom told me to keep still or I wouldn’t get to go either.

My dad hates the ride to JFK. “What does being a dancer got to do with us turning our lives upside down when she comes?” he wanted to know.

“She’s an artist,” said my mom. “She needs the right conditions. She would go crazy trying to find her way on the airport bus.”

“She’s crazy altogether,” he said. “She’s too nervous to look into your eyes when she talks. And she’s always yapping about London or Paris or some goddamned place you never heard of. What’s she coming home for anyway?”

I could have answered them that. I just got a letter from her last week. She always writes on blue vellum with black ink.

But my mom was talking already. “Oh, dear, when Victoria called, it was such a garble. She said she just wanted to see us all. She said that we, meaning the two of us, would go up to Manhattan to see a ballet together.”

“Swell,” he said. “We’re the limousine so Ms. Big Shot can do her business. Last time she dropped by America, she didn’t even fucking bother to call.”

“She was just in Washington for one benefit performance,” mom said. “And will you please watch your language.”

“Listen, the more Susie Q. in the back seat there knows, the less likely she’ll grow into.…”

“She’s shy,” I said, and I was going to tell him how much Aunt Victoria missed us, too, but my mom told me to be quiet and not to interrupt my father.

When we saw Aunt Victoria at the airport, she didn’t look very shy or lonely. She looked like an empress. Her hair was piled high with silver combs. She was wearing a red velvet skirt and a beautiful black shawl with flowers on it. She talked all the way home in the car and after dinner she gave everybody presents. She brought mom and dad

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