We fight over who gets to press up.
We fight over who gets to ring the bell.
Then Aunt Jean opens her door.
The scent plumes out—sweet-and-sour sauce,
cigarettes and soap.
Aunt Jean looks like Lucille Ball but rounder,
a white short-sleeve sweater over a floral dress,
full skirt, two strands of beads.
Aunt Jean is a career girl.
She works at Lever House,
which is a box of light gleaming
like the sun on Park Avenue.
We sit on hard sofas, eating cheese and crackers.
The IND subway runs behind her building.
Every time we feel its rumble,
rattling the floor and the dishes,
we all race to the window
to watch the train clatter by, so close
we can see the commuters’ faces
blurring past us
and then gone.
Though the subway sounds
like it’s roaring through her living room,
Jean never hears it. Oh, was that the train? she asks.
It’s my turn to stay overnight
to have Aunt Jean all to myself.
She has saved her McCall’s magazines just for me,
so I can cut out the paper doll that comes in each issue.
I get to put the quarter in the milk machine.
The pint carton plunks down into the chute.
We ride the subway to a Broadway matinee.
She’s friends with one of the actors.
We meet him at the stage door,
a little scary with all his makeup on.
Once I trip on the sidewalk.
Her lipstick leaves a print on my skinned elbow.
We eat dumplings in Chinatown.
On the paper place mat, she draws Betty Boop
and the Flintstones.
She orders a Tom Collins,
teaches me how to use chopsticks.
We go to Schrafft’s for ice cream,
and she orders an old-fashioned,
sucks a Chesterfield cigarette,
like the straw in an egg cream.
On Saturday night we stay up late
in our bathrobes.
Every little girl in every book she reads me
reminds her of me.
Her ashtray and highball glass
balance on the arm of her chair.
I hear her raggedy breath.
Her chin drops.
I get up, remove the cigarette from her lips, stub it out,
curl up in the chair beside her, breathing her scent.
In the rattling dishes, in the buzzing walls,
in my tummy, I can feel
the vibration. The train is coming.
Next morning, she opens
a new box of Entenmann’s crumb cake.
She announces, On Sunday
we eat dessert for breakfast,
as if it’s the eleventh commandment.
We talk about last Christmas,
when she took me to Lever House.
In the lobby, heaped with silver branches and tinkly bells,
there was a real, full-sized carousel playing carousel music.
I rode on a horse that sparkled like sugar.
Over my coffee cake I wonder if I dreamed it,
No, Honey, that was real, Jean says.
