Chapter 4: The Box Is at the End of the Tunnel

WELL, I NEVER...

My Grandmother's exact words. She was speechless after that.

Mom greeted Wendy with the hug reserved for her brother ... the hug kept for momentous occasions.

When Harry came home from Germany after the war, he got that hug. Mom came from a family of nine. Eight girls and Harry ... Harry was the treasured, and only boy. The Bleeker's, Harry Sr. and Myrtle, had Mom, then seven spectacular beauties, and Harry.

Harry had been captured when his B-17 was shot down three months before the surrender. But, we didn't know that, we only knew that Harry was "Missing, Presumed Dead." The war's end and the Red Cross notification that he was a POW came on the same day. Wendy got that same hug.

'I told you so.' she bragged in my mind.

'How did you do that?' I thought back to her.

'I'm her long lost niece ... twice removed.'

'You aren't.'

'I know that, you know that, but She thinks I am. She's more sure I'm her niece than she is sure her husband is your father.

'WHAT!?!'

'The possibility exists.'

That's just one of the many problems with mind reading ... you know the secrets and skeletons in the closets of the mind. Another problem is the inability to keep it to yourself ... dang her hide.

'You look a whole lot more like Harry Junior than you do your Dad.'

'Oh, that's just great ... now I'm the product of incest.'

'She gave him quite the sendoff when he went off to pilot training. She's thinking about it right now.'

'LALALALALALALALA'

"It's nice to see you smiling, Wendy," Mom said.

Wendy laughed, "It's been a long time since I had something to smile about, Aunt Vera." She stuck her tongue out at me and crossed her eyes.

"Charles," Mom was about to present Grannie Austin with the perfect place and situation for her to utter those words that head this chapter.

"Yes, Vera?" Pops said.

"You need to get David's bed down stairs and the full-size bed set up in Wendy's room."

"Sure thing, Vera. Where is David going to sleep?"

"With Wendy, until his voice changes."

'Told you so!'

'This is going to be fun!'

'No, it's not. We have a lot of growing to do before you get into my knickers.'

'Rats!'

I had no idea one could see the raspberry unvoiced.

(Enter Grandmother Austin, aghast! She voices her line ... exit Grandmother Austin, spluttering... )

I don't mind telling you, this was the first and ONLY time my mom shut her up. Grannie Austin had just begun to age. She looked like my Dad's much younger sister until she turned 70, three years later she died, looking a very old 90. Grandmother's beauty, spectacular build and culinary arts had been a bone of contention in my mothers mouth since before the wedding ... she chewed it often and oftener.

Mom was pretty, reasonably built and no cook. Gravity had set in after the first baby. Gravity and Grannie had no acquaintance, absolutely none. She was as firm and tight as a dewy fresh 16 year old virgin and looked it. And she could cook! Scots Irish women can cook!

My mother washed her chicken in bleach before she cooked it. It might have been better if she'd rinsed it before it hit the pot. To make matters worse, we knew what was for dinner every day of the week ... her menu never changed. Wednesday was so bad we used to beg our friends to invite us to dinner so we wouldn't have to eat at home.