Owls Well That Ends Well(19)

Cousin Morris didn’t seem either comfortable or bored at the moment. He looked miserable. He had raised his head to stare at something.

I followed his glance, and my jaw dropped. I knew Cousin Ginnie had taken a table for the yard sale but, until now, I hadn’t inspected her wares—the most incredible collection of racy lingerie I’d ever seen outside of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. As I watched, she took a pouf of black and fuchsia lace from a shopper half her age, demonstrated that the young woman had been holding it upside down, and gestured, with the same sweet smile she used when urging you to have another scoop of freshly whipped cream on your chocolate soufflé, toward the small tent that served as a dressing room.

“Oh, my,” I said.

“You see,” Morris said, shaking his head. “It’s as if she’s auctioning off our marriage, one romantic moment at a time. I thought she loved my little presents.”

“Oh, they’re all presents from you?” I said.

“So many wonderful Christmases, birthdays, anniversaries,” he intoned.

“That’s very sweet,” I said.

“Mother’s Days, Valentines Days, Easters, Halloweens, Thankgivings, Fourth of Julys, May Days, April Fool’s Days, summer and winter solistices …”

I had to admire Cousin Morris’s romanticism, though if I were Ginnie, I’d have tried to channel him into a more diverse range of gift ideas. Still, his heart was in the right place, I thought, as he progressed from holidays to special occasions.

“ … and graduations, and back-to-school weeks. Promotions, and awards, and of course as a welcome home whenever I return from a trip …”

Every trip? Morris spent about half his work life on the road.

“I think it’s wonderful,” I said. “But don’t you think that perhaps she might have decided she has too much … um …”

“How can you have too much love?” Cousin Morris asked, sounding slightly shocked. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose vigorously.

I wanted to suggest that even if you couldn’t have too much love, you could definitely have too many black lace negligees trimmed with marabou feathers. But before I could figure out how to say it tactfully, he wandered off, still shaking his head and muttering softly.

I should do something, I thought, but nothing came to mind, so I made a mental note to worry about it later. Considering what a hard time I had remembering mental notes just now, this amounted to the same thing as deciding not to worry about it, only with less guilt.

As I turned to leave, I noticed a nun shopping at Cousin Ginnie’s booth. Of course, given the costume discount, she probably wasn’t a real nun, but it was still disconcerting to see her perched on the counter, her habit hiked up well over her knees as she tried on a pair of fishnet stockings.

“Everything going okay?” I asked Michael, when I arrived back at the checkout counter.

“Just dandy,” Michael said. “Your out-of-town relations will never grow bored while I’m around. In the past hour alone they’ve asked if I’ve ever been married before, was I breast-fed, and what were my College Board scores.”

“Good grief,” I said. “Just tell them to mind their own business.”

“I just say ‘not recently’ or ‘I don’t remember,’ whichever fits my mood,” he said. “That keeps them happy.”

“Apart from that, how’s everything going?”

Mrs. Fenniman shook the cash box at me. I took this to mean it was filling up. Michael, who had a much better sense of my priorities, pointed to a man staggering away from the checkout counter with three large boxes of stuff. I smiled. Yes, stuff was leaving. Lots of stuff.

I took a deep breath. Maybe everything would turn out fine after all.

“Meg?”

I turned to find Dad and a man I didn’t recognize, carrying a large trunk toward the cashier’s table. I noticed several customers already in line glaring at them, and heard a few mutinous comments about people waiting their turns. In fact, the whole crowd was beginning to mutter.

I decided to avert trouble by meeting the trunk procession before it reached the checkout table.

“There’s a line, you know,” I said to the man.

“This lady wants to buy the trunk,” Dad said.

“But only if you can find the key,” said a short, blonde woman, appearing from behind the trunk. “It’s no use to me if I can’t even get it open.”

The mutinous comments from the line were growing louder.

“It had a key when we put it out,” I said, frowning. “Did you look around where you found the trunk?”