Me, Aunt Bea, and Some Candy Corn (Part 2)

The following is a work of fiction in several parts. You'll find the other parts on my blog.

Part 2

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“Just because you failed once at marriage doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try again,” said my Aunt Bea.

Was it Thursday already? I had barely arrived at her retirement home. Here she was digging into me hard already about the marriage thing. And she’d made it 82 years without ever marrying, so she must be some expert.

I knew she was trying to get me hitched again, probably to her nurse. She usually left this subject until the end of our visit, but now she had picked up right where we left off last time. This was not a good sign.

“We didn’t fail, Aunt Bea. Sometimes, marriage isn't permanent. I loved Serena, but we grew in different ways. That’s life. Just happens sometimes.”

“Well, if you ask me, that broad didn’t know what was good for her,” said Bea. “You’re a fine young man even if you do that Inter Net for a living.”

“It wasn’t her fault, Auntie. I wasn’t entirely faithful. Neither was she. We finally admitted the truth: that we were better off not being together.”

My aunt Bea looked away at the mention of cheating. Such talk embarrassed her. I thought I’d change the subject.

“Why have you never married, Aunt Bea?” I asked. In the past, she’d had a canned response of being too busy and I expected it again.

Instead, when she turned to me, I saw a single tear roll down behind her glasses.

“When you truly love someone, you want to be with that person the rest of your life,” she said. “I was not fortunate enough to marry.”

At 82, my aunt was still a cheerful and graceful woman. I had a hard time believing that the younger Bea had lacked for opportunities. Unless, of course, she had tried to convert every suitor to jazz. That would have sent some of them running for the hills. But even if she had, there must have been good men in her heyday who were jazz guys.

“I loved a man once, you know,” Bea added.

I hadn’t known. This was new information. Was it the beginning of a story she had held inside these many years?

“Then you are fortunate,” I gambled. “Some people never know what it is to love.”

Another tear dripped down her other cheek. I reached for one of Aunt Bea’s handkerchiefs and put it in her hand. She ignored the gesture, lost in thought.

“It was all about the music,” she said. “Young people don’t understand what it meant to us in those days. Jazz was in the clubs every night. And that music was more important to us than life or death.”

“I moved here for the jazz,” she continued. “Now there’s only one radio station left. And they play cheeseball songs.”

I laughed a little, hoping for a light moment to break the gloom. And Aunt Bea smiled just a little. But I remembered hearing “cheeseball” from her before. In Bea’s vocabulary, it was her way of saying something sucked. So her comment was still serious.

“Dean loved the jazz, too. He played the sax.”

Dean. Dean. My thoughts raced to identify anyone I had known with that name. And then suddenly, it clicked into place.

No way! Dean and Delilah were Aunt Bea’s neighbors for decades, probably the only black family in her neighborhood. They had raised a family in the house next door. And Aunt Bea had been like an aunt to their kids also.

“Your neighbor Dean?” I ventured. My mind conjured an image of the Dean I remembered meeting. Confident, assured, handsome. His face had reminded me of Andre 3000 with a wider jaw and glasses.

Aunt Bea nodded. “Neighbor. Gentleman. One heck of a saxaphone player. And the only true love I’ve ever known.”

My jaw must have been wide open. I couldn’t believe this.

“But you must have lived next to Dean and his wife Delilah for decades. She was your friend also.”

“Yes, she certainly was,” said Aunt Bea. “But Delilah never knew about Dean and me. We stopped, of course, before they got married. It was the right thing to do. But it tore me up that I could never have that man. At that time, it, it…”

Please tune in again soon for Part 3 on my blog.

This is a fiction series in several parts. The remainder will be coming soon to a blog near you. The image above is public domain. It's not really my aunt, since I've never had an Aunt Bea and I'm not really the person in the story either. It's fiction.