Parable of Aunt Mary

My 97-year-old aunt lives in Maine. So far, so good.

While she’s thriving in her way and probably still dangerous, the community where she holds court is surely gathering around her now like the old ladies in “Zorba the Greek,” if that rings a bell, waiting for the last breath to signal the onset of frenzied pillaging. They’re likely to be disappointed, however, as it’s long been clear to me that she will never die, denying me my undeserved inheritance (probably long stolen anyway).

My wife and I used to live in Chestertown, MD. In olden times, Aunt Mary would come down from Maine by car or plane to visit her brother Bob and assert her right to do whatever the hell she pleased. A couple of times she called us the day before she’d hinted she’d arrive, expecting to be picked up at the airport in Baltimore (at least a 150-mile round trip). I never did, although among the older generation of the family, shared DNA was accepted license for abuse. Instead, the woman who once bragged about being “worth a million dollars” had to pay 50 bucks for a shuttle from BWI and hated every penny of it. (I thought that was a bargain for the 90-minute ride and told her so!)

One time she announced that she was driving down, and could we please take care of her dog while she was in town. The assisted living quarters where my uncle lived didn’t allow pets, and that’s where she “had” to stay, because of course he didn’t charge her. The dog and the driving were related: as a result of a recent injury and surgery, the poor beast wore one of those rigid protective collars around her neck and needed looking after. My aunt could have boarded the animal with her local vet in Maine—the one who peformed the surgery—but I’m sure the fee gave her conniptions, hence the plan of driving all the way to Maryland and leaving the blameless dog with us.

We lived in the country beside a rural road with traffic whizzing by, on two-and-a-half acres with a cat. My wife was teaching full-time at the local college. I was submerged in my usual routine of fake self-actualization, guilt, and mowing the grass. Between the two of us, there wasn’t room to swing a cat, much less a dog, which I communicated to my aunt. Knowing full well it wasn’t what she wanted, I nonetheless did go to the trouble of lining up boarding with our local vet, who had an office just down the road. Better care for animals was nowhere to be found, and I made sure to pound in the point. The kicker was that the vet’s office closed early on the Saturday afternoon she was slated to arrive, so I made sure she knew to show up well before the 1:00 p.m. deadline…

Naturally, she didn’t.

No, not even though on that day she was only coming 70 miles from Baltimore, where she always stopped to spend the night for free with old girlfriends from the Army. Instead, she showed up at our house at about 10 minutes to 1:00, having driven past the vet’s office on her way, expecting us to take the dog because it was magically too late. Realizing this was a setup, I jumped into my car and zoomed down the road at 80 mph to go pound on the office door, but by then the vet’s assistant had packed up and left!

Sticking to our guns, we didn’t take the dog. My recollection is that I was able to arrange an after-hours appointment at the vet’s—small-town life has many advantages—but that my aunt decided to talk her way into keeping the dog in my uncle’s apartment instead, out of professed concern for the welfare of her pet, this after spending two and a half days driving down from Maine with the hapless animal bouncing around in the back seat on I-95 in the heat of summer with no air conditioning…

Sigh.

(‘Tis a parable, remember. And a dog whistle besides!)

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