The Third Fairy Tale

Ned Scoletti rose early, well before dawn, to catch the seven a.m. bus streaking up the coastal highway. With the cloying scent of orange blossoms snaking through the countryside, his mother was probably only just crawling out of bed, utterly clueless to the fact that Ned was on a Greyhound bus hurtling north. Final destination: Spaulding, Massachusetts. 

Two days. That’s how long it would take to get from Fort Pierce, Florida to New England. By late afternoon, his parents would realize the boy was missing, but it would be too late. The bus would be far up the coast near Saint Augustine or even Jacksonville just shy of the Georgia line.

A large black woman wedged her ample rump into the seat next to him and began nibbling on a bunch of red grapes. The woman thrust a fistful of fruit at Ned, but he only smiled and shook his head. “Where’re you headed?”

“Spaulding.” Having never actually said the word before, it sounded foreign on his lips. “Spaulding, Massachusetts. To visit my Aunt Josie.”

The black woman extended a huge paw of a hand and introduced herself as Hattie Mae Jackson. “Always nice when kinfolk move away but still remain close.” Ned didn’t know what to say. He glanced out the window at an endless procession of cabbage palmettos. Front lawns and rock gardens were littered year-round with a colorful array of Jamaica dogwood, Spanish bayonet, and rhododendron. “I’m spending a week with my sister, Darlene. Her family’s situated just outside Arlington. I head up there every year about this time, and she visits with the kids around Christmas.” The woman shifted in the seat “Should be cooler in Virginia. Not so humid.”

Ned was happy to be seated next to the pleasant, dark-skinned woman and not some nasty old coot who slept with her mouth open or stared sullenly out the window. “Do you make the trip often?” she asked.

“What trip?”

Hattie Mae peered at him uncertainly. “To see your aunt.”

“Never met the woman,” he confessed. “Aunt Josie doesn’t even know I’m coming.”

The black woman was holding a plump grape up to her lips but lowered her hand and put the fruit back in the plastic bag. By way of explanation, Ned added, “My mother had an identical twin sister. For the past fourteen years, I thought she was dead. Dead and buried. And now, a week ago last Friday, I discovered Aunt Josie’s very much alive.”

Hattie Mae cocked her head to one side as though she were trying to process what she had heard. Finally, she tapped him lightly on the wrist. “Either you’re on some heavy-duty medication,” she spoke in a throaty bass, “or you’ve got one heck of a weird family.”

The bus driver shifted into the left-hand lane to pass an elderly man puttering along in a battered pickup truck. A white egret on skeletal legs was resting in a drainage ditch, which bordered a grapefruit grove. The sun climbed slowly in an azure sky. “One heck of a weird family,” he confirmed.

Ned stared out the window at the endless expanse of sandy soil that covered the land. The well-drained loam which blanketed most of the Lake District was ideal for citrus groves, and Ned’s father cultivated several varieties of oranges, grapefruits, lemons and limes in their back yard. The best soil in the state, though, was the muck and peat deposits of the southern peninsula, a soil type born of the decayed vegetation from the marshes and swamp forests. Not that Ned gave two hoots about Florida topsoil or much of anything else right now except reaching his final destination in one piece.

At the tender age of fourteen, Ned barely understood how early settlers felt striking out on their own: Louis and Clark traipsing up the Missouri River toward the Rocky Mountains; the Midwest prairie farmers staking claim to wilderness homesteads. Of course, those early adventurers didn’t have the luxury of an air-conditioned, Greyhound bus with a lavatory in the rear.

Passing under a bridge, Ned glimpsed his reflection in the darkened window. His brown hair flopped down over a wide brow like an unkempt weed patch gone to seed. From his mother, Ned inherited hazel eyes flecked with brown plus a tendency to somber moods and prolonged periods of quiet reflection. From his easygoing father, a willingness to conjure up the numerous shades of gray sandwiched between contentious opposites.

The Greyhound passed Cape Canaveral, Titusville and Daytona Beach. Then a huge forest of longleaf, loblolly pine interspersed with slash pine, black gum and tupelo. Up around Jacksonville, they reached the state line. Halfway through Georgia near Fort Frederica, they crossed the Altimaha River. When the bus pulled into Savannah, Ned got off for ten minutes to stretch his legs, grab a root beer and ham salad sandwich from the snack bar. “Last call! All aboard!” the driver shouted. Ned settled in next to Hattie Mae Jackson, slouched down in the leather seat and closed his eyes.

• * * * * *

On Friday two weeks earlier, Ned woke up in the middle of the night to the familiar sound of his parents bickering. “Twenty years, for God’s sake!” Mr. Scoletti muttered. “When does the insufferable feuding end?”

“A hundred and twenty years,” Ned’s mother shot back acidly, “wouldn’t be long enough.”

“So you’ll never make peace with your sister.” His father’s voice sounded menacing as a late-summer, Florida thunderstorm. “You’ll carry the infernal grudge to the grave and beyond.”

  Ned glanced at the glowing face of the clock on the night table. Two a.m.. The central air conditioning broke down after supper. When Ned’s father called the repairman, he reached an answering machine. The bedroom was hotter than a furnace in hell, an interminable, bone-weary heat that wore you down through the steamy summer and left you wishing you lived anywhere else but South Florida. “Sister,” the young boy mused. “What sister? Aunt Josie died almost fifteen years ago.” At that moment a sharp pang of terror swirled through Ned’s gut.

“It’s over and done with.” His mother’s voice was calmer, more conciliatory now. “In all the ways that truly matter, Josie’s dead.” 

  Ned rolled over on his back. The sheets were drenched with sweat. He gazed out the window where a swarm of moths flitted crazily about the streetlights lining the roadway. In the hazy darkness the tropical vegetation exuded a dank oppressiveness. How many times had his father tamed the wiry brush and weeds before they crept back to reclaim the cleared land? Their relentless quest to overrun his mother’s flower and vegetable gardens crippled a half dozen lawn mowers and gas-driven weed whackers.

Ned was usually a heavy sleeper. If the air conditioner hadn’t broken down he would have slept straight through the night, waking non-the-wiser in blissful ignorance. But not really. He always figured Aunt Josie among the living, sensed a bewildering presence that his parents would neither deny nor confirm.

For one thing, no one ever mentioned how the nebulous creature died. Was it a disease or untimely accident? And where his aunt’s body lay buried. This woman who was the spitting image of his mother simply evaporated into thin air, transformed into a wraithlike wisp of nothingness.Aunt Josie, the ubiquitous nonperson. Aunt Nobody from Nowheresville.  If her name was mentioned twice a year, that was plenty.

One further, unsettling clue: a card postmarked July 3, 1987. Place of origin: Spaulding, Massachusetts. The crumpled card lay buried beneath a pile of odds and ends in Mrs. Scoletti’s sewing machine drawer. Signed Love, J, it bore no message.

The day after his parents’ quarrel, Ned found his mother sorting clothes in the laundry room. “Is Aunt Josie alive?”

If the outlandish remark caught Mrs. Scoletti off guard, she revealed nothing. Rather, she dropped a pile of dirty towels into the washer and adjusted the temperature setting. “When was the last time you had a friendly heart-to-heart with your favorite aunt?” His mother spoke into the belly of the washer as rising water swirled over the towels.

The element of surprise having slithered away, counted for nothing. But then, Ned should have known better. Where his headstrong mother was concerned, such reckless strategies never worked, especially when the subject was taboo. Off-limits. “Never laid eyes on Aunt Josie, much less talked to her.”

Mrs. Scoletti added a dash of detergent. “Well I guess you answered your own question.”

In the back yard, Ned’s father was pouring some foul-smelling chemical over a colony of fire ants. “No one hardly ever talks about Aunt Josie.”

Mr. Scoletti stuck a twig in the mouth of the anthill and a platoon of smallish red ants rushed out to discover what was causing the commotion. “Yes, that’s a fact.”

“She isn’t dead, is she,” Ned pressed, “in the conventional sense?”

Several of the ants succeeded in climbing halfway up the offending stick before Mr. Scoletti threw it aside. “Conventional sense… an interesting choice of words.”

Ned fingered a hibiscus with its large, showy flowers. His mother had ringed the edge of the fruit trees with a mix of royal poinciana, camellia, and fragrant gardenia. “Well, is she or isn’t she?”

His father soaked the ants a second time with the lethal mix and straightened up. “You heard the fight last night?” Ned shook his head. “Figured as much,” he said and walked away without elaboration.

What unspeakable crime had Aunt Josie committed to be banished - in his mother’s spiteful words - for a hundred and twenty years? There had been a falling out. Something outlandish on the scale of the Hatfields and McCoys. And here he was jumping right into the center of the maelstrom. 

*****

The next day Ned called information. “Josie Applebee in Spaulding, Massachusetts.” Applebee was his mother’s maiden name.

After a short pause the operator said, “Yes, I have that listing for you. Area code 508...”

In the late afternoon, weighted down with a pocketful of loose change, Ned trekked a mile and a half to the Cumberland Farms and dialed the number. “Hello.”

“Is Josie Applebee there?”

“Yes, this is Josie.”

Something short-circuited in Ned’s brain. A light dimmed and flitted out like a circuit breaker on overload. He clicked the cell phone off.

Okay. Let’s not have a nervous breakdown or do anything rash! We need a plan. A sensible course of action. But how could he develop a coherent plan if his parents continued to deny Aunt Josie’s physical existence? On Wednesday Ned withdrew 500 dollars of his college savings from the Sun City Bank and bought a round trip ticket to Spaulding, Massachusetts.

*****

At nine p.m. the bus passed through Charleston en route to Myrtle Beach. Ned dozed off and on. Dinner was a bag of tortilla chips and a soft drink. His teeth felt grimy, but he forgot to put a toothbrush in his backpack. 

“Now there’s some serious reading,” Hattie Mae whispered mischievously. A gaunt Jewish man, wearing a knit skullcap and lugging the largest book Ned had ever seen, joined the passengers an hour out of Daytona Beach. The bearded man, who was dressed in black, settled into the seat across from them, cracked the book open and never lifted his eyes from the volume. His lips fluttering noiselessly as he read, an emaciated finger accompanied the text across the page.

“Right to left,” Hattie Mae observed. “That monstrous book ... he’s reading right to left. Opposite of English.”

Ned leaned far forward in his seat. Sure enough, the Jewish man’s finger inched across the printed page as though he were reading backwards. Ten minutes later when Ned got up to visit the lavatory, he stole a glance at the immense volume. On one side, words blossomed in a flowery, exotic script he’d never seen before, presumably Hebrew. On the facing page was the English translation.

“While you were gone,” Hattie Mae confided when Ned returned, “I asked him about the book. Some Spanish philosopher wrote it almost a thousand years ago. Imagine that!”

“Yes, it’s quite amazing,” Ned replied.

“A Guide for the Perplexed. That’s what it’s called.”

A Guide for the Perplexed. What if a person could simply consult an ancient, moth-eaten manual and, abracadabra, solve all his worldly problems - set the universe spinning on an even keel. Was it just wishful thinking, a fanciful pipe dream? Ned gazed at the Jewish man. He was still bent over the heavy tome. A lock of dark hair, which he absent-mindedly twirled around an index finger, hung down almost to his shoulder. For this religious zealot, the world with all its intricacies and complications fell away. There was only a thousand year-old text and a Greyhound bus speeding north.

At the next stop an elderly couple boarded the bus and sat diagonally across, a seat in front of the scholarly Jew. “Hillbillies,” Ned mused. The elderly man, who looked like he’d slept a month-of-Sundays in his rumpled clothes, had a wide grizzled jaw that reminded Ned of the tempered steel scoop on a backhoe. He seemed angry and distracted as he stuffed a lumpy canvas bag into the overhead rack.

“Here let me help,” his wife offered.

“Leave me be!” He kept repositioning the bag but it was much too wide for the cramped space. “The morons who design these infernal contraptions never leave enough room. It’s disgraceful!” He spoke loud enough to ensure that everyone else on the bus was aware of his sentiments. The wife was trying to help ease the bag into the overhead rack but finally the man changed his mind, wrenched it free and crammed it under his seat. “Well, we’re off to a great start.”

“No need getting yourself lathered up over nothin’,” the wife spoke pleasantly.

“Shut up, you dimwitted fool!”

The woman winced as though she had been walloped with a pressure treated two-by-four. Then she screwed her face up in a hurt expression and sulked while her husband sneered at the back of the bus driver’s head. To the left, the Jewish man poured over his divinely inspired text. At the next stop the elderly couple got off. Lugging his lumpy, canvas bag, the hillbilly muttered something unintelligible and made a threatening gesture as he left the bus. Following on his heels, the downtrodden wife wore the look of martyrdom like a badge of honor.

The seat remained empty until a young woman with a newborn baby took their place. A shroud of darkness wrapped the countryside. “Was you tellin’ me the God’s honest truth back there in Saint Lucie County?” Hattie Mae was staring at Ned with a solemn expression. “About going to visit some auntie you ain’t never laid eyes on?”

At times, it didn’t seem real to Ned either. And he was the one making the trip!  The revelation scared him half to death. But not enough so to scramble off the bus at the next scheduled stop and put his return ticket to practical use. “I wouldn’t lie about such a thing.”

Ned Scoletti was fourteen years old, a thousand miles from home and finally out from under his mother’s wrath and chronic consternation. The bus driver had turned off the lights so passengers could catch some shut eye. The Rabbi lit the tiny overhead light and was still grappling with his Guide for the Perplexed. The darkness felt reassuring. A person could hide in the dark, take solace, and lick his wounds. “Sometimes I feel like I’m living some Greek tragedy.” He knew the pronouncement sounded melodramatic if not outright silly, but Ned needed to vent. He felt edgy, a mass of percolating emotions. In a word, a mess!

Hattie Mare Johnson wriggled her nose. Her black skin was perfectly smooth, flawless, so that it was impossible to gauge her age. “Greek tragedy,” she repeated. “I knew some Greek people once, but never was partial to that goat cheese or stuffed grape leaves.”

“My family’s like a Greek tragedy,” Ned continued. “My mother murdered off her own twin sister twenty years ago.”

“But she ain’t really dead,” Hattie Mae interjected, “least not rotting in some moldy grave.”

“That’s why I’m sitting on this bus in the middle of the night,” Ned affirmed. “I aim to bring the metaphorical corpse back to life.”

“You sure got a funny way with words.” Hattie Mae patted his arm, a comforting gesture and stared out the window for the longest time, her jaw grinding back and forth as though the woman was chewing a mouthful of leathery meat. “Truth is, you don’t chuck family out with the trash,” she said grimly, “like a pair of smelly, worn-out sneakers.” Hattie Mae stroked her fleshy chin thoughtfully. “Can’t imagine what awful crime your auntie committed to be banished forever.”

“Sort of like Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter.”

“Can’t rightly say as I know the woman.”

Ned told her a condensed version of the Hawthorne story. “Infidelity. Yeah, well it’s a possibility. But I was thinking your aunt must have done somethin’ a hell of a lot worse.... something flat out awful. Strangled a newborn child with her bare hands or become a depraved dope fiend nymphomaniac.”

Ned shrugged. He fingered the rectangular piece of cardboard in his front pocket. The roundtrip ticket had cost a hundred and thirty dollars. That left $370 for incidentals. If his aunt were a murderer or slutty dope fiend, he’d turn around and catch the next bus south. But not before treating himself to a lavish, sit down meal in the best restaurant he could find. And maybe a restful night in a decent hotel.

“Can’t say I envy you.” Hattie Mae patted his hand reassuringly.

Ned located a scrap of paper and scribbled a number on it. “When you get to your sister's, would

 you call my folks and tell them I’m okay.” He pressed the paper into the black woman’s pudgy hand. “Tell them I’m on my way to find Aunt Josie.”

“Sure will. And I’ll mention what a fine young man they have for a son.”

Ned didn’t think his straight-laced mother would be any too happy to hear that her son, who ran off without so much as a kiss goodbye, was a fine upstanding person.

*****

Mrs. Scoletti was a woman of extremes. A flawed creature prone to emotional excesses. Once, during a domestic squabble, she hurled a breakfast plate at his father. The dish shattered against the far wall leaving the buttermilk pancake and a half-eaten, hickory-smoked sausage plastered to the wallpaper. Bursting into tears, his mother ran from the room. Mr. Scoletti swept the broken plate into a dustpan then wiped the soggy pancake batter off the wallpaper.

“Your mom’s a humdinger!” Ned’s father chuckled. Judging by the veneration in his tone, Ned took that as an act of charitable forgiveness. Regarding the plate-throwing incident, there were no repeat performances. Over the years, Ned had learned to accommodate his mother’s whimsical moods. To love someone was to make allowances even when their behavior bordered on flagrant nuttiness.

In the morning the bus passed through Fayetteville and Elizabeth City. The endless stretches of Florida flat land were left far behind. Hattie Mae poured herself a cup of tea from a thermos and sipped at the steamy liquid. “I’ve got pictures.” Ned pulled two snapshots from his breast pocket and handed them to his seatmate. The first photo showed two young children, Ned’s mother and Aunt Josie, dressed in matching sailor suits. The twin toddlers were hugging each other and mugging it up for the camera. A sign overhead read ‘Manatee Cove, Fort Pierce, Florida. Home of the Sea Cows!’ The second picture showed the girls in their late teens leaning up against a palm tree.

“Which one’s your mother?” Hattie Mae asked.

Ned took the print and studied it for the longest time. Everything about the women - their slim build, curly brown hair and impish smiles - was identical. Ned could stare at the picture until the bus reached its northerly destination and still come away unsure who was who. “Hard to say. Maybe the one on the right. Like I said, they’re identical twins.”

The black woman pointed to the first picture taken at Manatee Cove. “These kids sure looked happy.” She drank the rest of her tea then wiped the cup dry with a napkin before screwing the lid back onto the thermos. “I’m a God-fearing woman… not like one of those Bible-thumping lunatics you see on cable TV, the fanatics who talk in tongues and cast out demons. No, none of that fundamentalist mumbo jumbo for me!” She paused just long enough to put her thoughts in order. “While you was sleeping early this morning I prayed and asked the Lord to keep an eye on you. Then, this still, small voice spoke to me in my heart-of-hearts. It said you were sent as a messenger to mend damaged souls and heal festering wounds.”

The temperature in the bus dropped and the driver turned on the heater. The warmth was making Ned groggy. “Messengers bring something … a message or a gift,” Ned protested. “I’m arriving empty handed.”

“Yes, but what if you are the message? Your presence is what’s required.” 

To be sure, Hattie Mae Jackson was a good-hearted soul. Her intentions were pure, beyond reproach, but her logic didn’t add up; it seemed more wishful thinking than common sense. Ned was on his way to visit a relative who wasn’t expecting him. Probably didn’t even know he existed. His presence was not required.

*****

At noontime Hattie Mae gathered her belongings and left the bus. As the black woman was exiting, a young girl accompanied by her mother boarded. The mother settled the daughter in the seat next to Ned and found a place for herself several rows up. “Don’t bother the nice man,” the mother instructed.

“No, Mummy, I wouldn’t do any such thing.” The girl who was rather chubby with a pendant lower lip and dark brown eyes turned to Ned. “My name is Samantha Crowley and I’m in the red-star reading group.” Ned smiled at the girl. She looked to be about  six or seven years old. “Average readers are blue, dummies and sped-busers green.”

“Sped,” Ned mused. “That would be special education.”

The girl smoothed the front of her dress. Ned made a mental note that her fingernails were the same color as her reading group. “I got this swell book. I could read you a story.”

Ned was hoping the chatty girl would just shut up and leave him alone long enough to digest and make sense of Hattie Mae’s last few remarks. How had she put it? Even though he brought neither gift nor message, perhaps Ned -

“Siberian Fairy Tales,” the girl had risen up on her knees and was whispering in his ear. She was a sloppy talker and every time she hit a hard consonant, a ‘p’ or a ‘b’, a slurry of warm spit sprayed across the tight compartment.

“What was that?” Ned wiped his damp earlobe and leaned away from the girl.

She waved a children's book up in the air. “Got this swell book for my birthday. Here, I’ll read you a story.”

“Actually,” Ned grabbed the book away from her just as the girl was settling in, “I’m rather tired and think I’ll take a little nap if you don’t mind.” He wedged the book in the leather pouch hanging from the seat in front of the girl, but she retrieved it immediately and made a disagreeable face. He didn’t really care if the girl minded or not. The first adrenaline rush of the clandestine trip north having dissipated, Ned was exhausted. With his eyes closed, he slipped back into a protective mode, collecting his thoughts for what lay ahead.

“You probably weren’t a very good reader,” the girl muttered. “That’s why you don’t want to hear this Russian folk tale, but I’m going to read it to you anyway.”

“Ninth grade,” Ned replied. “I’m going into high school next year, and I’m currently in the vermillion reading group.” The chubby girl eyed him suspiciously. “You don’t know what color vermillion is, do you?” The girl hesitated. “It’s bright red with orange highlights and a half mile ahead of your red group.”

That shut her up. Finally, Ned closed his eyes, slouched down in the seat and was fading off to sleep when an insistent drone drew him back from the solace of an incipient dream. “Once upon a time, over the mountain and beyond the river, lived a heron and a crane,” the little girl recited in a singsong fashion as though reading exclusively for her own enjoyment. “They lived in the same bog but at opposite ends. One day Mr. Crane felt terribly lonesome and decided to get married. “‘I’ll take Miss Heron for my wife,’” he thought. 

Samantha Crowley knew Ned wasn’t asleep and, even if he was, the girl could care less. “I don’t really want to hear about the Crane and the Heron. Why don’t you just read the story quietly to yourself?”

“Well I’m going to continue anyway as punishment for your rudeness.” “‘I’ll take Miss Heron for my wife,’” thought the Crane and he walked several miles through the mud. When he came to the Heron he said, ‘Heron, are you in?’”

“Birds don’t marry,!” Ned interjected.

“Siberian fairy tale birds can do anything they want,” Samantha corrected. “Heron, are you in?” she repeated.

“I am.”

“Will you marry me?”

“No, I will not. Your legs are too long and your flimsy feathers too short. You can’t fly well and you haven’t enough food for two. Go away you skinny-legged Crane!” “The Crane went home, his hopes ruined.”

“The Heron gave the awkward bird’s offer another thought. ‘It’s better to marry the Crane than live alone.’ So she hurried to the Crane and said, ‘Crane, you may marry me!’”

But the Cranes' feelings were so badly hurt that he shouted, “No, Heron. I don’t want to marry you. Go away!” The Heron went away, weeping and ashamed. A short while later the Crane thought, ‘I was wrong not to marry the Heron. It is dull to live alone. I’ll go and marry her right now. He hurried back and said, ‘Heron, I changed my mind and decided to marry you.’”

“‘No, Crane, I won’t marry you!’” The Crane went away. Now the Heron thought, ‘I shouldn’t refuse him. What’s the good in living alone? I’d better marry the Crane.’ She came to the Crane, but he didn’t want to marry her anymore, and to this day they still visit each other constantly making proposals, but never marrying.”

When she finished the story, Samantha closed the book. “Well, how did you like it?”

“Actually, it was rather depressing.”

“So you didn’t like it.”

“No, not particularly.”

Tucking her legs onto the seat, she lifted up on her knees a second time so that she was staring down at Ned with an impudent grin. “Folktales are fables… stories that teach valuable lessons. What did you learn from the story of the Heron and the Crane?”

 “Absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.”

“But you must have learned something,” the girl insisted.

How he hated the little girl's officious, nasally voice!“Given the opportunity to do the right thing or the wrong thing, most people generally opt for the latter.”

South of Fredericksburg the Chesapeake Bay loomed into view. Arlington came and went in a blur. The bus cruised the length of the New Jersey Turnpike, skirted New York and continued, full throttle, in the direction of Connecticut. Around eight o’clock that night, Ned glanced out the darkened window. The sign up ahead read ‘Providence Exit one mile’. The bus wasn’t scheduled to stop in Spaulding. Ned would catch a connecting bus travelling north from Rhode Island. He closed his eyes. It was just a matter of time now. The end of one journey. The beginning of another.

The obnoxious girl fell asleep leaning her head against Ned's shoulder. She dozed with her mouth open, leaving a line of drool snaking down to the wrist. As the sun was climbing over the horizon she opened her eyes and asked, “Do you know why the gopher has a short tail and the elk a long muzzle?”

“Not really, but I’m sure you’re going to enlighten me.”

She opened the book to the spot where she had left off. “Once, an elk was arguing with the squeaky taiga gopher. The gopher said. ‘Summer should be two times longer than it is now.’”

“The elk disagreed very strongly with her. ‘Oh, no! I don’t like summer at all. It is too hot and there are too many flies and midges in summer. There should be no summer at all. It would be much better.’”

“The squeaky gopher answered, ‘If winter lasted all year round, there would be so much snow that you wouldn’t be able to run quickly. And man would be sure to kill you.’”

“’Kill me? You rascal!’ The indignant elk stomped on the gopher, but she managed to escape and hide herself in her hole. Only her tale was left under the elk’s hoof. The elk, sulky and angry, stretched his muzzle and fixed his eyes on the hole, but the gopher never appeared.” “Summer passed but the elk still waited for the gopher, but the gopher didn’t want to meet with the Elk any more. The elk kept waiting by the hole. The rainy autumn ended. Winter came along and covered everything with snow. And now again noisy spring arrived, and summer was approaching.” “Only then did the elk understand that the gopher would not come out to argue with him, and he left.” “Since that time the elk’s muzzle is long and sulky, while the squeaky gopher's tail is short.”

No sooner had Samantha Crowley finished the second fairy tale then her mother stood up and began pulling down their luggage from the overhead rack. “Did the elk remind you of anyone?”

The white statehouse dome loomed in the far distance as the bus left the interstate. “With his nasty disposition, the animal reminded me of my mother.”

“And the Gopher?”

“My Aunt Jessie, my mother’s nemesis and personal tormentor, who passed away twenty years ago but was miraculously resurrected from the dead in recent days.” When the bus arrived at the Providence, Rhode Island bus terminal, Ned thanked the child for her Siberian fairy tales, collected his bag and left the bus.

*****

Everything in downtown Providence was shut down except for a cold snack bar. A couple of college kids were gabbing away. When the girl said ‘car’ it came out ‘cahhr’. A cardboard box was a ‘bwox’. “When’s the next bus to Spaulding?”

The ticket agent pointed over Ned’s left shoulder. “Tough luck! You just missed it by ten minutes. There won’t be another until 7 a.m.” Ned laid a bill on the counter.

“One way or round trip?” the ticket agent asked.

“Round trip.” Ned took his overnight bag and settled in as far from the door as possible. He caught a chill back in New Jersey where the temperature dropped to 50 degrees, and now his throat was rough as 50-grit sandpaper. The temperature outside had dropped another degree or two since the bus arrived. Hungry and cold, he was worn out from the trip. Maybe if he rested the chill would run its course and he’d be in better shape for the ....

His mind suddenly went blank. Exactly what word was he searching for? Reunion, perhaps? No, you can’t reunite with someone you met in a Polaroid snapshot. Well, whatever it was, the event was imminent. Since the decision to come north two weeks ago, Ned had rehearsed this scene a hundred times or more in his overheated brain. He’d head straight to the house where Aunt Josie lived, ring the doorbell and announce, “Hi, I’m Ned Scoletti. Mary-Ellen’s son.”

Nothing more. Short and sweet!

Let his aunt play her hand, make the first move. Either Aunt Josie would welcome him graciously or treat him with the same callous indifference that caused her to pull a Houdini vanishing act so many years earlier. Hi, I’m Ned Scoletti. Mary-Ellen’s son. I want you to bare your soul and explain why the identical twin sisters in this fading picture hate each other so intensely.

Ned swallowed hard; his throat had swollen shut. Glancing at the clock on the opposite wall, the small hand was edging toward midnight. Seven more hours and he would be back on the road. But the trip to Spaulding was a lark. A mere hour and fifteen minutes. Then a taxi to 105 Eddy. And then...

Hi, I’m Ned Scoletti, your sister, Mary-Ellen’s boy. Hi, I’m your nephew, Ned, newly arrived from Fort Pierce, home of the manatee sea cows. You don’t know me, but I just traveled up the Atlantic Coast on a Greyhound Bus to ....

• * * * * *

The Providence bus reached Spaulding well before noon. When Ned slung the backpack over his shoulder, the nylon bag felt as though it was weighted down with rocks. Worse yet, he was giddy, lightheaded. Ned couldn’t seem to keep his mind clear for more than two seconds at a time, his thoughts flitting about distractedly in his feverish brain. “Eddy Street,” Ned asked a cabby pulled up at the curb near the center of town, “can you take me there?”

The driver stuck a beefy arm out the driver’s side window and pointed at a red brick building. “Eddy Street’s over by the YMCA. You can walk there faster than I can drive.” The cabby looked him up and down. “Been jogging?”

“Huh?”

“You’re drenched with sweat.”

Ned ran a hand over his neck and his fingers came away wet. His shirt collar was soaked through. “I just got a bad cold, that’s all.” Halfway up the street he located a tidy, cedar-shingled ranch house with a sun porch. Strange! After the short walk from the taxi stand, his legs had gone haywire - weak, wobbly and totally uncooperative.

Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m... Well, who I am isn’t really all that important. Oh yes, I’m your nephew, Ned, newly arrived from Arlington, Virginia. No, that’s where Hattie Mae Jackson, the kind-hearted black lady who hears whispery voices in her heart-of-hearts, left the Greyhound Bus. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m Ned Scoletti from Fort Pierce, Florida, home of the manatee sea cows. And I’m here because ... because …

He knocked twice. When the door opened, Ned groped aimlessly for the rehearsed lines but his mind was a sieve that couldn’t hold a drop of rainwater much less a coherent thought. “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

“Mom!” It was more an undeniable statement of fact rather than an open-ended question. His usually sturdy legs felt like a pair of pasta noodles cooked al dente.

The woman laughed, making a breathy, musical sound. “I’m a mother, but most definitely not yours. Who exactly are you looking for?” The woman was standing no more than two feet away but her robust voice, which seemed to emanate from the far side of a distant universe, quickly faded away to nothing.

“After traveling two solid days on a bus,” Ned protested, “you think I wouldn’t know my own mother?” Those were his last words before he slumped forward into the cedar-shingled ranch house at thirty-five Eddy Street, collapsing on Aunt Josie’s living room rug.

• * * * * *

When he opened his eyes fifteen minutes later, Ned was sprawled out on a couch. A young girl with jet black hair and a Metallica T-shirt was leaning over, scanning his features like a tattered roadmap. “Who are you?” Ned asked weakly.

“Wrong question.” The girl wormed a digital thermometer under his tongue, waited for the beep and raised it to her pale brown eyes. “A smidgen over a hundred,” She called over her shoulder and a moment later a woman who resembled his mothers in every way imaginable entered the room.

“You gave us quite a scare, Ned Scoletti.”

“How’d you know my name?”

Aunt Josie waved the Polaroid pictures in the air. “These prehistoric prints fell out of your shirt pocket following your less-than-graceful entrance.” Ned tried to sit up, but his aunt gently eased him back down. Someone had placed a pillow under his head and draped a light blanket over his chest.

Hi, I’m Ned Scoletti, your sister, Mary-Ellen’s boy. Someone handed him a bogus script - the one titled ‘Ned Scoletti’s slapstick arrival at Josie’s place’. More hilarious than a three stooges TV marathon! Regardless how inelegant, he had arrived, and Ned was situated dead center in the proverbial eye of the storm. Ground zero! Aunt Josie bent down, cupped his face in both her hands and, as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world, gave him a sloppy kiss on both cheeks. “Already spoke to your mom back in Fort Pierce. She said some black lady called from Virginia to say that you pulled a Jack Kerouac and were on the road traveling north.” “We’ll keep you here a week or so until you’re physically well enough to travel then put you on a plane out of Logan Airport.” Aunt Josie felt his forehead. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“I grabbed an éclair at the bus station.”

All the while, the raven-haired girl gawked at Ned like some freak in a carnival sideshow. Eyeballing him through narrow, slitty eyes, her pokerfaced expression never changed. Aunt Josie turned to the girl. “Go to the market, Heather, and pick up some pork chops and baking potatoes. There are plenty of vegetables in the bin. After his ordeal, your Cousin Ned’s earned a meal fit for a king.”

“Cousin?” Ned mused. “Now I got a cousin, too? Another complication!”

The girl scrunched up her nose. “I don’t suppose they had showers on the bus.” Ned blinked several times. “That was just a joke.” Heather took some bills from her mother and headed out the door.

“I’m feeling stronger now and would like to wash up.”

Aunt Josie lugged the backpack into the bathroom and began pulling bras and several pairs of nylon stockings down from the shower stall. “Obviously, we weren’t expecting company. Did you bring clean underwear?”

“Only one pair.”

She produced a fresh towel and washcloth. “We’ll pick up a few things at the Value Plus in the morning along with whatever else you need.” Before closing the door, Aunt Josie gave him another generous kiss and announced, “Welcome to Spaulding, Ned Scoletti. I hope the rest of your visit turns out better than the trip north.”

Ned adjusted the water temperature and settled under the shower, but the hot spray pummeling his back only heightened the foul stench. A bar of Irish Spring soap rested in the soap dish. Ned washed himself thoroughly from head to toe, then repeated the process. With a forefinger and some borrowed toothpaste, he brushed his teeth. He hadn’t planned well, skipping over practical details and leaving everything to chance. But then, Ned was here in Spaulding, Massachusetts, on a special mission, a mission that was being redefined from one, tenuous minute to the next.

“Scoletti,” Aunt Josie inquired without looking up, when Ned emerged from the bathroom. She was in the kitchen preparing an early supper. “Your father wouldn’t be Frankie Scoletti.”

“Yeah, that’s my dad.”

Cousin Heather was seated backwards straddling a chair at the kitchen table. She stared at him with a deadpan expression - like a bug under a microscope or a long lost relative she never knew existed until fifteen minutes earlier. Surprise! Surprise! “I went to school with your father,” his aunt elaborated. “He played guard on the varsity basketball team. All the girls were crazy for Frankie Scoletti.”

“You never told me about him,” Heather piped up indignantly.

Aunt Josie slipped the chops into a Pyrex dish and centered it in the oven. “You never asked and, anyway, that was a hundred years ago back when your drop-dead beautiful mother had hormones and a full head of natural blond hair.”

An aunt with a sense of humor. What next? Clearly Aunt Josie approved of the match and was delighted to hear Ned’s mother hooked up with Frankie Scoletti. She had nothing to hide - harbored neither grudge nor grievance. So what was the problem? Why a decade’s worth of unquenchable bitterness? Ned felt even more confused than before he’d stumbled over the threshold.

Neither Aunt Josie nor her stony-faced daughter realized that Ned’s mother had a son. They didn’t even know she married Frankie Scoletti. But Cousin Heather was privy to certain, hidden secrets. Of that, Ned was absolutely sure. All the while he sat there making small talk, chewing the fat, his cousin’s eyes never strayed from his face. She seemed to be enjoying the intrigue, like a bonus chapter in a favorite book. But what genre - spy, mystery, romance, detective?

“I got this notion.” Aunt Josie opened the oven and placed a pat of butter on each pork chop then sprinkled the meat with breadcrumbs and cooking sherry. “Depending on how things go, you might want to extend your visit ... spend the remainder of the summer with us and fly home a few days before school starts.” She placed some string beans in a steamer, added water and set the timer for fifteen minutes. “Of course we’d need your folk’s permission.”

She removed a bottle of virgin olive oil from the cabinet. “We like to keep things simple… just a sprinkle of oil and salt on the beans.”

Strange! That’s exactly the way his mother fixed them back home in Fort Pierce. “Yes, that’s fine.”

“About the beans or spending more time with us?”

Ned grinned easily. “Both.”

His aunt, who was setting the table, slipped her arms around him and gave him a quick hug. “Heather will show you around the city and maybe introduce you to some of her friends.” The girl, who had hardly said two words since returning from the market, swung her leg off the back of the chair and helped her mother finish setting the table.

There it was again - that Cheshire cat grin that screamed, “I know the murky, convoluted history of the Applebee clan... what you’ve traveled the length of the East Coast to discover... the unseemly buried truth you’ve come to unearth and lay bare.”

At supper Heather asked what he wanted to drink. Ned pointed to a bottle of soda resting on the table near the peas. “Cola’s fine.” Filling his glass, he took a swig of the liquid and almost gagged. It had a strong, almost medicinal flavor that burned the roof of his mouth with an acrid, smoky aftertaste. “What’s this?”

“Moxie,” his aunt replied.

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s made from an extract of gentian root with a dollop of wintergreen. Good for digestion.”

“So how do you like your new, extended family?” Heather quipped. Her mother flashed a dirty look, but Heather kept her eyes riveted on her newly discovered cousin.

“Just fine, I guess.” He steered a pile of corn onto his fork with the blade of a knife.

“What if we were a bunch of Neanderthals,” Heather would not be denied, “who picked their noses in public and had no redeeming virtues?”

“Jeez, Heather!” Her mother shook a remonstrative finger at her daughter. “You’re such a boorish twit!”

Ned wasn’t the least bit put off by his cousin’s antics. “If the visit was a bust, I planned to check into the nearest hotel for the night and catch the first bus home to Fort Pierce.”

“There are none,” Heather noted. “No hotels in sleepy Spaulding. Only a 7-Eleven and an all-night gas station.”

Ned tried another sip of the Moxie and discovered that, once he got past the tart aftertaste, his taste buds craved more. “If you’re gonna stay with us for any length of time,” his aunt assumed an apologetic tone, “you’ll have to make allowances for Cousin Heather. She tends to say any foolish thing that comes into her flighty head.”

“Better that,” Ned replied, “than keeping secrets for the better part of eternity.” Aunt Josie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and there was only light banter through the remainder of the meal.

After supper, Ned’s aunt insisted that he call home. “And make sure you apologize a thousand times over for running off.” She dialed the number, handed him the cell phone and left the room, closing the door behind her.

“How could you do such a thing?” Ned’s mother hissed, but there was hardly any bitterness in her questioning tone, only relief.

“I had an aunt... all along.” Ned flung the accusation back at his mother. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Perverts lurk in bus station lobbies.” She ignored the question, glossed right over it. “Winos, degenerates, panhandlers, child molesters...”

“All I met was a religious black woman with a bag of red grapes.”

“How’s your fever, Ned?”

His pushy cousin had crammed the digital thermometer in his mouth again shortly after supper. The temperature was down to 99.5 and his swollen throat was greatly improved. “Much better. I just caught a chill passing through New Jersey.”

“Your father wants to say a few words.”

Ned’s father blustered for a good five minutes without saying anything he didn’t already know about the perils of traveling alone then put his mother back on the phone for a final goodbye. Strangely, no one asked to speak to Aunt Josie.

“She’s got a kid.” Ned said as the conversation ebbed.

“Who does?”

“Aunt Josie.” Aunt Josie - except on the bus trip, Ned hadn’t ever used those two words in normal conversation.

“Really?”

“Yeah, a daughter, Heather.”

“How old?”

“I dunno. About sixteen or so.” He waited but there was no response on the other end of the line. “She’s sort of weird.”

“Most teenage girls tend to weirdness.” They said their good-byes and hung up.

• * * * * *

Later that night Aunt Josie pulled out the sleep sofa in the den and made up a bed for him. She fluffed the pillow and pulled the covers back at a diagonal. “Are there any other Scolettis I should know about?” Ned stared at his aunt trying to decipher her intent. “Brothers or sisters?”

“Two younger sisters, that’s all.”

“Imagine that!” Aunt Josie seemed genuinely pleased. “My kid sister with three youngin’s.”

“Why do you call her your kid sister if you’re identical twins?”

“I skittered down the birth canal first. Your mother followed three minutes later.” Aunt Josie chuckled as though at some private joke. “Not much of a horse race, huh?”

“No photo finish.” Ned agreed.

They went to bed promptly at ten o’clock and Ned lay under the covers in the split-level ranch house in Spaulding, Massachusetts with his Aunt Josie - heart as big as the Grand Canyon - and super-weird Cousin Heather a short distance down the hall. His fever was gone altogether, the throat still scratchy but on the mend.

So where did things stand? His mother had been totally in the dark that her own sister possessed a teenage daughter, and, until earlier, Aunt Josie wasn’t even remotely aware that Ned’s mother married Frank Scoletti, Spaulding’s most-eligible heartthrob, much less had a family of her own. And what about Cousin Heather’s father? Was he still in the picture?

Just before he turned off the light and settled under the covers, his cousin shuffled into the room. She wore cotton pajamas and slippers that made a crisp, slapping sound on the hardwood floor. “You okay?

“Yeah I’m fine.”

“Do you know the story of the heron and the crane?” Ned asked. Heather wagged her head from side to side. He repeated the story almost word for word as Samantha Crowley had told it. Then he explained how the gopher lost his tail and the elk got his long muzzle.

Heather sat down on the side of the bed. She kissed him on the cheek then rubbed the moistness away with her fingers. “Are all the relatives from Florida as flakey as you?”

“Now,” Ned ignored the question, “I want you to tell me a fairy tale.”

“Don’t know any.”

“The mythical fable of the identical twin sisters who acted every bit as childish as the talking animals in Siberian folktales.”

Heather took his hand and held it tight. Then she leaned over and placed her lips against his ear. “Tony Scoletti was not your mother’s first love. A year before she started dating your father she was engaged to another man… Henry Whipple.”

 Ned felt nauseous, lightheaded. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You risked your neck traveling all this way alone. You’ve earned the truth.”

“The week before the wedding, the groom ran off with the bride’s older sister. That is, older sister by three minutes.” Josie and Henry were married by a justice of the peace a week after they reached Spaulding. Henry Whipple - the man who loved two sisters, but not equally - died of pancreatic cancer three days before their daughter’s first birthday.

“Push over,” Heather whispered as she slid under the covers next to him. Ned lay on his side facing the wall. “I’ll stay here until you fall asleep.”

Fifteen minutes passed. His cousin’s presence was comforting. Just before dozing off, it occurred to Ned that the Heron and Crane might have enjoyed similar solace had they shown better sense.