Who Homeward Go

I. “The Matagorda Supper”

Before Miranda had time to give any further thought to the question, the matter was decided. Uncle Aberdeen (that is, the notorious attorney J. Michael Aberdeen, who was at that time a stock figure in all of the county’s consequential topics) would serve as chaperone and shuttle while she crossed her way from the southern crest of Texas to the airport.

She looked at her watch as a covert maneuver with an eye towards determining if her breath still smelled like rum; but as the first test was inconclusive she shortly affected a yawn to achieve a confirmation. It definitely still did.

Upon her arrival in Houston, Miranda would depart her uncle, board a plane, and alight at the Capital for a purpose which was being rigidly established by this present session of her tiny family congress. As set forward by Llewelyn—whom she called something like a father—from the Church of Our Lady of the Twenty Aerial Tollhouses she would collect three items: an urn containing the ashen remains of her late grandmother, a beige woolen coverlet (with lacy edging), and a black leather notebook wrapped on both sides.

A small bundle of invoices, receipts, and other paper fragments had already been placed on the coffee table, evidencing that an excessive sum had thus far been spent on the affair. With her air travel and Uncle Aberdeen’s reasonable expenses for gas and other accommodation considered, the total would surely now exceed the family’s first expectation. The entire enterprise was becoming more uncertain by the moment, as one of the ‘old aunts’ made her best effort to man an adding machine that was balanced on the summit of her misscrossed knee.

If only she really had her wits about her––thought Miranda––her own role in this could certainly be minimized. While Llewelyn talked on to the family about the benefits of Miranda having a valid social security number, she tried to remember how bad the rum smell was.

Soon the company began to stand and exchange agreeable looks, making it clear that the grandees had called the meeting to a formal close; and it was only in this rather sudden moment of rising that Miranda realized all opportunity of appeal was now lost. Despite the family’s dubious opinion of her, somehow she had been assigned to act as the courier for its most important talismans. The mounting nature of the aggregate bill and the importance of the three items awaiting retrieval seemed to inspire the family with a sense of urgency, such that a Godfather and two-and-a-half teenage cousins were collectively able to produce Miranda’s airport check-in papers from the upstairs printer in under seventeen minutes. They all agreed that this was truly the type of situation for which families were made.

II. “Epiphany Rising”

Starting by a coarse ride in a car with busted suspension and the constant breathing of her fat uncle scarcely made this leg of Miranda’s long journey tolerable. She had no desire to talk with him, but the Imperial Freeway had a bad habit of being lined with peach-colored sound barriers; and, after a period of time, few other options remained to save oneself from the soul-death which would otherwise ensue at the hands of those endless walls but to attempt some light chat.

“So when’s the last time you saw Gert?” she asked, hoping to avert Aberdeen’s rising flirtation with the idea of playing his ‘Sounds of the Economy’ podcast, the approach of which she had quietly observed by noting his repeated glances towards the phone on the center console.

“Gert-aah––” he started, wrapping her name into an echo. “You’d either be a baby or maybe ten last I saw Gertie. A baby or a kid either way. When do they do a communion?”

Miranda didn’t want to answer; suddenly an infinite stretch of peach concrete seemed like the safer place to hide. After all, her late grandmother Gertrude had almost certainly suffered greater indignities along the slow course of her road into the present State. She probably dug potatoes out of the frozen ground with her bare hands and always got her fingernails dirty just to eat breakfast. Miranda wished that she could be tough like that.

“Gotta be years,” she said.

“Yup.”

“So we decided there’s no will?”

“There’s no will.”

“But didn’t she write that note to pa––” Miranda attempted to ask, as Aberdeen quickly threw the car in a dramatic and unnecessary skid into the next lane. He shot a sideways glance at his niece, making a great performance of righting the car and reestablishing a general sense of order.

“Shut up a minute honey,” he said, “I’ve got an exit coming up.”

III. “Gravidity”

Bartholomew IV International Airport is located along the southern edge of the Fifth Ring Road on the Connecticut coast, and was Miranda’s shortest path to her established destination when arriving from Texas by air. Indeed, so short a flying distance was far from enough to compensate for the misery of her earlier drive. Four or five hours spent in the company of roaring jet engines and fussy imps with drunk, inattentive parents felt to her like a welcome respite when compared against only two spent in the car with grunting Aberdeen and his vaguely racist jokes. And at least the airline had the good grace of offering gin and tonic.

As this was Miranda’s first time away from home, let alone away by herself, she was understandably confronted by some nervousness. As an antidote to this fear however, she kept the critical objects of her journey firmly in-mind: the urn, the fancy woolen coverlet, and the black notebook. Having never seen either of these three herself, she was required to construct little pictures of them within her mind. Sometimes she imagined the urn as a sort of brass amphora with a heavy lid, while other times it took on the more delicate appearance of a vase. The blanket she knew was beige in color and likely to be heavy. Most mysterious of all among the three was surely the black leather notebook. Her charge to retrieve it came with a tacit injunction that she would not read its contents, and she was aware of a general sense that the upper echelons of her family both suspected its contents and desired to conceal them. Nonetheless, it was still the image of the notebook which was most effective when it came to silencing the disquiet of her maiden voyage. She would get that notebook.

From the airport she boarded a coach bus (all of the necessary arrangements having been made by the family in advance) and commuted to her hotel about thirty miles away. The hotel, of course, was likewise preordained by her handlers as being close enough to the church, without being close enough to––what they would term––“trouble.” Off to the right margin of the hotel lobby there was a little bar, hosted by a surly tapstress in her late fifties, whom Miranda found laughing like a fishwife with the kitchen staff.

After two watery drinks from the fishwife, she glanced down at her watch and wearily contemplated the idea of calling her mother. Of course, as soon as she had, the phone was answered by her Uncle without a moment’s pause.

“Miranda?”

“It’s me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I––“

“Button-it, Lewey! I’m trying to find out,” Aberdeen hollered across the room to Llewelyn. “What’s it, doll?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to tell ma I got out here all right.”

“Don’t forget the check for the pastor.”

Abrupt as his parting words were, Uncle Aberdeen had reminded her about the yellow envelope addressed to the Chief Priest of the church, and the next morning she ensured that it was safely stowed within the favored zipper pocket of her purse.

Arriving at her destination, Miranda naturally took a moment to observe the building. She looked up at the stony face of the church and wondered if it was in fact modeled after one of the Twenty Aerial Tollhouses for which it had been named, so much did the blank cement figure suggest the work of a local bridge and tunnel company.

The assistant she found within the office informed her that, while the coverlet and notebook were there, she would have to walk about four blocks down Eight-Thousand Martyrs Boulevard to collect the urn from the mortuary. After the exchange of the yellow envelope, Miranda was handed two plastic shopping bags: each bag containing one of the objects of her interstate mission.

IV. “Parity”

Before retrieving her grandmother’s urn, Miranda chose to stop for a moment at a memorial pagoda by the river. There were benches where she could sit and attempt to regain her composure, having so quickly and easily obtained two of her errand’s objects. She ran her hand along the opening of the closest plastic bag, touching the decorative edge of the coverlet before quickly retreating back. In a cautious manner, she next moved towards the second bag until she was met with the lightning sensation of the black notebook against her skin.

Withdrawing the notebook, Miranda could instantly feel from the very weight and elegance of the volume that it contained the personal disclosures of a woman who had lived a substantial life. After a breathless moment sitting by the riverbank and contemplating her resolve, she reached a decision. She would open the notebook.

As a wanton breeze played against the loose handles of the two plastic bags, she read all of Gertrude’s final notebook from cover-to-cover within two hours. A number of revelations were delivered by her grandmother’s biography; among them were such treasures as her real family name, their story, and Gert’s strong desire to convey a sum of money to her Texan family without the burden of paperwork.

While the text itself had gradually reduced her to trembling, that flow of quakes reached a fever-pitch when she realized the time and jumped to her feet. Miranda raced down the street, shopping bags in hand, while she frantically searched her purse for the remainder of the packet with which Aberdeen had sent her to Connecticut. By the time she reached the mortuary she had managed to free a small bundle of papers from the collection, and she continued to sort them even as the unpleasant manager went to retrieve her grandmother’s urn.

The sight of the urn quickly confirmed the assertions of both the notebook and the twenty-thousand-dollar insurance certificate found within her purse. It was an otherwise plain vessel, decked however with an egg-shaped finial of South Sea pearl whose value would doubtlessly exceed even the insured sum according to any reasonable appraisal. This was a tax scam for sure. From the notebook Miranda was aware of the pearl’s strange origin, and she handled it almost like a newborn as she wrapped it within the folds of the beige coverlet.

That evening Miranda returned to the airport with her precious cargo safely in-tow and bought a ticket for a new flight. It was not a flight for Texas.