She put her head on my chest and I inhaled her hair—it smelled of roses and fresh air.
Auntie Lee looked up at me and two tears shined in her eyes. “We can’t have kids,” she blurted out. “Tried and tried, but can’t. Now that you’re leaving, it seems to have hit Zack hard. There’s no outlet for all that fatherly stuff he loves to talk to you about.”
“Auntie Lee,” I said.
“Mikey, let me talk for a second. I have to get this out and I feel I have to tell you. Your uncle has a problem that doesn’t allow him to have kids. We’ve tried everything, but it didn’t work. I mentioned adoption, but he said ‘If I raise a kid, I want some of my DNA to be planted there.’ So your going off to school I guess had brought about a crisis in him. And I’m worried. Real worried.”
“Auntie Lee.” That’s all I said and that shows you how creative I am under pressure to make somebody feel better.
“You’ve been so nice, Mikey. It’s just that when I saw you two together there, it made me so happy. You two look like brothers, you look so much alike. I guess I just needed to vent a little. A shoulder to cry on.” She brushed away real tears off my chest. “A literal one,” she laughed … a fake laugh. “Thanks for letting your old aunt get this off her chest. It’s was helpful, even though there’s nothing we can do.”
She reached up with those lips and kissed my cheek. Then walked over to Uncle Zack, who looked at me with a determined stare.
I’m no big problem solver, and I’m no genetic scientist, but given a calculator and a piece of paper and a couple of #2 pencils, I can put two and two together. DNA, my DNA, which is a lot like Uncle Zack’s DNA—he wanted me to plant it. The answer to that calculation was:
Uncle Zack wanted me to get Auntie Lee pregnant!
********************************
The whole party was a success. Full of surprises—no, make that shocks—for me, but a success if you measure the fun everyone had and the real appreciation and celebration people showed my mom and Uncle Zack.
Finally it wound down late (I bet it was after midnight even though I didn’t look at a clock or my phone specifically for the time) and Auntie Lee and Uncle Zack were about to leave … the last ones.
Auntie Lee came up to me and said, “Sorry for adding some extra drama tonight. It meant a lot to me to have someone I could trust to share that with. I know you love your uncle and I felt you should know what he … I really mean ‘we’ are fighting with right at the moment.”
“I wish I could help,” I said before thinking. It was a reflex, some instinct to make somebody feel better, and not—
“Flirting again!” Uncle Zack’s voice piped up behind me.
“What? No! I mean …!”
“Zack! Quit teasing. Can’t I talk with my nephew?” she laughed. “I know he’s so handsome and all, but you don’t have to get jealous!”
Now, she was teasing too.
But she didn’t know the background of what went on earlier between my uncle and me.
“Mikey, don’t forget what we talked about. It has to happen real soon. These things have to be timed just right,” he said and gave me the raised eyebrows, the ones where one person knows and does the gesture to let the other person know he knows you know. I didn’t twitch a facial muscle.