Aunt Mary’s Confession
by Anne Mikkelsen

I hadn’t seen Aunt Mary for 36 years, but I longed to see a face that looked like my father’s. Everyone, including my father said, “We Cutter men die young, unexpectedly.” And what I discovered was everyone, including my father, did, too young in fact to explain things that bothered me for years. Aunt Mary could answer questions—simple questions, I thought, but where was she? I wanted to know why my father sat in his car when he came home from work and just stared out at the Mississippi River until the sun went down and the sky was completely dark. Surely Aunt Mary, his sister, would have a clue. When I was young, I asked my mother. She offered some ideas. “Well, maybe he’s thinking of his parents. You know they both died young, unexpectedly. Or maybe he’s thinking about the war, he doesn’t talk about it.” I thought maybe he just didn’t want to come inside to all the confusion of children and laundry and bad manners and grace at the table reminding him that he signed away the spiritual fostering of his children to the Catholic church, Father Murphy and the nuns. Most of all, I was afraid my father was sad.

The last time Aunt Mary came to visit was when my oldest brother Leedsie was killed by a drunk driver, during a blizzard on Highway 10 in front of Jax Coon Rapids Truck Stop at 10:36 p.m. on Valentine’s Day 1962. I was a senior at Anoka High School home of the mighty Tornadoes, every where we go-oh, people want to know-oh who we are, so we tell them, we are tornadoes, mighty, mighty tornadoes, and my boyfriend was co-captain of the football, basketball, and baseball teams. At 10:36 p.m. on Valentine’s Day 1962, Raymond had just brought me home from a sock-hop at the Rec center, and was trying to “get to second base” in our driveway with only the dim sunporch light to remind me what Father Ardolph had told our “release class. “Don’t ever have sex with someone you do not want to marry.” Very good advice, I thought. And on that dark, blizzardy Valentine’s night, we sat squashed together on the passenger side in the front seat of Raymond’s orange and white ‘57 Chevrolet with the big wings on either side. The motor was running, the windows were foggy, and the heater made the usual smells even stronger--after-the-game basketball socks and a heavy layer of Brill-Creme “a little dab’l do ya,” applied to his crew cut in front of a crowded, steamy mirror in the boy’s locker room of the Anoka High School. Raymond was acting all confused and angry. “You know we’re the only ones, of everybody in the whole high school, who haven’t done it yet. You know that don’t you?” That again. I looked through the fog and snow at the porch light. If Mom was home she’d be standing there blinking that light on and off, on and off, on and off until I got out of the car.

“I gotcha sumptin for Valentine’s Day.” Raymond handed over a wad of newspaper. “Go head, open ‘er.” I released the wrinkled newspaper and discovered a tangled ball of gold chains. He opened the glove compartment and the light shined on the glittering ball of chains. One had tiny pearls hanging on the gold chain about every three inches. Another had pin-head sized emeralds every three inches. As I untangled each necklace, I wondered why he had given these to me—books and stuffed animals that was the rule. The third necklace had rhinestones that looked like diamonds, and the fourth had amethyst, my birthstone. “I know you’re not supposed to accept gifts of jewelry or clothing from boys, so I got ya these.” The first thing I thought was, I’m not supposed to accept jewelry from boys and this is jewelry. “Well, maybe you can just sneak and don’t tell anybody where they came from.” I looked at him and thought, boy am I glad I don’t want to marry you. “No thank you. I can’t accept these.” I handed the newspaper ball and the chains back to Raymond and said, “Mom will be home pretty soon. I have to get inside. Good night.”

I stomped through the snow up four steps, halfway regretting the loss of four necklaces. I opened the door to the sunporch and waved goodbye to the winged tail lights of the Chevy. No lights on in the kitchen, but I could see on the grey formica kitchen table, at Leedsie’s place, which used to be at Dad’s right hand before he died unexpectedly a year and a half ago, was a Valentine with silver glitter glued around the edges. I found out later it was from Marcus Aurelius Mad Russian. He must have made it in school. “to leedsie, I missed you tonight, happy valentines, your youngest brother”.

I went upstairs and checked on the little kids. They were all asleep. Mom was with her friends at a lecture on Modern Art given by Vincent Price at the University of Minnesota. Leedsie was a pre-law student, studying late at Wilson Library. Instead of riding home with his regular commuting buddies, he decided to ride home with Mom—in the way-back small pop-up seat of the station wagon, with her four best friends up front, after the lecture, through the blizzard at 30 miles per hour, probably talking about Vincent Price and how strange a person Picasso must be, past Jax Truck Stop in Coon Rapids, at 10:36 p.m. on Valentine’s Day when the drunk guys from Elk River drove in front of the semi and the semi slid and swerved in the snow and they both hit Mom’s station wagon head-on.

After I checked on the little kids I went to bed. I missed Acey being in the same room with me. She was at the University, living at the Sanford Hall dormitory for women and studying Home Ec. I was afraid I would have to study Home Ec. too.

The next thing I remember was sometime around midnight, a policeman was sitting at the end of my bed. “I’m sorry to wake you, but you’ll have to come with me to North Memorial Hospital and identify the bodies of your mother and brother. There’s been an accident.” My brother died and my mother had to stay in the hospital for two months, except for Leedsie’s funeral, when the North Memorial ambulance brought Mother to St. Anne’s church for the Requiem Mass for the dead, and people just wouldn’t go away. All of them milling around outside in the snow, worrying and wondering why it was that those Cutter men died unexpectedly. Acey and I planned a family-and-friends-only funeral so strangers wouldn’t bother Mother on her stretcher lying next to her eldest son’s casket. We combed Oscar’s pretty dark curls and braided Milo’s hair in our room in front of our own mirrors. Someone told us that Eightball was too young to go to another funeral, but we dressed her up and took her anyway.

Aunt Mary was there for Leedsie’s funeral, in the first pew on St. Joseph’s side of the church. She wore the same black suit and veiled pillbox hat that she had worn for my father’s funeral a year and a half ago. That was the last time we saw her for 36 years. Thirty-six years.

August 15, 1998 I invited Aunt Mary to come to Minnesota for tea and biegnets. Please, come to see me and my sisters. My youngest sister, Eightball, asked Aunt Mary straight out, “We have questions that only you can answer, because everyone else died. Why didn’t you talk to us for all those years?” Aunt Mary took a long time looking at our faces, staring back at her, as we stood in a line going down the hillside in my yard, eldest to youngest. We must have reminded her of her brother in some way. Finally she said, “I just couldn’t. You were all too sad.”

Anne Mikkelsen was born in 1944 in New York. Raised as Charlie Cutter in and near The Last House on Park Street, Anoka, Minnesota; mother of four and grandmother; studied cooking with Simone Beck L’Ecole des trois Gourmandes, Grasse, France; owned/operated Palette & Wheel restaurant, Minnetonka Center of Arts and Walker Art Center, Minnesota; studied writing with Jane Resh-Thomas, Minneapolis; Guardian ad Litem, Rice County, Minnesota; worked for ten years as advocate, prevention/intervention coordinator for high-risk youth, Rice County Community Corrections; Executive Director, Northfield Union of Youth, Inc., a youth-run youth center, Minnesota. Currently, living in Bellingham, Washington with husband Mike, and attending Fairhaven College at Western Washington University studying law, sociology and writing.