OK by Me

Great Aunt Vilna screamed in the living room, and everyone in her large, drafty house froze. Vilna couldn’t find the radio, was all. That’s what she said to the dozens of well-wishers after Grandfather Perry’s funeral who were now staring at her.

“It was here this morning,” she said, trying to get her bearings now that the most prized item in the family was gone. She tried to temper her tone to show that the lost item was valuable enough to merit such a scream, but only for sentimentality and nothing more.

Calyn, the tomboyish, mischievous girl of 15, felt her face flush. She was on the toilet at the church restroom that morning when she overheard Great Aunt Vilna talking to Grandmother Perry about the radio.

An average student, Calyn sometimes sat in detention but only for talking and not for fighting. She just happened to be in the bathroom with her feet pushed against the stall door after the funeral service had started, and both grandmother and Great Aunt Vilna did look under the stalls to ensure they were alone, an action that took some balance, especially for grandmother, who used a cane.

Such a meeting in the empty bathroom during Grandfather Perry’s funeral was the perfect time to discuss the secret pen and possible recipients among the younger generation.

Sure, Calyn had heard of the radio. It was ugly and said to not work properly and Calyn didn’t want it—until she heard that it contained a secret pen that only her cousin Stacia and possibly her cousin Brody were to receive.

“Is it still in the footstool?” grandmother asked.

Calyn wondered how she could get to the footstool in the living room first. After the funeral, the family would drive to the cemetery while Susan went back to Vilna’s home to make lunch. Calyn, who had culinary interests, asked her mother if she could help Susan, and permission was granted.

After stacking perhaps hundreds of fat triangles of sandwiches of chicken salad and egg salad on platters, Calyn tiptoed into the empty living room and lifted off the cushion from the velvet, olive-colored footstool. Alas, she held the radio in all its subdued, disappointing effect. Where was the pen?

“Calyn,” Susan called from the kitchen. “Come make the punch.”

Calyn placed the radio in her canvas bag and tended to the drink bowls stationed around the kitchen and living room. After ice rings were dutifully floating in the punch, and little clear plastic cups were arranged in pyramids nearby, Calyn heard the click of heels coming up the sidewalk. In seconds, she ran with the radio to the bathroom and locked the door.

If this is our family’s prized possession, we’re in trouble, Calyn thought. She removed the plastic backing as one might to replace the batteries and sure enough, lying on a satin bed, was a smooth, gold fountain pen. Her hand cupped the pen, which was the heaviest she’d ever held. Then came Vilna’s scream, Calyn’s flushed face and the pressure to act quickly.

“Calyn?” her mother knocked on the door. “Please open the door.”

Calyn’s mother stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind her, surprising Calyn at her intensity.

“Let me have the radio,” mother said with her hands out. “Aunt Vilna says you have it.”

Calyn was puzzled at all the passion. She had suspected her family was boring. Her best friend was part Greek and during their parties, Calyn picked up how to say things like “he’s cute,” or "she has pretty hair," and how to cuss in Greek. 

But Calyn’s family was just her family. They always got together on Thanksgiving but had no special language nor customs—or if there were, she didn’t recognize them because they were such a part of her life. Yet a radio had Great Aunt Vilna screaming and her mother acting with unusual force.

“You don’t understand,” mother said to Calyn. “The radio goes to Stacia.”

Calyn walked into the living room behind her mom, who apologetically placed the radio in Great Aunt Vilna’s hand.

“Great sakes alive!” declared Vilna, who exhaled deeply with her hand across her chest.

She looked questioningly at mother, who only nodded.

“Look here, child,” Great Aunt Vilna said forcefully at Calyn. “We’re going to talk.”

Calyn felt her face flush again and Great Aunt Vilna took Calyn’s hand and led her to the patio.

“You were in the bathroom when your grandmother and I were talking?” Vilna asked.

Calyn nodded.

“What is the matter with you?” Vilna asked, peering into Calyn’s eyes.

Calyn had never looked at Great Aunt Vilna so closely, but Vilna held her face about an inch away from Calyn’s face.

“Look at me. My nose is—well, look!” Vilna said, running her finger along the ridge of her nose and stopping over the boney hump in the center.

“And I have no shape,” she said brushing her hands from her waist to her sides.

“And I wasn’t dirt poor, but I had to work two jobs, before and after school to help my mother after daddy died,” Vilna said. “And yet look at me.”

Calyn looked at her great aunt afresh while still stunned at all the commotion over a radio and a pen. On the back patio, Great Aunt Vilna stood with a backdrop of pecan, fig and pear trees. Her house was grand, and if Great Aunt Vilna had an ugly nose, her graceful manners, slim figure and style more than made up for it.

“I’ll be right back,” Vilna said, disappearing into the house and returning with a picture.

“Here. Do you remember him, your Great Uncle Edward?”

Calyn nodded. She was 7 when he died, but she remembered him. She held the framed black-and-white photo, and said he was handsome.

“Handsome! Of course he was! And rich!” said Vilna with a laugh.

“And how on earth do you think I, a poor country girl, married someone like him? Do you think I won him through my cooking?” Vilna scoffed. “It was the pen.”

Uncle Hank, too, was an out-of-league catch. Aunt Elvira had used the pen, she said.

“And goodness knows, I shouldn’t say this, but Aunt Teresa got into college because of the pen,” Great Aunt Vilna said.

“But you don’t need it,” she told Calyn. “Now come in and get some punch.”

But Calyn did need it. She needed everything she could get. She felt as if she were born in the wrong year or perhaps born with the wrong hair or maybe she got the wrong personality. And she was overweight.

Plush, she had received a smattering of possible diagnoses, but none quite fit, and often, when she wanted to talk the most, she said nothing and then felt like crying.

And if she didn’t feel like crying, she felt like screaming, and she had never ever in her whole life been pretty like Stacia.

Determined to raise that little pen from its satin coffin, Calyn first sat meekly on the old polished furniture in Great Aunt Vilna’s living room, unsure how to be herself without thinking so hard. There was a cadence to her family, but she sat outside of it, unable to find her rhythm. She knew the pen would help.

But any hopes of getting it were weakened when she saw Great Aunt Vilna talking to Stacia in the kitchen. “Your mother will help you use it,” Vilna said to her little cousin.

Stacia made great grades, was well mannered and pretty. Stacia could also sing like an angel, and seemed always happy. But Calyn was always trying to be better. Calyn would give her pearl inlay guitar or her laptop to Stacia for the magic pen.

“You got the radio?” Calyn asked Stacia.

“A great help,” Stacia said, parroting Great Aunt Vilna’s words to her.

If Stacia got any more help, she’d be smart enough to be a teacher or pretty enough to be a beauty queen. Why then would her family give help to the girl who needed none?

“May I have it?” Calyn asked outright. “I’ll give you my guitar.”

Stacia, wanting to please her older cousin, said Calyn could have the pen and keep her guitar. Then Calyn’s heart beat faster and her hands trembled.

From across the room Great Aunt Vilna was watching the pair despite the post-funeral company around her. She could say just the right thing and not miss a beat even when she saw the two girls disappear into the bathroom.

“Excuse me,” she said to her guests as she made her way across the room.

“Thirty years,” Great Aunt Vilna said, knocking on the bathroom door. “Thirty years before we’ll get another use of the pen if you use it today.”

The girls, wide eyed at Vilna’s knocking, opened the bathroom door to let her in. Before today, the girls had only had small, surface talks with each other and only poised and polite conversations with their Great Aunt Vilna. Now, the three seemed as peers, anxious about the upcoming use of the pen.

Vilna reached in her purse and offered a small pad of paper to Calyn. Calyn shrugged, so Great Aunt Vilna guided Calyn’s hand around the pen as if she were a toddler learning to write. She poised her hand over the pad.

“Now just wait,” Great Aunt Vilna said with a loud exhale.

At least two minutes passed. Then, the pen moved and Calyn held on. In fancy script the pen in Calyn’s hand wrote, “You are brave and don’t need my help.”

Calyn screamed. Stacia looked confused, wondering if she missed something, and Great Aunt Vilna only shook her head.

“Thirty years,” Vilna repeated.

“Mom, I’m OK! I’m OK!” Calyn yelled running toward her mom.

Catching herself mid step, however, Calyn turned around briefly.

“You’re getting my guitar,” Calyn told Stacia before turning again. “Mom! I’m OK!”