The Best Laid Plan

By Marilyn Rudenstein

“Aunt Ginny’s having a hard time coping with Freddie’s death, Sarah. Nothing I do seems to help her get over it. Do you have any suggestions?” “

Who on earth is Freddie?” I said. 

My mother groaned, as usual, when I talk to her. “You know, the little dog she loved so much.” 

“Oh, yeah, I forgot its name.” 

My mother’s question surprised me this Saturday morning. She doesn’t often ask me for advice about anything. If she turns to anyone, since my parents are divorced, it’s usually one of my older brothers who are already in college. As for Aunt Ginny, I hadn’t had much to do with her for the past few years, being very busy with music, school, parties and sports —first at Little Harbour and now Portsmouth Middle School where I’m in eighth grade. Ginny is my mother’s older sister and she lives alone in the Margeson Apartments, not too far from my own house. She was born with a brain injury, which left her mentally and physically challenged. However, she still walks down Route 1 to her part-time job at one of the fast food places down there and my mother says Ginny is very proud of herself for that accomplishment. The job, and caring for her little dog, Freddie, seemed to provide her with a satisfactory quality of life, my mother often said, at least for the last fourteen years I’ve known about. 

Suddenly, helping Aunt Ginny became very important to me. I pictured myself single-handedly providing her with such an exciting day, today, that she would feel really happy and forget about Freddie. I, personally don’t think it’s such a big deal to lose a pet, but then I’ve never cared particularly for animals myself. 

“Maybe I can help, Mom. I’ll call her up and ask her to go downtown with me today —we can eat lunch at that funky Friendly Toast and then go somewhere for ice cream. I bet Aunt Ginny would love to spend some time with me. Yes, that’s it. Sorry, Mom, looks like you won’t have my sterling company for a few hours. Gotta call Aunt Ginny.” 

I walked over to Ginny’s apartment to pick her up. I was loaded with money to do all the great things I was thinking of, and pretty pleased with myself for being so extraordinarily kind.

 I was a bit self-conscious being seen with Ginny because she’s very heavy, walks with a limp and has a speech impediment. I was thinking how people would be wondering why a pretty girl like me was hanging around with someone like her. Maybe they would think I was her caretaker, or something, which would not be as embarrassing. We took the trolley downtown and started off in Prescott Park, looking at the beautiful flowers and the boats in the river. I purposely didn’t bring up Freddie, as I didn’t want to spoil the day for Aunt Ginny. Instead, I chatted on about myself and all the fun things I’ve been doing, my soccer games and crushes, best friends and all the computer stuff I was learning. She was a good listener and I did most of the talking. I figured there would be less pressure on her that way. Also, my stuff is really interesting! 

When I got tired of the park, I took Aunt Ginny over to that fun restaurant, a few blocks away. Aunt Ginny said she loved her lunch even though she didn’t eat much and seemed a little distracted by all the unusual people and cool things going on at the restaurant I chose. Sometimes, because of her responses, I wasn’t sure she could adequately hear or understand everything I was telling her about. But that didn’t matter to me because I was sure she was just happy being with me, her only niece. Next we went to Annabelle’s for ice cream and we did some window-shopping as we walked back to my aunt’s apartment. I was feeling pretty good about how everything went and was imagining how I would tell my mother about what a good job I did cheering Aunt Ginny up. “

Thank you, Sarah, I had a really nice time today. Now I think I’ll go lie down for a while to rest up from the walk. I wish Freddie were here to lie down with me like he always used to.” With that Aunt Ginny made a sad face and rushed off into her bedroom.

I went down in the elevator and walked slowly back home suddenly feeling a little more perplexed than gratified and not so cocksure of myself —anymore. It unnerved me when I started to feel uneasy, as I couldn’t really put my finger on the reason for my discomfort. I certainly did not feel as good as I did when I started out on my mission that morning. “

How did it go, Sarah? Did you manage to cheer Ginny up a bit?” 

“Of course I did; I told you I would, Ma. Well, actually I thought I did, but now maybe I’m not so sure. The last thing she said was something about missing Freddie lying on the bed with her. Maybe we should just get her another dog and that’ll be the end of it.” 

“I suggested that already but she was adamantly certain she didn’t want a new pet, at least not yet.” 

“What does adamantly mean?” 

“Definitely.” 

“Oh.” 

I put Ginny out of my mind, which wasn’t very hard to do. In fact, she went out of my thoughts quite easily. It wasn’t until I happened upon a TV documentary a couple of weeks later that Aunt Ginny vaguely passed through my mind again. The show took place in a veteran’s hospital and apparently attempted to focus in on how the veterans coped with their pain and depression and passed the time until they were released. It was very sad. In the beginning, we just saw men lying in beds, many with different parts of their bodies missing, while the nurses and doctors administered to their needs. Occasionally, the men talked to one another. There were a lot of gripes, tears, and talk of all the losses they were experiencing. 

It was so full of misery that I finally decided to shut it off just as the scene shifted to some vets in a little group around a large table. Most of them were in wheelchairs or propped up in awkward positions. The camera zeroed in on the men’s faces, or what was left of them, as they reminisced about the war. I expected to hear more of the terrible tales of death and losing buddies and limbs, but instead they mostly had smiles on their faces, well almost smiles. 

They were talking about the good times they had had with their old buddies before some of them were ripped apart or killed in the war. Each of them seemed to have a funny story to relate which most of the others found amusing. It was much less despairing to watch this portion of the documentary and I continued to do so until they switched back to the miserable parts. 

That night, I couldn’t help thinking about the documentary, and the looks on the men’s faces when they were talking about the happy experiences in their past. My thoughts drifted between these images and pictures of Aunt Ginny’s sad face when I left her apartment that Saturday. I have no idea why that television program and Aunt Ginny kept getting mixed up in my mind. 

The next weekend I was running some errands downtown and bumped into Aunt Ginny coming out of the Post Office. 

“How are you, Aunt Ginny?” 

“Fine,” she said, with tears welling up in her eyes. 

“You know, why don’t we go back to your apartment and have some iced tea or juice together. I’ve got time before I have to meet my friends.”

“Oh, that will be nice, Sarah.” 

When we got up to Ginny’s apartment, she started to prepare some iced tea and took out some cookies and put them on the kitchen table. We sat down together, and this time, for some reason, I didn’t start talking at her right away. In fact, I just sat there, occasionally remarking upon the good cookies and iced drink. Aunt Ginny sat there sort of staring into space until her eyes got a little watery and I asked her what she was thinking about. She shifted her eyes to mine and started telling me about how cute Freddie was when he was just a little puppy. As we spoke, I frequently asked her little questions about her favorite memories of Freddie and what kinds of things they did together. While chatting, Aunt Ginny’s face brightened just a little bit and she started speaking more animatedly than I had ever heard her before. At first I found it endearing, but then I started to get bored out of my mind listening to her babble on and on about some dog I couldn’t even remember. Her speech defect was grating on my nerves so much that I had an impulse to pinch her lips together so that she couldn’t torture me with another sound. 

Finally, I just interrupted her in the middle of a sentence since it was her fault she was so boring and didn’t even care about who had to listen to her constant banter.

I said, “Aunt Ginny, do you have any photographs of Freddie?” I figured we could look briefly at the pictures and then I could make a quick getaway. 

“Oh, yes, yes, lots. Would you like to see some?” Aunt Ginny quickly brought out a great big envelope filled with snapshots of Freddie going all the way back to when he was a little puppy. She laughed and obviously was having a good time showing them to me. 

At this point, since she had become so annoying and inconsiderate of my feelings, I had no choice but to stand up and say, “Aunt Ginny, why don’t you just buy yourself a photo album and put the pictures in it?” 

With that said, I whisked myself out of there and hightailed it down to Market Square to see if I could join up with my friends. 

That night, I realized that something went wrong between me and my aunt and that I didn’t accomplish my goal again. Briefly, I thought it might have something to do with my lack of patience and consideration. I sure as heck wasn’t going to sit down with my mother and discuss it, though. Maybe when I’m older, I said to myself as I drifted off to sleep.