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Chapter Four
Mickie
After my fourth trip from my apartment, I walked into my aunt’s apartment with my final box. I loved this place, and I was so thankful that she was letting me stay here while she was in Morocco.
“Here you come with the last of your things, and now, this dreamy home is yours for the next year or two,” Aunt Beverly said with her sassy smile.
I smiled as she greeted me in the oversized foyer of her home. It was decorated with 1940s fashionable charm, the peak of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Aunt Bev looked every bit like I imagined Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner would’ve, roaming the house wearing satin and heels with perfectly coifed hair.
“Two years, eh?” I said, setting the box down. It was filled with my medical books, waiting to take their place on an empty shelf in her immaculate library. “I might just take you up on that offer.”
“If you know what’s best for you, you will. You and I could become roomies and live here wild and carefree with no men around to ruin anything.”
Aunt Beverly was all class with a ton of sass. She was my dad’s sister, but she wasn’t cut from the same cloth. They grew up in a small town in Tennessee, where playing sports was life. My dad was an all-star football player, which led to him coaching for numerous colleges before deciding to wind down his career by coaching the local high school.
Aunt Bev’s superstar looks made it easy for her to pursue her passion of performing in the theater, so she took off for New York three weeks before her eighteenth birthday and never looked back.
Everyone who’s ever met Aunt Bev said she was a born entertainer, so it didn’t take long for her career to blossom. Within a year, her agent got her an audition to star on The Lighthouse, and the woman had Hollywood eating out of her hand since.
I’d loved visiting this home since I was a child, and being with Aunt Bev was icing on the cake. She was vibrant and witty and didn’t seem bothered by the usual weight of the world like all the other adults I knew, including my parents.
I admired how nothing seemed to bother her, but I could never quite get myself to be so carefree. When I was younger, she would bring me with her on set, or we’d attend the opera in San Francisco, no doubt trying to broaden my horizons and show me that there was more to life than getting good grades and being the captain of the swim team, pushing myself to exhaustion to be the best and brightest.
Nothing worked to change my resolve, however. I’d always been a girl on a mission, which was ingrained. I could only hope being in her home would allow me to relax more often. I was aware that being more flexible would only benefit me in my new career, and I needed to access that side of myself desperately because if I weren’t careful, I’d scare off John Aster with my bitchy personality and the rest of the hospital, too.
“So,” Aunt Beverly said, her gold and pearl necklaces clanging together as they hung lavishly around her neck and over her silk dress. “Tell me all about your new job.”
I smiled and sipped the dirty martini she’d made for me. “It’s great. The other day, I delivered over thirty babies within twenty-four hours,” I finished with a laugh, seeing her eyes widen.
“God in heaven,” she said, covering her heart. “You had to stare at that many vaginas, child? I lived through the 70s, and that’s still more than I’ve managed to see in a day.”
I shook my head with a laugh. “There were C-sections too. Even if there weren’t, Aunt Bev, it’s wonderful to assist a mother in bringing a baby into the world. The whole process is beautiful.”
She smiled at me. “Well, I remember when I gave birth to your cousin, Anthony, and they asked if I wanted a mirror to see everything. Now,” she held up one finger while sipping her martini, then returned to her conversation, “don’t get me wrong. My vagina is groomed and well cared for, and I’m sure most women would get plastic surgery for theirs to look half as good.”
“Of course,” I nodded in humor as she took another drink.
“But can you imagine? There was no way in hell I would watch a child burst forth from it.”
“That’s just you,” I said. “Some women treasure the moment.”
“How in God’s name can you treasure your greatest asset being stretched from stem to stern?”
“I can assure you that years in medical school and my internship have taught me that it is natural for the woman’s vagina to stretch that much. It all goes back to normal,” I laughed while she humored me, trying to be serious.
“If it didn’t return to normal size, then I would’ve demanded a C-section, as you well know.”
“Indeed. Now, let’s move on to a different subject,” I said.
“Fair enough.” She sat back on her rich velvet sofa, kicked off her heels, and curled her petite feet beneath her, “I heard you are officially done with that jackass, Jesse.”
“A topic I don’t wish to discuss even more than your vagina.”
“Well, you need to,” she eyed me. “I can see the stress dragging down your beautiful face, dear, and I want you to get all this off your chest before I leave tomorrow morning.”
“It’s easy enough to say that he and I grew apart. I buried myself in medical school, and he traveled a lot for work. I’m just thankful I didn’t have to go through the gut-wrenching process of a divorce, and we ended things sooner than later.”
“Agreed,” she said. “Your mother told me he was with some woman at Avalon?”
