Post 25: Favorite Aunt

Despite their obvious love for each other, it seemed to me that the two of them spun in different orbits, around a different sun. While Uncle Lee ran a small and mostly solvent accounting practice, Aunt Cam made the money. She and another Briarwood housewife bought a lackluster women’s clothing shop in the late fifties. Aunt Cam had an extraordinary eye for fabric and clothing design. Her partner, Mrs. Calhoun, was personable and knew everyone in town and the four adjacent counties. Aunt Cam upscaled their inventory, attending the clothing markets in New York twice a year: in April for the fall/winter lines, and in November for the spring/cruise wear lines. At first, Mrs. Calhoun told Aunt Cam that no one within fifty miles of their shop, “Camille,” was going to buy a two-hundred-fifty-dollar cashmere sweater, much less a four-hundred-dollar silk dress. Turns out, they did.

Aunt Cam knew that the coal mines in the surrounding Virginia and West Virginia mountains had created a lot of wealthy men. And the wives of those men were eager to show off clothing labels that flattered their matronly figures.

As much as she could appreciate beautiful fabric, hand-stitching, or an exquisite design, Aunt Cam equally revered a profit. She made a 100 percent mark-up on her inventory. She bought the best and charged the most. After a few years, she was on a first-name basis with the major New York wholesalers. She and Mrs. Calhoun developed a loyal following and, over time, would come to buy certain lines with particular customers in mind.

Resolutely afraid to fly, Aunt Cam took the train to New York for her “buying trips” leaving Mrs. Calhoun to mind the store. Having read about the Algonquin Hotel over the years, she found it suited her perfectly and made it her New York headquarters during her visits. She claimed, with no one to dispute her, that she grew to be on a first name basis with the piano player in the Algonquin bar, a “nice, skinny little Jewish boy” who rose to fame as Michael Feinstein. It seems perfectly plausible to this day to imagine her, third scotch in hand, using her sultry Southern drawl to entice “Mikey” to play “As Time Goes By,” and then to “play it again.”

While she was known to tell tall tales and occasionally embellish the truth, Aunt Cam refused to let any of her customers leave the store with ill-fitting or unflattering pieces. Observing a customer pull a dress from a rack across the store, Aunt Cam would quietly shake her head. “She’d look better naked than running around in that,” Cam would hiss under her breath, and then step in to prevent whatever hideous fashion faux pas was in the making. Her goal was to make her patrons look good. If they looked good, they came back and bought again.

It was a rare occasion that a customer made it all the way to one of the store’s velvet-curtained dressing rooms without assistance. But when a customer slipped through on her own and emerged in an outfit that Aunt Cam knew would be returned in a day or two, Aunt Cam resorted to the truth: “Alice, you know I love you, but honey you can’t wear yellow. It won’t work with your color. You’ll look much better in this. Go try it on.” Or, “Claire, I know this is a beautiful dress, but it’s not for you. The cut doesn’t work with your figure. I got something for you in New York last trip that’ll be perfect on you. Come see.” Aunt Cam not only wanted to sell clothes, but she wanted her customers to look great in them. If they took her advice, they did.

The problem with Aunt Cam’s financial success was the fact that, for every dollar Aunt Cam made, Uncle Lee could find a reason to spend two. So, when Uncle Lee discovered an asset or a deal he felt would make them “wealthy as a shah,” he’d sometimes snap it up without a word to Aunt Cam, but dipping into their joint funds--which were mostly hers. Sometimes, it seems, he failed to tell her about these purchases at all.

A professional success at the store, Aunt Cam also enjoyed great personal satisfaction in the kitchen. So, it stood to reason that she could appreciate a powerful cook top, large, accurate ovens, and generous counter space. In the fall of the year when I was entering sixth grade, Aunt Cam had saved for, designed, and contracted for a complete remodel of her serviceable but vintage ’40s kitchen.

For the transformation, she had chosen two wall ovens, a six-burner cook top, “gorgeous” stone countertops, an industrial dishwasher “that could scrub the paint off my Volvo,” and double stainless-steel sinks outfitted with a disposal that “could do a beer bottle!” When she talked about her new kitchen, she beamed. And she talked about nothing else for months. It was a reward for working hard, and she wasn’t afraid to spend.

Unfortunately, Uncle Lee wasn’t afraid to spend either. When Aunt Cam’s deposit check to the contractor bounced, she was at first mortified, then confused, and then furious. It seems Uncle Lee had neglected to mention that he had added a cemetery to their financial portfolio. Thinking that the land would yield a wildcat vein of minerals, he was not aware of the sacred nature of the mountains nor of the restrictions placed on land that held the remains of those at eternal rest. Uncle Lee had purchased a cemetery, and that’s what it remains. I often heard Aunt Cam yell at Uncle Lee: “Lee, I love ya, but sometimes I could just kill ya.” It never occurred to me that she might really mean it. Until this debacle.

In short, Uncle Lee had spent Aunt Cam’s kitchen money. Later, Mama would tell us that she had only seen Aunt Cam cry twice: once when their father died, and again over the thought of losing her new kitchen. Months later, Kayreen, Aunt Cam’s cleaning lady, told Mama that there had been a lot of yelling around that time, and hinted that here may have been some thrown china involved. Undaunted, Uncle Lee got Aunt Cam her money, and the construction, after a tumultuous week’s delay, began. We never fully understood how Uncle Lee came up with the money. It was rumored but never proven that the bishop was his unnamed benefactor. Despite the fuzzy details, Aunt Cam got her beautiful kitchen. Uncle Lee’s life was spared.

While GranMag and I were visiting, Aunt Cam was on her better behavior. She smoked a little less, stopped at two pre-dinner scotches instead of three, and poked less fun at the current walking targets that any of our given relatives had recently become. As part of her respect for her elders and in keeping with her weekend good behavior, Aunt Cam upped her patience for the elderly in general, and GranMag in particular. For the most part, Uncle Lee, bemused by his fiery, funny wife, was often just along for the ride.

Despite any missteps or mischief Aunt Cam might incur during our overnight, the one consistent and most meaningful gift she gave her mother and me was a magnificent, delicious, and calorie-laden Southern dinner on the night of our arrival. Dinner at Aunt Cam’s was a combination of gentility, spectacle, and pure pleasure. As much as I loved my own mother’s cooking, I loved Aunt Cam’s more. Perhaps it was the sheer energy of spending time with Aunt Cam, or her connection with and respect for fat, the source of flavor in so much good cooking. It was likely both, in addition to Aunt Cam’s genuine intention and effort devoted to making dinner with her and Uncle Lee an occasion both delicious and memorable.

To that end, Aunt Cam’s dinner hospitality started at cocktail hour. Without asking, Aunt Cam poured GranMag a good white wine in a cut crystal stem as if it were part of her daily evening routine. Not to be excluded, I was served a Shirley Temple in the same on-the-rocks crystal that the adults enjoyed. Like the adults, I was offered (and always accepted) a second drink before dinner. Throughout cocktail hour, we were served crisp little toasts with savory spreads along with tiny country ham biscuits that melted in your mouth in one bite.