The Demented Aunt

The Demented Aunt was smoking a Gauloises because in her mind she was French. "In your mind you can be who you want to be," she said. "As well as your lungs. In my mind and in my lungs I am very French. These are my two favorite organs of the human body. When I was younger there were others, the spleen, for example, because it is misunderstood. But now only these two hold any interest for me."

"I will need to have you committed," her nephew Hervie said. "It’s the right thing to do. Sometimes doing the right thing is hard, God bless, but in this case it will be like eating a slice of pizza with your shoes off and the wolf parked safely in the street. Besides. The mind is not an organ. It is a representation of our longing for transcendence. The brain is an organ, but it fails to fulfill our need for more."

The Demented Aunt lit another cigarette from the one she was smoking. She inhaled deeply and blew smoke rings in the direction of her nephew. Hervie was not impressed by the solidity and circular purity of his aunt’s smoke rings, but her yellow fingers were quite striking, their sludge-like indifference to a cleaner palette.

"At one time, all over the civilized world, people did that, lit one cigarette from another. It had panache. Where is panache now? It runs two miles a day and drinks prune juice. As for the mind. That’s just another way of saying the brain is awash in magic as well as in brain juice."

Hervie unlaced and removed his sneakers. He’d been sneaking about all day and now that he was home he didn’t really have to sneak anymore. Of course, when you live with a Demented Aunt you find yourself sneaking out of habit because she might speak to you if you don’t. Hervie said, "My mother, your sister, was also demented, but she was sweet. They erected a statue of her in the Park of the Demented. Now she stands there, leaning on her staff, a stopover on the pigeon routes. You are not sweet; therefore, I will have to drown you."

Hervie got them both some tea.

"Of course," said Hervie, "drowning is reserved for sailors and those people who drive jet skis."

"I know I’m vile," the Demented Aunt said. "But it’s what I’m good at now. Once I was good at loyal and steadfast, kind and decent. Now all I can put my heart into is vile. You have to do what you’re good at, otherwise you lose your pluck."

"Hanging is a possibility," said Hervie. "You get that metronome quality if you’re careful with the arrangement of rope and beam. I met a man today on the bus I wanted to try out the metronome effect on. He leaned into me. I felt his whole life pass through the fabric of my coat. A man for whom wretchedness would have been an improvement."

The Demented Aunt evicted a series of coughs. She turned a shade of blue last seen in Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, the smoke rising from the campfires at dusk, a silly image but one the Demented Aunt liked because of its range of historical irrelevance. And Hervie liked it too. It was very becoming, the way a frontal lobotomy would be in persons you share the bus with.

When she finished her coughs, the Demented Aunt lit another Gauloises. "What do you want for supper?" she asked her nephew. "I thought a nice chop. Simone and Jean-Paul like a chop. Writing and sex cause hunger and there’s nothing like a chop for hunger."

I would like to turn you into a chop, Hervie thought, then got up to get them another cup of tea.