Way past uncomfortable and feeling moderately creeped out by her encounter with her Aunt, Simone needed a walk to clear her head.   She knew her Aunt sometimes had a little too much to drink, but why did Emaculata have to pick those times to seek her company or try to connect with her, Simone wondered.  Intellectually, she knew the answer.  Simone the adult recognized that the emotionally bankrupt older woman needed the benefit of alcohol just to get in touch with, let alone express, any feelings. 

But, Simone, the young girl, had been the recipient of far too many awkward attempts on her liquored up Aunty's part at being affectionate, to be understanding.  She recognized that Emaculata had often tried to fill a void for Simone and be motherly to her, but the fact that she was more often stern and indifferent made it hard to receive the infrequent and uncharacteristic overtures as intended.  And when they were committed under the influence, it just made Simone cringe. 

Efforts at "mothering" were really lost on Simone, she had weaned herself from the need for maternal comfort and attention early on, when it became apparent that she simply did not have a dependable source of it in her own mother.  So when a rather pitiful rendition of it came her way, too little, too late and from a tipsy Aunt, it was superfluous at best.  At their worst, the encounters left Simone feeling used and rather like an unwitting guinea pig for Emaculata's experiments in humanity.

If her aunt being several belts in to her own personal happy hour didn't make it difficult enough for  Simone to have a normal interaction with the older woman,  making eye contact with her was all but impossible for Simone now, having just come from Michael's bed.  Under the nun's scrutinizing gaze Simone always inwardly reverted to the guilty, young school girl being called on the carpet for her errant behavior. 

And though she could avoid looking directly at her, she could feel Emaculata's eyes roaming her,  taking mental inventory of her slightly disheveled appearance as she slurred "you've been out with Michael haven't you?"  the tone hinting at her disapproval.  Oddly, it didn't seem that Emaculata's contempt was fueled by the fact that Simone had apparently engaged in a mortal sin, but rather that she had engaged in it with a man that wasn't good enough for her.  Not even wanting to consider the implications of that fact, Simone simply didn't respond.