“‘But I need to tell you this: I’m still mad about what you said to me when last we met. Furious. You know what I’m talking about.’”
“What’s in your hand?” Mercury asked, still writing. She figured he was stalling for time while he caught up to her words.
“It’s a purse. A little boy made it for me a long time ago.”
Mercury turned to look. “Any money in it?”
All little boys know what purses are for, thought Aunt Helen Beck: in each and every one a Fort Knox.
“Two pennies,” she said. “Let’s get back to work.”
“Where does this guy live?” Mercury started writing again.
“He’s dead,” said Aunt Helen Beck.
“You can’t write to dead people.” He put down his pencil and turned around again.
“Why not?”
“They’re dead.”
“That only means they can’t read,” she told him. “It has nothing to do with what I can or cannot do. Let’s see how you’re doing.” She sat up; the arm of the loveseat was cutting off the circulation to her feet.
He leaned away so she could see, and what she saw was this, in pale letters because he did not bear down: MERCURY MERCURY MERCURY KABOOM I LOVE YOU.
“Well,” she said, because he had tried his best. “I might have put that last part down anyway.”
In the morning, when she slipped her hand into the pocket for Georgie’s purse, it was gone. She took her hand out of her pocket, put it back in, took it out, back in again. It was not in her pocket.
Not in her pocket, where it always was; not on top of the dresser or tucked in her suitcase. Not anywhere in the kitchen, not even on the floor near the edges along the baseboards, which is where she was looking when Chris walked in.
“Aunt Helen Beck,” Chris said, alarmed. “What’s the matter?”
“Somebody’s taken Georgie’s purse. I can’t find it anywhere.”
“I’m sure it’s around.” Chris dropped to her knees beside Aunt Helen Beck.
“I can’t find it.” She hadn’t ever been without the purse; it was one of her organs, it was vital. “I have to find it,” she said.
“We will, we will.” Chris had caught her worry. “I’ll look in the living room.” She crawled toward the other room just as Mercury came in the door. He laughed to see the grown-ups on all fours. Chris, looking over one shoulder, asked, “Have you seen Aunt Helen Beck’s purse?”
“No,” he said, too quickly.
“You’re sure,” said Aunt Helen Beck. She did not want to frighten him, but suddenly understood that he was the one who must have taken it. Who is as sneaky as a little boy? Who is more interested in other people’s belongings?
“It’s in your pocket,” he said.
“No it isn’t,” she said, still on her hands and knees, still looking at him squarely. “If you have it, Mercury, I would very much like it back.” She wished that just once, in all those houses she’d been in, she had picked up the child psychology book that was always sandwiched between Shakespeare and Tolstoy. Just use common sense, she’d always advised, but common sense, she now realized, had little to do with real life.
“It’s not in my pockets,” she said again.
“I don’t have it,” said Mercury, inching toward the door.
“Merc—” Chris began.
“I don’t!” he yelled, and he ran out.
They sat back on their heels. Aunt Helen Beck rubbed the tops of her thighs slowly, in an effort not to cry. It didn’t work, which surprised her.
“Oh, Aunt Helen Beck.” Chris shuffle-crawled over to her, and laid one hand on her shoulder.
“What will become of me without it?”
“If he has it, I’m sure he’ll bring it back. He’s an honest kid, and he sees how much it means to you.”
But Aunt Helen Beck could not see that happening. Little boys lose things. They trade them or bury them or give them to their sisters to chew on. The walls of the purse were the only walls she’d ever owned, and she’d allowed them to be taken away. She would have told another person in the same situation, You’re allowed to be careless once in eight decades. She could not believe so herself.
“Aunt Helen Beck, your talisman,” Ford said when he found out. “I’m so sorry. Maybe Merc’s got it and he’ll bring it back.” He sat down on the loveseat beside her. “Listen. Maybe we can make a stand-in.”
Aunt Helen Beck leaned away from him and looked out the window at the silver trailer, and envied the woman’s life there. Gaia was surely surrounded by things she owned: big jars of rice, children. To keep your family in such a small place now struck her as intelligent; it was like making your whole life a locket.
“I don’t mean replace,” said Ford. “But it was a symbol. Now you need another symbol, something to stand for Georgie and how much you love him.”
“Georgie Beck died when he was seven. There is nothing in this world that he touched except that purse.”
“Earth’s the same,” he said. “Same then as now. We’ll make a little pillow of earth.”
Aunt Helen Beck turned to look at him, and was startled at how close he sat. She could easily have hit him. Some common damp dirt for Georgie? But then she saw Ford was sad and desperate over the whole thing and somehow wanted to help.
“No thank you,” she said.
Thereafter, Mercury kept his distance. One little boy was dead and gone; the other had done something she was not sure she could ever forgive. Her anger at him did not make the loss of his company any easier to bear: you always miss the person who breaks your heart. A few nights later, she caught a glimpse of him outside of the trailer, staring up at the house, as if he were a miniature general considering the best means of attack.
Ford went down to the trailer to talk to Gaia, who said that she hadn’t seen it, would keep her eye out. “She’ll do her best,” Ford said.
Even as he said it, Aunt Helen Beck felt herself change. She had been, up until that moment, in the same mood her entire life. The panic that engulfed her now was unfamiliar and frightening. She felt there must be a pill, something she could eat, that would clear it up. Or a pair of hands that put upon her would restore her to the way she used to be. But a pill worked its way through you, hands departed your skin. They were no replacement for the one thing she’d always owned.
Now she sat still to watch the sun set every night with Chris and Ford, and admired the family pictures that had always lined the walls. Those nights, she talked a streak, about nothing in particular. There was an affectionate recklessness to what she said: she spoke of people from her past, and family.
“I once knew a woman with twenty-one children,” she said to Chris.
“Good Lord,” said Chris. “That doesn’t seem possible.”
“It’s true,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “She was a collector. They weren’t all hers; she just fancied them and took them in and when she tired of one, threw him out and got another.”
“She sounds like a sad case,” said Chris.
“Perhaps. Despite it all, I loved my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “We are discussing my mother.”
And later, when Ford asked her what she did for Christmas as a child, she said, “Nothing. I always wanted to celebrate it, but my people are Jewish.”
“What?” asked Ford. “What part of the family?”
“All sides. My grandfather was a rabbi.” He looked confused, so she added, “Orthodox.”
“I never knew we had any Judaism in the family,” he said.
“You might not,” she began, and then she caught herself. “You might not have been told,” she said. “People used to like to cover that up, you know.”
“But I thought your brother was a preacher—”
“Half-brother,” she said quickly, her lightness gone. “And I don’t want to talk about it. Have a care, Ford.” Frequently she’d turn like that, from nostalgia straig
ht into anger. Ford and Chris grew wary of her, and started going to bed earlier and earlier. She could hear them talk about her—her name again and again, because Aunt Helen Beck could not be reduced to a handful of pronouns. She didn’t care to listen closely.
“We’re glad to have you here,” Chris would tell Aunt Helen Beck in the morning, coming in for a careful half hug. Aunt Helen Beck could feel heat coming off the younger woman’s body. With her copper curls, her freckles exactly the same color, white skin underneath, Chris reminded Aunt Helen Beck of some pale cake left too long in the oven. She even smelled that way, delicate and warm, as if a sudden loud noise could make her collapse.
Did people always radiate such heat, or any heat? Did their temperatures vary? Aunt Helen Beck had never noticed before. She wanted to steal up behind Chris, or Ford, let a long breath loose across their skin to cool them before touching, cautiously, a quick furtive tap with her fingertips before allowing her whole palm to rest.
Sometimes, she would feel suddenly fearless and loving, put a hand on Ford’s shoulder, give Chris a pat on the cheek, leave them notes in the bathroom signed with a heart. The one day they all went into town, she drifted off from them and returned with licorice, ginseng tea, a little trial-size packet of vitamins.
“Happy un-birthday,” she said. “Have an un-birthday present.”
Ford laughed, and said, “Aunt Helen Beck, you’re all right.”
“Just all right?” she asked. All he did was laugh again in his horsey way, but she really did want to know. She had tried all her life to be a good person, but how could she judge her success unless other people let her know? She knew she was not a good listener, supposed she got impatient at times. That’s what having standards will get you, she thought: restless. It was one of the reasons she went visiting. Every person saw her a different way, and once she divined their opinion—bossy old lady or lovable crank or sometimes, she hoped, even nice plain honest woman—she wondered what someone else might think. She wondered if two people who knew her at separate times would agree.
Still, she felt now, for the first time, all it would take would be one person saying, Aunt Helen Beck, here’s where you belong, and she’d stay in a minute.
She didn’t hear the boy walk into the room until he said, “I want you to cut my hair.”
“Hello, Mercury,” she said. He hadn’t been in the house in the two weeks since the purse had gone missing. She looked at him and hoped that he had it tucked in his pocket, though she still felt so wretched about its loss she was no longer sure even the thing itself would help.
“I want you to cut my hair, please.”
“Why?” asked Aunt Helen Beck, but even as she asked, she eyed the blond fall of hair, thought about how it would feel, giving way to the pressure of a pair of scissors.
“Too long,” he said.
“Get your mother to do it.”
“She won’t.”
“Well then, perhaps you shouldn’t.”
“It’s too long,” he said. “Please? It makes me look like a girl. You said so.”
“It makes you look like Mercury.”
He took a deep breath. “Aunt Helen Beck, please cut my hair.”
“What will you do with it?” she asked.
He pleated his nose at her.
“That’s a lot of loose hair you’ll have. Will you throw it in the ocean? Wear it as a bracelet?”
“I don’t want it,” he said.
“Well,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “We’ll see.”
His hair was dry and light, like some rare delicate vegetable that couldn’t possibly be nourishing but is rumored to cure cancer. She had to sit down to reach. He didn’t make a noise, though she felt him wince every time he heard the scissors shut. She could only find the kitchen shears, and they were a little rusted at the heart.
“It’s coming fine,” she said.
She did not understand why she was doing such a thing, but it improved her; she felt herself return to normal every time the blades slid into a kiss.
“What will your mother say?” she asked.
“I don’t care.”
Finally, she finished.
“You’re handsomer than I thought you were. Would you like a mirror?”
Mercury ran one hand up the back of his head, smiling at the bristle of it. Aunt Helen Beck knew a few things about hair cutting, and she realized it was not modesty when she thought: Well, I certainly botched this job.
“Feels weird,” he said, which is when Chris and Ford came through the door.
“Shit,” said Chris. She put her hands to her face, as if to steady her head.
“I like it,” Mercury said.
“How do you know?” asked Aunt Helen Beck. “Run look in a mirror and then decide.”
“Shit,” said Ford.
“It’s cool,” Merc said, returning.
Aunt Helen Beck picked up Merc’s hair, which she had braided and secured with rubber bands before she took the first cut. “I’m going to keep this,” she said quietly. She started to look for a broom to sweep up the thin scraps on the floor.
Ford put his hand on Mercury’s head; the boy leaned into the touch and rubbed his head against Ford’s palm.
“I know you’re upset,” Chris said. She sat down at the kitchen table. “But why on earth?”
“He asked me,” she answered. “You know I have never been able to refuse a child.”
That evening, they approached her. “Aunt Helen Beck,” Ford said. “I think we need to talk.”
They took the loveseat; she sat in a chair across from them, feeling the curl of hair in her pocket.
“Tell me again,” said Ford. “How are we related, precisely?”
“Your great-grandfather,” she began, but then she realized it was gone. Usually, she knew everything, every uncle, but now she couldn’t remember anything about Ford’s family, and hers therefore, except that she imagined they were Irish. “He came from Ireland,” she said. “He was a doctor.”
“And?” said Ford.
“He was a magician,” she said, changing her mind.
Ford sighed. “A witch doctor, maybe?”
“A flim-flam artist,” she said. “A snake-oil salesman. Perhaps not really a doctor.”
“No,” said Ford. “Flim-flam runs in the family, huh?” He smiled; Chris poked him in the side.
“I called Abbie,” said Ford, “and we discussed the possibility, and then I called the rest of my family and, Aunt Helen Beck—you’re not related to us.”
“Why, Ford.”
Ford rubbed his beard. She could not tell whether he was enjoying this or whether he was truly sympathetic. “Maybe a family friend,” he said. “I mean, maybe you grew up calling one of my relatives uncle. Family friend’s enough, if you’re a close one.”
She knew that it wasn’t. If it were, she could call up anybody and say, I once knew your mother. All that would get her was a cup of coffee, and besides, she’d have to know about college or DAR days or wasn’t the wedding beautiful. She was silent.
“I thought so,” Ford said.
“I can’t believe this.” Chris stared at the floor, then looked up. “You’re a liar,” she said.
Ford touched his wife’s arm. “Now, listen—”
“You’re one, too. You told me you remembered her. When she first called, you said, Oh yes, my dear Aunt Helen. And how long have you known this without telling me?”
“I’m not a liar,” said Aunt Helen Beck.
Chris just shook her head.
“I took that picture you gave me out of its frame,” said Ford, softly. “And it says on the back, Holland, school play. Even the guy’s mustache is fake.”
Aunt Helen Beck sat up straight in the chair, arranged her legs, smoothed her skirt.
“How did you choose us?” Ford asked.
“Well,” she said. “I was at the public library, and Abbie had donated some magazines. They were good magazines.”
Ford laughe
d out loud, but Chris looked bitterly disappointed. Which struck Aunt Helen Beck as unfair; she’d never claimed to have been related to Chris.
“I can’t believe you made it all up,” said Chris. “I can’t believe you took advantage of us like this.”
“I didn’t make it all up,” she said.
“You came in and told us sad stories that weren’t even true. You made up this tragic dead brother—”
“Georgie Beck was real,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “And everything I said I felt about him I did.”
“Will you please, please tell us the truth, just for a minute?”
“It would be nice,” said Ford.
Aunt Helen Beck looked at her and then at Ford and then out the window.
“It was my first visit. I’d heard he was sick—he was a famous child, and I heard this in my hometown, my real hometown. He’d preached there before and caused a sensation and people said what a shame it was. And so I went and knocked on the door and called myself cousin. I was a child myself, sixteen. Back then,” she said, looking at them, “it was even easier. I really did nurse him, but he died anyway, and I took the purse—” Here she returned to the window, certain of herself in a way she had not been since the purse had been lost. “He’d made it for his brother, I think, and I took it and his name besides, and I left.”
“You’re a fraud,” said Chris.
Aunt Helen Beck sat still. Flashes jumped off the water with such regularity that the sparkle looked somehow mechanical, as if it were worked by a crank. “He told me he loved me,” she said. “‘God loves you, too,’ but I told him to say the first part again.
“This is all the truth.” She looked at them. “I suppose I’ll leave in the morning.”
“You don’t—” said Ford.
Chris said, “It would be for the best.”
They left her in her chair, said they imagined she’d rather pack alone. Though what she wanted to pack, of course, was nowhere in the house. She had never been caught before—never accused, anyway—and some part of her had stopped worrying about it. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving, of any more travel, certainly not without Georgie’s purse. For a moment, she supposed the most useful thing for her to do was to die.
Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry Page 7