by Sarah Dreher
She’d never lived so vividly as when she was a Gypsy. But it was exhausting, which was probably why those lives were short.
Hermione was a sort of gypsy even now, if by “gypsy” you meant a free spirit who was never very impressed with the kinds of things most people are impressed with. And who didn’t give a damn about their opinion of her.
It was all those hundreds of lifetimes, she often thought. After a few turns on the karmic carousel, all that hoopla over things and status took on a very false ring. She couldn’t remember exactly in which lifetime it had happened to her. In the pre-Christian Roman one, maybe. Or when she served in the court of the Empress of China, who, she was firmly convinced, was now her sister Helen in another incarnation.
The Empress had been a thoroughly nasty, bloodthirsty individual with well-developed and famous sadistic appetites. By comparison, Helen had come a long way. But she was no Mother Teresa.
At least the Empress had had the good grace to give away her children. Helen preferred to drive hers away.
The only time Hermione had ever seen Stoner be a child was that morning when she had opened the door to find her sixteen-year-old niece huddled on the step of her Boston brownstone, tired, dirty, hungry, eyes deep with anxiety.
“Please don’t make me go back,” was all she’d said, and Hermione fell into a case of mother-love from which she’d never recovered.
Stoner’s child phase had lasted only one day. By the next evening she had made arrangements to finish high school and applied for early admission to B.U., and had found herself a part-time job. She insisted she had no intention of grubbing, and wanted to do her share toward expenses.
It was the lesbian business, of course. Helen had—not quite accidentally— found Stoner’s journal and read it. In it, she expressed some rather charming feelings toward a particular teacher—social studies, if she recalled correctly—who was clearly female. That threw Helen into a state, and whatever nasty and hurtful things she hadn’t already said to her daughter, she said to her now. Stoner had borne it for a few weeks, but finally couldn’t take it any more and had run to the one member of the family she could trust—her Aunt Hermione.
It was, Hermione thought, the best and luckiest day of her own personal life.
She blew out the candle and folded the fringed table cloth she used for her readings. She was wandering again. Marylou’s mother, ‘the eminent Dr. Edith Kesselbaum’ as they called her affectionately, would pronounce her “loose and tangential.” But it was an occupational hazard. She had to follow her thoughts wherever they led, because that was where intuition lay.
The trouble was, lately she was having trouble thinking in a straight line when she needed to. And she was forgetful, and clumsy. A chronic state of PMS, except that she had passed far beyond the point where PMS was a possibility, and hadn’t been bothered by it much when she was of the age. It felt a little like being in a fog, where you didn’t notice things until they were on top of you, and then they scared you half to death.
She supposed it would pass, but until she was certain it wouldn’t, she wasn’t going to worry Stoner with it. It would turn out to be some seasonal ailment, an allergy, perhaps. She wished she could remember her herbology from her lifetime as Blue Mary the healer, but some of them didn’t stick as well as others, and herbs had been her bugaboo of record from her current life.
If they all knew how she was feeling, they’d probably start treating her like an old person. Raising their voices and speaking in simple sentences and fetching and carrying.
Hermione Moore had no intention of being fetched and carried for as long as she could assume a vertical position.
The worst part of being treated like an old person, she thought, was the loneliness. She’d had friends who aged, and clients. Loneliness was the one thing they had in common. “It’s not that I’m neglected,” Laura, a Virgo, had told her (and if there was anyone who would know when they were being neglected, it was a Virgo), “but they treat me as if I were a chapter in a book on how to handle your aging parents. It’s all ‘old people need this,’ and ‘old people like that.’ They never ask you what you need. If it’s not in the book, you don’t need it.”
Laura was living in Boston with her daughter at the time. Hermione advised her to run away and change her name. The last she heard from Laura was a postcard from Las Vegas. It turned out that she had a previously undetected knack for remembering numbers, and was doing quite well at the blackjack tables. In fact, one casino had offered her a job as a dealer, just to get her on their side. It wasn’t exactly what Hermione had in mind, but it was an improvement.
She heard the back screen door slam, and smiled. That would be Marylou, coming in the back so as not to disturb her, then letting the screen door slam.
“Marylou,” she called, glad to be brought out of her own rambling, “would you like some tea?”
Chapter 2
“They probably don’t even know who Lucy B. Stone is,” Stoner said.
“But they know who you are,” Marylou insisted.
Stoner laughed. “All fourteen of them know me. And a few close friends. Not exactly name recognition.”
What in the world were they talking about?
Hermione patted her mouth with her napkin and arranged the knife she hadn’t needed so its handle was exactly perpendicular to the table edge. She must have drifted again. A minute ago they’d been talking about… about... Damn, what had they been talking about? They’d discussed the weather, the tourists who were beginning to filter into town, Gwen’s job, and… what?
She couldn’t remember eating, either, but her plate was clean. She remembered cooking, but not what she’d cooked.
“What do you think, Aunt Hermione?” Stoner asked.
Oh, dear. “I think,” she said, covering, “it would be a risky idea. But if you really want to do it...”
They all looked at her.
She felt herself go pale.
“It was your idea,” Marylou said.
“Well, that’s true. But it was only an idea, after all. Not a requirement.”
Gwen was watching her in that quiet, concerned way she had. Seeing through her. Gwyneth was all too good at seeing through people.
“I have to agree with Stoner,” Gwen said. “Most of these kids wouldn’t know who Lucy B. Stone was, much less want to name their team after her.”
Ah! “It was a good enough name for my niece,” she said. It ought to be good enough for a softball team.” She put a touch of crotchety into her voice and sniffed a little. Maybe they’d think she’d drifted away on a cloud of despair for the younger and definitely unpolitical generation. “But it seemed like a good idea at the time,” she added with a rueful smile. “Too bad the time was nearly forty years ago. Though, as I recall, nobody knew who Lucy B. Stone was then, either, at first.” She touched Stoner’s hand. “Just think, dear, I named you for a shadowy historical figure.”
“Better a shadowy one than a shady one,” Stoner said, returning her touch. “Besides, by the time I was old enough to care about who I was named for, we were in the middle of the Women’s Movement, and everyone knew who she was.”
Hermione let her mind drift to those sweet days, when they were raging feminists together, Stoner the teenager and her middle-aged aunt. They went everywhere, to rallies and conventions and sit-ins and pot-lucks and candlelight vigils, “Take Back the Night” marches, and side trips to protest nuclear power. Washington, Miami Beach, Wall Street, Atlantic City—and Boston, of course, picketing movie theaters and other dens of sexism. The two generations of “libbers,” glorying in the unexpected delight of being women.
It wasn’t an insult then, to be called a “libber” or a “bra burner.” You could say “feminist” without apologizing or explaining what you meant. Even the people who didn’t agree with you knew you stood for change.
In the ’70s, change was needed and change was in the air.
Gwen’s life and marriage, for instanc
e, were perfect examples of why they’d needed a Women’s Movement. Oppressive traditional father, totally self-centered traditional mother, and an untraditional but sociopathic cad for a husband. Went into teaching because it was a safely “feminine” thing to do. And the grandmother, a Southern Lady who cared only about appearances and—the last Hermione had heard—was drinking herself into oblivion because her granddaughter was a lesbian. Liberation material if she’d ever seen it.
She liked Gwen. Always had. And took a secret pride in her part in bringing her and Stoner together. It had required a little manipulating, but Hermione didn’t think she’d incurred a serious karmic stain for throwing a few opportunities in her niece’s path.
Gwen was the quietest of them all. Not out of shyness or introversion, but because it was her nature. Her body was quiet, her mind was quiet, and her heart was open. She was content to let things and people—especially people—unfold in front of her. Every new day was a new life to her, and she let her feelings tell her who to trust and who to avoid.
Sometimes she was wrong. She was usually right.
She was like a radio telescope, Hermione thought, waiting for the signal from outer space that might or might not come.
Stoner, on the other hand, was sonar. Constantly sending out ‘beeps,’ listening for ‘pings’ to return. Gwen might wander into trouble. Stoner plunged into it with her eyes wide open and checking for the exits. Because it was the right thing to do.
Not many people did things these days simply because they were the right things. Hermione was grateful to be related to someone who did.
“Well,” said Marylou as she licked a bit of jelly from her spoon, “I still like my idea.”
Gwen smiled. “Of course you do. You always like your own ideas.”
“What kind of a no-self-confidence jerk would I be if I didn’t?”
“I usually like your ideas, too,” Stoner said. “I just wonder if ‘Guts and Glory’ is the kind of message we want the softball team to send.”
“Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me,” Gwen said. “It sort of makes me think of a plane crash.”
“Personally,” Hermione ventured, “if you don’t think the feminist motif is appropriate, I’d suggest you go with a travel image. Preferably a positive one.”
“Yeah,” Stoner said and slouched down in her chair. “But what?”
Hermione stroked the stem of her wine glass with one finger. It wore her out, having to play catch-up with the conversation. And filling in the gaps in her memories of her day with activities which sounded plausible and couldn’t be checked.
“Confabulating,” Edith Kesselbaum would call it.
It was a symptom of a wide range of mental problems, none of them desirable.
Alzheimer’s, she thought, and shuddered. There was no way she was about to share a diagnosis with Ronald Reagan.
“Aunt Hermione?”
Stoner was looking at her with that troubled expression.
“Sorry. I was wool-gathering.”
“Where were you?”
“Thinking about Ronald Reagan.”
“That does it,” Marylou said, and flipped her napkin onto the table. “I don’t know what you were burning when I came in, but it’s reduced your IQ to double digits.”
“It was Kali,” Stoner said, still looking at her aunt.
“Really?” Gwen asked. She turned to Marylou. “I thought the house smelled like a high school bathroom. Are you sure it wasn’t marijuana?”
“Not unless Cutter’s ship has come in.”
“Does he...?” Stoner began.
“No, he doesn’t ‘do drugs.’ Sometimes he smokes a little, when he can get it. It helps him sleep. His nerves are shot.”
Hermione nodded, glad to be on safer ground. “They used to call it ‘shell-shocked’ back in World War II. Somehow that seemed like a more accurate description than this post-traumatic business. When you heard shell-shocked, you knew it was about the war. It put the blame where it belonged.”
What were they all thinking? Did she sound rational, or as rambling as she felt? There was no person in this house who needed a lecture on the evils of war.
“Well,” she said, dabbing at her mouth again so they wouldn’t see the trembling at the corners of her lips, “I, for one, would like to go to a movie. Anyone care to join me?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen said, “by the time we drive to Greenfield and back it’ll be pretty late.”
“I was thinking of the show over at Pothole. I believe it’s the last one of the season.”
Pothole Pictures had been started by a group who wanted to bring movies back to Shelburne Falls. They’d found space in the old Memorial Hall, and showed old and slightly arty films on Thursday and Friday nights. Sometimes the films were followed by a discussion. It was, the locals agreed, a good way to spend the months between half-past hunters and ten minutes to tourists.
“Stoner?” Gwen asked.
“You go on,” Stoner said. “I’ve seen the movie.”
“Dear God, it’s not Gone With the Wind, is it?” Gwen asked in horror.
“The Maltese Falcon.”
“Everyone’s seen that one at least three times,” Marylou said. “See it again.”
“I don’t want to see it again. I hate seeing movies twice.”
Marylou raised an eyebrow. “Really? I thought you’d seen The Sterile Cuckoo five times.”
“That’s different.”
“She’s never seen The Wizard of Oz,” Hermione offered.
Stoner slouched down further in her chair. “I’ve seen the previews a dozen times. They’re creepy.”
“Now that you mention it,” Gwen said, “The movie’s pretty creepy, too.”
“Personally,” Hermione said, “I’d love to see The Maltese Falcon.”
She knew what Stoner had been thinking by the way she glanced at her. Quickly. Irritated. Guilty. She’d been hoping to get her aunt alone to have a talk.
We know each other so well we can read three emotions in one glance.
She wanted to wink at her in their usual conspiratorial, tell-you-later way. But she couldn’t let herself do it. Until she knew what this... thing… was, she couldn’t risk the intimacy. It would make her fall apart.
“What about it?” she asked them all in general. “I’ll buy the popcorn.”
“That does it for me,” Gwen said. She got up and reached for their dishes. “My turn. I think I’ll just heave them out the back door.”
“You will not,” said Marylou, pushing back her chair to help. “There could be bears out there. We don’t need to turn our back yard into a Yellowstone campground.” She started making a pile of the plates.
“My grandmother would kill you,” Gwen said. “Stacking and carrying.”
“Your grandmother,” Marylou pronounced, “is something out of a Tennessee Williams play.” She pretended to fan herself. “Ah swear ah shall perish, just perish from this heat.”
“Go right ahead,” Gwen said as she pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen. “Don’t start depending on the kindness of strangers. You tried that at Disney World, and look where it got you.”
“The ride I was on there,” Marylou said as she pursued her through the door, “was a whole lot more exciting than the ride you were on.”
So now they were alone in the room together. It was the last thing Hermione wanted. “I think,” she said quickly, “Marylou has a short memory for trauma.”
“Aunt Hermione...”
She avoided Stoner’s eyes. “I recall her complaining heartily about being ‘snatched’, as she so colorfully put it.”
“Aunt Hermione...”
She couldn’t take it any more. The hovering, the questioning, her own guilt. “The only thing wrong with me,” she snapped, “is that you don’t give me a chance to breathe.”
She got up, shrugged into her coat, and left the house.
The glass panes in the door rattled behind her slam.
Did it again, damn it.
Stoner tossed the unread newspaper to the floor in disgust. Finishing the dishes hadn’t helped. Kicking furniture hadn’t helped. Staring at the wall hadn’t helped. And the time was creeping along. Still only 8:15 and they wouldn’t be home until 10 at the earliest.
You just have to keep pushing and pushing until you go too far, don’t you? she berated herself. Never satisfied to wait. Never willing to leave well enough alone. Other people get scared, and they live with it. They don’t make fools of themselves and annoy everyone around them.
You need professional help.
She sat up.
Yes! Call the eminent Dr. Edith Kesselbaum. She helped you before, she can do it again.
Stoner picked up the phone and hoped this wasn’t Edith’s night to work late. She stayed at her office one evening a week, so people who were gainfully employed wouldn’t have to take time off every week for their shrink sessions.
It also fit in quite nicely with Max’s schedule.
Max was Edith’s second husband and a retired FBI agent. Once a week he and his cronies from the “old days” got together to reminisce. Wayne—Edith thought it was the one called Wayne, but it might be Stewart or even Carl—was obsessively unable to let go of a murder he hadn’t solved ten years ago when he was working for the Bureau. Still thinking he had missed a vital clue. Still thinking, if he went over it all often enough it might come to him.