by Lisa Samson
“Are you serious?”
Apart from devouring Rick’s Flannery O’Connor book and smoking on the stoop, I’m not sure Aunt Bel has any interests. In the week since her arrival, she’s gotten more reserved than on the first day, not less. All my conversations with her when I go home at night are one-sided, and Finn’s efforts haven’t yielded much more.
“You said yourself, you don’t know what she even does with her time. Maybe she needs something to occupy herself.”
“Other than smoking and reading Flannery O’Connor.”
“Right. Plus, it might be good for her, you know, being around other people. I get this vibe off her like she’s spent way too much time in her life alone.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “I just don’t have time to babysit her here—there’s too much to do.”
“I’ll do it, Sara.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. It was my idea, so I’ll be responsible.”
“Finn, you know I love you, right?”
“How could you not?” he asks, grinning. Then he sobers, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me softly on the mouth. “I’ve always been crazy about you,” he whispers almost inaudibly in my ear.
Sometimes, for the life of me, I can’t understand why. But that doesn’t mean I won’t take it.
That night at dinner he floats the idea to Aunt Bel, who absorbs it in her ambivalent, noncommittal way. But the next morning she’s dressed and ready for breakfast, walks with us to the studio without our asking, and seems in higher spirits than I’ve seen from her since day one. I’m about as tired after my late night as I ever want to be, but between Diana and me, we have three good designs for the invite.
True to his word, Finn finds little jobs around the office to keep Aunt Bel busy—stacking, folding, cutting—and from time to time gives her impromptu lectures on various things happening all around her. He parks her behind my desk as I go over the work on the fund-raiser invite, going on at length about vector art and the new platemaking process for letterpress printing. “Nobody uses lead type anymore, not for serious work. We send out the files and have polymer plates made.” He digs some flimsy old ink-stained polymers out of the drawer and shows them off. Bel makes appreciative sounds, as she always does during Finn’s instructional interludes.
Not that Finn is in her age range or anything, but there’s an inherent sensuality about my aunt. It basically creeps me out thinking about that, but that doesn’t change things. Some women just can’t help it. They’ve got so much sexual energy, it just bleeds out of them whether they want it to or not.
I am not one of those women.
In thirty minutes I leave for a meeting with Holly to garner her approval of the invitation design. I’m nervous. I may not have a lot of sexual energy oozing out of me, but nervous energy? If you could hook up a backhoe to me right now, I’d dig you a pit the size of Kazakhstan.
After garnering a reaction from Holly only someone like Nelson Mandela deserves and a tour of her husband’s office as well as lunch at the Nautilus Diner to celebrate the direction of the project, I find Finn and Aunt Bel standing over Huey’s shoulder at the Vandercook. At the counter, Diana motions me to be quiet and listen, much as she would if she were observing wildlife and didn’t want to spook them.
“Just wait,” she says.
Finn is narrating Huey’s every move like a color commentator, as if he expects my aunt to jump in and assist once she’s heard enough. Judging by Huey’s bristly, overprecise movements, I can tell he’s about reached his limit. Sure enough, he starts offering his own counter-narration in between Finn’s pauses, explaining what he’s really doing on the press and how catastrophic it would be if anyone were to take Finn’s explanations at face value.
“They’re in top form today,” Diana says, crossing her legs on her stool.
“Nice pumps,” I say, pointing to black vintage kitten heel shoes.
“Thanks. So while you were gone, Finn announced he was going to get a start on the Iron Maiden this afternoon.”
At Diana’s elbow I see the Flannery O’Connor book. “What’s this?”
“Bel brought it in. She wanted me to read one of the stories. Because of these,” she says, lifting her arms to indicate her shoulder-to-wrist tats.
Noticing my return, Huey breaks off and comes to see whether the designs met with approval. I give him the thumbs-up. “She picked one and loves it. Now we need to knock them out.”
“I’m ready whenever you are. Let’s rock and roll.”
“I’m all set up,” Huey informs me the next afternoon. “You ready to print?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
Huey smiles and we head out to the print floor.
There’s nothing like the whir of the Vandercook, the back and forth ker-clunk, ker-clunk of its cylinder, rolling forward to make the print, re-inking the plate as it travels back. Huey walks the cylinder forward, his hand on the crank, pulling the prints one at a time and handing them to Aunt Bel, who places them gingerly on the drying rack. The sound of progress, the smell of the ink, the whole process is all rather intoxicating, and wonderfully manual. The ink and paper, though fine to begin with, seem somehow ennobled by the energy of a human being powering the process. The invitations are invitations, yes, but they are also now a form of art.
All afternoon the work continues, and as Huey works the press, Finn turns his attention to the Iron Maiden. He drags a chair alongside, then dons headphones so he can watch his instructional videos yet again. I check on him whenever I take a break, and by the time the invites are done, he has set out several plastic tubs of water and is soaking some test parts to remove the rust via electrolysis. He’s bought a battery charger especially for this. I can’t watch.
Despite the influx of work, I stick to keeping our weekly staff meetings, a habit I carved out early on that gives me a chance to kick new ideas around and keep a finger on the shop’s pulse. This time of year we’re always brainstorming ideas for the retail business. One of our major retailers, the Brooklyn-based lifestyle store Katz Lime, wants a whole new greeting card line, something exclusive to them and edgy.
“You don’t want me at this,” Bel says, groping at the fabric of her skirt.
“Everybody’s sitting in. You’ll have fun.”
We gather around the conference table, laying out notebooks and coffee cups and tablet computers. Finn brings a fresh carafe of coffee and opens a box of pastries fetched this morning from the bakery.
“All right,” I say, reaching for a cream cheese danish. “Let’s hear something edgy.”
Crickets.
It’s the same thing that happens if, out of the blue, you say, “Tell me something funny.” Most people when they’re put on the spot can’t deliver.
We go around the table, starting with Finn, who throws out a few ideas without finishing any of them. Halfway in, he stops and says, “No, that’s crap.” Then he launches into a new one, only to pull up again.
“What about you, Bel?” Diana asks, then bites into an apricot macadamia muffin.
“I don’t even know what ‘edgy’ means.”
“Diana?” I ask.
The girl has a rockabilly thing she’s always trying to channel into the product. I’m open to her vibe, but between us we’ve never figured out how to make it work tastefully. Judging from her start, we’re not going to manage that today either.
“Think roller girls,” she says. “But absolutely covered in blood—”
Finn cups his hands around his mouth: “Next.”
Diana throws one of her Altoids at him.
“Okay, here’s mine,” Huey says. “Listen up.” He pauses over the legal pad where he’s scribbled his ideas down, awaiting our full attention. “Here it is: first lines of famous books, with sarcastic comebacks inside. For example, on the front of the card, you see a bonnet and a big Victorian dress, and underneath is the opening line of Middlemarch. It says—” He consults the
pad again. “ ‘Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.’ Then you open the card and it says, ‘What’s your excuse?’ ”
“So the comeback is aimed at the reader, not the quote?” Diana asks.
“Yeah, exactly. So, like, this is the card you give the friend who doesn’t know how to dress herself. It’s a trash-talking card.”
“I like that.” Sassy.
“Here’s another one. First line on the cover comes from Anna Karenina: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ You open it up, and it says, ‘Thanks for keeping us so unique.’ ”
“That one needs work,” I say.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“She’s right,” Finn says. “What’s the card for? You give it to your parents for making your life miserable?”
I flap my hands in the air. “Oh, wait, I’ve got it. This is the card you give your soon-to-be sister-in-law so she knows what she’s getting into. It says, ‘Welcome to the family.’ ”
“No, no,” Diana says. “How about: ‘Guess which one we are?’ You know, you’re marrying into it, and you don’t know the dynamic. You get this sarcastic card from your fiancé’s sister and you’re like, Okaaaay, I’m going with unhappy.”
“But at least they have a sense of humor,” I say.
Huey goes back to the legal pad. “Next one. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ I don’t have anything for inside that one, but I was thinking, you know, you give it to your friend who’s just announced her engagement to a guy you don’t like.”
“ ‘His fortune better be more than good. Just sayin,’ ” Finn says.
“Ha, ha, I like that.”
Diana shakes her head. “How about, it’s the card you give the hot guy who just moved into the apartment building. The line is: ‘Welcome to the neighborhood.’ ”
Aunt Bel sits across from me with a baffled look. We might as well be speaking Swahili as far as she’s concerned. “I don’t get it,” she says. “These sound kind of … mean.”
“That’s the idea,” Huey replies. “They gotta have some attitude. That’s the humor. People think of these classics of literature as kind of stuffy and sacrosanct. So you make ’em catty and ill-tempered, and people love it.”
“But why would you buy something like that? I wouldn’t give somebody a card to tell them I thought they were choosing the wrong husband, or to warn her not to marry into the family. Would you?”
“It’s meant to be funny. Like I said, it’s trash talk. Riffing on lines from literature makes it snobby trash talk, which is pitching right across the plate for our demographic—right, Sara?”
“Pretty much,” I say.
“Maybe I just don’t understand. Could you explain why it’s funny?”
Huey starts chuckling. “Bel, baby, explaining a joke is like coming home drunk at three in the morning with another woman’s lipstick on your cheek. Nothing you say is gonna be good enough. Trust me, this is good stuff.”
As Huey speaks, I notice Finn—who’s sitting right next to Aunt Bel—start to wriggle with discomfort, puckering his lips in a way I recognize. He thinks we’re patronizing her and doesn’t like it. The next words out of his mouth are going to be in her defense.
“Maybe Bel has a point,” he says.
I cut him off. “We need to refine the wording, but I think the idea itself is solid. I don’t know how big the market for sarcastic greeting cards actually is, but I think they’ll do fine as letterpress pieces—and this is the kind of concept that’ll get us play on the blogs. I can see us posting photos of these, closed, then open. We’ll be reblogged, reposted, repinned, retweeted, you name it. This is good stuff, Huey.”
“Thanks,” he says. “Got a few more. Here’s Fahrenheit 451: ‘It was a pleasure to burn.’ Open it up and—” He drops his voice into the Barry White register. “ ‘Let’s do it again sometime, baby.’ ”
“Yeah,” Diana says.
“Are you adjusting all right, Aunt Bel?” I ask.
She’s been at the studio every day for a couple of weeks, watching and learning, helping out where she can. In that time, I have picked up on her method and come to understand her a bit better. Aunt Bel focuses on one person at a time, does what she can to win them over, then—once she feels things are stable enough—moves on. That first day with me, her attention was total. Now she remains polite but distant. She attached herself to Finn next, then Diana, and finally put some time into winning Huey over.
“You seem like you’ve made some friends,” I add, realizing I sound like the school counselor talking to the troubled new kid.
“It’s relaxing here,” she says.
“You think so? It can get pretty stressful for me sometimes.”
“Everything is clear, though. The steps to go through, the deadlines. Once you know what to do, you can tune things out.”
“You mean turn them out? You can get a lot done.”
“No, tune them out. Forget they exist. I like that, Sara. Very much. You can’t do that with people.”
“Finn thinks you should learn how to pull prints. He wants to start you on the Sigwalt, which is nice and straightforward. I’m not sure, but he thinks you’re ready.”
She shrugs, not seeming to care one way or the other.
“You don’t have to,” I tell her. It’s painfully obvious she could take or leave this stuff. “But it’s a good skill to have. I’d rather see you doing that than getting dragged into Iron Maiden duty.”
The Maiden is now partially disassembled, the big flywheel flat on the ground taking up twice the space as before, the other pieces arranged in various heaps, the logic of their division known only to Finn. While the bulk of the pieces still need to be de-rusted, he has moved on to testing paint on the handful of restored parts, collecting votes on bright red versus a dark blackish green.
“You’re very blessed to have this place. I am happy for you, Sara. It’s not at all what I imagined, but I am happy for you.”
“Well, thanks.” I think?
While she heads off to the Sigwalt, where Finn stands waiting with a spare apron, I catch Diana’s eye and beckon her over.
“What do you think about my aunt? Is she right in the head?”
“I think she’s kind of amazing,” Diana says. “I wish she was my aunt instead.”
If I had more time, I would chew on that thought, but rebranding Eric Ringwald’s website hasn’t come as easily as the concept for the invitation. I’ve had to figure out not just his operation but the various nonprofits he regularly assists, haunted by Holly’s desire to grab people’s hearts—which is much easier to say than to translate into good design. Picture a cartoon hand closing around a cartoon heart. It conveys … nothing. Yet every sketch I make, every idea I kick around amounts to little more than that.
It’s four in the afternoon. I have been pushing myself since lunch and have nothing to show for it. Holly calls—she touches base every few days—and of course she’s wondering if I have anything for her to see. I’m in the middle of making excuses when I hear a scream from over the cubicle wall.
“Holly, I’ve gotta go.”
The voice was Diana’s, but she’s not the one who’s hurt. She’s standing with her back slightly arched, hands over her mouth. I follow her line of sight to a huddle of bodies, Huey and Finn bending over a crumpled Aunt Bel, helping her rise to her feet. I rush over, my chest pounding. Her face twists in pain as she cradles her left hand.
“Give her space,” Finn is saying.
Huey’s arm supports her. “Come on, Bel, lemme take a look.”
“What happened?” I say, but it comes out as a shriek. Finn stares at me, pale and petrified.
“It’s all right,” Huey keeps saying, in a tone that suggests anything but. Aunt Bel turns slightly toward me, and I can see the p
roblem. Her left pinkie finger hangs at the wrong angle in relation to her hand.
I slam my hand over my mouth, willing myself not to throw up.
8.
A Holy Fool
In the clinic’s crowded waiting room, we hem Aunt Bel in on either side, shielding her from feverish, germ-clouded kids, a potbellied man in a neck brace, and a grandmother whose hacking cough is so loud I can visualize the inside of her throat and let me tell you, it should belong in a commercial for drain cleaner. They should post a warning on the wall: If you weren’t sick before, you will be now. Just across from us, a guy on crutches flips through a wrinkled auto magazine with the ease of a regular patient, his shoeless foot cocked to knee-level, the dingy white sock tugged forward on his foot into a little point.
“Maybe it’s not broken,” Finn says. He’s been clutching at this hope ever since Huey put it into his head. “They’ll just have to pop it into joint like Huey said. It’s ridiculous how long it’s taking. Are you sure you don’t remember how you did it?”
Aunt Bel shrugs, keeping her hand aloft. “It happened so fast.”
“I’m so sorry, Bel,” he says.
I don’t like waiting rooms. So much despair, so much fear and uncertainty has leached like smoke into the upholstery. You can’t be in such a place without feeling it. I never can. The senseless waiting. The irrational first-come, first-serve order, ignoring each patient’s level of need in favor of something as random as mere chronology. The clinic makes me feel insecure. Anything could go wrong here. I just want to leave.
“What’s taking them so long?” I say.
Finn chuckles. “They don’t call it the waiting room for nothing.”
It’s your fault we’re even here, I think. If he hadn’t become so enamored of my aunt, she’d be home getting cancer on the stoop.
When the nurse finally calls, I accompany Aunt Bel through the inner door, leaving Finn and yet another of his apologies hanging in the air.
“He shouldn’t blame himself,” Aunt Bel murmurs.