Tuesday, November 3, 2020

On the Tuesday four days before she stepped into her own, Wilhelmina woke in her bed in her room at the top of the aunts' house in Pennsylvania.

She woke from a confused dream about swimming in a lake, with the moon casting a flat, cold light onto the water. On the shore was a waiting wolf. And then something scraped against her skin, something with hard, sharp claws. Wilhelmina woke up gasping.

In the air above her bed, she thought she saw dancing colors. Floating bits of paper? Her bleary morning eyes couldn't figure it out, so she groped for her glasses. When she shoved them on, the sun-sequined leaves of the sycamore outside her window came into focus. Propping herself on one elbow, she saw the blue stones on the windowsill. Next, Frankie's knitted blanket drew her eyes, black birds flying across a blue sky.

Wilhelmina remembered what day it was, and why she was here. With a sense of sliding panic, she remembered that before this day ended, she would be back in Massachusetts again. On the bedside bookshelf, her phone buzzed. When she saw Julie's name, she braced herself for Julie's praise. What a hero Wilhelmina was. How hopeful we should all be.

Instead, Julie wrote: Hey, elephant. Bee told me about the crow that's "keeping" my necklace. Of course he thinks that's a deep thought, but let's face it, my necklace is gone. OMG! So sad! And I'm jealous too! You guys still have your necklaces!

Wilhelmina's insides were filling up with something not very kind, in response to Julie believing she was entitled to jealousy. She imagined a little plumber inside her, installing a faucet up near her collarbone, then leaving it to run, a steady trickle of bitterness that seeped down past her heart and her lungs and pooled around her uterus and fallopian tubes, her kidneys and liver, rising up past her stomach. When it got to her throat, maybe she would choke on it.

Her phone buzzed again. Thanks for telling us, wrote Julie. I'm glad you were there to see what happened

Wilhelmina muted all notifications from Julie and Bee. Her phone stopped buzzing.

She took out her nightguard and put on her necklace, chasing away all thoughts about why she was putting it on, or whether she should put it on. She went downstairs, wearing Frankie's blanket as a cape over her pajamas and holding a small handful of painkillers. She was almost afraid to start stretching. Her neck, chest, shoulders, and jaw felt immovable, like a marble bust of herself.

She smelled coffee, but she couldn't find her aunts. In the kitchen, beams of sunlight illuminated floating dust that made Wilhelmina sneeze.

Then she heard Aunt Margaret's voice, cheerful and bright, and another voice answering. She followed the noise to a front window, where a collage of trees around the house and along the road instantly dazzled her: the oaks and birches, the beeches, one ginkgo, and especially the maples—the sugar and red maples! Wilhelmina almost couldn't believe the assault of red, gold, pink, orange, yellow, green, brown. Needing to be closer, she opened the front door and stepped onto the porch in her socks and blanket cape, squealing a little as the cold cut through her sock bottoms to her feet.

"Is that Wilhelmina?" called a voice from the road.

Aunt Margaret was at the driveway's end with a rake in her hands, wearing her pale green winter coat with the political buttons, standing beside a massive pile of crimson leaves. Across the road at a respectful pandemic distance stood the aunts' longtime neighbor Mrs. Watchulonis, who lived ten minutes' walk away.

"Hi, Mrs. Watchulonis," said Wilhelmina, startled by the tears that sprang to her eyes. Mrs. Watchulonis was younger than the aunts, yet she was smaller and more white-haired than Wilhelmina remembered her. "Are you taking your morning walk?"

"Every day, rain or shine!" said Mrs. Watchulonis. "Imagine my surprise to find your aunt Margie raking leaves!"

Wilhelmina was wondering about that, actually. Should a person who'd just had eye surgery be engaging in an activity that stirred up infinitesimal pieces of leaf dander? "Did your eye doctor say anything about raking leaves, Aunt Margaret?" she said.

"Don't you worry, Wilhelmina," said Aunt Margaret. "I've been assured that my eye patch is up for the job."

Wilhelmina didn't want to know what that meant. Also, she was cold. "Good to see you, Mrs. Watchulonis," she said.

"You too, Wilhelmina," said Mrs. Watchulonis. "You've gotten so grown-up. I can hardly believe it. And what a wonderful thing, for you to drive your aunts home so they can vote."

Back inside, Wilhelmina wandered, not certain what she was looking for. In a kitchen cupboard, she found some breakfast cereal that wasn't as stale as she thought it should be, given that it had been untouched for—what was it now? Three, three and a half months? The aunts had held out together for most of the spring and summer, a little overwhelmed by the challenge of caring for a giant old house by themselves in a pandemic. They'd managed. Aunt Margaret was a gardener—not like Frankie, but she'd kept a few things growing, and Esther wasn't bad at house upkeep, as long as she could go slow. Neighbors helped. They'd managed—until a stretch in late July, when Aunt Margaret had sprained an ankle, and Esther had had a bad patch with her arthritis. Suddenly, they hadn't been able to take care of each other. Theo and Cleo had convinced them to come to Massachusetts for a bit.

What a strange house this was for Wilhelmina now, dusty and cold, empty, in the wrong season, and with the wrong views outside the window. But it smelled right. It felt the same. When Wilhelmina turned to look at the kitchen table, she could almost see herself there, writing a letter to Bee, three blue stones above the page.

She sat at that table now with her cereal, eating it in stages while beginning the process of trying to stretch the pain out of her neck. She took her first painkiller and poured herself some coffee. Then she closed her eyes and breathed, listening, waiting for some indicator of Esther's location.

Esther was in the carriage house.

Bemused about why she thought she knew that, Wilhelmina found some old garden shoes of Aunt Margaret's. Still wearing her blanket cape and carrying her coffee, she went outside.

Aunt Margaret's and Esther's consulting office had always seemed a little odd to Wilhelmina—or anyway, odd for a consulting office. Not odd as a space for the aunts. It did have office-ish things like a desk with a computer on it, a printer, a filing cabinet. But those items were tucked away in a corner near the entrance, while the centermost focus of the room had more the air of a well-lit kitchen with very high ceilings.

Or a chemistry lab,Wilhelmina thought now as she entered the sunny space and found Esther seated on a tall chair at the counter in the room's middle. The counter reminded Wilhelmina of the islands in the kitchens of rich people. Bee's kitchen in his house before his father had died had contained an island where his father had liked to stand, glass-eyed and bitingly jovial, making waffles and drinking scotch at random times of day.

The carriage house counter was a square. Each side had a different purpose. One side contained a deep, porcelain sink with a long, swan-necked faucet. One contained a small, glass stovetop with two electric burners, and cabinets underneath. One, the one at which Esther sat, was like a high tabletop for working. The last side was crowded with gigantic potted plants—all looking surprisingly alive and green to Wilhelmina's eye—with bookshelves underneath. The plant and bookshelf side faced a small area with a Persian rug, a rust-brown love seat, and a pair of upholstered navy armchairs around a glass coffee table. A woodstove stood in a nearby corner. The windows were many, and cast long blocks of golden light onto the scene. The few framed pictures on the walls were black-and-white photographs of forests, songbirds, and owls.

"Good morning, Wilhelmina," said Esther, glancing up with a small smile as Wilhelmina entered. Esther was wearing forest-green slacks and a sweater in a paler green, and her locs were piled up on top of her head, sticking out like branches; she looked like a forest.

"Good morning," said Wilhelmina.

"That blanket," Esther said, gesturing at Wilhelmina with a vague hand. Esther was doing something at the counter with candles, a bowl, pencil, and paper. She seemed distracted.

"Yes?"

"I think it's a sort of a…something for you," said Esther.

"Yes?" said Wilhelmina, with an edge of impatience.

"Not a shield, exactly," said Esther. "Not a comfort. But something in between. Maybe a kind of shelter. You should take it with you when we go."

Wilhelmina brought her cup to her face, the sleeves of her blanket cape rising as she lifted her hands. She remembered the robes of the priest at the funeral she'd gone to with Frankie so long ago, the funeral for Mrs. Mancusi, Frankie's empress. The priest had raised a round white disc of bread into the air and an altar boy had rung a soft, sweet bell. The priest's robes had hung from his hands the way Frankie's blanket was hanging from Wilhelmina's hands now, and she hadn't understood what any of it had had to do with Mrs. Mancusi. But when the bell had rung, she'd felt the whole room of people around her, united in their wish to pay tribute to the woman who had died.

Carefully, Wilhelmina raised her coffee mug into the air, for Frankie.

"I take it back," said Esther, in a different voice, focused and certain. "That blanket is your battle armor."

Wilhelmina was tired of obscure pronouncements. "What are you doing, Esther?" she asked, lowering her coffee cup.

"Oh," said Esther, who was jotting something down on a small slip of paper. "I guess it's a sort of…strengthening." Esther held the piece of paper to the candle flickering on the counter before her. When a flame began to curl the paper's edges, she placed the burning page into a shallow ceramic bowl that showed evidence of other burnt paper. Then she picked up her pencil again.

"You know how that man's been priming his followers?" said Esther. "To assume our side's cheating? So, if votes are taking a while to be counted, and the count is turning against him—like when that worm of his was elected governor in Florida—he starts shouting about forged votes? Votes appearing out of nowhere? And his people believe him? They can't—or won't—see what game he's playing?"

"Yes," said Wilhelmina, her throat suddenly dry.

"Well," said Esther. "It'll take a while for the votes in this election to be counted. I expect a lot of lies, from a lot of people. A lot of harmful noise. A lot of people are going to be under pressure to do wrong. A lot of people's integrity is about to be tested, Wilhelmina."

Esther jotted something down on another slip of paper. Then she held it up to the flame. "So I'm sending out a sort of prayer," she said. "To give courage to the people who'll need it."

Thoughts were stumbling over each other inside Wilhelmina's mind—hot, frustrated thoughts. Candles? Prayers? Had Esther subjected her consulting clients to this? Write your investment goals on this paper and then we'll burn them together? What use was it?

There was nothing she could say that wasn't sharp and mean. She spun around and went outside.

Frankie had had a number of flower beds, an herb garden, and a few berry bushes, some of which—the lilies of the valley and the raspberries in particular—had repeatedly attempted to take over the yard. And then, bigger than all the others combined, she'd had her vegetable garden. Every summer day, Wilhelmina could find Frankie kneeling in there, her hands in the dirt.

Her blanket snagging on broken stalks, Wilhelmina walked straight into the vegetable garden. She followed the paths between rows of dead-looking plants to the middle, where a tangle of dusty vines announced that tomato season was long over. She crouched, running her fingers along the vines and bringing them to her nose, hoping for that distinctive tomato-vine smell that had used to be synonymous with summer for Wilhelmina. She remembered pulling Julie into this garden once, a hand on her wrist, to share the tomato vine smell.

"Yeah, I know what tomato vines smell like," Julie had said, rolling her eyes at her friend, but letting herself be towed down the rows of Frankie's vegetables. It hadn't been the smell, really, that Wilhelmina had wanted to share; it had been something about herself.

"If you had to name what summer smells like," Wilhelmina had asked her, not sure how to explain, "what would you say?"

"I don't know about summer," said Julie, thoughtful. "Maybe that smell when you put a sparkler in water. But fall is my favorite season. Fall smells like fires in our fireplace." Next she'd put her fingers to the vines, then raised them to her nose. She'd smiled, delighted, and Wilhelmina had been happy.

Now Wilhelmina was looking for something in this garden. What? A door? On the other side of which she would find—what? A place where everything hurt less?

What she did find was Frankie's old gardening bench. One of Esther's many cousins had made it, oh, eons ago—Wilhelmina could remember that cousin, she thought it had been Ruben, hammering and sanding the little bench and offering it to Frankie with such shy kindness in his face. Frankie had used that bench always. And now here it was, planted in the garden in a spot between the tomatoes and the beans. Esther and Aunt Margaret had made a shrine of it. It was a kneeling bench, which meant it had a slanted surface, so the aunts hadn't tried to rest anything atop it. But they'd turned the space underneath into a little bird sanctuary with rows of wooden and ceramic birds, much like the birds the aunts had placed on the windowsill at home, but smaller. There was no snow goose with a bobbing head in this collection, but there were a lot of glazed ceramic owls. A veritable parliament of owls, and a few songbirds Wilhelmina couldn't identify, and at the bench's far right end, a handful of tiny black molded plastic birds that spilled out from under the bench and spread across the dirt beyond, as if they came and went as they pleased. Their heads were sleek, and their wings were sharp. Some of their beaks were open, as if cawing. They were crows. Wilhelmina supposed that the birds on her blanket cape were probably also crows.

A crack did open then, but Wilhelmina pushed it closed again. Esther and Aunt Margaret were wrong. There weren't any doors to anything in Frankie's garden, and Wilhelmina didn't want to think about crows.

"Well, Wilhelmina," said Aunt Margaret, coming around the corner of the house with her rake. "Shall we vote?"

Wilhelmina changed into the only clothes she'd brought: a soft, loose, gray-brown sweater dress and brown leggings she'd chosen because they made her feel like a bear who at any moment was allowed to call it and go into hibernation.

Then she stretched again for a few minutes, or tried to. Sometimes Wilhelmina imagined a surgeon opening up her skin and reaching under her fascia, then easing her tight cords of muscle flat with warm, gentle fingers. Then applying some sort of ointment that would keep them soft and supple indefinitely, then closing her up again with no pain.

In the car, as Wilhelmina fastened her seat belt around her red coat, Aunt Margaret reached forward from the back, something golden and sparkly in her hand.

"This is for you, dear," she said.

Wilhelmina accepted the tiny item and inspected it, surprised, then completely unsurprised, to see an owl staring back at her. It had a round little body and big, taloned feet; steady eyes made of deep red stones; and a facial expression of apoplectic rage mixed with utter disdain.

"It's an ear cuff," said Aunt Margaret.

Wilhelmina saw then that the owl was standing on a thick, golden branch that curved almost into a circle. "Why are you giving me an ear cuff?"

"It was Frankie's," said Aunt Margaret. "I found it in my jewelry box this morning and knew she'd want you to have it."

With some ambivalence, Wilhelmina considered the owl, wondering if a person could have an owl saturation point. The truth was, she'd reached her bird limit generally. She wanted to say to the universe, I get it. Some message about birds. Now back off, okay? But at least this bird looked pissed off, and it wasn't a crow. It wasn't an elephant either.

Carefully, using the rearview mirror, she slid the little owl around the cartilage of her left ear. Its deep red eyes worked well with her glasses. It sat there, nicely framed by wispy bits of her dark hair, looking nettled and ferocious.

"The stones that make its eyes are garnets," said Aunt Margaret. "Garnets are vessels for abundant love."

The drive to the fire hall was both familiar and unfamiliar to Wilhelmina, because of the transformation of the trees. When they passed the lake where Wilhelmina had used to swim to the blue stones, she was startled by the birch trees surrounding it. Somehow she'd failed to notice all those birches, until now, when their leaves glowed like pale yellow suns.

"Just look at that," said Aunt Margaret dreamily.

"Oh my," said Esther, who was not beholding the birch trees. Esther was staring straight ahead, at a row of cars parked on the grass at the edge of the road. "That can't be the parking for the voting, can it? This far from the fire hall?"

Then a line of people came into view, standing in the grass on the side of the road opposite the cars. The line seemed to stretch on forever. The fire hall was nowhere in sight.

Coming abreast of the people, Wilhelmina stopped the car.

"Wilhelmina?" said Aunt Margaret. "You can't park in the middle of the road."

"She wants us to get in line," said Esther, releasing her seat belt and pulling her mask up. "Vámonos, Margeleh."

Wilhelmina was already jumping out and running around to the trunk, where the camping chairs were stored. "You two get in line while I investigate," she said. "Maybe they have a shorter line for senior citizens."

A convoy of traffic was approaching from the opposite direction, horns honking. Wilhelmina and the aunts crossed the road into the grass, joining the end of the line, trying to get out of the way. Three pickup trucks passed in succession, honking, flying MAGA and Blue Lives Matter flags. An armored truck followed them, a machine gun attached to its roof. A banner hung below the gun. It said, Come and Take It.

Wilhelmina's car was still blocking the road. She helped the aunts open their camp chairs, then ran to it and jumped back in.

For a few minutes after that, Wilhelmina was alone, inching along through a scene that would've been incomprehensible a year ago: dozens of people—hundreds?—lined up at the edge of a rural road, most of them wearing masks on their faces, most spread out six-ish feet apart. With the windows closed and the sounds outside muted, Wilhelmina's progress had the feeling of a slow, weird, amusement park ride with an unidentifiable theme.

Eventually, she reached the fire hall, tall and gray-shingled, with giant, fire-truck-sized doors. She noticed that the voting line seemed to split into three or four branches at the hall, and that the parking stretched on past the hall in the other direction. Wilhelmina kept driving.

When she got to the last parked car, she pulled over, tucking her car into place. Then, climbing out onto the verge, she took a minute to herself. Wilhelmina hadn't prepared for this. She'd known about the possibility of lines, but not this—not a wait of, what, hours? With two women, one of them Black, in chilly weather, in a place where the vast majority of people were white and some people thought it was okay to drive by with MAGA signs and guns. Wilhelmina's head, neck, and shoulders had gone rigid, like a tightly clenched claw.

The car she'd parked in front of had two MAGA stickers on its front bumper. With a memory that felt more than a few days old, Wilhelmina reached into the deep front pocket of her coat. She pulled out the sheet of stickers that her fingers had known they would find there, the stickers Julie's little sister, Tina, had given her on Halloween. Then, on her own back bumper, directly facing each MAGA sticker, she affixed two Spells for Goblin Banishment.

As she straightened, she noticed someone in her peripheral vision walking toward her from the direction of the fire hall. The person was still a good distance away, but when he saw her, he stopped in his tracks. Then he began moving faster. His voice was sharp and incredulous. "Wilhelmina?"

Wilhelmina looked up into the dumbfounded face of James Fang.

"What are you doing here?" cried James.

"What are you doing here?" cried Wilhelmina.

"I'm going for a walk!"

"All the way from Massachusetts?" cried Wilhelmina.

"My grandparents are here!" he said, gesturing back toward the fire hall. "I drove them here to vote!"

"I drove my aunts!" said Wilhelmina.

"This is unbelievable," said James. A mask hung from one of his ears, but he wasn't wearing it. Quick, astonished smiles kept illuminating his face, one bursting in after the other. He wore his puffy sky-blue coat with the zipper open. "Your family's from here?"

"My dad's aunts," she said. "They moved in with us because of the pandemic. They didn't get their ballots in time."

"Same," said James. "My mom's parents. I just can't believe this."

"I can't believe it either," said Wilhelmina weakly.

The sound of honking broke into their conversation. Wilhelmina, instantly alarmed, motioned for James to step closer to her, out of the road. "Come here with me," she said. "They're horrible."

It was a different convoy of pickup trucks, though the flags were similar. This time, the last truck in line was flying a Confederate flag. When Wilhelmina saw it coming, she almost cried out; she didn't want James to see it. She tried to get between him and it, but she was stuck in the place between the two cars, and anyway, there was no way to hide such an ugly thing. It passed in a spray of gravel, very close, very loud. Esther, she thought. Julie.

"Hey," said James, whose mouth had grown grim. "Are you okay?"

"Of course I'm okay," she said. "Are you?"

"Yeah."

They studied each other's faces. Wilhelmina didn't know what it was like to be a person whose appearance was noticeably mixed race on a Pennsylvania roadside where people made a special point of flying racist flags on their trucks, but what she saw, as James watched her with his head tilted, was that his eyes were soft with concern.

"I think you're a kind person," said Wilhelmina.

His eyes widened, as if she'd surprised him. "You're a magic person," he said.

"I'm not," she said automatically.

"Then how come I'm not as surprised as I should be to find you here?"

Wilhelmina was having a hard time keeping all of her doors closed. Little cracks were opening everywhere, letting in light.

"Listen," she said. "I kind of want to check on my aunts. And, like, see if there's a line for senior citizens."

"Good idea," he said, pulling up his mask. "I should do that too."

Outside the fire hall,they found a masked woman wearing an official-looking vest that said Ask Me Questions. The woman was pink and plump and extremely apologetic. Every time she said something unaccommodating, she reached back and grabbed her thin ponytail anxiously.

"There is a separate line for senior citizens and disabled people, yes," she said, tugging on her ponytail, "but I'm afraid it's also rather long at the moment. Please ask your family members to wait in the main line. Anytime the senior citizen and disabled line gets low, one of us walks the main line collecting people."

"Okay," said Wilhelmina. "Thank you."

The woman looked like she was trying to pull her head off her body by her hair. "We'll come get you as soon as we can!" she said.

Leaving the fire hall, James and Wilhelmina made their way along the lines of people. When they reached a small, masked woman who was watching the two of them with kind, curious eyes, James shot Wilhelmina an apologetic, see you soon sort of expression over his mask and broke off to join the woman. She had long, dark hair wound around her head in a braid. Wilhelmina supposed she must be the mother of James's mother, Alfie, the tall and graceful proprietor of the doughnut shop. Who'd grown up here? Wilhelmina had never wondered where Alfie of Alfie Fang's had grown up, but it nevertheless wrenched her sense of things sideways to try to picture Alfie young, and growing up here. A tall man whose hair was a wispy ring of white stood beside James's grandmother.

"Wilhelmina?" called Aunt Margaret, as Wilhelmina drifted along the line toward her aunts. Snapping to attention, she found them sitting together side by side, watching her with matching high-eyebrowed expressions that put her instantly on guard.

"Wilhelmina," said Aunt Margaret as she approached. "Who was that dishy young man we saw you walking with?"

"Oh my god," said Wilhelmina.

"Margeleh," said Esther firmly. "No one says ‘dishy' anymore. They say ‘fine,' or ‘thirst trap,' or ‘side of sauce.'?"

"Oh my god!" said Wilhelmina, whose mind was now presenting her with the image of the wet, shirtless James of her dreams. "No one says ‘side of sauce'! Where did you even hear that?"

"Sauce goes in a dish," said Aunt Margaret, "rendering it dishy. Who is he, Wilhelmina? You didn't seem like strangers."

Wilhelmina was pretty sure her face was bright pink. "He's from my class at school," she said. "He drove his grandparents here to vote today, just like I drove you."

Aunt Margaret's eye widened dramatically. "What an extraordinary coincidence!" she said. "Who are his grandparents?"

"I don't know," said Wilhelmina. "His family owns Alfie Fang's."

"The doughnut shop?" said Aunt Margaret. "This is astonishing. And his grandparents live here, but they're staying in Massachusetts?"

"We need to meet them," said Esther. "Friends from home!"

"They should be in our bubble!"

"Okay, calm down," said Wilhelmina. "The line is moving. Let's move the chairs up, okay?"

"Okay," said Aunt Margaret, "but then you need to go tell that nice young man that we want to meet his grandparents."

What followed was an awkward but surprisingly sweet set of introductions. First Wilhelmina moved ahead in line and met James's grandparents, the Cognettis. They were both very kind, as kind as two people can be when meeting someone at a distance while wearing masks, with a soft glow of joy in their faces every time they looked at James. His grandmother Rose, something about her manner, her straight shoulders and high chin, reminded Wilhelmina strongly of Alfie, even though Rose was much shorter. James's grandfather Rudy reminded Wilhelmina obscurely of someone she couldn't place. His name was familiar. Hadn't the aunts known someone named Rudy, years ago? She would have to ask them. His voice, a pleasant rumble, tickled something in her mind. She could hear someone with that voice talking to Frankie, but not in a memory, exactly. It felt like a memory from a dream.

Next, Wilhelmina brought James to meet the aunts.

"They may say something mortifying," she warned him as they walked.

"What kind of mortifying?" said James.

"They think you're dishy."

James snorted, then threw his head back and laughed. It was a wonderful laugh, warm and high-pitched, familiar, as if maybe it had been part of the ambience at school for the last couple years, and she'd never quite registered it.

As it turned out, the aunts didn't embarrass Wilhelmina. They made no comment on James's dishiness and said only kind and gracious things—about his family's doughnuts, his consideration in driving his grandparents all this way, the remarkable parallels between his family's situation and their own. Nonetheless, Wilhelmina was relieved when it was over. She knew Esther and Aunt Margaret well enough to imagine the conversation they were storing up to have later.

Next, the elderly relations all assembled at a midpoint while James and Wilhelmina held their places in line. Wilhelmina observed them pulling out phones and shouting numbers at each other across the six-foot gap. The next time James and Wilhelmina joined each other, they mostly just snorted and giggled for a while.

"My grandparents can't actually use their phones," said James. "My grandpa holds his like it's a baby he's afraid of dropping."

"My aunts aren't actually so bad," said Wilhelmina. "Which is funny, because I think they're older than your grandparents are. Don't you think so?"

"Yeah," said James. "Did they both grow up here?"

"Aunt Margaret did. Esther grew up in New York. They met in college. You're too late to meet my other aunt," said Wilhelmina. "Frankie. She grew up here too. But she died."

"Was she your aunt Margaret's sister?"

This sort of question always made Wilhelmina wary. "No," she said, trying to keep her voice from sounding automatically defensive. "They weren't like that. They were like a couple, but with three of them."

"Oh!" said James. "I see." He scrunched up his face. "Did I say anything obnoxious?"

"No," said Wilhelmina. "Why? Did my voice get deep and pissed off?"

"No," he said, glancing at her in surprise. "Are you pissed off?"

"No!"

"Oh, good."

"Why did you think you said something obnoxious?"

"Because it never occurred to me that you might've had three aunts who lived together as a throuple," said James.

"Well, it's pretty unusual," said Wilhelmina. "Maybe you've never encountered it before."

"Why did you think your voice was deep and pissed off?"

"It happens sometimes," she said. "When I'm preparing to get pissed off."

"Filing that under useful information," said James.

There was a small commotion behind them, from the direction of Esther and Aunt Margaret.

"Oh my!" cried Aunt Margaret. "Are you all right, Esther?"

James and Wilhelmina moved to them quickly. Esther was, indeed, all right, but the same couldn't be said for her chair. It had torn from the frame at one of the grommets and almost spilled her onto the ground.

"Hm," said James, dropping to one knee in order to inspect the damage. "Maybe we can fix it."

"It's okay," said Esther, who was standing. "It's not worth the fuss. I don't need a chair."

"You can have my chair, sweetie," said Aunt Margaret. "Your arthritis. I can stand."

Behind them in line, a woman spoke up. "Would you like a folding stool?" she said. "I have one in my car."

"Oh, no thank you," said Esther, glancing back at the woman, who was wearing a red mask with Maga emblazoned across it. "No need for anyone to go to any trouble."

"It's no trouble," said the woman. "My car is close by. And I'll wipe it down with an alcohol wipe."

"But maybe you want it for yourself," said Esther. "Or maybe someone else would like to use it."

"Let me get it for you," said the woman, "and then you can decide."

As the woman moved away from the line toward her car, Esther looked after her, a quiet, almost grave expression on her face. When the woman returned with a small, black folding stool, then wiped it down thoroughly using a succession of alcohol wipes, Esther accepted it politely.

"Thank you," she said. "It's very kind of you."

"No reason to stand if you don't need to," said the woman.

Wilhelmina realized she was braced, but she wasn't sure what she was braced for. The MAGA woman to announce something in defense of the racist person for whom she was voting? Esther to decide she couldn't bear to sit on a MAGA stool? Nothing happened. The woman returned to her place in line, beside a man who was wearing a mask that covered his mouth but not his nose. Esther sat down. It was a low stool. Her long legs, bent at the knees in her green slacks, made Wilhelmina think of a grasshopper.

"I'll take the broken chair back to the car," she said.

"Thank you, dear," said Aunt Margaret. "How are your hands holding up?"

Wilhelmina's hands were burning, and she felt the pressure of something in her neck and chest, something that was trying to expand. "They're well enough that I can carry a chair to the car," she said.

"What's wrong?" said James. "I can carry the chair."

"But germs," said Wilhelmina.

"Hand sanitizer," said James, patting the pocket of his puffy sky-blue coat.

Wilhelmina let James carry the chair.

For most of the walk past the fire hall, then past the line of parked cars, they moved in silence. Wilhelmina was stuck in a rumination she got stuck in sometimes, when she found herself thinking about perfectly nice people who were MAGA voters. How could they be? What piece were they missing? Or was there something she was missing? Could she be the one who didn't understand? And then she wondered if they were trying equally hard to understand her. Did they too wonder whether they were the ones who were wrong? If not, was that the piece they were missing? Did all harm come from a refusal to consider whether one might be wrong?

Wilhelmina never came to any conclusions.

"The littlest things feel so full of significance," she finally said. "You know?"

"Yeah," said James. "She was really kind, but it was like she had no awareness of what a vile thing she had on her face."

"Yeah," said Wilhelmina. "Thanks for carrying the chair. I have this…pain problem. I'm supposed to be stretching, but I haven't really had a chance."

"Can you do it now?" he said. "What do you need? Like, a mat?"

"A tree," she said.

"Hm," said James, glancing into the field of golden grass that stretched out beside the road. "I'm guessing you mean a vertical tree."

"Are there horizontal trees?" said Wilhelmina, then noticed what James had noticed: a fallen tree trunk in the field. "Oh. Hm," she said, thinking about her foam roller. Wilhelmina's foam roller was a thick cylinder, like a three-foot length of telephone pole, but made of firm red foam. In the time before the Delia Invasion, Wilhelmina had often set up the foam roller on her bedroom floor and reclined on it lengthwise, extending her arms, letting her shoulders drop, and feeling a massive stretch in her pectorals and the scalene muscles of her neck. She could even watch stuff on her laptop while she did this, if she stretched one arm at a time.

"You know foam rollers?" Wilhelmina asked James.

"Oh yeah," he said.

"Would it be too terribly weird if I went and lay down on that log for a while?" she said.

This is definitely one of my weirder days,Wilhelmina thought to herself a few minutes later. Because not only was she lying on a log in a field in Pennsylvania, stretching her arms out like a crucifixion, but James Fang was lying at the other end of the log, telling her about how he wanted to work with birds.

"Birds?" said Wilhelmina. Her stretched-out arms suddenly felt less like arms, and more like wings. Maybe James was the person to ask about penguin penises? Too soon, thought Wilhelmina.

"Yeah," he said. "Like, I want to be the person on the other end of the phone when someone finds an injured owl in their yard. Or an albatross."

"An albatross?" said Wilhelmina, startled. Did people in Massachusetts find albatrosses in their yards?

"That reminds me," said James, sitting up. He was holding a long stick to manipulate his shoulders into odd positions that he'd told her were javelin stretches. This was the kind of day Wilhelmina was having. James Fang was teaching her javelin stretches with a giant branch in a field in Pennsylvania. "I haven't looked up the answer to your goose question yet," he said. "But I haven't forgotten."

"Oh," said Wilhelmina, remembering. "Thanks. It's not an emergency."

"How's your stretch?"

How was her stretch? The release in Wilhelmina's neck when she lay on this log felt like a bath of pure joy. Almost. Like a bath of pure joy if joy hurt. "It's a good stretch," she said.

"That's great," he said. "Hey, Wilhelmina, when do you want to talk about all the weird stuff that's been happening? We should talk, right? I mean, it was a huge relief to talk to Julie, but we're the ones it's happening to."

When James spoke Julie's name, Wilhelmina heard a tiny ding. A sweet little bell, to accompany the name "Julie." It wasn't her phone, which was still muted.

She sat up and looked at James. "Did your phone ding?" she said, even though she knew it hadn't.

"No."

"Did you hear a bell?"

"No," he said. "What's going on? Did something else weird happen?"

Wilhelmina had the need suddenly, like a symphony of bells rising up through her body and shoving the words out of her throat, to ask James about the habits of crows. "Crows," she said.

"Crows?" he echoed, holding his branch beside him like a walking stick and looking back at her. His mask hung from his ear again. She could see the quizzical look on his face. "Did crows happen?"

"I just want to know," she said, "where do crows live this time of year?"

"Where do they live?" he said, looking more and more confused. "Like, what part of the country?"

"Where would I go," she said, "if I wanted to find one? Like, at home?"

"Oh," he said. "Well, they fly all over. Like, they fly for miles every day, looking for food. And then at night they come back and roost in a tree, like, in groups, in the biggest, tallest tree they can find. Up high, so they can have a view of everything." He scrunched his face at her. "Is that what you're asking me?"

"I guess so, yeah."

"Why?"

Wilhelmina shrugged.

"Are you not going to tell me why?" said James.

"I guess not, no," said Wilhelmina, swallowing.

"And we're not going to have a conversation about all the weirdness either," he said. "Are we."

Something had changed in James's tone, though his expression remained even. Wilhelmina studied him with a touch of apprehension, obscurely alarmed when his eyes held her gaze unflinchingly. "Are you…annoyed at me?" she said.

"We need to talk about the weirdness," he said. "I'm getting the sense you don't want to talk about it. I'm even getting the sense you want to pretend it's not happening. But it is happening, so we need to talk about it."

"It's not happening," said Wilhelmina.

James's eyebrows rose. "Do you have any idea how much you were glowing when I first saw you today?" he said. "I thought one of the cars was on fire."

"It's not happening," Wilhelmina said, hearing her own voice drop to the register of a cello.

James stood up, his face flushed. Calmly, he placed his branch on the ground beside the fallen tree. "It's scary," he said. "I get it. But especially today, when we're here with this line of people, most of whom are probably going to vote for a racist fascist while swearing up and down and even believing in their own hearts that they're not being racist or fascist, I can't be with you if you're going to look straight at this and deny what it is."

"Wait, what?" said Wilhelmina, also standing, almost tripping. She righted herself against the tree trunk with one burning hand. "You think I'm like them?"

"I mean, I don't think you vote like them," he said. "But you're denying the truth like them, aren't you? To yourself and to me?"

Wilhelmina was absolutely winded with disbelief, and overcome with pain. She bent down over the tree, propping herself up on her hands, trying to catch her breath.

"Hey," said James, moving a step closer. "I'm sorry. It was a mean analogy."

Out on the road, another chorus of honking began. More trucks with flags. Wilhelmina had one searing need: to get away from James, who thought she was like them.

"I need to check on my aunts," she said, turning away from him, and running toward the road.

She couldn't find the aunts. They weren't in line, no matter how many times she walked up and down it searching. Finally, it occurred to her to look for the MAGA woman who'd lent Esther the stool. When she found her, the woman was carrying the stool.

"Excuse me," said Wilhelmina, approaching her. "Did you see where my aunts went?"

"They've gone ahead to the senior citizen line, hon," said the woman. "Someone came to get them."

Which meant they were probably in the fire hall, voting. Good. They could leave soon.

"Thank you," she said, then set out for the hall, pretending not to see James, who was hovering nearby, watching her in obvious distress.

Outside the fire hall, she found a place to wait where no one else was waiting, with a view of the doors. Then James's grandparents emerged. She ducked and darted away before they could see her, spun around, and crashed straight into James.

"Sorry!" he said. "Sorry! Wilhelmina—"

"All right, my dear," said James's grandmother, coming up behind them. "We're done."

"We had to fill out provisional ballots," said his grandfather. "Took a bit longer."

"My Ray of light," said James's grandmother, reaching her hand up to touch the side of James's face. "You're upset. What's wrong?"

"I—" said James.

"I hope you have a nice, easy drive home," Wilhelmina interrupted, infusing her words with every drop of Politeness to Elders she possessed. "It was lovely to meet you," she said, backing away. "Pardon me while I go check on my aunts."

"Of course!" said Rose. "You have a safe drive too!"

"Bye now," said Wilhelmina, turning and walking off in no particular direction, just away. She didn't look at James. When she turned back some moments later, she was relieved to see them moving slowly toward the cars with their backs to her. Rudy had a hand on James's shoulder and was patting him gently.

When she turned around again, her aunts were walking toward her, exuding joy.

In the car, the aunts' chatter fell like leaves around her, comforting Wilhelmina with its lack of demands upon her.

"I wonder if Rudy is short for Rudolph," said Aunt Margaret. "Or maybe Rudolfo. ‘Cognetti' is certainly an Italian name."

"I have sympathy for all Rudys these days," said Esther. "Imagine having to share a name with that shmegegge."

"You mean Giuliani?"

"I didn't like that man much when he was mayor," said Esther, "but can you believe him now? All along, he was looking for a bigger bully to worship! Pathetic."

"I'll never forget that he announced his marital separation at a press conference," said Aunt Margaret, "before ever telling his wife."

Esther hooted. "I forgot about that!"

"I'd be tempted to change my name," said Aunt Margaret. "Maybe to Rudyard."

"Or Ruby," said Esther. "Or Rumi."

Or one of the other reindeer,Wilhelmina thought, but didn't say out loud. Wilhelmina wasn't in a mood to draw attention to herself at the moment. Also, she was having some disorienting déjà vu. They'd had a Rudy conversation once before, she was sure of it. It had been about Italian names and reindeer, and it had taken place in a car. That was all Wilhelmina could remember about it, and the aunts didn't seem to remember it at all. Nor did they seem to find James's grandfather familiar. She was tired of memories she couldn't reach, like they were trapped behind a door that had closed without her noticing, a long time ago.

At the house, she went inside only briefly, climbing the stairs to her bedroom and packing her things. She left Frankie's crow blanket heaped on the bed. She ignored the blue stones in her peripheral vision. But she did reach into the drawer of the desk tucked under the hanging bookshelves in the corner, then pull out the bundle of cards that were wrapped in a dark cloth covered with a scatter of bumblebees. Frankie's tarot cards. She didn't know why she wanted them. She only knew that her primary goal was not to feel anything, and if she left them behind, she would feel something.

She jammed the bundle into her suitcase, zipped it closed, and rolled the suitcase out into the hall. There, she stopped for a moment, assessing. Turning back, she reentered the room. She grabbed the blanket and the stones. It wasn't easy to fit the blanket into her suitcase, but she managed it.

Navigating her suitcase down the stairs with aching arms and tight shoulders, she went outside to wait in the car.

On the long drive back to Massachusetts, Wilhelmina was mostly quiet. She breathed through pain, counting down the minutes until she was allowed to medicate again. Fantasizing about the muscle relaxant she would take when she got home. She noticed Esther's door when they passed through it in Connecticut. The driving became more difficult, the tension in her head increasing. She clenched her teeth and kept breathing.

Her attention flitted sometimes to the aunts' conversation. "I don't think you've said his name out loud once," Aunt Margaret was saying. "Not once in his presidency."

"Names have power," said Esther grimly. "I'll never say his name. It summons a little part of him into being."

"A good argument for talking about all the people who make us hopeful instead," said Aunt Margaret. "Like Wilhelmina," she said, reaching forward from the back seat and touching Wilhelmina's shoulder lightly.

"You don't need to summon me into being, Aunt Margaret," said Wilhelmina. "I'm right here."

"Were you aware that Frankie chose your name, Wilhelmina?" said Aunt Margaret.

"What?" said Wilhelmina, startled. "No. What do you mean, she chose it?"

"More like she suggested it," said Esther. "And your parents liked it."

"It's not an Italian name, is it?" said Wilhelmina.

"No," said Esther. "German or Dutch, I think. I don't think it was a family name."

"She liked its meaning," said Aunt Margaret. "?‘Resolute protector.' Quite a lot for a baby, though not for the young woman you've become, Wilhelmina. She liked that it contained the word ‘will,' and the word ‘helm.'?"

"Maybe she wanted you to be safe inside your armor," Esther said, then added, as an afterthought, "Our Wilhelmineleh."

Memories rushed into Wilhelmina's heart; she was five years old. "Esther," she said. "You haven't called me that in a long time."

"Haven't I?" said Esther. "My mother used to do that to names. I was ‘Estherleh' sometimes. My papa called me his Estrella, or his Estrellita—his little star. Did you know ‘Esther' means ‘star'?"

"It sounds familiar," said Wilhelmina, "but I'm not sure I've ever thought about it."

"We don't think about the words we use all the time," said Esther.

"Are you…" Wilhelmina hesitated. "Are you sure my name came from Frankie?"

"Oh yes," said Aunt Margaret. "We were present at the time. Your father had the flu when you were born, Wilhelmina, dear, as I'm sure you've been told, and your mother had a difficult delivery. We three were all there, helping. Like fairy godmothers."

Esther snorted. "Except competent ones," she said. "None of that Sleeping Beauty bunk."

"Though you are a beauty, Wilhelmina," said Aunt Margaret.

"Yes," said Esther. "That's undeniable."

"And after what you've done for us, Wilhelmina," said Aunt Margaret, "no one's more deserving of a long, restful sleep. The good kind. The kind that gives you peace."

It was early evening when Wilhelmina stopped the car in front of the Hart home, but the sky was already dark and pricked with stars.

She saw lights on upstairs, in Julie's living room, and told the aunts to go ahead inside. For a few minutes, she sat by herself in the car. She rested her arms and watched Julie's windows, unsure what she was waiting for. She touched her necklace.

Not really wanting to, she pulled out her phone and checked her missed messages. Twenty-five from Julie. Twelve from Bee.

Instead of reading them, she sent a group text to them both. Hey. Home safe. So so tired. Going to bed soon

Julie replied almost immediately. Hey! I'm at Bee's. We're gonna watch the returns. Want to watch with us over text?

Hands hurt too much,said Wilhelmina.

Over video chat?

Sorry,said Wilhelmina. Going to bed

You have more self-restraint than we do,said Julie. Listen, can I give James your phone number? He's texted me like three times

Wilhelmina put her phone in her pocket. The Dunstable car was in the narrow driveway, and the winter overnight parking ban hadn't started up yet, so she left the car parked on the street, and went inside. When voices clamored to greet her, she did her best to respond the way a normal person would. When her father placed a bowl of soup on the table for her, she sat down and ate it. When Philip tried to climb into her lap, she told him she was too sore. When her parents made motions like they wanted to hover around her asking questions about the trip, she pretended to yawn, announcing that she needed to medicate and go to bed. When Delia ran out to the car, then came back inside rolling the suitcase Wilhelmina had left behind, asking her if she needed help unpacking, tears swam suddenly in Wilhelmina's eyes.

"Thanks, Delia," she said. "Maybe tomorrow."

"You go to sleep, hon," said Cleo. "We'll clean up."

In her room, Wilhelmina pulled the blanket out of her suitcase. She detached the little owl from her ear, but left her necklace on. Then she took some metaxalone, found her mouthguard, removed her glasses, and crawled into bed.

In the middle of the night, Wilhelmina came wide awake.

Groggy from the metaxalone, she sat on the edge of her bed, holding her head in her hands. Her neck needed stretching so badly that after a while, she felt around for her glasses, then used her phone's light to search for her foam roller among the mountains of clothing and other miscellaneous Delia detritus. Finding it half under Delia's bed, she carried it out of the room, past Theo's laptop on the kitchen table and into the living room. There, she placed it onto the floor and lay down upon it.

Through the window that contained Frankie's treasures, a fat pale moon shone. In its light, Wilhelmina could see the head of the plastic snow goose gently bobbing.

When the pressure of the foam roller on her back and butt began to hurt a little, Wilhelmina levered herself up onto her feet again. Locating her boots, she slipped outside. It was cold, and she had no plan for how to find what she was looking for.

She rounded the dark house to the uneven backyard, understanding, now that she was outside, that the light of the waning moon was not enough to guide her gracefully across dirt that dipped and mounded without warning. Stumbling, she made her way downhill to the tall trees that grew along the retaining wall at the border between this property and the drop to the property below.

There, she steadied her hand against a tree trunk. She craned her neck up. Crow? she thought into the tree. Are you there? I changed my mind. I want the necklace back.

Nothing happened, except that a muscle pulled tight in her straining neck, burrowing into her shoulder and embedding itself there, a new little hub for the rest of her pain to organize itself around. What was she doing out here? The rustling trees cast frightening shadows and she couldn't even see what was real. And it was cold. Wrapping her arms around her body, Wilhelmina climbed up to the house again and went inside.

On her way back to her bedroom, her father's laptop stopped her. Why did she do what she did next? What purpose did she think it would serve? She went to the kitchen table, sat down, and opened the laptop. The election returns flashed back at her. The monster was leading in almost every swing state. The map of the nation shone red and pink, projecting his victory. In Pennsylvania he was leading by thirteen percentage points. Thirteen.

Wilhelmina went back to bed.