Interim Summer 2016

It was different to be at the aunts' house while possessing a cell phone. It felt a little like Wilhelmina had tied a long silk thread to herself before leaving Massachusetts, and handed the other end to Julie and Bee. As she moved through each warm, sweet day, she collected walks and swims, sunlight and stars, to pass back along the thread to them.

The summer Wilhelmina was fourteen, the cardinal returned, pounding at the window glass. Or maybe it was a new cardinal; maybe aggressive dissatisfaction was endemic in Pennsylvania cardinals. The cardinal chose a different time of day (later) and a different basement window (farther from Wilhelmina's bedroom), and his behavior struck her differently too. Wilhelmina wasn't that cardinal anymore. No more senseless pounding. She'd figured some things out.

In the fall, she would start high school with Julie. She'd begun playing with eye makeup, with lipstick, and she wore glasses now. She liked her glasses, which were chunky, and bluish gray. She'd begun frequenting thrift stores with Bee, who himself had a bit of a thrift-store aesthetic. It wasn't easy to thrift for clothing long enough to fit Bee's increasingly tall frame, and it was even harder to find adornments for Wilhelmina's short, round body. But they persisted, like astrophysicists searching the galaxy for habitable planets. Gradually, Wilhelmina collected dresses that worked over leggings, over long-sleeved shirts, above boots, under belts. Wilhelmina was nervous about high school, sure. She'd figured some things out—not everything. But at least she would march down its halls feeling right in her clothes.

Her long hair was gone. She'd taken a bus into Harvard Square after Christmas and told an embarrassingly hot man whose own hair was pink to chop it down close. It had cost her all her Christmas money plus one month's allowance, and ever since, she'd trimmed it herself. The first time she'd held a pair of craft scissors to her head, her heart had started pounding just like the cardinal in the window, but she'd thought of something Cleo liked to say—Cleo of all people, who was always therapizing when no one wanted to hear it, but who'd said: "Think about scary things as experiments. You'll try them out, and then afterward, you'll decide what you think. It'll make you feel like you have some power." Wilhelmina had cut some hair off, as an experiment. The experiment had gone well enough. So she'd bought some hair shears after that, which had been a lot less expensive than a haircut in Harvard Square.

High school,Wilhelmina thought to herself while she gardened with Frankie or swam across the lake. After high school, a year with the aunts. She imagined learning from the aunts—she didn't know what. How to run a business, like Esther and Aunt Margaret did? Running a business didn't sound too interesting to Wilhelmina, but she liked learning how to do things, and she liked the idea of skills that might one day lead her to a job she didn't hate. Not a librarian, not a therapist, not an emergency room doctor, and not a grade school teacher. Not someone with an unreasonable boss like Mrs. Mardrosian, who was, from Wilhelmina's way of looking at things, the foremost source of stress in Theo's life. Wilhelmina was quite certain about the things she didn't want to do, which was enough for now. Maybe in a year with the aunts, she could learn how to have…this quality they had. Not happiness, exactly, because the aunts often felt sadness. And anger, and worry; in that summer, which was the summer of 2016, all three aunts carried a deep and profound well of sadness and worry about the way the upcoming presidential election was shaping up. In moments of stillness, if she looked for it, Wilhelmina could feel it stirring inside them. But there was some other, fundamental quality the aunts had that she wanted to learn. It felt to her like strength, but it had nothing to do with muscles. It had everything to do with…being able to contain the whole world yet remain steady? Was that a quality a person could have? Wilhelmina felt it when she was with them. That there was room for everything here, and a sense of balance.

Wilhelmina's favorite time to talk to Julie and Bee was after a long swim at the lake. Not immediately; after she'd shivered herself back to warmth while wearing a towel as a blanket, drinking whatever tea or soup Aunt Margaret or Esther handed to her in the thermos. When the sun on her skin made her tingle with contentment, she would call them individually, or text them together. It depended on whether either of them was having a crisis. Bee's summer was composed of frequent small crises, because his dad was being even more touchy and erratic than usual and his irregular work hours made encounters with him unpredictable. Bee never wanted to text about it, because he didn't trust his dad not to read his texts. Actually, he spent a lot of time at Julie's, so sometimes, if Wilhelmina called one of them, she got to talk to both of them. Once, out of an irritated sense of obligation, she'd returned a call from her mother. Cleo was extremely pregnant that summer, and beset by constant, agonizing itchy rashes. It was a condition called PUPPP, which was way too many Ps and stood for "pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy," which was a gross name. When Wilhelmina had called, Cleo had been itchy; Delia, who was six, had been impersonating an air raid siren in the background; and Cleo's voice had grown increasingly harassed, until finally she'd said, "Wilhelmina, hon, why don't you talk to Bee?"

"Hi," Bee had said, in his new, uneven, thirteen-year-old voice.

"Oh, hi!" Wilhelmina had said. "I didn't know you were there."

"My dad…" Bee said, sounding as if more words were coming, but then not saying them. It made Wilhelmina's heart begin to thump.

"Did he hurt you?"

"No! Just—you know. Stuff."

"Okay."

"Where are you?"

"At the lake."

"Find any blue stones?"

"The beach was sparkling with blue stones today," she said, because that's how it seemed on the beach this summer, now that Wilhelmina wore glasses that she took off to swim. Her uncorrected vision was good enough for most purposes, but she understood now that the world was sharper than she'd previously thought. She would pull herself from the water and look out upon a great expanse of pebbles that seemed soft at the edges, her peripheral vision sparkling with points of blue. "But I didn't take any. Should I go back and get you one? Or I could signal to Aunt Margaret," she said, because Aunt Margaret was swimming, in a bright yellow bathing suit Wilhelmina could spot even with her glasses still off.

"No. Next time," he said. "Do you think…"

Wilhelmina's hand was hurting a little, weird stinging in her palm. She switched the phone to the other ear. "Yeah?" she said. "What?"

"Do you think Frankie could pull me a card sometime?"

"Sure," said Wilhelmina. "I'll ask her later."

"Thanks," he said. "Have you talked to Julie today?"

"Not yet."

"She's having…" Bee's voice got low and whispery. "A problem with a guy."

"What? What guy?"

"I can't tell you now."

"Should I call her?"

"She's not answering. I think she's at chess."

"Can I text about it?"

"Yeah," said Bee. "That's fine."

"Okay. Stay tuned," said Wilhelmina. Then she set her phone on the blanket beside her for a few minutes, because holding it was making her hands feel tingly and weird. She rubbed at her palms.

"Everything okay, bubeleh?" said Esther, who sat in a beach chair nearby, reading an issue of The Atlantic. Esther wore a filmy, silver-gray wrap that reminded Wilhelmina of a rainstorm, big sunglasses, and a giant sun hat with a black ribbon. She looked like a movie star trying to go incognito.

"Yes," said Wilhelmina. "I called home, but Bee was there." She stopped, twisting her mouth up. Wilhelmina was never sure how much to say to her aunts on the topic of Bee. She had the sense that they knew he had troubles at home, but her loyalty to him always stopped her from providing details.

"Are you worried about Bee?" asked Esther.

In that moment, a door opened, and Wilhelmina realized she was always worried about Bee. Always. "Yes," she said.

Esther seemed to accept her brief and nondescriptive response. She lowered her magazine into her lap and pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"I think you see through Bee's father," she said. "Straight through his own self-deceit."

Wilhelmina sat up straighter and stared at Esther. "Do you know Bee's father?" she asked in surprise.

"He called a few times," said Esther, "the summer Bee was here. He gave me a funny feeling, so I googled him. Watched him give a speech about how wonderful he was. It was enough. Anyway, I know you, Wilhelmina. You can see into people. I trust your mistrust of that man."

Wilhelmina pulled her towel blanket tight, thinking about that. "I hate him," she admitted. It was something she'd never said out loud before. "I worry about Bee all the time."

Esther nodded grimly. "There's a special torture in being able to see the truth of a dysfunctional situation that others can't see."

"His mom can't see it," said Wilhelmina. "She pretends everything's fine."

"I expect that's another thing you see clearly," said Esther. "It's a power, you know. Seeing the truth of a situation makes you powerful. Unlike everyone else, you can make realistic plans."

Wilhelmina knew that this was wrong. "I can't make a plan for Bee," she said. "I can't save him."

Esther grunted in affirmation. "Realistic plans," she said. "Not plans that magically make everything better. Anyway, you've already set your plan in motion, bubeleh. You're Bee's friend. The kind of friend who acknowledges what he's going through."

Far at the other end of the beach, some kids were playing with a volleyball. Finding her glasses, Wilhelmina watched a dark-haired guy in sky-blue bathing trunks prop the ball on his hand above one shoulder, then run with it, then hurl it as far as he could across the sand, where it landed near a guy and a girl who seemed to have the job of marking its landing place. She heard a few cheers. Apparently, whatever he'd done, he'd done it well. They were too far away for Wilhelmina to see the details.

"Sometimes it doesn't seem like much," she said. "Just to be someone's friend."

Esther made another affirming noise. But she said, "A lot of bad situations don't have easy solutions. We care for each other as best we can."

At home, Aunt Margaret puttered around the kitchen, throwing beans, tomatoes, and carrots into the slow cooker that was her new toy. Now that Aunt Margaret and Esther worked from home, they seemed to like to do more of the cooking—"As long as I can throw it all in there and forget about it," Aunt Margaret said. Esther was different. She liked to cook complicated things and take her time doing it, often with her sister or one of her cousins on speakerphone if she needed advice. Once, her cousin Sofia visited, and brought some nice ripe plantains—hard to find in rural Pennsylvania. Wilhelmina feasted on platanos maduros for days. Esther could cook anything, really. Her pastas were almost as good as Frankie's, and she made a tofu with peanut butter, soy sauce, and ginger that was so delicious that Wilhelmina would volunteer for dish duty so she could eat the leftovers out of the pot.

Frankie still cooked too, of course, though she seemed just a bit tired out when it came to cooking this summer. When she did cook, she would make large quantities of soup, or massive vats of meatballs and her homemade sauce, then freeze the extras. Zucchini cakes with zucchini from the garden—mountains of them. Bread—four loaves instead of two. The aunts had a freezer in the basement down to which Frankie would send Wilhelmina with bags of bread or containers of soup. Then send her down again a few weeks later to retrieve some treasure that only needed defrosting in order to become a delicious meal.

Through the kitchen window, Wilhelmina saw Frankie in the garden, sitting on her bench, holding a hose to the cucumbers. "Hi, Frankie," she called through the screen.

"Hello, my love," said Frankie, turning to the window. It was hard to see her expression because she wore a giant cloth sun hat that had once been coral, but was faded now from the sun. It cast her face in shadow and made her look tiny, like a woman composed of bird bones. And still, her smile glowed.

"Later," called Wilhelmina, "could you pull a card for Bee?"

"Certainly," said Frankie.

Up in her room, Wilhelmina tucked herself against the wall on her bed and texted Julie and Bee. Something happened w a guy, J?

Oh hi, said Julie. Just left chess. Heading home. B tell u?

No details,wrote Bee.

Its Quinn Carter,wrote Julie.

Something twisted inside Wilhelmina: a flicker of misgiving she'd never realized she had for Quinn Carter, who was one of those guys who was universally liked on the basis of being excellent at all sports and never saying much. It hadn't occurred to Wilhelmina to think about him before. Did he hurt u? she wrote, surprised by her own suspicion.

No!said Julie. Hes into me

Super into her,said Bee.

Oh,said Wilhelmina, considering. You never knew with someone who didn't talk much. It created an air of wisdom, but it could also be a sign of moral cowardice. Regardless, if Julie might be about to start something with him, then she needed to support Julie. Ru, she typed, then erased it. Her palms were stinging again. She wrote, How u feel abt that?

OMG,said Julie. TY for asking me that. Its like theres no room for me to feel how I feel cuz everyones acting like its a miracle and Im so lucky and of course I must be into him but I feel a big nothing Wil. I got nothing. I mean hes fine hes nice whatever. But I do not want to hang out w him I have other shit to do and I dont appreciate the pressure or the assumptions

U dont have to hang out w him, Julie,said Wilhelmina.

TY!!!

U don't have to do anything

Anyway,Julie wrote, the way Bethie Ramona and Hannah talk it sounds like those boys all expect bjs

WHAT?wrote Wilhelmina, who was suddenly, unexpectedly floored. WHAT?

Yeah

What do u mean, EXPECT them

Its just what they do,wrote Julie. Like Bethie is w Connor and Hannah is w Jeremy and they all hang out at someones house and the night isnt over till bh give cj bjs

Like in front of everyone???!!!

No! Like theyll be at Ramonas house. She has her own bathroom

Theyll do it in Ramonas bathroom? Wow! Romantic!Wilhelmina searched for the puke emoji and added it five times. Then she sent it another five times. Wilhelmina was really upset. Honestly, she was confused by how upset she was.

I know,wrote Julie. But anyway. It seems

GROSS?wrote Wilhelmina.

Really one sided,Julie wrote.

Yeah,wrote Wilhelmina, who understood then, finally, why she felt a little out of control. It was because she was angry. Yeah, she wrote again, calmer now. It sounds really selfish. Her hands were weirdly burning, but this was important, so she kept typing. It sounds like those guys are really selfish Julie

Thats what I think too. And Quinn is in that group

Yeah,said Wilhelmina.

It doesnt mean hes like that

True

The girls act like its funny

Now Wilhelmina needed a minute to figure out a new feeling. Sadness. For everyone. That was how it made Wilhelmina feel, that those girls would find it funny, instead of unfair.

That makes me really sad,she wrote. It's not funny

I agree,said Julie.

What do u want?she asked Julie, badly hoping Julie wanted no part of this. I support u, whatever u want

I want to have my summer and forget abt Quinn

U get to,Wilhelmina wrote.

TY,wrote Julie. Then she added a crying emoji, which jarred Wilhelmina out of her own feelings. She wished she could hug Julie. She sent her a string of blue hearts instead.

U got quiet B,Julie wrote. Too much bj talk?

Just listening,said Bee.

Like in a creeper way?said Julie.

No!said Bee. Ouch!

I know,said Julie. Sorry.

Connors in soccer. Central midfield,he said. Nice guy when ppl r around but

We did a drill alone once and he called me fag

Wilhelmina's jaw dropped. OK, she wrote. Wow

Shit,wrote Julie. What u do?

I told him apologize or hed become invisible to me on the field

He didnt. So I stopped passing to him

Pretty sure he hates me. U can c him going red at penalty kick drills w how bad he wants to get the ball past me but Ive decided he never gets it past me anymore

Wow,wrote Julie. Thats a long game ur playing

Hes in high school now,wrote Bee. Gets a new goalie to b a douche to, for exactly 1 year

Lol,said Julie.

Now Wilhelmina was giggling. Hands hurt, she wrote. Cant type. B, F sez shell pull u card

TY,said Bee.

TTFN

TTFN

TTFN

Alone in her room, Wilhelmina rubbed at the base of her palms again, not sure whether they were stinging or itching. It was weird not to be able to tell. They felt better when she wasn't typing. She could hear the muted voice of Aunt Margaret downstairs, speaking to someone who was too quiet to be heard. It was Frankie; they were in the kitchen together; water was running. Then Frankie moved to the stairs and climbed them slowly, then went to her own room.

Wilhelmina waited, but Frankie didn't come out. Getting up, she crossed to her desk and unearthed Frankie's old tarot cards, wrapped in the dark fabric with the scattering of bumblebees. Then she brought the deck downstairs and walked along the corridor, nonchalantly peeking through Frankie's open door. Frankie was lying on her bed with her eyes closed. She looked very small.

"Wilhelmina?" said Frankie.

"Yes," said Wilhelmina, not sure why she was whispering.

"How are you?"

"Fine."

"Would you like to come in?"

"Yes," said Wilhelmina, relieved when Frankie opened her eyes and turned to her, smiling.

"My old cards!" Frankie said, patting the bed. "Shall I pull one for Bee?"

"Okay," said Wilhelmina. "But the Temperance card is missing. I keep that one in my mirror at home."

Frankie turned her smile briefly to the three Temperance prints above her bed. "Temperance is a good focus card for any reading," she said. "We can just pretend it's already on the table." Then she reached a hand for Wilhelmina's cloth-covered bundle and began to unwrap it. "I haven't touched these cards in years," she said, with obvious pleasure. As she removed the fabric and smoothed it out onto the bed beside her, Wilhelmina felt how she imagined it might feel to be a cat someone was scratching behind the ears.

"Sit down, dear," Frankie said. Then she began to shuffle the old, weathered cards. Her hands were brown from the sun, and quick. Stroking the bumblebee fabric with one finger, Wilhelmina sat.

"Do you remember going to Mrs. Mancusi's funeral with me, Wilhelmina?" said Frankie. "Oh, some six or seven years ago? She was my math teacher in high school, and my mentor. She was like a mother to me."

Wilhelmina remembered a church interior, and a priest's even voice. She remembered a boy throwing pieces of tissue paper into the air that caught the colored light streaming through the windows. "I think so," she said. "Did you call her your empress?"

"Probably," said Frankie, smiling. "She was my empress. She even wore her hair in a crown."

"Like you used to do," said Wilhelmina, then wished she hadn't said it, because it broke some sort of spell inside her. She was anxious and cold.

But Frankie only laughed, running a quick hand over her short, wispy hair. "I did, indeed," she said. "It's lighter now. A crown can be a burden. These were Mrs. Mancusi's cards, Wilhelmina. She taught me tarot, and she gave these cards to me. I gave them to you, because—well, I'm not sure why. Because I love you, and because it felt right. I can't imagine that I could ever be for anyone what Mrs. Mancusi was for me, but I wanted to share some of her goodness with you."

"You're everything to me," said Wilhelmina.

Frankie stopped shuffling and looked at her hard. Wilhelmina was surprised by the surprise that sat in her face. Could Frankie truly be ignorant of how important she was?

Reaching out, Frankie touched Wilhelmina's cheek with her warm palm. "Your love is very powerful, Wilhelmina," she said. "Thank you for it."

"You're welcome," said Wilhelmina, who wasn't sure how else to answer.

"Now, a card for Bee," said Frankie. Wilhelmina cut the deck, as usual. Then Frankie turned over a card that brought an unmistakably sad expression to her face.

"What is it?" said Wilhelmina anxiously. "Is it something bad?"

"It's something true," said Frankie, handing Wilhelmina an unfamiliar card. It showed a man in a long dark robe, contemplating three overturned cups at his feet. Behind him, two more cups stood upright. In the background, a bridge led over a river to a building surrounded by trees.

"The Five of Cups is about loss," said Frankie. "Those cups have spilled over. Something that should've come to pass will never come to pass; it's missing. The pain of that is bone deep."

Wilhelmina had tears running down her face. "Bone-deep pain?" she said. "For Bee? Is that, like, a prediction?"

"Not a prediction," said Frankie. "Just a comment on his current situation. When I pull a single card like this, I'm not making predictions, Wilhelmina dear. Just presenting a framework for thinking about things. But, sweetheart, look. This card also shows a beginning. Look behind him. You see those two cups that are still standing?"

"Yes."

"That man is going to turn around," said Frankie. "You see? He'll turn around and see that not everything is lost. He has two cups standing upright. Those cups are filled to the brim with the love and support he needs. They're, like, his support cups."

Wilhelmina snorted. "That makes them sound like a bra!"

"And there's a path too—you see that?" said Frankie. "A path across a bridge, to a home."

"Do I tell Bee?" said Wilhelmina. "Won't it upset him?"

"I think Bee already knows about the pain," said Frankie. "Maybe it'll make him feel understood. And he might like to hear about the rest of it, you know? The full cups, and the path."

One morning a week later, Wilhelmina woke to a phone ringing somewhere far away in the house. She came very awake, very fast, which was strange. She sat gripping her sheets, and waiting for something.

When, soon after, there was a knock on her door, Wilhelmina shot across the room and yanked the door open. Aunt Margaret stood in the hallway, tears brimming in her eyes.

"Bee?" said Wilhelmina.

"His father is dead," said Aunt Margaret.

Wilhelmina needed to grab on to the doorframe for balance. "Dead!"

"Yes," said Aunt Margaret. "There was an accident of some kind, dear."

"Accident!" said Wilhelmina. "Was Bee in the accident?"

"No, no! Bee was safely asleep in his bed."

Behind Aunt Margaret, Wilhelmina saw Frankie and Esther making their way up the stairs, Frankie leaning on Esther for support. Their faces were suffused with concern. "Bee is okay?" said Wilhelmina.

"Bee is okay," said Aunt Margaret.

"Bee is okay?" said Wilhelmina, trying again.

"Bee is safe," said Aunt Margaret, "and his father is dead."

As Frankie and Esther made it to the top of the stairs, Wilhelmina burst into tears.

"There, there," the aunts said, surrounding her with their hugs and their warmth. "There, there, dear. You're safe. Bee is safe."

"I need to go home," said Wilhelmina, even though it was only mid-July.

"We did wonder if you would feel that way, bubeleh," said Esther.

"I don't want to leave," she said. "But I need to go home. Bee needs both of his support cups right now."