Interim Summer 2013

The aunts had conversations that moved around Wilhelmina, as if they were tossing a ball one to the other and she was inside the circle. She could take part if she wanted, but whether she did or not, she knew she was included. Often she kept quiet on purpose, even as thoughts and questions mounted inside her, because of how it felt to be embraced by the conversation. And then eventually one of them would say, "What do you think, Wilhelmina?" and she would come out with her ideas while they listened, nodding and making exclamations of appreciation or surprise, the same way they did to each other.

During the summer Wilhelmina was eleven, the aunts returned often to a certain conversation. It was like they all kept it tucked in their pockets, so that any of them could pull it out when she wanted it. The conversation was about something that hadn't happened yet, but the aunts could see it coming.

It was the summer of 2013. It wasn't legal for same-sex couples to marry in Pennsylvania, but in some of its bordering states, the marriage laws had changed. And something had happened in the Supreme Court that very summer, a decision requiring the federal government to recognize any same-sex marriage that any state had approved. The plaintiff for that case had been a woman from Pennsylvania, Edie Windsor. The Supreme Court's decision had lit a fire under a lot of butts. Bills were introduced and lawsuits were filed all over, including in Pennsylvania, where advocates hoped to overturn a same-sex marriage ban that had been in place since before Wilhelmina was born.

Wilhelmina had noticed that the aunts' conversations tended to follow a certain pattern. First, someone, usually Frankie or Esther, asked the others if they'd noticed some piece of Pennsylvania-specific news. "Did you see that Brian Sims and Steve McCarter are planning to introduce a bill to the General Assembly?" (The General Assembly was the name of Pennsylvania's legislative branch, and Brian Sims and Steve McCarter were members of the House who supported gay marriage.) Or, "Did you see the ACLU filed suit?"

Next, some chatter would follow. Sometimes it was contemplative or analytical or hopeful. Sometimes you couldn't predict it, like Frankie having a crush on Brian Sims and Esther calling her a cradle robber. Wilhelmina googled him. She supposed he was handsome, for a politician who was like forty. But obviously Frankie wasn't a cradle robber if he was forty!

"Look at those bright eyes and those rosy cheeks," Esther said.

"Stop infantilizing the boy," said Frankie.

"You're the one who just called him a boy."

"He's like forty!" said Wilhelmina.

"He's thirty-four," said Esther.

"That's basically forty," said Wilhelmina.

"I defend my right to admire privately the appearance of a grown person who's fighting to make gay marriage legal in Pennsylvania," said Frankie.

Regardless of the shape of the conversation, the next step in the pattern was this: eventually, tears would begin to slide down Aunt Margaret's face.

"Oh, Margie," Frankie would say. At that point, Wilhelmina would move closer to Aunt Margaret, because she knew a group hug was coming and she wanted to be part of it.

She thought about it on her own for a while before finally asking one day, "Aunt Margaret, why does it make you cry?"

"Oh," said Aunt Margaret, her tears beginning anew. "It just hurts, my dear. As if now that things are changing, I can feel everyone's pain all at once, all of it that's ever existed. Does that make sense? I'm not sure how else to explain it."

It made a kind of sense that Wilhelmina could feel, even if she got muddled when she tried to understand the logic. It seemed that when a good thing was happening, one would expect to feel joy. But Aunt Margaret's grief had its place too in the summer they were all living, even though that summer was otherwise composed of happy things.

No group hug followed Wilhelmina's question this time, because Wilhelmina and the aunts were in the car. They were on their way to go camping for a couple nights. But Frankie, who sat in the front passenger seat, found a tissue in one of her bags and passed it to Aunt Margaret, who sat in the back with Wilhelmina.

"Of course," said Frankie, "if this change does happen, we'll have to discuss the practicalities."

"What practicalities are there for us to discuss?" said Esther, who was driving. "We are not a same-sex couple."

"No," said Frankie. "But it might make sense for one of you to marry me."

Wilhelmina felt the air in the car change. Beside her, Aunt Margaret was surprised; in front of her, Esther was agitated.

"We have paperwork," Esther said. "We've taken legal steps already."

"But this would add an extra layer of protection," said Frankie. "Simplify some things."

"And complicate others!" said Esther.

"Not now," said Aunt Margaret in a voice that was certain, but trembled with a new rush of tears. "We'll have this conversation, but not now. Not in the car. There's no room in the car!"

"That's true," said Frankie. "I'm sorry, love. It's not a car conversation."

Now Wilhelmina was the one who was surprised. Not by the rush of emotion that had risen so quickly; the aunts often rustled like trees with changing emotion. She was surprised by the realization that some conversations were car conversations and some weren't.

"Wait," she said. "What's a car conversation?"

"Now, that is an excellent question," said Esther, smiling softly as she drove. "There's no escape in a car. I suppose it needs to be a conversation everyone wants to have."

"It also needs to be about something you don't mind being completely surrounded by," said Aunt Margaret.

"So, a topic that isn't like someone else's tuna sandwich," said Esther.

"Or like a squirrel that's gotten out of its box," said Frankie.

"That sounds terrifying," said Esther. "Why would you have a boxed squirrel in the car?"

"You wouldn't. That's the point."

"Some conversations benefit from an open sky and a wide view," said Aunt Margaret. "So there's room for your feelings to expand. There's not much room in a car."

"So, are we having a car conversation now?" said Esther. "What do you think, Wilhelmina?"

"I think so," said Wilhelmina.

"So then we need to figure out what changed between the last conversation and this conversation," said Esther.

Wilhelmina thought about that for a bit. "The last conversation scared Aunt Margaret," she finally said.

"Oh, Wilhelmina," said Aunt Margaret, beginning to drip with tears again. "You're right. It did scare me."

"No scary conversations in the car, then," said Frankie softly, turning back and passing Aunt Margaret another tissue.

It was a busy summer for the aunts, busier than usual. Frankie had had another surgery for ovarian cancer in the spring, and it was taking her longer to get her strength back this time than it had last time. Or anyway, that's what everyone said; Wilhelmina couldn't remember last time. She'd been very young. Frankie seemed regular to Wilhelmina, aside from every four weeks or so, when she had chemo and felt sick for a few days. "I'm completely fine," she always said, in a voice Wilhelmina believed. She was just tired, that was all. But it did mean that Esther and Aunt Margaret were taking on more of the chores.

Also, this summer, the aunts were renovating, because Esther and Aunt Margaret were starting a new business that they intended to run from home. Esther had long been some kind of consultant and Aunt Margaret an accountant and bookkeeper, each of them working in a small office in town, right down the street from each other. They'd now retired, but not with the intention of ceasing to work. They wanted to keep working, and do so together.

Beside the house was the broken-down carriage house with a sagging roof and a bare cement floor. For years, Frankie had encouraged the lilacs, forsythia, and masses of thorny roses to grow wild and tall around it, to deter anyone, especially their young summer resident, from trying to find a way inside, because it wasn't safe. Wilhelmina had always looked upon that corner of the yard as impenetrable.

But now the flora was cleared, the old structure was torn down, and atop the strong concrete base, a team of men were building a small office. It was going to have running water and electricity and its own teeny bathroom. It was going to have a woodstove and a vaulted ceiling. It was going to have a sign beside the door, with Esther's and Aunt Margaret's names in lights: Pérez and Hart, Soulful Consultants.

The work was almost done. The men were now nail-gunning shingles to the outside, which was why the aunts and Wilhelmina were going camping for a few days, as they'd done a couple other times that summer too, whenever the noise had reached nerve-fraying proportions. They were driving to Hickory Run State Park, which had a lake for swimming, a waterfall Aunt Margaret adored, and a gigantic, flat stretch of land completely crowded with boulders. It was called the Boulder Field, and it wasn't like other places Wilhelmina had ever been. She loved to scramble across it on her sturdy, stompy feet. It was thought to be a relic from a time hundreds of thousands of years ago when a retreating glacier had dropped its load of boulders, the same way Wilhelmina's shoes, after a day at the beach, dropped clumps of sand around the house.

In the car as they drove to Hickory Run, Wilhelmina began to work her way through a few questions she was keeping to herself. If two of the aunts married, what would happen to the other aunt? If two of the aunts married, why did one of them need to be Frankie particularly? And why was Aunt Margaret scared?

She wondered if the questions were connected. Was Aunt Margaret scared because she didn't want to be the aunt who didn't get married?

She waited until the car had entered the narrow, winding roads of the park. She waited until they'd located the cabin in which they would be staying, which had a name she liked, written on a board above the entrance: Ruffed Grouse. She waited until they'd parked and climbed out, because she understood that it wasn't a car conversation. She put the question to Esther after Frankie and Aunt Margaret had gone bustling into the cabin, because she considered Esther to be the most neutral party.

"If two of you marry each other," she said, "will the third one of you be…left out?"

"Oh, no, bubeleh!" Esther cried, with more passion than Wilhelmina had been expecting. "Nothing like that."

"What's that?" said Aunt Margaret, coming out of the cabin again. "What's wrong, Esther?"

"Wilhelmina asked if one of us would be left out, if the other two married," said Esther.

"Oh, no, dear!" cried Aunt Margaret, in such a perfect echo of Esther's tone that for some reason, tears pricked Wilhelmina's throat. "Never. It would only be a legal decision, a practical one. When people are married, certain rights become straightforward in the eyes of the law, like, oh, boring things like beneficiaries, or who gets to make medical decisions. It wouldn't change how we live, Wilhelmina. Is this conversation upsetting you? We don't need to talk about it in front of you if it makes you worry!"

"You can talk about it," said Wilhelmina. "That was the only part I was worried about."

"All right," said Aunt Margaret, coming to Wilhelmina and pulling her into a hug. Aunt Margaret was a good hugger, so Wilhelmina welcomed the hug, even though she was confused. Aunt Margaret didn't seem scared of being left out. So something else was scaring her.

While Frankie and Esther rested, Wilhelmina and Aunt Margaret went to the lake. It was smaller than the lake near the aunts' house and had no secret beach with blue stones, but its lack of familiarity made it interesting. Wilhelmina ignored the floating buoys that enclosed the designated swimming area and set out for an adventure on her own. She didn't rush; her progress was steady and deliberate, just as it was when she moved across land. Warm sun, cold water, and strong swimming set her body tingling with joy.

While she was lying on her blanket drying off, Aunt Margaret let her borrow her cell phone to call Bee and Julie. Bee wasn't home, which made Wilhelmina miss him with a sweet yearning, but at least his mother answered the phone, rather than his father. She sounded hassled, and tired. Bee had a new little sister that summer. So did Julie.

Julie answered on the first ring. "Hey!" she said. "Miss you."

"Miss you too," said Wilhelmina.

"We're driving home," said Julie, who was on her mother's cell phone.

"Soccer or chess?" said Wilhelmina.

"Chess," said Julie. "A tournament."

Wilhelmina knew that Julie gritted her teeth through chess tournaments. She always did well, but it wasn't fun. Also, at tournaments, she was usually one of few girls and often the only Black girl. "I always feel like I have to prove something," she'd told Wilhelmina and Bee. "You know?" But her parents wanted her to persevere, so she did. They told her it would look good on her college applications someday, which Wilhelmina found alarming, because her parents never talked about college applications. "Should I be thinking about my college applications?" she'd asked her father once. "What?" he'd said, startled. "No, Wilhelmina. You're eleven."

"I'm sorry I'm not home!" said Wilhelmina. "How was it?"

"Fine," said Julie. "Won three, lost one. I played against a five-year-old."

"What!"

"He's a child genius, apparently," said Julie. "It was my hardest win. But oh my god, Wil, it took him forever to write his notations."

"Was he writing different notations from everyone else?"

"No! Exactly the same! But he's five! He can't write yet!"

Wilhelmina's laughter felt like music. "I knew you would laugh like that," said Julie. "That's why I wanted to tell you. I miss you!"

"Me too," said Wilhelmina. "My aunts want you to come visit."

"I know," said Julie. "My parents say maybe next summer."

"Did you get the blue stone I sent?"

"Yeah," said Julie. "I keep it in my pocket."

For dinner that night, they had spaghetti with homemade meatballs and sauce that Frankie had cooked ahead of time and frozen, plus a salad Wilhelmina made with normal salad ingredients like lettuce and tomatoes, but also blueberries and mint. Wilhelmina thought that camping spaghetti made by Frankie, with a salad made of things Frankie had grown, might be her favorite meal. After dinner, she washed the dishes with Esther at the outside pump, then climbed into bed early, exhausted and happy, not too worried about the questions to which she had no answers. That night, it rained, a steady thrumming on the roof right above their heads. An owl found them, hooting its way into Wilhelmina's dreams.

In the morning, Wilhelmina and the aunts drove to the Boulder Field.

"Have you met the ranger?" asked Esther, who was driving again. "I ran into her this morning at the bathroom. She told me the attorney general refuses to defend the marriage ban in court!"

"Really?" said Frankie. "Are you okay with this conversation, Margie?" she added, glancing back at Aunt Margaret.

"I have no problem with news," said Aunt Margaret placidly.

"She says the ban is unconstitutional!" said Esther.

"Has the governor responded?" asked Frankie.

Esther snorted. "Not yet. I'm sure he's checking with his donors."

"You talked about all of this with the park ranger?" said Aunt Margaret, impressed.

"Sometimes you can just sense a kindred soul," said Esther.

"Yes," said Aunt Margaret. "That's true. On the other topic," she added. "The one we won't talk about in the car. I want to reiterate that I will talk about it. I just need some time." She was awash in a pool of sadness, but she was speaking bravely. Wilhelmina felt it.

"Thank you, Margie," said Frankie.

A long silence followed, during which Wilhelmina could feel a sort of desperate resistance coming from Esther. Esther was battling with something inside herself, something that was causing her great distress.

Finally, her tight grip on the steering wheel loosened, and a tear trickled down her cheek. She said, "I'll be willing to talk about it too."

"Thank you, Esther," said Frankie.

Wilhelmina knew that this was the moment to say, What's going on? What is this about? But something stopped her. It was partly a sense, unfamiliar and confusing, that she was on the outside of this particular conversation, that they didn't entirely remember she was there. No one was going to smile at her and say, What do you think, Wilhelmina?

But maybe it was also because she was beginning to guess what it was about. Yesterday, Aunt Margaret had talked about beneficiaries, about medical decisions. Those words had connected with Wilhelmina's understanding that Frankie had had surgery in the spring, and that every few weeks, she went in to the doctor for chemo. The surgery had gone well, and the chemo was routine. It was normal that Frankie was tired, and that the chemo was rough sometimes. Everyone said so. Her hair was different now too—her silver crown of braids was gone and instead she had a short arrangement of soft, white fuzz—but that was normal too, for people to change their hair.

Nonetheless, despite how normal everything was, Wilhelmina was beginning to experience a small blockage in the flow of her curiosity. She was inclined to look out the window at the trees instead.

At the Boulder Field, the aunts gamely commenced to climb among the cluster of boulders nearest the edge. Then, fairly soon, they found comfortable rocks to sit down upon while sharing a thermos of coffee, as they always did. The aunts liked to sit and survey the expanse of uneven gray rock, but they left the exploration to Wilhelmina, who had young ankles.

The field spread out for about sixteen acres, and Wilhelmina liked to hike all the way to the far side. It required a slow, careful pace. Some of the smaller boulders rocked when you stepped on them, and some of the hugest were too steep to climb. She liked to veer slightly to the right as she began, to visit the single spindly pine tree that had pushed its way up through an impossible terrain. The Boulder Field was surrounded by woodlands, but it took an unusual tree to grow in its middle. When she reached the tree, she patted its trunk. Then, steadily, she continued on.

Most of the rocks were gray and smooth, but occasionally she discovered one with a touch of color or sparkle. When she came upon a bluish boulder, she briefly enjoyed imagining that this was the pebbly beach with the blue stones and she'd shrunk to the size of a mouse. She wished she could tell Bee. Then she wondered what had created that pebbly beach. Another glacier? She wondered where lakes came from. When a noisy group of kids mostly older than she passed by, she wondered how to study them without them studying her.

There were seven of them: three girls and four boys. When she felt the eyes of one of the boys on her, a dark-haired boy with a weird, gangly-looking bird on his T-shirt, she changed her route subtly to discourage him from talking to her, and took care not to look into his face. They were just very…tight-knit and loud. One of the older boys, a blond one, wore no shirt. He had muscles she might expect to see in an underwear ad, which Wilhelmina found exquisitely embarrassing. She wished for Julie. It was funny, sometimes she wished for Bee and sometimes she wished for Julie. She just knew Julie would say something about that shirtless boy that would make her giggle and feel less weird.

Much to her relief, the group moved on. Once alone, she sat down for a bit. Something was tugging at her, something she wasn't sure she liked. She was thinking, for some reason, about Bee's sadness. Bee wasn't always sad, of course, but when he was sad, Wilhelmina could feel the force of it. And she never felt the need to guard herself from it. Bee's sadness wasn't threatening to her. It just was.

Same with the pain Aunt Margaret felt for the whole world, now that the marriage laws were changing. Wilhelmina could feel that pain too, but it didn't unbalance her.

The aunts' sadness when they talked about marrying Frankie was different somehow. It wasn't just their sadness. A deep-down part of Wilhelmina sensed that it was her sadness too.

She pushed up from the boulder she sat upon and continued to explore. With a decision that wasn't entirely conscious, she resolved to leave the topic out here on the rocks. She wasn't going to think about it anymore.

When Wilhelmina returned to the aunts, she had a scrape on one shin from bashing into a sharp rock, and she was ever-so-slightly grouchy.

"Does that hurt, bubeleh?" asked Esther, her face pursed in concern.

"It's fine," said Wilhelmina, more snappishly than she ever spoke to the aunts. She scrambled past Aunt Margaret and Esther, who were sitting together, and on to Frankie, who was sitting with a thin man with a ring of graying hair who looked slightly familiar to Wilhelmina.

"And that's Angela," the man was saying in a rumbly, singsong voice, "the one with blond hair who's waving her arms like a windmill. And Raimondo there at the back, the dark-haired boy, our youngest. It's his middle name, but it was my wife's brother's name, so he forebears and lets us use it. We call him our Ray of light."

"How nice," said Frankie. "You must love to have them all here at once."

"I wish it could happen more often," said the man, who had a sweet smile. "They live so far away."

"Allow me to introduce my great-niece Wilhelmina," said Frankie. "We have her all summer. It's one of the joys of our lives."

"Nice to meet you, Wilhelmina," said the man, who looked old to Wilhelmina, but younger than the aunts. Less gray, more boisterous. And more and more familiar. For some reason, Wilhelmina could picture this graying man on a blanket on a beach, at the lake near the aunts' house. She could see the golden light in the air around him, and feel herself wrapped in a towel, shivering in the sun. Was that weird? She spun back to peer at the kids out on the rocks, who were making more noise than seemed possible. Had she seen any of them before? They were too far away for her to isolate their features, and she didn't want to attract their attention.

"Nice to meet you," said Wilhelmina.

"How was your adventure, dear?" asked Frankie.

"Fine."

"Shall we head back for some lunch?"

"Okay."

"All right," said Frankie, pushing herself up with knees that crackled. "It was lovely to meet you, Rudy," she said to the man. "Enjoy your grandchildren." Then the aunts drove back to the cabin, where Frankie made tuna sandwiches with pickles and no celery, Wilhelmina's favorite way to eat a tuna sandwich. After lunch, she went swimming again with Aunt Margaret. The water felt strange on her scraped shin, but in a nice way, like it was numbing the sting.

The next morning, they visited the waterfall, then puttered around for a while, a sunny, lazy day. It was late afternoon when they began to pack the car.

Now that Wilhelmina was resisting certain topics inside her thoughts, it was, perhaps, fortuitous that Aunt Margaret had a low tolerance for the related conversations. Wilhelmina didn't need to think about her own low tolerance, because Aunt Margaret would always raise objections before Wilhelmina got uncomfortable enough to notice.

Nonetheless, it was a different mode of being for Wilhelmina. She wasn't a natural non-thinker. Not thinking about something required some defenses, and not thinking about the fact that she wasn't thinking required even more. Not just a tight web of vines, but maybe a few well-placed thorns.

On the car ride home from Hickory Run, Esther asked Frankie to remind her when her next chemo appointment was.

"About ten days, I think," said Frankie.

"It'll be nice when the renovations are behind us, and we have a routine of working from home," said Esther. "We'll be able to be more present and helpful."

"We should have done this sooner," said Aunt Margaret from the back seat.

"Well," said Frankie. "Your jobs were paying for our lives!"

"But we could have done it sooner," said Aunt Margaret.

Frankie paused for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was gentle. "We still have time."

Wilhelmina changed the subject. She was unpracticed, so she did it abruptly, and a little too loud. "How did you know that man you were talking to yesterday?" she said.

The aunts were startled. Frankie, who was in the front passenger seat, shot her a puzzled glance in the rearview mirror.

"The one with the grandkids," Wilhelmina said. "You called him Rudy."

"Ah," said Frankie. "I met him for the first time yesterday. He seemed to want to talk about his grandchildren, so I lent him an ear. Why do you ask, Wilhelmina?"

"I just wondered. He looked familiar. I thought maybe I'd seen him at the lake before."

"You mean the lake at home?" said Frankie, puzzled again. "You've seen him at our lake?"

"I mean, maybe. I don't remember."

"Well!" said Aunt Margaret. "I'll have to watch for him. Though I'm afraid I hardly paid him any attention."

"Me neither," said Esther.

"Next time I go swimming, I'll stand at a high point on the beach and bellow his name," said Aunt Margaret.

"Oh, yes, that'll make him eager to befriend you," said Esther. "You should do the same thing in grocery stores until you find him. Assuming it's the same person. Otherwise, you're just a woman bellowing a random name in a grocery store. Rudy, was it?"

"I'm sure it's Rudolfo," said Frankie. "Italian."

"Rudolfo," said Aunt Margaret. "That makes me wonder something."

"Yes?"

"What would Santa's other reindeer be named if they were Italian?"

"Hm," said Frankie, intrigued. "I can probably work that out. Let's see, Dasher. Like, as in, to rush? So, Affrettatore?" She pursed her lips, then nodded. "Yes, that works. Affrettatore," she said, the word drawn-out and musical, the Rs rolling in her mouth, just like when Esther spoke Spanish. "Let's call Dancer Ballerina to keep things simple. Prancer. Huh. I don't know the word for ‘prance.'?"

"Vixen would be Isabella Rossellini," said Aunt Margaret.

"No! Gina Lollobrigida," said Esther. "Una tremenda manguita!"

"I always want to call people mangoes," said Aunt Margaret, "but I can never remember which fruit means a sexy person and which one means a vagina. I don't want to call someone a vagina by accident."

"?‘Papaya' means vagina," said Esther. Wilhelmina had heard this conversation before; it was about Cuban slang. "They're both three syllables long. Papaya, vagina. You can remember it that way."

"Oh! What a helpful mnemonic, Esther!"

"Okay, I'm looking ahead to Donder and Blitzen," said Frankie. "What do those words even mean?"

Wilhelmina was enjoying this new conversation thoroughly. While the aunts chattered, she watched the crescent moon through the window, pale in the sunlight, then turning to gold as the sky went deep and pink.

"I wonder how much they'll have managed to get done?" said Aunt Margaret as the car, now moving through darkness, neared the house.

When they finally pulled into the drive, it was too dark to tell if the builders had finished with the shingles. But they'd hung Aunt Margaret and Esther's sign beside the door, and turned it on.

"Oh," said Aunt Margaret, sighing with happiness. "Just look at that."

"Beautiful," said Esther. "Is that how you pictured it, Frankie?"

"Exactly," said Frankie.

"Do you like our sign, Wilhelmina?" asked Aunt Margaret. "It was Frankie's idea to use all those little bulbs. We told her it was impractical, but now I'm glad she convinced us."

"I see lights like those in my dreams," said Frankie. "Do you remember the old movie marquee from when we were little, Margie?"

"Barely," said Aunt Margaret.

"I get announcements," said Frankie. "In my dreams. Beautiful, sparkling announcements. ‘Remember to water the cucumbers!' ‘Your missing sock is in the dryer!'?"

"Was your missing sock in the dryer?" asked Aunt Margaret, sounding impressed.

"Well, yes, but is that such a revelation?"

"I suppose not. But of course your dreams sparkle, Frankie."

Wilhelmina wasn't really listening. She was gazing at the sign, transfixed: Pérez and Hart, Soulful Consultants. Each letter was made of tiny little lights that glowed gold, suspended and sparkling, as if the names of her aunts were written in fireflies.