The Aunt Bel who drifts down the stairs, the childlike Aunt Bel, seems so different from the serious woman who saw deeply into my soul an hour ago. I can’t help questioning whether I understood her right. Uncertain how to proceed, still nervous from earlier, I play hostess—but badly. Can I get you something to drink? Are you sure? And have you eaten? You really must be hungry—Until she finally agrees to hot tea, at which point I’m forced to confess to not being sure we actually have any.
“That’s okay,” she says, watching me closely, like she’s not sure what I might do next but knows it is certain to be wonderful.
It makes me uncomfortable, that look, giving me her full attention. I could be the only other person in the world, not just the room, judging by those eyes. A part of me has gone through life thinking all I wanted was the world’s undivided attention—its praise, its love, its undying admiration. Paying attention to all the work I do, the things I make, even my thoughts and opinions for the admiration of others. But here I am getting a taste of the real thing, the full attention of just one person, and I’m not sure I want it anymore.
It feels like being wrapped in a quilt knitted of candy-coated claustrophobia.
Whatever it is, I already know I can’t live up to it.
“Let’s get out of the house,” I suggest. Finn, who has yet to meet the newest member of Drexel’s Curiosity Shop, went to the studio to work on the Iron Maiden after church.
In the open air, the strength of Aunt Bel’s presence is somewhat diluted. She has other things to occupy her: kids chalking pictures on the still-wet pavement, a couple of neighbors inspecting the portable grill on their stoop to figure out why it won’t light, the coming and going of Lycra-clad cyclists in twos and threes on the opposite side of the street. She knots her fingers together, taking everything in.
“How are you adjusting to being back?” I ask her.
“I don’t know.” She wriggles from the bottom up, loosing herself from an imaginary net. And her eyes constrict the way they would if something cold and unpleasant had crawled across her bare skin. Her I don’t know seems just a placeholder for other words she is unwilling or unable to utter.
“You’ve been away a long time. What was it like?”
Again she pauses, as if I’ve posed some unanswerable riddle. “Everything’s changed,” she finally admits.
“Well, maybe in the winter, when the heat is reliable, you’ll feel differently.”
“I can’t say.”
The Grove Street Artisan is my third place, the notch in my dial between home and work, the place I end up when I don’t intend to end up anywhere, so that’s where I take her, snagging the same table by the window that Mom chose on my birthday. I introduce her to Madge, which serves the added purpose of distracting her long enough for one of the girls behind the counter to make my latte. Despite having already eaten, Aunt Bel devours a blueberry scone, then returns to the counter and, after some indecision, brings back a mammoth sugar cookie.
The sweet tooth must run in the family.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’ve always wondered what it was like, staying over there.”
“What do you want to know?” She breaks off a piece of cookie and takes a bite. Her eyes grow large and she nods. “These are good.”
“The story I heard was that after your summer trip, you liked it so much that you decided to stay. It’s hard to imagine not coming back, though, at least to visit. You must have really . . .”
“Really what?”
I shake my head. “I dunno—found your calling? Loved being a missionary?”
Her mouth drops open. “Is that what they’ve always told you?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
She stares at the crystals of sugar that have fallen on her napkin. “I guess you could say I had a calling I needed to fulfill.”
“Did you?”
“Fulfill the calling?” she asks.
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s only one person who can be the judge of that.” She waves a fragment of sugar cookie in the air, dismissive. “What’s a missionary, anyway? Everybody’s a missionary, or nobody is. It’s all the same, isn’t it?”
“Wait. So you weren’t a missionary?”
She shrugs. “Who’s to say?”
Who’s to say? What does that even mean in this context? Why would I be told she was a missionary if she wasn’t? I’m confused, but observant enough to get the strong signal that she’s not going to enlighten me further.
“Well, according to Grandmom and Grandpop’s definition, then.” Believe me, that definition made me decidedly not want to become one, and that definition always made me question my own dedication. It still does despite hundreds of sermons to the contrary, sermons about the spirituality of a life well lived, about calling and giftedness.
The Mona Lisa smile returns. “Sara, there isn’t a missionary alive that’s a missionary by their definition.”
I laugh with relief. “You’re not what I expected,” I tell her.
“Were you thinking Saint Francis?”
“Maybe Judson Taylor.” My grandmother actually had a framed picture of the famed missionary to the Chinese people in her prayer closet, the place she went for at least an hour each day to pray over all the prayer cards she collected at the missions conferences she attended over the years.
“Oh, Lord!” She barks out a laugh. “Heavens, no!”
“My husband, Finn—who you’ll meet—he was calling you the Nun. I don’t know, I guess when I think of somebody who’s been a missionary for twenty-some years, I imagine she’d have her hair up in a bun, with no makeup and a big denim skirt.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” She smiles.
“I know it’s an unfair caricature. I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t know anyone like you.”
“What am I like?”
Someone prone to asking uncomfortable questions?
I veer away from any answer that might have some depth. “You know, you’re stylish. I mean, look how you dress. It kills me you can wear what you wear and look great in it. I’d look like such a poseur,” I say. “Like I was dressed by the Internet.”
She looks at her clothes, as if noticing them for the first time, and I can see that she’s surprised by what I’ve said.
“I’m not stylish,” she says. “I just wear what I like. Things that come to me.”
“That kills me even more.”
“The dress I found in the hallway of my apartment building. I never knew if someone dropped it on their way back from the laundry or threw it out.” She places a hand up to her mouth and stifles a laugh. “I never had the nerve to wear it over there. I’ve had it for ten years too!”
“That’s insane!”
“What? No. I just didn’t want—”
“No. I don’t mean that you’re crazy, Aunt Bel. The situation is. Don’t be offended. It just means I find it all so . . . unusual. I can’t relate.”
“Oh.” She nods once. “Okay.”
“What about the sweater?”
“This sweater, my friend Katya gave it to me.” She pinches the fabric between her fingers, remembering. “That makes it special. I think of her.”
“The friend who gave you the doll?”
“Oh, no,” she says. “That was someone else, a long time ago.”
“Well, maybe Katya can come and visit you sometime.”
“No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you think you’ll ever go back?”
“I will never go back.”
That has an air of finality. “Never?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I don’t want to talk about me, I want to talk about you, Sara. We have so much catching up to do. But not all at once.” She clenches her hands together, the tips of her fingers squeezing against the backs of her hands ever so slightly.
“Are you all right?” I ask. “It can’t be easy coming home after so long. All the people you left behind back there, twenty-some years of work . . . ?”
As I say this, Aunt Bel starts looking over her shoulder, scanning faces at the other tables. Is she worried about being overheard? She leans forward a little and under her breath asks, “Is it okay to smoke in here, or is that not allowed?”
When Finn walks up, I am sitting on the stoop next to my missionary aunt, who is on her second cancer stick since we left Grove Street. She holds it delicately between two fingertips, resting her elbow on her knee, and when she blows smoke she tilts her neck back, releasing it toward the sky. If you put a gif of it on Tumblr, it would probably go viral. My husband pauses on the sidewalk, giving me a what’s this? grin. I can tell as he approaches that he hasn’t put two and two together yet.
“Hey,” Finn says.
“Hey, yourself, Mr. Fix It. How did it go?”
“Oh, there’s plenty of time to catch up about that.”
Is there something in the water around here?
Aunt Bel glances up, then flicks her cigarette to the curb before standing. They must be as casual about littering in Kazakhstan as they are about smoking.
“This is my aunt,” I tell him. “Aunt Bel, this is Finn.”
“You’re—” he begins, then stops himself.
“You can say it.” Aunt Bel laughs. “The Nun.”
I can’t believe it. She’s making a joke. And he’s most likely thinking that missionary aunts aren’t supposed to be hot in their own special way. He’s shifting gears in his mind, but being an aesthete like I am, I know what he’s thinking: Better this than what I was picturing. Old lady brogues. Gray hair in a short, mannish do. Definitely not those gorgeous legs.
Finn puts the guitar down and reaches his hand out, then seems to decide that long-lost aunts probably merit a hug. I almost stop him, thinking Aunt Bel might shrivel at the touch, but she hugs him back, and by the time we’re up the stairs and inside, I find myself envying Finn’s easy way with people, free of the constraint, the uncertainty I can never seem to shake.
The questions I’ve been reluctant to ask he poses right off the bat, and instead of evasive monosyllables, he gets answers out of Aunt Bel. Of a sort.
“So what’s your plan?” He pulls out a kitchen chair for her. “You’re starting all over, is that the thing?”
She nods her thanks and sits down. “Oh, I have a lot of plans. Nothing but plans. I don’t know what half of them are yet, but I could do anything, be anything. That’s how I feel.”
“Well, that’s a fantastic place to start.” He pulls out a chair for me. “I guess you have people to touch base with. Supporters, that kind of thing. I know a lot of missionaries come back on leave, raising funds before they go back. That’s not what you’re doing—or is it?”
“Deputation,” I say, marveling at how easily the term jumped up from its seat at the back of my mind.
“Nothing like that,” she says. “I told Sara. I won’t be going back. This is the beginning. There is no one to see or touch base with. A fresh start.”
Unlike me, Finn doesn’t seem to find Aunt Bel’s intensity draining. Instead, she injects air into the fire of his own intensity, which comes out blazing.
“Wow,” he says. “That’s pretty brave. Do you have any ideas as far as work goes, the job market?” He grabs the kettle and begins to fill it.
Good luck with that tea, dear heart.
“Lots of ideas,” she says. “I thought of being a painter.”
“You mean, like houses?” He gives me a look.
“Painting pictures.”
“As in—art? That’s more of a hobby than a job, though. Unless you’re like Picasso or something. You’re not a Picasso, are you?” He reaches into the cabinet and pulls down the tea tin.
Really? How did I not see that earlier?
“I don’t know what I am anymore. We’ll have to see.”
They’re like two gamblers at the poker table, raising each other’s bets.
My cell phone rings. Dad. “Excuse me,” I say, heading into the living room.
“You surviving, Sare?” he asks.
“You’re right. She’s a little . . . unusual.”
He barks out a laugh. “You asked for it.”
“Mom did, actually.”
“Look, the couch here isn’t the best of situations, but if you ever need to get away—”
I laugh. “I thought you were going to offer to have Aunt Bel return.”
“She’s all yours. By the way, how’s that pound cake?”
“What pound cake? Mom must have driven off with it.”
“Big shocker there.” He pauses. “Well, at least I can still do something right.”
“Daddy, you do most things right.”
“Thanks, doll. So do you.”
He’s wrong, but I don’t mind one bit that he believes it.
The kettle is screaming when I hang up. From the hallway, I watch as Finn lifts it off the burner and pours it into a French press we use for tea, all the while describing to Aunt Bel our little creative agency and telling her that if she’s serious about painting, he could introduce her to some people. I have no idea who he means, but Finn’s circle is much wider than mine, thanks to his role at the Firehouse.
And, let’s face it, his general easygoing, caring, confidently friendly personality goes a long way too.
I listen unbeknownst to Aunt Bel, who fiddles with her pack of smokes. “What I really want is to know Sara more. I’ve wanted to meet her a long time. Living over there sometimes, I would imagine all this, what her life must be like.”
“And how does it compare to what you imagined?” Finn asks.
“I don’t know yet,” she tells him. “I only just arrived. But so far so good.”
I make my entrance and sit at the table.
Finn drops some shortbread on a plate and sets it down in the middle of the table. “Are you coming tonight?” he asks me.
“Aunt Bel’s probably tired, and I don’t want to leave her on her own.”
“What is tonight?” Aunt Bel reaches for a cookie.
“Church,” Finn says.
“Oh, I’d like to go.”
“It’s not like normal church,” I blurt. “You might not be—” I struggle for the word and end up with: “Comfortable.”
Aunt Bel narrows her eyes. “I don’t want to be comfortable.”
“Then you’re going to love this.” Finn grins and starts his well-rehearsed missive about St. Rick, the Big Idea, and the Microchurch.
I know the story already, so I pour a cup of tea, grab a couple of cookies, and head upstairs to change my clothes. Why would anybody not want to be comfortable? Why would she say that?
At the door to the spare bedroom, I glance inside to see whether Aunt Bel has unpacked. She has. Two framed pictures rest atop the dresser too. Whose pictures would she have?
My curiosity propels me into the room.
The first one isn’t a picture at all; it’s a framed greeting card. A cartoon bird executed in shiny blue foil perched on a branch, with a speech bubble coming from his beak. Inside the bubble, the bird says, @TWEET, @TWEET.
Looking at the card, I get goose bumps. What is she doing with this? I designed it two, almost three years ago, the first card we managed to get into retail shops. Compared to the work we do now, thanks to Huey’s expertise, this one looks a little crude, the kiss of the plate cutting deep but unevenly into the card stock. I pulled them all myself on the Pilot, and Finn helped me fold them. There were two hundred altogether, and I think half of those are still sitting in a box somewhere at the studio. How did she get her hands on this in Kazakhstan of all places? Daddy, I suppose.
Underneath the card, however, is a photo turned around. I peel it away.
It’s my graduation picture. Now that probably did come from my father. But . . . why me? Why the fascination?
Next to the bird sits a framed black-and-white photo of a boy, about five or six years old, his back against a tree, with a leafy field over his shoulder. He might be at a park, or in a rural backyard. Features slightly out of focus seem burdened by a dull, almost sleepy expression, his eyes half closed. Only visible from the shoulders up, he appears to be wearing a T-shirt too large for his body. A contrasting color circles around the wide collar opening, revealing his clavicle and the right side of his neck. Honestly, he would be perfect on the cover of a memoir about a childhood of deprivation, sorrow, and life in postwar poverty.
Only there’s a certain little flame in his eyes as if to say, I may look miserable to you, but I’m happy where it counts.
I open this one too, looking for writing on the back. Finn’s still talking downstairs, which means neither one of them is about to walk in on me. This feels like a violation, but I do it anyway. The back of the photo is blank. Maybe it’s from Kazakhstan, or maybe it’s one she has kept with her since before she left. Hard to tell.
Sometimes I wonder whether a photograph stared at long enough can retain a kind of resonance. Like a battery soaking up and storing energy, the photo stores the emotion invested in it by the human gaze. Sounds silly, I know, but this boy’s picture radiates sadness. He doesn’t seem unhappy in the photo. If anything, he seems listless. But that’s not what I’m feeling. There’s something else, something the image itself does not convey, something coming from the gaze that beheld the image before me, not from the boy himself.
I feel like a voyeur all of a sudden, put the photo back in the frame, then scurry away to change. Finn enters our bedroom and closes the door behind him. He leans against it and shows me what he has in his hands: the porcelain doll I left downstairs.
“What’s this all about?” he whispers in that “conspiracy of the odd” voice we get when we’re talking to the person who doesn’t get what we don’t get either.
I shake my head. “She gave it to me. It has sentimental value.”
“I sure hope so. Yeesh.” He sits next to me on the bed, arranging the doll on my nightstand, back up against my lamp.
I don’t want the doll there, but I ignore it. “What do you think?”
“She’s not what I expected.”
“You mean she’s pretty.”
“Well, yeah,” he concedes. “Especially for a woman her age.”
Good boy.
“And kind of . . . not all there? I guess I imagined her like one of those nuns who hits your knuckles with the ruler.” This from a man who didn’t grow up Catholic and, as far as I know, has never met a real nun in his life. “Instead, she’s kind of cool, but kind of spaced out, you know? But I like her. I think. She did ask me if it was okay to smoke in the bedroom.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t know what to say. We haven’t had that conversation. I told her you were in charge of things like that. You didn’t tell me she smoked.”
“How was I supposed to know? I didn’t think missionaries were allowed.”
“Maybe she was like some badass, twisted missionary.”
I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder, sighing. “A twisted missionary. I am sure that’s not allowed.”
“How much time before we have to leave?” he asks.
“Enough,” I say, turning to face him and pushing my fingers into his curls. Realization strikes. “Wait. We’re not alone in the house.”
“Oh, baby. Really?”
“Really. Look at it this way, she won’t be here forever.” Not like kids are. Chew on that a little bit.
“Where’s she going to go?” he asks.
“I think that’s up to us to help her find out.”
“I’m on it.”