The week after Aunt Bel’s arrival, a new client walks into the studio just after opening. Right off the street, not even calling ahead. From my cubicle, I can hear her talking to Diana, saying all the things I like to hear. Could this finally be it? The ideal client who says things like, “Price is no object.” Or, “Please, you’re the artist. Do whatever you want.”
Uh, most likely not. But stranger things have happened.
“I’ve heard some great things about you guys, and I’m looking for the very best. I need something different, something creative and outside the box. I really want to invest in something special, you know? Make it magical. I want to grab people by the heart.”
The woman dwarfs Diana and me, this blond, dressed in an expensive-looking short tailored jacket and dark jeans. She has an oversized leather purse over one shoulder that I’m accustomed to assuming is a knock-off, though in this case it probably isn’t. If I had to guess, I would say she’s about Aunt Bel’s age, but in terms of conscious sophistication, she’s the anti-Bel.
Her blond hair falls straight, a shining light down to the middle of her back.
She reaches over the counter to shake my hand. “You’re Sara? It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Finally?” I say.
“I’m Holly. We have some friends in common.”
These friends, it turns out, are from The Community, where Holly works as something called Director of Aesthetics. She knows Finn, she knows St. Rick, and is apparently best friends forever with Rick’s wife, Beth. She explains all this as I lead her over to the conference table, and my heart starts to sink. Church work tends to be pro bono work. Not to mention most churches involve too many people in the decision-making process, which leads to every designer’s nightmare: design-by-committee. Every time I do a freebie for some church group, I promise myself afterward I’m going to start saying no.
“I’m not wearing my Community hat,” Holly explains, removing a file folder from her bag. “I’m helping my husband out. Eric Ringwald, the financier?”
She says his name like I ought to have heard of him, so I smile and play along. Doing work for a financier sounds a lot more promising than undertaking a job on behalf of The Community, especially given Finn’s on-again, off-again relationship to that church.
“He left all that behind a few years ago,” she says, “and now he’s a full-time fund-raiser.”
My heart can’t take this. Fund-raising sounds like nonprofit, and nonprofit groups are right behind churches in the line for free stuff. Not to sound cynical, but when you have rent and employees and your own house payments to make, you start to resent people bringing you these pro bono opportunities, encouraging you to “give back,” as if you’ve already made it and all that’s left in life is to work gratis on behalf of others.
“This,” she says, sliding the folder over, “is what he’s working with now. He spent a lot of money a couple of years ago to have the organization branded, and as you can see, ended up with something so sterile and generic that it says absolutely nothing. Safe and corporate, but it has no soul.”
Inside the folder, I find a stack of glossy four-color brochures, some invitations to events that took place last year and the year before, and a flat version of what appears to be a DVD cover, featuring some stock photo children riding bicycles through a park. I glance over the copy inside one of the brochures and come away none the wiser.
“What was all this for?”
“If you want people’s money,” she says, “you have to ask for it. These are some of the ways you ask. We mail the brochures, invite people to parties, show them videos of all the good work the organizations are doing—whoever Eric’s raising money for at the moment—and then, once the groundwork is laid, Eric asks if they’ll write him the check.”
Unlike most clients, Holly knows exactly what she wants. Her husband is hosting a fund-raising event twelve weeks from now. She wants us to start with the invitations to the event, then redesign her husband’s logo and website, along with all the collateral printed pieces, from stationery to the brochures. And she wants all of it designed, printed, and ready to go by the evening of the fund-raiser.
“We’re picking up the tab on this, not the charities,” she explains, “and I don’t want to cut any corners. I want everything to be beautiful, and it should capture what his work is all about. The organizations Eric raises money for are really making a difference in the world, and people should know about it. That’s what I mean when I say it has to grab them by the heart. They’re not giving money to Eric, or to the charities even, they’re giving it to people.” She pauses, then smiles. “Okay, that’s the end of my sermon. This is my budget.” She hands me a piece of paper. “Now, is twelve weeks enough time?”
“We’ll make it enough,” I say. “We’re gonna show you what we can do.”
Oh yeah, we are.
It’s the chance of a decade, the one I’ve been looking for.
I round everybody up immediately and explain the project, the reactions ranging from Huey’s sigh at the deadline to Finn’s boyish enthusiasm. “These are the kind of clients we’ve been dreaming of,” he says. “The Ringwalds are loaded, and they know a lot of people who are even more loaded. If we pull this off, it could lead to big things.”
“Sure,” Huey says. “If we can pull it off.”
“What do you mean if, Huey?” I ask. “I’m usually with you on the practical side of things, but look at who’s sitting in this room? If we can’t do . . . well, I just don’t know. Can you let go of the curmudgeon act for just an hour and let me relish a little?”
Finn stifles a laugh with his fist.
Huey apparently didn’t hear me. “We’ve already got more on our plates than we can handle, and that hunk of junk in the middle of the studio isn’t going to fix itself. We need working presses here, not restoration projects.”
“Whatever we can’t do in-house, we can outsource,” I say.
Huey glares at me like I’ve just suggested opening a sweatshop powered by orphan labor. “The whole point of being a printer is not having to send things out.”
“Which is why you need to be on board one hundred percent.” Looking for some way to motivate him, I say, “With the money from this project, we can buy a Heidelberg.”
Finn sits up straight. “What do we need a Heidelberg for when we’ve got that? Am I right or am I right?”
We all turn to look at the rusted Iron Maiden dominating the center of the studio.
Huey stands. “Anybody want a cup of coffee or tea? This is going to be a long afternoon.”
All three of us raise our hands.
He heads back to the small kitchen at the back of the shop. Finn, Diana, and I look at each other, the excitement foaming and frothing between us.
“This is gonna be good,” I say.
“Oh yeah, you guys.” Finn smiles. “Nothing Byzantine about this situation here, Sara.”
Nope. Just a pie-in-the-sky, all-is-right-with-the-world thing going on right now and I’m not going to complain.
By the end of the meeting, I’ve worked out a plan. Diana and I will divide design duties down the middle. While I focus on Holly’s job, she will handle the log of wedding invitations and walk-in design projects on her own, with help from Finn as needed. Once I have the invites for the fund-raising event done, Huey will print them, and then in the space, as I work on the brochure and other promotional pieces, Finn will build the website. Together, Huey and Finn will see what can be done with the Chandler & Price.
But right now, I have to do an immediate turnaround for the invitation to the fund-raising event. I told Holly I’d have a few design options tomorrow. Thank goodness she just wants something simple. Thank goodness we’ve designed more wedding invitations than I ever thought we would. I haven’t pulled an all-nighter in a long time. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
Taking me aside for a private consult, Finn makes a suggestion. “You know something, we could use an extra set of hands down here. For the time being, anyway. What about your aunt? You think she’d be interested?”
“Are you serious?”
Apart from devouring Rick’s Flannery O’Connor book and smoking on the stoop, I’m not sure Aunt Bel has any interests. In the week since her arrival, she’s gotten more reserved than on the first day, not less. All my conversations with her when I go home at night are one-sided, and Finn’s efforts haven’t yielded much more.
“You said yourself, you don’t know what she even does with her time. Maybe she needs something to occupy herself.”
“Other than smoking and reading Flannery O’Connor.”
“Right. Plus, it might be good for her, you know, being around other people. I get this vibe off her like she’s spent way too much time in her life alone.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “I just don’t have time to babysit her here—there’s too much to do.”
“I’ll do it, Sara.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. It was my idea, so I’ll be responsible.”
“Finn, you know I love you, right?”
“How could you not?” he asks, grinning. Then he sobers, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me softly on the mouth. “I’ve always been crazy about you,” he whispers almost inaudibly in my ear.
Sometimes, for the life of me, I can’t understand why. But that doesn’t mean I won’t take it.
That night at dinner he floats the idea to Aunt Bel, who absorbs it in her ambivalent, noncommittal way. But the next morning she’s dressed and ready for breakfast, walks with us to the studio without our asking, and seems in higher spirits than I’ve seen from her since day one. I’m about as tired after my late night as I ever want to be, but between Diana and me, we have three good designs for the invite.
True to his word, Finn finds little jobs around the office to keep Aunt Bel busy—stacking, folding, cutting—and from time to time gives her impromptu lectures on various things happening all around her. He parks her behind my desk as I go over the work on the fund-raiser invite, going on at length about vector art and the new platemaking process for letterpress printing. “Nobody uses lead type anymore, not for serious work. We send out the files and have polymer plates made.” He digs some flimsy old ink-stained polymers out of the drawer and shows them off. Bel makes appreciative sounds, as she always does during Finn’s instructional interludes.
Not that Finn is in her age range or anything, but there’s an inherent sensuality about my aunt. It basically creeps me out thinking about that, but that doesn’t change things. Some women just can’t help it. They’ve got so much sexual energy, it just bleeds out of them whether they want it to or not.
I am not one of those women.
In thirty minutes I leave for a meeting with Holly to garner her approval of the invitation design. I’m nervous. I may not have a lot of sexual energy oozing out of me, but nervous energy? If you could hook up a backhoe to me right now, I’d dig you a pit the size of Kazakhstan.
After garnering a reaction from Holly only someone like Nelson Mandela deserves and a tour of her husband’s office as well as lunch at the Nautilus Diner to celebrate the direction of the project, I find Finn and Aunt Bel standing over Huey’s shoulder at the Vandercook. At the counter, Diana motions me to be quiet and listen, much as she would if she were observing wildlife and didn’t want to spook them.
“Just wait,” she says.
Finn is narrating Huey’s every move like a color commentator, as if he expects my aunt to jump in and assist once she’s heard enough. Judging by Huey’s bristly, overprecise movements, I can tell he’s about reached his limit. Sure enough, he starts offering his own counter-narration in between Finn’s pauses, explaining what he’s really doing on the press and how catastrophic it would be if anyone were to take Finn’s explanations at face value.
“They’re in top form today,” Diana says, crossing her legs on her stool.
“Nice pumps,” I say, pointing to black vintage kitten heel shoes.
“Thanks. So while you were gone, Finn announced he was going to get a start on the Iron Maiden this afternoon.”
At Diana’s elbow I see the Flannery O’Connor book. “What’s this?”
“Bel brought it in. She wanted me to read one of the stories. Because of these,” she says, lifting her arms to indicate her shoulder-to-wrist tats.
Noticing my return, Huey breaks off and comes to see whether the designs met with approval. I give him the thumbs-up. “She picked one and loves it. Now we need to knock them out.”
“I’m ready whenever you are. Let’s rock and roll.”
“I’m all set up,” Huey informs me the next afternoon. “You ready to print?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
Huey smiles and we head out to the print floor.
There’s nothing like the whir of the Vandercook, the back and forth ker-clunk, ker-clunk of its cylinder, rolling forward to make the print, re-inking the plate as it travels back. Huey walks the cylinder forward, his hand on the crank, pulling the prints one at a time and handing them to Aunt Bel, who places them gingerly on the drying rack. The sound of progress, the smell of the ink, the whole process is all rather intoxicating, and wonderfully manual. The ink and paper, though fine to begin with, seem somehow ennobled by the energy of a human being powering the process. The invitations are invitations, yes, but they are also now a form of art.
All afternoon the work continues, and as Huey works the press, Finn turns his attention to the Iron Maiden. He drags a chair alongside, then dons headphones so he can watch his instructional videos yet again. I check on him whenever I take a break, and by the time the invites are done, he has set out several plastic tubs of water and is soaking some test parts to remove the rust via electrolysis. He’s bought a battery charger especially for this. I can’t watch.
Despite the influx of work, I stick to keeping our weekly staff meetings, a habit I carved out early on that gives me a chance to kick new ideas around and keep a finger on the shop’s pulse. This time of year we’re always brainstorming ideas for the retail business. One of our major retailers, the Brooklyn-based lifestyle store Katz Lime, wants a whole new greeting card line, something exclusive to them and edgy.
“You don’t want me at this,” Bel says, groping at the fabric of her skirt.
“Everybody’s sitting in. You’ll have fun.”
We gather around the conference table, laying out notebooks and coffee cups and tablet computers. Finn brings a fresh carafe of coffee and opens a box of pastries fetched this morning from the bakery.
“All right,” I say, reaching for a cream cheese danish. “Let’s hear something edgy.”
Crickets.
It’s the same thing that happens if, out of the blue, you say, “Tell me something funny.” Most people when they’re put on the spot can’t deliver.
We go around the table, starting with Finn, who throws out a few ideas without finishing any of them. Halfway in, he stops and says, “No, that’s crap.” Then he launches into a new one, only to pull up again.
“What about you, Bel?” Diana asks, then bites into an apricot macadamia muffin.
“I don’t even know what ‘edgy’ means.”
“Diana?” I ask.
The girl has a rockabilly thing she’s always trying to channel into the product. I’m open to her vibe, but between us we’ve never figured out how to make it work tastefully. Judging from her start, we’re not going to manage that today either.
“Think roller girls,” she says. “But absolutely covered in blood—”
Finn cups his hands around his mouth: “Next.”
Diana throws one of her Altoids at him.
“Okay, here’s mine,” Huey says. “Listen up.” He pauses over the legal pad where he’s scribbled his ideas down, awaiting our full attention. “Here it is: first lines of famous books, with sarcastic comebacks inside. For example, on the front of the card, you see a bonnet and a big Victorian dress, and underneath is the opening line of Middlemarch. It says—” He consults the pad again. “ ‘Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.’ Then you open the card and it says, ‘What’s your excuse?’ ”
“So the comeback is aimed at the reader, not the quote?” Diana asks.
“Yeah, exactly. So, like, this is the card you give the friend who doesn’t know how to dress herself. It’s a trash-talking card.”
“I like that.” Sassy.
“Here’s another one. First line on the cover comes from Anna Karenina: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ You open it up, and it says, ‘Thanks for keeping us so unique.’ ”
“That one needs work,” I say.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“She’s right,” Finn says. “What’s the card for? You give it to your parents for making your life miserable?”
I flap my hands in the air. “Oh, wait, I’ve got it. This is the card you give your soon-to-be sister-in-law so she knows what she’s getting into. It says, ‘Welcome to the family.’ ”
“No, no,” Diana says. “How about: ‘Guess which one we are?’ You know, you’re marrying into it, and you don’t know the dynamic. You get this sarcastic card from your fiancé’s sister and you’re like, Okaaaay, I’m going with unhappy.”
“But at least they have a sense of humor,” I say.
Huey goes back to the legal pad. “Next one. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ I don’t have anything for inside that one, but I was thinking, you know, you give it to your friend who’s just announced her engagement to a guy you don’t like.”
“ ‘His fortune better be more than good. Just sayin,’ ” Finn says.
“Ha, ha, I like that.”
Diana shakes her head. “How about, it’s the card you give the hot guy who just moved into the apartment building. The line is: ‘Welcome to the neighborhood.’ ”
Aunt Bel sits across from me with a baffled look. We might as well be speaking Swahili as far as she’s concerned. “I don’t get it,” she says. “These sound kind of . . . mean.”
“That’s the idea,” Huey replies. “They gotta have some attitude. That’s the humor. People think of these classics of literature as kind of stuffy and sacrosanct. So you make ’em catty and ill-tempered, and people love it.”
“But why would you buy something like that? I wouldn’t give somebody a card to tell them I thought they were choosing the wrong husband, or to warn her not to marry into the family. Would you?”
“It’s meant to be funny. Like I said, it’s trash talk. Riffing on lines from literature makes it snobby trash talk, which is pitching right across the plate for our demographic—right, Sara?”
“Pretty much,” I say.
“Maybe I just don’t understand. Could you explain why it’s funny?”
Huey starts chuckling. “Bel, baby, explaining a joke is like coming home drunk at three in the morning with another woman’s lipstick on your cheek. Nothing you say is gonna be good enough. Trust me, this is good stuff.”
As Huey speaks, I notice Finn—who’s sitting right next to Aunt Bel—start to wriggle with discomfort, puckering his lips in a way I recognize. He thinks we’re patronizing her and doesn’t like it. The next words out of his mouth are going to be in her defense.
“Maybe Bel has a point,” he says.
I cut him off. “We need to refine the wording, but I think the idea itself is solid. I don’t know how big the market for sarcastic greeting cards actually is, but I think they’ll do fine as letterpress pieces—and this is the kind of concept that’ll get us play on the blogs. I can see us posting photos of these, closed, then open. We’ll be reblogged, reposted, repinned, retweeted, you name it. This is good stuff, Huey.”
“Thanks,” he says. “Got a few more. Here’s Fahrenheit 451: ‘It was a pleasure to burn.’ Open it up and—” He drops his voice into the Barry White register. “ ‘Let’s do it again sometime, baby.’ ”
“Yeah,” Diana says.
“Are you adjusting all right, Aunt Bel?” I ask.
She’s been at the studio every day for a couple of weeks, watching and learning, helping out where she can. In that time, I have picked up on her method and come to understand her a bit better. Aunt Bel focuses on one person at a time, does what she can to win them over, then—once she feels things are stable enough—moves on. That first day with me, her attention was total. Now she remains polite but distant. She attached herself to Finn next, then Diana, and finally put some time into winning Huey over.
“You seem like you’ve made some friends,” I add, realizing I sound like the school counselor talking to the troubled new kid.
“It’s relaxing here,” she says.
“You think so? It can get pretty stressful for me sometimes.”
“Everything is clear, though. The steps to go through, the deadlines. Once you know what to do, you can tune things out.”
“You mean turn them out? You can get a lot done.”
“No, tune them out. Forget they exist. I like that, Sara. Very much. You can’t do that with people.”
“Finn thinks you should learn how to pull prints. He wants to start you on the Sigwalt, which is nice and straightforward. I’m not sure, but he thinks you’re ready.”
She shrugs, not seeming to care one way or the other.
“You don’t have to,” I tell her. It’s painfully obvious she could take or leave this stuff. “But it’s a good skill to have. I’d rather see you doing that than getting dragged into Iron Maiden duty.”
The Maiden is now partially disassembled, the big flywheel flat on the ground taking up twice the space as before, the other pieces arranged in various heaps, the logic of their division known only to Finn. While the bulk of the pieces still need to be de-rusted, he has moved on to testing paint on the handful of restored parts, collecting votes on bright red versus a dark blackish green.
“You’re very blessed to have this place. I am happy for you, Sara. It’s not at all what I imagined, but I am happy for you.”
While she heads off to the Sigwalt, where Finn stands waiting with a spare apron, I catch Diana’s eye and beckon her over.
“What do you think about my aunt? Is she right in the head?”
“I think she’s kind of amazing,” Diana says. “I wish she was my aunt instead.”
If I had more time, I would chew on that thought, but rebranding Eric Ringwald’s website hasn’t come as easily as the concept for the invitation. I’ve had to figure out not just his operation but the various nonprofits he regularly assists, haunted by Holly’s desire to grab people’s hearts—which is much easier to say than to translate into good design. Picture a cartoon hand closing around a cartoon heart. It conveys . . . nothing. Yet every sketch I make, every idea I kick around amounts to little more than that.
It’s four in the afternoon. I have been pushing myself since lunch and have nothing to show for it. Holly calls—she touches base every few days—and of course she’s wondering if I have anything for her to see. I’m in the middle of making excuses when I hear a scream from over the cubicle wall.
“Holly, I’ve gotta go.”
The voice was Diana’s, but she’s not the one who’s hurt. She’s standing with her back slightly arched, hands over her mouth. I follow her line of sight to a huddle of bodies, Huey and Finn bending over a crumpled Aunt Bel, helping her rise to her feet. I rush over, my chest pounding. Her face twists in pain as she cradles her left hand.
“Give her space,” Finn is saying.
Huey’s arm supports her. “Come on, Bel, lemme take a look.”
“What happened?” I say, but it comes out as a shriek. Finn stares at me, pale and petrified.
“It’s all right,” Huey keeps saying, in a tone that suggests anything but. Aunt Bel turns slightly toward me, and I can see the problem. Her left pinkie finger hangs at the wrong angle in relation to her hand.
I slam my hand over my mouth, willing myself not to throw up.