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Aunt Helen Beck was square-shouldered and prone to headaches. She stretched out on sofas too short for her, and let her feet climb walls or rest on end tables or knock over plants. The children in the houses she visited told Aunt Helen Beck Stories, first to their friends, then to their own children, who sometimes got to meet the old lady in real life and collect their own tales, the same ones: the healing power of molasses; the letters she dictated to dead relatives. Her fondness for reciting James Whitcomb Riley or any morbid poet with three names: Edgar Allan Poe, Edwin Arlington Robinson. She said she knew James Whitcomb Riley when she was a girl in Indianapolis and had once presented him with a bouquet of flowers at a school pageant. He was drunk.

After a while, everyone Aunt Helen Beck knew was dead, and so she wrote a lot of letters, dictated to the children, who, despite being terrified of the enormous old lady on the sofa, loved scribbling down: “Dear Arthur. You have been dead fifty years and I still don’t forgive you.” Aunt Helen Beck would hold a small change purse in her hand and shake it as she spoke; it was leather gone green with age. Aunt Helen Beck said there were two pennies in it, though she would never show them to anybody.

“I have had these pennies for sixty-five years,” she’d say. “I intend to be buried with them.”

Aunt Helen Beck had many intentions about her death. She was about being dead the way some people are about being British—she wasn’t, and it seemed she never would be, but it was clearly something she aspired to, since all the people she respected were.

*  *  *  *  *

I am your Aunt Helen Beck.

That was how she began every call, no matter who answered the phone. It was important to say it as if they should remember her, though of course, having never met her, they rarely did.

Aunt Helen Beck, they’d say. How are you?

Tell the truth, she’d answer, not so good. I’m in Springfield (or Delta Bay, or Cedar Rapids, or Yuma), and I need a place to stay.

Sometimes she’d explain that she was about to visit a friend who had now suddenly fallen ill. If she had stayed with one of their siblings, she’d mention that. They’d come in a pick-up truck or a sedan or a ramshackle station wagon, and when they spotted the one old woman likewise looking for a stranger, she could see their alarm. It was as if they were scanning a dictionary page for a word they’d just heard for the first time: Good Lord. You mean that’s how it’s spelled?

Aunt Helen Beck always liked that moment. She was bigger than anyone ever assumed she’d be; she looked as if she might still be growing, her hands and knees outsize, like a teenager’s. People thought women were like dogs: the big ones were expected to die, until all that was left were the small, fussy sorts, the ones with nervous stomachs and improbable hair.

Then she got in the car with them and they drove home.

This time, it was a boat she stepped off, the ferry to Orcas Island, in Puget Sound. Already she could spot Ford and his wife, Chris: they kept still, looking through the crowd only with their eyes. Ford held his wife’s hand. Aunt Helen Beck had stayed with Abbie, Ford’s sister, a few years before. That’s when she’d gotten Ford’s address, and back then an island had sounded too far away to visit. Now she was beginning to run out of places.

Aunt Helen Beck walked straight up to them, one arm extended, without any doubt. In the other hand she carried a suitcase as if it weighed nothing at all.

“Ford,” said Aunt Helen Beck. They both jumped. “And Chris.” She bent down a bit to allow Chris a kiss on the cheek, but made it clear she did not want another kiss anytime in the near future. Ford took her suitcase instead.

She saw them take her in, her navy blue suit, clean shirt, none of the usual old lady fripperies: no perfume, makeup, or glasses. Her gray hair was short and close to her head. She looked like a nun who had decided, after much thought, that as a matter of fact she’d always preferred cleanliness over godliness.

“You have a beard,” Aunt Helen Beck said to Ford.

“Glory be,” he said, touching his chin. “Actually, yes. I do.”

“Your cousin Edward was fond of his beard, too. I always thought that bearded men were hiding something, but I have been assured that that’s not true.”

“I hope not,” said Chris. She was a copper-headed, freckled woman dressed just like her husband, in blue jeans and a dark long-sleeved T-shirt.

“Just parked over here,” Ford said.

Chris climbed in the bed of the truck. Ford tried to help Aunt Helen Beck up into the cab, but she wouldn’t allow it. He walked around and got in.

“So.” Ford tapped the steering wheel, then turned the key in the ignition. “How long do you think you’ll be with us?”

Aunt Helen Beck looked at him. “Here’s your hat what’s your hurry, is that how it is?”

“No,” he said. “No. I was just wondering—”

“Well, I don’t know whether or not I like you. It would be premature for me to make a prediction. I might want to turn around soon as we get to your house.”

“I hope,” said Ford, a little sincerity forced into his voice, “that you’ll give us more of a chance than that.”

“Done,” said Aunt Helen Beck.

She looked at his profile, at the sun coming through his beard. In fact, he was hiding things. There were acne scars on the parts of his cheeks that were out in the open; and it was clear that if you poked your finger straight into his beard, it would be a while before you hit any semblance of a chin.

“Here.” Aunt Helen Beck reached into her pocket and pulled out a small framed photograph of a mustached man standing in front of a painted arbor. “For you,” she said. “Your great-grandfather. My uncle Patrick Corrigan. Not my blood uncle, of course, but I was very fond of him always.” She held it up. “You do look like him.”

Ford looked at it out of the corner of his eye. “Nice-looking man,” he said. “Thank you. Sure you want to give that up?”

“I always bring a present to my hosts,” said Aunt Helen Beck.

They pulled up a rocky drive that jostled Aunt Helen Beck’s bones, still sore from traveling. An old trailer flashed by, the round sort that had always looked to her like a thermos bottle, as if the people inside needed protection against rot. Then a house showed itself around a bend, halfway up the big hill. It looked like a good house, solid and small. Aunt Helen Beck had stayed in better, perhaps, but she had certainly stayed in much worse.

“This must be the place,” said Ford, pulling on the brake.

She heard a child say to Chris, “You’re ridin’ in back like a dog.”

Chris barked a response, then came around to the door to help Aunt Helen Beck out. The child, who had white-blond hair halfway down its back, ran around with her.

“Who’s that?” the child asked, pointing.

“Who are you?” Aunt Helen Beck replied, and then, because she couldn’t tell, “Are you a little boy or a little girl?” They dressed them alike, these days.

“I’m a boy,” he said.

“Your hair’s too long,” she told him.

“I like my hair. My mother cuts it for me.”

“Your mother is falling down on the job,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “Come to me and I’ll do better.” She grabbed her suitcase, which Ford took from her. “I’m your Aunt Helen Beck,” she told the boy.

“He’s not ours,” said Ford, swinging the suitcase over his shoulder. “He lives in that trailer we just passed.”

“Good,” she said.

They went around back and walked into a bright kitchen, full of the sorts of long skinny plants Aunt Helen Beck had always distrusted: they looked like they wanted to ruffle your hair or sample your cooking. The boy followed them into the house. He flopped down on the couch; Aunt Helen Beck couldn’t blame him. A child who lived in a trailer surely thought that furniture was a luxury.

“So,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Mercury,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Ford shrugged. “His mother likes planets.”

“I like vegetables,” said Aunt Helen Beck, “but I wouldn’t name my child Rutabaga. But”—she squinted at Ford,—“I suppose that someone named after a car isn’t shocked.”

“The theater, actually,” said Ford.

“Huh,” said Aunt Helen Beck. She turned to her niece. “Christopher Columbus, I presume?”

Chris just blushed.

“In my day,” said Aunt Helen Beck, “we settled on a dead uncle and were done with it.”

Mercury took off one of his shoes. “When you have children,” he recited, “you can name them anything you want.”

*  *  *  *  *

The house was a small prefab; Aunt Helen Beck had never heard of such a thing. The guest room down the hall was decorated with a number of faded bedspreads: on the narrow cot, as drapes, suspended from the ceiling like something in a harem. The furniture was otherwise sparse and functional; Ford explained that he had made some of it himself and was thinking of taking up caning. There was a picture window in the living room with a view of both Puget Sound and the silver trailer. According to Ford, Mercury’s mother, Gaia, had casual attitudes toward marriage and having children. So far she’d had Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, and seemed bent on assembling her own galaxy, though God help the child named Pluto or Uranus. The kids were all as blond and airy as Gaia, and constantly orbited Chris and Ford’s flower patch, dirty and nosy as trowels.

“Ford’s cooking dinner tonight,” Chris said. “What do you like to eat?”

“Nothing, really,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “But I’ll eat anything anyhow.”

In the kitchen, Ford was pulling pots and boxes out of cupboards. “I’d thought I’d make some quinoa,” he said. “The grain of the ancient Aztecs.”

“Of who?” Aunt Helen Beck asked. She and Chris sat down at the kitchen table.

“Aztecs,” said Ford. “Or. Incas? Ancient somebodies. The guy at the store told me. I think you’ll like it.”

“Because I’m ancient, no doubt.”

“No, no,” said Ford. But Chris laughed and touched Aunt Helen Beck’s forearm lightly.

“No, really,” Ford said. “Somebody ancient really did eat this stuff.”

“But did they like it?” asked Chris, giggling.

“Not you, too,” said Ford. “Okay. Rice? It’s tricky, Aunt Helen Beck: we’re vegetarians.”

“As am I,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “I knew you seemed sensible.”

“Beans and rice it is,” said Ford. He set out his things carefully: first garlic, then spices; he poured the rice into a glass measuring cup and then into a strainer. “No time to soak beans,” he said under his breath, “so we’ll just use canned,” and Aunt Helen Beck could tell that he was a convert to careful diet: once upon a time he went through this sort of ritual with substances that were not so good for him. She had seen that sort of thing in plenty of houses.

“So where were you taking the bus from?” Chris asked her.

“From Vallejo.” Aunt Helen Beck got up and opened a drawer, looking for silverware. When she found it, she started setting the table.

“Leave that,” Ford said. “We’ll do it.”

Aunt Helen Beck ignored him. She said to Chris, “Usually I travel by car, but my car broke down about a month ago and I had to leave it behind.”

“That’s terrible,” said Chris. “Are you going to get another one?”

“I can’t tell. This car was a gift, so I suppose if someone wants to give me another I’ll take it.”

Chris tried to take a fork from Aunt Helen Beck’s hand, but failed. “You’re making me feel guilty,” she said.

“Your guilt I can do nothing about,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “The table I can.”

“You’re from Vallejo?” asked Ford.

“Heavens, no,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “My niece Marlene lives there. I was just visiting her. And before that I was with Abbie, and before that I was with my dear cousin Audrey, who passed away.”

“Oh dear,” said Chris. “While you were visiting?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say.” Aunt Helen Beck straightened one of the placemats that was already on the table. “She gave me the car—she left it to me; she left everything to me. I think perhaps Audrey was my closest friend, though I didn’t meet her until we were both grown women. In fact, I read her husband’s obituary and realized this was a cousin and called her to offer my condolences, that’s how we met. I visited Audrey often.”

“How long had you been there when she died?” Chris asked.

“Five years. When you’re seventy-four, the people you know are dying or dead. One gets used to it.”

Ford rummaged in a kitchen drawer for a spoon. “Where do you call home now?”

Aunt Helen Beck picked up a fork and set it back down decisively. “All set here,” she said. “Ready when you are.”

*  *  *  *  *

After Aunt Helen Beck had cleared the table, washed the dishes, and wiped down the table, the three of them sat around the kitchen table. Aunt Helen Beck rattled her little purse.

“There must be a story behind that,” Chris said.

“My brother made it for me.” Aunt Helen Beck stopped shaking it but didn’t open her palm to let them see.

“Another relative!” said Ford. “Where’s he now?”

“He died very young. My brother,” said Aunt Helen Beck, “was a child preacher. He toured the South with my father. Beautiful child, Georgie. Famous, too. Before he died, he made me this purse for my birthday and put two pennies in it. I’ve kept it with me ever since.”

“Nice to know there’s spirituality in the family,” said Ford.

Aunt Helen Beck waved her hand. “My father made him preach, and Georgie was smart and pretty. Children are not spiritual, in my opinion.”

But the voice she used when she wanted to shut people up had no effect on him. “Why, Aunt Helen Beck,” he said. “Children are spiritual creatures. It’s why they’re unpredictable.”

“No,” she said. “There’s a difference between being spiritual and just being willful. Some people never learn that.” She looked at him deliberately.

Chris laughed. “Don’t get him started, Aunt Helen Beck. He’s full of theories.”

“So’s Aunt Helen Beck, I have a feeling,” said Ford.

She smiled back. “I’m sure we have a lot to talk about.” She could tell he was flattered by that: he was the type of man who wanted to be invited to join every club there was. Even hers.

*  *  *  *  *

Aunt Helen Beck worked hard at all the things that convinced people to let her stay. She got up early to bake bread, examined the books that were on the shelves and referred to them in conversation. She did dishes immediately; cooked for herself; went to bed early and pretended to sleep soundly.

She charmed Mercury, at least. He adored her, and started playing in the yard less and in the house more. She instructed Mercury to behave, she threatened him with poems about goblins that stole nasty children, and he seemed eager to be taken, and asked her if she were the head goblin.

“He’s a good kid,” Chris told her. “Just restless.”

“Perhaps,” said Aunt Helen Beck, but she smiled. She was fond of Mercury, though the brother and sister old enough to walk struck her as colorless and dull. Children did not interest her until they were six: Aunt Helen Beck liked conversation.

She got that in abundance from Ford. He was a glib young man, too free and easy. Aunt Helen Beck had expected him to be reserved, since when she’d stayed with his sister he left a message on the answering machine: “Oh hell, Ab,” he said. “You got a machine? Well. Hate these things. Guess I’ll just write.” Aunt Helen Beck had assumed that meant he wouldn’t brook any nonsense, when really he just preferred his own special stock. He admired Indians—both sorts—and wrote poetry that he tacked to the doorjambs of the house, frequently addressed to “The Earth,” or, “The Goddess.” It took Aunt Helen Beck some time to discover that this second wasn’t a pet name for his wife.

She was the reason Aunt Helen Beck wanted to stay. Chris stayed home all day to make her necklaces, which she sold through some of the shops and galleries in town. Sometimes, Ford helped with the beading, but Aunt Helen Beck noticed his impatience: he threw all the good beads together, and ended up with chunky clashed messes. His wife knew how to spell the dazzle with tiny beads and knots. Aunt Helen Beck noted with approval that Chris was quiet and perennially embarrassed: an attractive quality in a woman, and something, she knew, that had always been lacking in herself.

*  *  *  *  *

After a week, she let Chris catch her making a phone call in the kitchen.

“I thought I might come to visit,” said Aunt Helen Beck into the phone. “Oh. Well, no, of course you’re busy. Might I help? No, you’re welcome, I just thought I might be useful. Some other time, perhaps. In a month or so.” She hung up the phone.

“Aunt Helen Beck,” said Chris. “You don’t have anywhere to stay, do you?”

“I’m sure I’ll find some place—”

“Stay here. We like having you, there’s plenty of room—”

“Can’t stay forever,” said Aunt Helen Beck.

“Well,” said Chris. She thought it over. “For a while, at least. For as long as you like. Why not?”

“Dear me,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “You’re sure to think of a reason eventually.”

*  *  *  *  *

After dinner each night, Chris and Ford went in the living room and watched the sun set over the Sound and tried to get her to join them. They sat with arms around each other, and though Aunt Helen Beck did not strictly approve of that sort of public display, she did not object. She liked people in love: they were slow-witted and cheerful. They never asked her again how long she planned to stay.

Sometimes, she stood in the door of the living room, and the three of them looked at the trailer standing between them and the Sound. Ford liked to pretend he knew what was going on in there, and made up stories.

“About now,” he said, “Gaia has fed them and bathed them—”

“Bathed them?” asked Aunt Helen Beck. “There’s a tub in that tiny thing?”

“A little shower,” he said. “Or she’s taken them to the lake to swim. And one of them—probably Venus, since she’s stubborn and a flirt—is refusing to get dressed and is bouncing off the walls, stark naked.”

“And so Gaia is singing a getting-dressed song,” said Chris.

“And Jupiter’s crying,” said Ford. “Because it’s not a very good song.”

Aunt Helen Beck shook her head. “All those people in one little house. I’m not sure I approve.”

“What’s to approve?” asked Ford. “She leads her life and she’s happy. And they’re good kids, so she must be doing something right.”

“How does she make her way in the world?”

“Oh, the way anybody does around here. Part-time work, barter. She works a couple of days a week at the Healing Arts Center.”

“Healing?” asked Aunt Helen Beck. “Physical healing?”

“Reiki. Rolfing. That sort of thing. Laying on of hands, really. Perhaps not so different from what your brother did, Aunt Helen Beck.”

“My brother,” she said, “was a child of God.”

“Well, everybody’s got their own idea of God,” said Ford. “Anyhow, Gaia’s good at what she does. She fixes things. Maybe”—he looked at her with teasing eyes,—“you should go to her sometime.”

Aunt Helen Beck said, “I was not under the impression I needed fixing.”

*  *  *  *  *

“Eat this.”

Mercury closed his mouth around the spoon of molasses.

“Mmmmm.” He licked the spoon all over, including the handle.

“You think that’s good?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. Chris and Ford were in town, shopping, and Mercury had elected to follow Aunt Helen Beck through the house as she cleaned and straightened. His brother and sister had been outside, throwing dirt at the window, until she had dispatched him to tell them to stop.

“If you think that tastes good,” she said, “I’m afraid something’s wrong with you. You must be part dog, to think everything’s good to eat.”

“Maybe I am a dog,” he said; he lay down on the living room floor, his hair fanning out behind him.

“How old are you, Mercury?”

“Seven.”

“Do you know how to write?”

“Yes,” he said peevishly.

“Well then.” She looked around for a piece of paper. “Would you like to write a letter for me?”

“Who to?”

“Kneel down here,” she said, pointing to the coffee table, “and I’ll tell you what to say.” She found a pencil and some lined paper in a drawer and gave them to him, then tried to stretch out on the sofa, a tiny loveseat. She bent her knees over the arm and let her feet dangle. “All right. Put down just what I tell you. Here we go. ‘Dear Mac. Of course, we haven’t spoken for a while. That is understandable.’ Do you have that?”

“Yes.” His head was bent over the paper and he was holding the pencil like a needle, very delicately. His hair, that ridiculous hair, hid his face. She imagined he was concentrating.

“‘But I need to tell you this: I’m still mad about what you said to me when last we met. Furious. You know what I’m talking about.’”

“What’s in your hand?” Mercury asked, still writing. She figured he was stalling for time while he caught up to her words.

“It’s a purse. A little boy made it for me a long time ago.”

Mercury turned to look. “Any money in it?”

All little boys know what purses are for, thought Aunt Helen Beck: in each and every one a Fort Knox.

“Two pennies,” she said. “Let’s get back to work.”

“Where does this guy live?” Mercury started writing again.

“He’s dead,” said Aunt Helen Beck.

“You can’t write to dead people.” He put down his pencil and turned around again.

“Why not?”

“They’re dead.”

“That only means they can’t read,” she told him. “It has nothing to do with what I can or cannot do. Let’s see how you’re doing.” She sat up; the arm of the loveseat was cutting off the circulation to her feet.

He leaned away so she could see, and what she saw was this, in pale letters because he did not bear down: MERCURY MERCURY MERCURY KABOOM I LOVE YOU.

“Well,” she said, because he had tried his best. “I might have put that last part down anyway.”

*  *  *  *  *

In the morning, when she slipped her hand into the pocket for Georgie’s purse, it was gone. She took her hand out of her pocket, put it back in, took it out, back in again. It was not in her pocket.

Not in her pocket, where it always was; not on top of the dresser or tucked in her suitcase. Not anywhere in the kitchen, not even on the floor near the edges along the baseboards, which is where she was looking when Chris walked in.

“Aunt Helen Beck,” Chris said, alarmed. “What’s the matter?”

“Somebody’s taken Georgie’s purse. I can’t find it anywhere.”

“I’m sure it’s around.” Chris dropped to her knees beside Aunt Helen Beck.

“I can’t find it.” She hadn’t ever been without the purse; it was one of her organs, it was vital. “I have to find it,” she said.

“We will, we will.” Chris had caught her worry. “I’ll look in the living room.” She crawled toward the other room just as Mercury came in the door. He laughed to see the grown-ups on all fours. Chris, looking over one shoulder, asked, “Have you seen Aunt Helen Beck’s purse?”

“No,” he said, too quickly.

“You’re sure,” said Aunt Helen Beck. She did not want to frighten him, but suddenly understood that he was the one who must have taken it. Who is as sneaky as a little boy? Who is more interested in other people’s belongings?

“It’s in your pocket,” he said.

“No it isn’t,” she said, still on her hands and knees, still looking at him squarely. “If you have it, Mercury, I would very much like it back.” She wished that just once, in all those houses she’d been in, she had picked up the child psychology book that was always sandwiched between Shakespeare and Tolstoy. Just use common sense, she’d always advised, but common sense, she now realized, had little to do with real life.

“It’s not in my pockets,” she said again.

“I don’t have it,” said Mercury, inching toward the door.

“Merc—” Chris began.

“I don’t!” he yelled, and he ran out.

They sat back on their heels. Aunt Helen Beck rubbed the tops of her thighs slowly, in an effort not to cry. It didn’t work, which surprised her.

“Oh, Aunt Helen Beck.” Chris shuffle-crawled over to her, and laid one hand on her shoulder.

“What will become of me without it?”

“If he has it, I’m sure he’ll bring it back. He’s an honest kid, and he sees how much it means to you.”

But Aunt Helen Beck could not see that happening. Little boys lose things. They trade them or bury them or give them to their sisters to chew on. The walls of the purse were the only walls she’d ever owned, and she’d allowed them to be taken away. She would have told another person in the same situation, You’re allowed to be careless once in eight decades. She could not believe so herself.

*  *  *  *  *

“Aunt Helen Beck, your talisman,” Ford said when he found out. “I’m so sorry. Maybe Merc’s got it and he’ll bring it back.” He sat down on the loveseat beside her. “Listen. Maybe we can make a stand-in.”

Aunt Helen Beck leaned away from him and looked out the window at the silver trailer, and envied the woman’s life there. Gaia was surely surrounded by things she owned: big jars of rice, children. To keep your family in such a small place now struck her as intelligent; it was like making your whole life a locket.

“I don’t mean replace,” said Ford. “But it was a symbol. Now you need another symbol, something to stand for Georgie and how much you love him.”

“Georgie Beck died when he was seven. There is nothing in this world that he touched except that purse.”

“Earth’s the same,” he said. “Same then as now. We’ll make a little pillow of earth.”

Aunt Helen Beck turned to look at him, and was startled at how close he sat. She could easily have hit him. Some common damp dirt for Georgie? But then she saw Ford was sad and desperate over the whole thing and somehow wanted to help.

“No thank you,” she said.

Thereafter, Mercury kept his distance. One little boy was dead and gone; the other had done something she was not sure she could ever forgive. Her anger at him did not make the loss of his company any easier to bear: you always miss the person who breaks your heart. A few nights later, she caught a glimpse of him outside of the trailer, staring up at the house, as if he were a miniature general considering the best means of attack.

*  *  *  *  *

Ford went down to the trailer to talk to Gaia, who said that she hadn’t seen it, would keep her eye out. “She’ll do her best,” Ford said.

Even as he said it, Aunt Helen Beck felt herself change. She had been, up until that moment, in the same mood her entire life. The panic that engulfed her now was unfamiliar and frightening. She felt there must be a pill, something she could eat, that would clear it up. Or a pair of hands that put upon her would restore her to the way she used to be. But a pill worked its way through you, hands departed your skin. They were no replacement for the one thing she’d always owned.

Now she sat still to watch the sun set every night with Chris and Ford, and admired the family pictures that had always lined the walls. Those nights, she talked a streak, about nothing in particular. There was an affectionate recklessness to what she said: she spoke of people from her past, and family.

“I once knew a woman with twenty-one children,” she said to Chris.

“Good Lord,” said Chris. “That doesn’t seem possible.”

“It’s true,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “She was a collector. They weren’t all hers; she just fancied them and took them in and when she tired of one, threw him out and got another.”

“She sounds like a sad case,” said Chris.

“Perhaps. Despite it all, I loved my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “We are discussing my mother.”

And later, when Ford asked her what she did for Christmas as a child, she said, “Nothing. I always wanted to celebrate it, but my people are Jewish.”

“What?” asked Ford. “What part of the family?”

“All sides. My grandfather was a rabbi.” He looked confused, so she added, “Orthodox.”

“I never knew we had any Judaism in the family,” he said.

“You might not,” she began, and then she caught herself. “You might not have been told,” she said. “People used to like to cover that up, you know.”

“But I thought your brother was a preacher—”

“Half-brother,” she said quickly, her lightness gone. “And I don’t want to talk about it. Have a care, Ford.” Frequently she’d turn like that, from nostalgia straight into anger. Ford and Chris grew wary of her, and started going to bed earlier and earlier. She could hear them talk about her—her name again and again, because Aunt Helen Beck could not be reduced to a handful of pronouns. She didn’t care to listen closely.

“We’re glad to have you here,” Chris would tell Aunt Helen Beck in the morning, coming in for a careful half hug. Aunt Helen Beck could feel heat coming off the younger woman’s body. With her copper curls, her freckles exactly the same color, white skin underneath, Chris reminded Aunt Helen Beck of some pale cake left too long in the oven. She even smelled that way, delicate and warm, as if a sudden loud noise could make her collapse.

Did people always radiate such heat, or any heat? Did their temperatures vary? Aunt Helen Beck had never noticed before. She wanted to steal up behind Chris, or Ford, let a long breath loose across their skin to cool them before touching, cautiously, a quick furtive tap with her fingertips before allowing her whole palm to rest.

Sometimes, she would feel suddenly fearless and loving, put a hand on Ford’s shoulder, give Chris a pat on the cheek, leave them notes in the bathroom signed with a heart. The one day they all went into town, she drifted off from them and returned with licorice, ginseng tea, a little trial-size packet of vitamins.

“Happy un-birthday,” she said. “Have an un-birthday present.”

Ford laughed, and said, “Aunt Helen Beck, you’re all right.”

“Just all right?” she asked. All he did was laugh again in his horsey way, but she really did want to know. She had tried all her life to be a good person, but how could she judge her success unless other people let her know? She knew she was not a good listener, supposed she got impatient at times. That’s what having standards will get you, she thought: restless. It was one of the reasons she went visiting. Every person saw her a different way, and once she divined their opinion—bossy old lady or lovable crank or sometimes, she hoped, even nice plain honest woman—she wondered what someone else might think. She wondered if two people who knew her at separate times would agree.

Still, she felt now, for the first time, all it would take would be one person saying, Aunt Helen Beck, here’s where you belong, and she’d stay in a minute.

*  *  *  *  *

She didn’t hear the boy walk into the room until he said, “I want you to cut my hair.”

“Hello, Mercury,” she said. He hadn’t been in the house in the two weeks since the purse had gone missing. She looked at him and hoped that he had it tucked in his pocket, though she still felt so wretched about its loss she was no longer sure even the thing itself would help.

“I want you to cut my hair, please.”

“Why?” asked Aunt Helen Beck, but even as she asked, she eyed the blond fall of hair, thought about how it would feel, giving way to the pressure of a pair of scissors.

“Too long,” he said.

“Get your mother to do it.”

“She won’t.”

“Well then, perhaps you shouldn’t.”

“It’s too long,” he said. “Please? It makes me look like a girl. You said so.”

“It makes you look like Mercury.”

He took a deep breath. “Aunt Helen Beck, please cut my hair.”

“What will you do with it?” she asked.

He pleated his nose at her.

“That’s a lot of loose hair you’ll have. Will you throw it in the ocean? Wear it as a bracelet?”

“I don’t want it,” he said.

“Well,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “We’ll see.”

His hair was dry and light, like some rare delicate vegetable that couldn’t possibly be nourishing but is rumored to cure cancer. She had to sit down to reach. He didn’t make a noise, though she felt him wince every time he heard the scissors shut. She could only find the kitchen shears, and they were a little rusted at the heart.

“It’s coming fine,” she said.

She did not understand why she was doing such a thing, but it improved her; she felt herself return to normal every time the blades slid into a kiss.

“What will your mother say?” she asked.

“I don’t care.”

Finally, she finished.

“You’re handsomer than I thought you were. Would you like a mirror?”

Mercury ran one hand up the back of his head, smiling at the bristle of it. Aunt Helen Beck knew a few things about hair cutting, and she realized it was not modesty when she thought: Well, I certainly botched this job.

“Feels weird,” he said, which is when Chris and Ford came through the door.

“Shit,” said Chris. She put her hands to her face, as if to steady her head.

“I like it,” Mercury said.

“How do you know?” asked Aunt Helen Beck. “Run look in a mirror and then decide.”

“Shit,” said Ford.

“It’s cool,” Merc said, returning.

Aunt Helen Beck picked up Merc’s hair, which she had braided and secured with rubber bands before she took the first cut. “I’m going to keep this,” she said quietly. She started to look for a broom to sweep up the thin scraps on the floor.

Ford put his hand on Mercury’s head; the boy leaned into the touch and rubbed his head against Ford’s palm.

“I know you’re upset,” Chris said. She sat down at the kitchen table. “But why on earth?”

“He asked me,” she answered. “You know I have never been able to refuse a child.”

*  *  *  *  *

That evening, they approached her. “Aunt Helen Beck,” Ford said. “I think we need to talk.”

They took the loveseat; she sat in a chair across from them, feeling the curl of hair in her pocket.

“Tell me again,” said Ford. “How are we related, precisely?”

“Your great-grandfather,” she began, but then she realized it was gone. Usually, she knew everything, every uncle, but now she couldn’t remember anything about Ford’s family, and hers therefore, except that she imagined they were Irish. “He came from Ireland,” she said. “He was a doctor.”

“And?” said Ford.

“He was a magician,” she said, changing her mind.

Ford sighed. “A witch doctor, maybe?”

“A flim-flam artist,” she said. “A snake-oil salesman. Perhaps not really a doctor.”

“No,” said Ford. “Flim-flam runs in the family, huh?” He smiled; Chris poked him in the side.

“I called Abbie,” said Ford, “and we discussed the possibility, and then I called the rest of my family and, Aunt Helen Beck—you’re not related to us.”

“Why, Ford.”

Ford rubbed his beard. She could not tell whether he was enjoying this or whether he was truly sympathetic. “Maybe a family friend,” he said. “I mean, maybe you grew up calling one of my relatives uncle. Family friend’s enough, if you’re a close one.”

She knew that it wasn’t. If it were, she could call up anybody and say, I once knew your mother. All that would get her was a cup of coffee, and besides, she’d have to know about college or DAR days or wasn’t the wedding beautiful. She was silent.

“I thought so,” Ford said.

“I can’t believe this.” Chris stared at the floor, then looked up. “You’re a liar,” she said.

Ford touched his wife’s arm. “Now, listen—”

“You’re one, too. You told me you remembered her. When she first called, you said, Oh yes, my dear Aunt Helen. And how long have you known this without telling me?”

“I’m not a liar,” said Aunt Helen Beck.

Chris just shook her head.

“I took that picture you gave me out of its frame,” said Ford, softly. “And it says on the back, Holland, school play. Even the guy’s mustache is fake.”

Aunt Helen Beck sat up straight in the chair, arranged her legs, smoothed her skirt.

“How did you choose us?” Ford asked.

“Well,” she said. “I was at the public library, and Abbie had donated some magazines. They were good magazines.”

Ford laughed out loud, but Chris looked bitterly disappointed. Which struck Aunt Helen Beck as unfair; she’d never claimed to have been related to Chris.

“I can’t believe you made it all up,” said Chris. “I can’t believe you took advantage of us like this.”

“I didn’t make it all up,” she said.

“You came in and told us sad stories that weren’t even true. You made up this tragic dead brother—”

“Georgie Beck was real,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “And everything I said I felt about him I did.”

“Will you please, please tell us the truth, just for a minute?”

“It would be nice,” said Ford.

Aunt Helen Beck looked at her and then at Ford and then out the window.

“It was my first visit. I’d heard he was sick—he was a famous child, and I heard this in my hometown, my real hometown. He’d preached there before and caused a sensation and people said what a shame it was. And so I went and knocked on the door and called myself cousin. I was a child myself, sixteen. Back then,” she said, looking at them, “it was even easier. I really did nurse him, but he died anyway, and I took the purse—” Here she returned to the window, certain of herself in a way she had not been since the purse had been lost. “He’d made it for his brother, I think, and I took it and his name besides, and I left.”

“You’re a fraud,” said Chris.

Aunt Helen Beck sat still. Flashes jumped off the water with such regularity that the sparkle looked somehow mechanical, as if it were worked by a crank. “He told me he loved me,” she said. “‘God loves you, too,’ but I told him to say the first part again.

“This is all the truth.” She looked at them. “I suppose I’ll leave in the morning.”

“You don’t—” said Ford.

Chris said, “It would be for the best.”

They left her in her chair, said they imagined she’d rather pack alone. Though what she wanted to pack, of course, was nowhere in the house. She had never been caught before—never accused, anyway—and some part of her had stopped worrying about it. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving, of any more travel, certainly not without Georgie’s purse. For a moment, she supposed the most useful thing for her to do was to die.

But she had no interest in dying. At least, she did not want to start soon. She felt her life was a course of study with the obvious terminal degree; to hurry it meant being somehow unprepared. She had asked them not to turn her in to the police, and Chris, who had softened a bit, said of course not.

“You’re obviously harmless,” she said before she went to bed. Then she said, “Be careful. You live pretty dangerously.”

Aunt Helen Beck said, “I have been living dangerously for some time.”

*  *  *  *  *

That night, she took a brass candlestick from the whatnot shelf in the living room; she always had to take something to give to her next host—a little gift, an heirloom. It made her feel like the families really were somehow related.

Leaving would not be easy. Usually, she left clean, as if each little life were a railroad car and she was simply walking through to the back. This time, she had left things behind: Georgie Beck, and information. She felt a wind across her legs; something new was starting. Aunt Helen Beck did not believe in fate, but she did think that you made mistakes according to what you wanted in your heart, and she could not understand what it was she wanted this time, what she was trying to tell herself.

She stayed up all night, wanting to see the light playing off the silver trailer one more time; she forgot that the sun rose on the other side of the island. Intent on catching the sun itself she barely noticed the growing light, as if she were a detective intent on nabbing a single criminal when in truth conspiracy was all around her. Suddenly it was morning. Time to go, she thought; she certainly didn’t intend to face Chris and Ford again. Aunt Helen Beck picked up her suitcase, felt the candlestick roll in the bottom. Already she could tell she hadn’t taken enough.

Outside the air was cold and wet. She began to walk down the hill, stepping sideways so she wouldn’t slip in the mud.

“Hey,” she heard somebody say.

It was Mercury. He stepped out from behind a tree, dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing the night before; a few hair clippings glistened on his shirt. Really, she thought, you could see why his mother kept his hair long: jug ears. Big as planets orbiting his head. Not a good-looking boy after all.

He scratched the back of his neck. “Hello.”

“Good morning.” Aunt Helen Beck set her suitcase down. “You’re up early.”

He blinked at her. She couldn’t tell whether or not he was angry over the haircut.

“You’re still asleep, looks like,” she said. “You’re grumpy.”

He picked up a stone and turned it over in his hand. “Nope.” Then he looked at her. “My mother says I can’t come in till I grow some hair back.”

“She left you out all night?”

Mercury shrugged and nodded at the same time, stepping closer. Aunt Helen Beck leaned down in the mud and put a hand on one side of the boy’s head. He was damp to the touch, like something blown off a tree in bad weather. She saw in his eyes an old, familiar expression: I could go now, it wouldn’t make any difference, my family album might as well be the phone book, so long.

She lightly took hold of one of those extraordinary ears—it was like a hand itself, like a purse, like something that could hold a great deal.

“Tell me, Mercury,” said Aunt Helen Beck. “Tell me—are you fond of travel?”