They didn’t have to worry about cancer, about cells inside your body that might already be inside you, so far symptomless and hiding and waiting their turn.
Aunt Helen had gone to a normal gynecologist appointment on a normal Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, and her doctor had done a normal breast exam where nothing is ever out of the ordinary. Only something was out of the ordinary, and it’s probably nothing, Helen, but we don’t like to take these things lightly. She had gone the very next day for a mammogram, and then the week after that she was sitting down with all of us and speaking quietly about survival rates because I just want you guys to know what I know. I don’t want there to be any secrets.
“Ah, my firstborn,” Dad said, coming into the kitchen. I looked up sharply, Aunt Helen’s words still vibrating around in my head. She’d told us here, in this house, in the living room. She’d invited us over for dinner and waited until we were getting ready to leave.
Dad sat down next to me, pulled my water glass toward him, and took a sip. “Are you doing okay?” he asked.
“Are you doing okay, Dad?”
“Shit,” he said quietly. “No idea.”
I waited a minute or two, but I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I slid off the stool and left him alone. I made my way to the living room quietly, and when I walked through the doorway, I swear I could almost see the five of us, huddled around each other, my dad crying and my mom crying and Abe and me just looking at each other with wide eyes and Aunt Helen not really looking at anything, just letting her eyes scan the room, the walls, the ceiling, the chairs, the windows.
“Oh, Helen,” my mother had said while my brain struggled to rewrite the course of that evening. It was not supposed to end like that. We were supposed to have ice cream for dessert and go to bed too full.
I sat down on the couch. I felt a tiny thrill of undirected anger (at cancer, at death, at dying, at everything), but I did my best to ignore it.
“Good-bye, house,” I whispered for the second time.
It was the best I could do.
The attic was expansive, its space seemed to not even make sense, like surely there was too much here to have actually fit inside the house. Alvin wondered idly of blueprints, of square footage, as he carefully picked his way through the room, navigating countless wooden boxes and scientific paraphernalia: a telescope, a globe (but not Earth, he noted), something that looked like a printing press. Behind him, Margo banged her knee against a suit of armor and cursed. Her voice sounded quiet and muffled, lost among all the clutter of the room.
Alvin made his way carefully deeper into the attic. He let his hand brush against a stack of scientific journals piled waist-high on the floor. He stopped at a towering shelf unit and peeked at any number of unsightly things kept stored in jars and formaldehyde. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust; no one had been in this house, in this attic, for a very long time.
And then he saw it: a book.
But not just any book.
This was the biggest book he’d ever seen in his entire life, a giant of a book, like seven dictionaries stuck back to back.
He was drawn to it, no longer caring about watching where he was going, knocking over a silver scale and what looked like a miniature black cauldron as he rushed over to it.
The book was bound in rich brown leather, and the title was printed in gold on the front: The Everlife Grimoire.
—from Alvin Hatter and the House in the Middle of the Woods
5
We got home in the afternoon, and I went straight upstairs to my room to read Aunt Helen’s next letter. I had left it on my desk so I wouldn’t be tempted to read it while we were still at her house. I wanted to honor whatever last wishes she had, and part of those wishes were my instructions on how and when to open these. So now, bedroom door shut and outside world temporarily on hold, I was ready to see what she had in store for me next.
Lottie,
I spent a sad, lonely sort of afternoon walking through my house, touching everything I’ve acquired over the years, thinking about the accumulation of stuff, wondering why little trinkets have the ability to make us so silly-happy. Do you remember that time we went vintage shopping and you found that little ceramic deer and fell in love with it? Not two hours later you dropped it and dissolved into hysterics. (You mustn’t be too hard on yourself; you were only eight.) I wonder now, thinking back on that, what causes that sort of immediate attachment? What caused our immediate attachment too, the attachment of aunt and niece? Surely we did not have to be as close as we are. I know plenty of aunts who have more distant birthday cards and see-you-at-Christmas types of relationships with their nieces and nephews. Maybe it’s best not to read so much into it. Maybe we were just lucky? Luckier, at least, than that poor deer.
It’s funny, the things that occur to you after an afternoon like that. I realized, quite out of nowhere, that I’ll be gone soon, and that the people I took for granted will no longer have me in their daily lives in the way I was so lucky to have them in my daily life. (That sounds a bit conceited; I think you’ll know what I mean.) I would be devastated if it were one of them who left me first. I imagine they will miss me as well.
So I guess what I’d most like to do right now but can’t (it is too late, some other day) is go and see one of our old friends, Clarice. The owner of my favorite bookstore: Page & Ink. Bring her a hot tea and a banana muffin from Kester’s. Buy yourself some books, Lottie. They help with everything.
Books can make you live a thousand lifetimes, a thousand different lives.
Books make you immortal.
Love, H.
She had slipped three twenties into the envelope.
I texted Em immediately.
Last hurrah before I have to go back to school tomorrow?
Em responded in a few minutes:
Absolutely. What are we doing?
I’ll pick you up in 30.
She texted back a kissy-face emoji, and I went downstairs to see if there was any coffee made. There was—I poured myself some into a mug that said Luke’s Diner (my brother’s purchase) and went to the back porch. The backyard was currently being croqueted up by Abe. Amy, in a little yellow sundress and an unreal vintage denim vest covered in patches (she really was the coolest person I knew), sat on the steps, watching. I sat down next to her.
“Are you really measuring the distance between the gates right now?” I asked Abe.
“They’re wickets, dummy,” he retorted, rolling his eyes.
“I don’t know why he likes weird things this much,” Amy said, a little wide-eyed.
“I think he just likes the club.”
He sighed loudly. “It’s a mallet, Lottie, geez.”
“We should play with flamingoes,” I suggested.
“Okay, good reference. Now be quiet.”