“Mom! Dad!” Alvin shouted, bursting into their parents’ bedroom, turning on the light.
The bed was mussed, but their parents were not in it.
A lamp lay broken on the ground.
A picture of the four Hatters had been knocked crooked on the wall.
There was a broken window, and the night breeze billowed in, making the curtains move like silent ghosts.
“Alvin,” Margo said again, this time her voice no more than a whisper, “they aren’t here.”
—from Alvin Hatter and the Overcoat Man
2
Lunch was subdued, sullen, each of us in our own worlds, me refusing to let the letters out of my sight for even a moment, terrified that something completely irrational would happen to them: they would blow away in the wind; they would vanish into thin air; they would spontaneously combust. So I waited in the car while my parents went into the deli to pick up the sandwiches, and then we ate at home, me with the letters stacked neatly next to my plate. I knew my parents and Abe were dying to know what they were, what the first one had said, but I knew if I talked about it I would start crying and probably never stop. Like Alice, crying in our kitchen until I was washed away in a river of my own tears.
After lunch I went up to my room and sat down on my bed, spreading the letters out carefully on my bedspread, getting my copies of the Alvin Hatter books and laying them out in order. I had read these books so much, loved them ever since I was a little girl, I knew every plot twist and denouement by heart. My copies were torn and creased and dirty; Abe’s were pristine and unopened (he had a second set for reading) and claimed the top shelf of his bookshelf, the one with the glass cabinets.
I’d heard Abe’s friends laughing at him once about keeping children’s books displayed in his room, but then I’d heard him tell them how much each one was worth (first edition, first printing, signed by Helen Reaves, naturally). They’d stopped laughing pretty quickly.
I picked up Alvin Hatter and the Everlife Society, my personal favorite. The moment I started reading, I was no longer in my bedroom, no longer sad, no longer even myself. I was an unseen friend of Alvin and Margo Hatter’s, following along with them as they escaped with the Everlife Society and tried to find out what happened to their missing parents. There was danger in these pages, but there was also a kind of safety, an underlying knowledge that no physical harm could come to our hero and heroine themselves; they’d found the Everlife Formula and drank from it. Alvin and Margo Hatter were immortal.
And I wondered what my aunt would have done if that same potion were real and right in front of her. If it could have saved her life, would she have chosen to live forever?
Hours later, days later, there was a knock on my door, and my dad pushed it gently open. “Can I come in?” he asked.
I was halfway through the book and had read right through dinner. That was how good they were. Every time was like the first time.
“Yeah, Dad, of course.”
He pushed the door open wider and wandered in with half a glass of wine (truly wandered; he looked a little lost). He sat on my bed and sighed.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’m okay,” he said. “We had a little warning. I guess that was nice. But not too much warning, or else we would have had to think about it for too long. You know?”
“I know.”
“Are you okay? You’ve been up here for a while.”
“Just reading.”
“Ah, Alvin.” He picked up the first book, Alvin Hatter and the House in the Middle of the Woods. It had been published when my aunt was twenty-four. She was flat broke, living in my father’s garage, two years out of college and still refusing to look for a job (much to his chagrin). “I don’t need to eat,” she’d famously told him once, “I need to write.”
“These books, huh, kid?” He paused, had a sip of wine, sighed again. “I’m so happy you kids got a chance to know her so well. Your aunts and uncles in Peru . . . Well, I know your mother wishes they were closer. Family is important, kid.”
Uh-oh.
My father was in the red wine danger zone.
Someone hadn’t been paying attention, and I could guarantee this was his third glass, exactly the amount needed for him to turn inward and deep and philosophical.
But I guess he deserved it.
And it wouldn’t last long.
The end of the third glass would see him sound asleep within fifteen minutes.
It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it was like clockwork.
“I know family’s important, Dad.”
“That’s why I’m so happy you and Abe have each other,” he continued. “Helen and I were so close growing up. I’m glad you two are the same way.”
“Me too.”
“Your aunt was a trip.” Another sip, this one so miniscule that the liquid barely touched his lips. He stared out my window (which was covered by a curtain, so I guess he stared at my curtain).
“What do you mean?”
“There was always . . . just something. Something about her.”
“What kind of something? Like she’s super famous?”
He laughed, crossed his legs. “No, silly. Not like that. I mean there was something I couldn’t put my finger on. Like she was keeping something from me. You know?”
“Abe has a locked trunk of comics he’s never let me look through,” I said. “Like that?”
“Maybe like that. Maybe different. Weird things, you know? Once I caught her with this little bottle. Just this little glass—”
“Sal?” my mom interrupted, poking her head into the room. She was wearing scrubs; she had to leave soon for an overnight at the hospital. She analyzed the current situation: Dad glossy-eyed, holding an almost-empty wineglass, me looking slightly terrified. She moved into the doorway and held three fingers up so my father couldn’t see. I nodded, confirming it.
“Hi, honey,” Dad said. “Lottie and I were just talking about Helen. She was great, wasn’t she? You liked her, right?”
“You know I loved your sister, Sal. Like my own sister.”
Mom swooped into the room, moving so quickly she was almost a blur. But before I knew what was happening she was holding Dad’s wineglass and he was standing up, stretching, yawning.
“Let’s get you to bed,” she said, taking his hand.
“To bed!” he agreed.
He stumbled out of the room before her, and she hung back a second, taking stock of the state of my bed, the letters and the book. She took a step toward me and put her hand on my cheek.
“Are you doing all right, my love?”
“Just sad. But all right.”
“The sadness will always be there,” she said, never one to mince words. “It will never go away. But you will learn to move around it, and then it will fade a little, and then it will be replaced with happiness that you got to be so close to your aunt.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Get some sleep, Lottie.”
She kissed the top of my head and left. I read until dawn.