Regarding Ducks and Universes (29 page)

A
garden path lined with ornamental cactuses and sculpted shrubbery led to a large, well-kept villa. Posted on the front was a doorbell list with the abbreviated names (as per Regulation 3) of the occupants of six condominiums, two condos on each floor.
H. S., 1st floor, left
. The stained glass, impeccably clean front door was unlocked.

“She called us this morning—wanted to get in touch with you,” Bean said as we stood knocking on the door of
1st floor, left
.

“Felix B might have thought to mention that Aunt Henrietta B existed.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Ran into him in Carmel.”

“Perhaps he assumed you knew about her. After all, one doesn’t generally say, ‘By the way, so-and-so is still with us.’ Rather the reverse.”

The condo door opened by itself, allowing us access into a narrow hallway. I followed Bean past a coatrack, an ornate mirror, a cabinet displaying sea-life-themed knickknacks, and into an equally densely furnished living room.

“Well, sit down,” an old lady commanded from the sofa, putting her door remote away. Henrietta Sayers.

I sat down into the first chair I saw.

“No, over HERE, Felix, dear,” Aunt Henrietta patted the cushion next to her. I moved over to the sofa, sliding my legs under a wicker table; on it waited a large leather box and a tray holding three small cups.

“And take those things off your necks, please,” Aunt Henrietta added. “I don’t like to be interrupted.”

Bean took our two omnis into the hallway and hung them on the coatrack and I took the opportunity to glance around the room. Numerous sea-motif figurines occupied shelf space and dreamlike photographs of jellyfish covered the walls. I was reminded that Aunt Henrietta had spent a long career as a marine biologist.

Aunt Hen had been my
great
-aunt Henrietta, a relation through marriage on my father’s side, my great-uncle Otto’s second wife. Uncle Otto had once sent me a remote-controlled, three-speed airplane with retractable wheels as a birthday present, forever cementing the good will of a ten-year-old. He had met Aunt Hen late in life. They had gotten married in their eighties. A framed formal photograph of Uncle Otto sat among the sea-horse figurines.

This
Henrietta, strictly speaking, was not related to me at all, but I could not think of her in any other way than as Aunt Henrietta. She was just as I remembered her, a small, frail, withered dynamo with more than nine decades of life experience behind her.

As Bean took the stiff armchair I had vacated, Aunt Henrietta reached up and gave me a pat on the head like I was still a ten-year-old and not someone who, even sitting, towered over her. Like my Aunt Hen had, she seemed to have gone a bit deaf over the years and occasionally shrieked a word or two in each sentence.

“So you are my other GREAT-NEPHEW, are you?”

“MORE OR LESS,” I said.

“There is no need to shout, Felix, dear. And I know that we’re not related on PAPER,” she added with a bony-handed dismissive wave of the practicalities of linked universes, “but I’ve always felt we’re family. And this is your GIRLFRIEND?”

“This is Bean,” I said, moderating my voice. “I’m helping her with her bihistory research.”

“Are you, now?”

“Pleased to meet you,” Bean said.

Aunt Henrietta looked me over. “You’re thinner than HE is.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You should try to EAT MORE.”

There was a shrill whistle, making me jump.

“Just in TIME. Child, can you bring in the hot water from the stove?”

Bean got up and went into the kitchen. She came back with a silver kettle and proceeded to pour steaming water into the three cups waiting on the wicker table.

“None for me, thanks,” I said. “I’ve had too much tea this week.”

“Nonsense, Felix, dear. It’s chamomile. Aids the digestion.”

Bean met my eye and passed me a teacup. Delicate white-and-yellow flowers floated in the steaming water.

“So you figured it out, DID YOU?” Aunt Hen shrieked suddenly. “I told Patrick and Klara it wasn’t a good idea to change Felix’s birth date, but they DIDN’T LISTEN. Patrick and Klara,” she shook her head, “always had VERY progressive ideas. ARTISTS.”

“You sent me—that is, Aunt Hen left me a photograph. That’s how I found out.”

“Left you a photo in her will, did she?”

“If you happen to have any old photographs—” Bean said.

Aunt Henrietta wrinkled her nose, deepening its natural furrows. “IF I had any photographs—I’m not saying I do—well, I never said a word to my Felix about his TRUE age, not until he came to me and told me that he’d met YOU, Felix, dear. He’s embroiled in some scheme to prove he’s the universe MAKER, my Felix is. The idea sounds like it has some SCIENTIFIC merit, I’d say. What did she DIE OF?”

I hesitated. Aunt Hen, to the best of my knowledge, had died of extreme old age, but I felt it would be tactless to say so.

“Er—she tripped in front of a people mover.”

“Speak up, dear.”

“People mover,” I repeated more loudly, immediately regretting the lie.

“Good way to go. That’s how I’d like to die—out and about, not lying in BED.”

“So Felix’s parents never gave you any baby photos of him?” Bean tried again. “A photo taken on Y-day?”

“Y-day, you say? Well, there was a POSTCARD.”

“Why didn’t you say so, Aunt Hen?” I said. “A postcard—”

“You didn’t ASK about a postcard,” she pointed out. “Here, hand me that box.”

I moved the round leather box, which was heavier than it looked, from the wicker table to the middle of the sofa between us. Aunt Hen took the lid off and proceeded to finger through the jumble of old photographs, letters, and documents. After only a couple of minutes she pronounced, “There.” A youthful smile crossed her face. “I was still onboard in the Mediterranean then, my last project before I retired to teaching. Letters often took more than TWO months to REACH us.”

In the postcard, the Golden Gate Bridge looked much the same as it had yesterday when I’d traversed its sidewalks, except that the cars driving across were antique-looking, in silver, beige, and other subdued colors. The space on the back was filled in my mother’s handwriting (or rather, Felix’s mother’s handwriting, since the stamp on the Universe B postcard trailed Y-day by a week.) I read the card, then passed it to Bean, who read it aloud, pausing here and there to decipher a word:

“Wait a minute,” I said as the meaning of my mother’s words sank in. “You knew my parents
before
the universes diverged?”

“Yes, of course. I knew your father when he was a child.”

“That’s impossible. Aunt Hen and Uncle Otto met and got married during my first year at San Diego. I’m sure of that. I had to go to the wedding and wear a tuxedo.”

“Then why did
she
have a baby photo of you, the Aunt Henrietta of your Universe A, Felix?” said Bean.

“I have no idea.”

Henrietta B gave a ladylike chortle. “She always was a bit WILD, Henrietta was. Otto and I got married at eighteen, dear Felix. We were working together in the Mediterranean when this postcard came.” She tapped the postcard with a long, arched, yellowish nail. “Not long after that we found out we now had two universes and there were COPIES of everybody! Quite a scientific discovery. You won’t get many people to say this, but I LIKE that we have two universes. The more, the MERRIER, I say. But things did get out of hand for a while. Klara and Patrick wanted to shield you from all that.”

I took a sip of the tea, felt something grainy in my mouth, and returned one of the chamomile flowers back into the teacup.

“It was decided that the two branches of the family would not keep in touch. PITY. I’ve always felt you and Felix were my great-nephews equally. As for Henrietta A,” Aunt Hen sniffed, “she and her Otto got a DIVORCE a couple of years after Y-day—some silly spat over money. MY Otto and I never let MONEY stand in our way. But they remarried later, you say?” She shook her head and dug something else out of the leather box. “There is no harm in letting you see the photograph now, I suppose. It came with the postcard. Klara and Patrick later asked me never to show it to anyone and I haven’t, not until today.”

It was a faded and yellowing version of the photo Bean and I knew as 13B.

“So my parents did drive to the city for a new gallery piece,” I said, picking up the postcard again. “I assumed that there would be more to it than that. I wonder what the acquisition was. It doesn’t matter in the least, but it just seems right to know, somehow.”

“I can tell you the answer to that, Felix, dear. It was an oil painting—a Venus, a NUDE,” said Aunt Henrietta.

I remembered it. Not from the gallery. The shapely alabaster figure had hung on my parents’ living room wall and captivated the interest of a teenage boy. Later, as I was gathering my mother’s watercolors and other keepsakes from the Carmel house, I’d packed the Venus into the protective boxes with the watercolors. I’d been meaning to unpack the paintings and put them on my walls for a long time.

Aunt Henrietta took a sip of her tea. “I am looking forward to the mystery DINNER, I have to say.”

“I beg your pardon, Aunt Hen?” I thought she had gotten confused about who we were and why we were there.

“My Felix is hosting a mystery dinner party tonight at his Organic Oven. Last month the theme was Imperial Russia and I played the part of a duchess. This time we’re a party of snowbound Alaska explorers. Sometime during the evening someone will get KILLED—I hope it’s not me, it’s deathly BORING being the victim—and the rest of us will get clues and try to figure out who did it and why. Dear Felix will be stopping by later to bring my instruction packet.”

“Mystery dinner party? Huh.” I got up. “We should be going, Bean. I don’t want to overstay my tourist entry permit. Besides, er—I have work to do.”

Without moving from sofa, Aunt Henrietta asked, “What are you planning on doing with your LIFE, young man?”

“I work for a kitchen company.”

She didn’t seem to hear me.

“I’m writing a book,” I pronounced more loudly.

“Are you, now?” said Aunt Henrietta. “About WHAT?”

“It’s a mystery.”

“You don’t SAY. It must run in the family, the taste for mysteries. Not as useful as a COOKBOOK, perhaps, but often a satisfying read. Here, HELP me up.”

Bean and I took an arm each and gently helped Aunt Henrietta to her feet. Leaning on a cane, she made her way across the room to a door I hadn’t noticed before.

“In here.” She pushed the door open with her cane. The cramped space, probably meant as a large closet, held floor-to-ceiling glass-fronted bookcases.

“Most of it is academic materials. Marine biology textbooks and periodicals. Of no interest to you, of course. But down there—yes, that might be just the thing.” She shuffled over to the far bookcase, opened the glass door, and tapped the row of books on the bottom with her cane. “THAT one, dear Felix. At the end.”

I knelt down and retrieved the book she had indicated.

“It’s the 1934 printing of
The Nine Tailors
. The first edition,” Aunt Hen said. “My favorite of the Dorothy Sayers books. The dust jacket is ORIGINAL. The nine tailors are BELLS, not suit-makers, and Dorothy herself is NO relation, of course. The book is out of print, though YOU have access to it, no doubt, on that endless shelf that hangs around your neck. Still, I’d like you to have it, Felix, dear. I don’t know how anyone can read on those little screens.”

“The font size is adjustable. Or you can have it read to you,” I said. “First edition? Dust jacket?”

“The very first—the original—printing of a book. Dust jacket—well, self-explanatory,” Bean said from the doorway.

“It can read a book to you? In that case I might have to give it a try,” Aunt Hen said. “After all, when Socrates faced the brand-new technology of the written word, he DID NOT LIKE IT at all. It takes time to get used to things. Though if you are going to use a machine for reading it should at least be shaped like a book. Why does it open up to a CIRCLE?”

“I suppose Olivia May Novak Irving would know,” I said. The Dorothy Sayers had clearly passed through many hands. The dust jacket was a faded brown, whether by the hand of time or because of poor printing quality, I couldn’t tell, nothing like the glossy colors I had seen on the covers of the volumes in the Bookworm. The edges were worn and there was a grease stain on the spine. The paper looked a tad moldy.

“And what about ROMANCES?” Aunt Henrietta said. “Don’t look so surprised. Did I say I ONLY liked academic periodicals and mysteries? A romance is a good POOL-side read. Are omnis WATERPROOF?”

“Not usually,” Bean said.

“Thanks for the paper book, Aunt Hen,” I said. “Do you collect dolphin porcelain figurines? I have half of—that is, do you want—”

“THOSE things,” she guffawed. “A waste of time AND money. I collect SEA HORSES, much more sensible. Good resale value.”

As we stood on the apartment doorstep on our way out, Aunt Henrietta nudged my leg with her cane and asked, “Is HER Otto still alive?”

“I—yes, he is. Last I heard he was doing a world tour of marine sanctuaries in—well, in Aunt Hen’s honor.”

“My Otto has been in greener pastures these twenty years. I wonder…”

Quite inexplicably, Bean bent down and gave Aunt Henrietta a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. Women do strange things sometimes.

“Thank you for everything, Aunt Henrietta,” she said.