Chasing Mercury

by Kimberly Cooper Griffin

  Although Nora could watch her lover sleep forever, she pried herself away and took a quick shower before she went over to Aunt Mace’s house for their morning coffee ritual.

  She found her aunt at the kitchen table in the same chair she had been sitting in the night before. It was familiar, a sight that Nora had seen almost every day for the last four years. Some mornings there were friends at the table, too, laughing over a cup of coffee. Not this morning. Aunt Mace was by herself, sipping the dark brew and scanning the newspaper. If it weren’t for the new frailty of the woman, and the scarf she wore to cover the wispy remnants of the few hairs spared from chemotherapy, it would have been the perfect picture of home for Nora.

  “You’re up early,” said Aunt Mace when Nora let herself in through the back door.

  “No earlier than usual,” said Nora as she walked over to pour herself a cup of coffee. Her empty cup was already sitting next to the sugar bowl, along with another cup, no doubt for 4B. She poured the coffee, added sugar and cream and then slid into the chair she had claimed as her own four years earlier.

  “I’d have wagered you and that beautiful thing you brought home would have been tuckered out.”

  “We had time to recuperate in Anchorage. The airline put us up at a nice hotel.”

  “That’s not what I meant. You two were giving each other the sexy eyes all night. I know you didn’t get much sleep once you left.”

  Nora blushed but ignored the comment and took a sip of her coffee. Perfection in a cup. God she loved Aunt Mace’s brew. She held her cup below her chin and shut her eyes, enjoying the tickle of warm steam as it wafted over her face.

  “Ah! To be young and in love again,” said Aunt Mace. Nora looked at her aunt who was staring into her half-full coffee cup.

  Love?

  “Has your coffee gone cold, Aunt Mace? Do you want me to get you a warm up?”

  “No. I can’t drink more than a few sips these days. Doesn’t seem to please my wormy guts. Nothing tastes good. Bleh.”

  Nora had noticed Aunt Mace had barely touched the food she had prepared for her the night before, too. Chemo had that effect on her, but she’d finished her last round a few weeks ago. Her appetite should have returned by now.

  “What does the doctor say?”

  “Does it matter?” The unfamiliar sound of defeat threaded itself through her aunt’s reply. It scared her.

  “Of course it does, Aunt Mace.”

  “I’m tired of talking about what the doctor says. It doesn’t matter what she says. I’m circling the drain, Eleanor.”

  “I hate it when you talk like that. You’ve been saying that for months, Aunt Mace.”

  “I’ve been circling the drain for months.”

  “No, you haven’t. The chemo helped. It shrank the tumor. This new medicine will take care of the rest.”

  Her aunt just stared at her coffee.

  “I’m sorry it took so long for me to get it here. But it feels like the Universe had a hand in making sure I did, otherwise I might not have made it at all.”

  “Or maybe you wouldn’t have been on the goddamn airplane in the first place, Eleanor. Have you thought of that?”

  Nora was surprised by the question.

  “Since I don’t believe in fate, no, I really haven’t. The fact is I am here, and so is the medicine. Let’s see how it helps us.”

  “How it helps me, not you,” snapped Aunt Mace. “It’s me who has to take it. No one else. Not you.” Nora flinched from the comment as if Aunt Mace had screamed it. Aunt Mace was sometimes gruff, but she wasn’t often mean, so the comment, tinged with rebuke, stung.

  Nora fought her natural instinct to either snap back or withdraw. She couldn’t face the gap either response might cause between them. Not now. She cleared her throat.

  “Okay. Let’s see how it helps you,” she said.

  Aunt Mace continued to look into her cup and they were quiet for a few minutes. Nora tried to drink the coffee that now felt like sand going down her throat. She knew her aunt was far more sensitive than she let on and would suffer for issuing the sharp comment, but there was no way to make it go away, and discussing it only made things worse when her aunt was in a mood, so Nora was surprised when her aunt spoke.

  “Eleanor, I’m sorry. You know I don’t mean it when the asshole in me speaks.”

  Nora reached over and put her hand over her aunt’s bony knuckles, feeling the small, hard scabs dotting the paper-thin skin. She carefully ran her fingers over the hands that had always been so strong and able. Now they could barely lift a coffee mug.

  “I know Aunt Mace. I just wish I had a magic wand, you know? The medi—“

  “I don’t think I will be taking the medicine, Puffinstuff,” said Aunt Mace, placing her other hand over their hands. Aunt Mace’s use of the nickname she had bestowed upon her when she was a toddler tugged at Nora’s heart. Unconsciously, she blew out her cheeks in the gesture that had inspired it, and she tried to keep the tears from coming. “I know you went to a lot of trouble to get it, and I almost feel obligated to go through with it. I promised, I know. But I’d like you to let me out of that promise.”

  Nora remembered the talk she had with her aunt just before she’d left for Mexico. The doctors down there had refused to send the medicine in the mail because it hadn’t been approved for use in the United States yet. Unlike some doctors, they were ethical enough to not want to flagrantly disregard the American law. If she came to them in their own country, it was different. They didn’t need to know where she took it. As inconvenient as it was, it had been one of the things that had given Nora confidence in the experimental medicine. The doctors weren’t quacks and it didn’t feel like she was falling for fish oil. Aunt Mace hadn’t wanted Nora to go to so much trouble, but Nora had insisted. And Aunt Mace had finally agreed to the plan.

  “Why the change of heart, Aunt Mace?” asked Nora, already knowing the answer. Her aunt had given up. She could see it in her every move.

  “I’m just tired, Eleanor. So tired. I just don’t want to go through any more of the hoops that I’ve been jumping through all these months.”

  “Do you think that simply taking the medicine will be difficult? Are you afraid of the side effects? We can look it up and see if there’s something we can do to counteract whatever it is you’re concerned with. I’ll do all the research.” Nora asked the questions, and made suggestions, even though she knew she risked inciting her aunt’s temper again.

  “I’ve done the research. It’s some of that. Some of everything else,” said her aunt in a small voice that broke Nora’s heart more than the worst lashing out could have. “Mostly I’m just so scared I might live longer but I won’t know who I am anymore.”

  Nora remembered how hard the chemo had been, the forgetfulness, the mood swings, the day she had found her aunt curled in a ball next to her bed sobbing. Just sobbing. That hadn’t been the Aunt Mace she knew. But her aunt had returned to her old self shortly after the last treatment, along with the wispy tufts of baby soft hair. If the medicine worked, there would be another round of chemo. They already knew that. Nora took a shuddering breath and decided she wouldn’t try to get her aunt to take her last chance. It wasn’t worth it to her to see her so defeated.

  “Okay. No medicine, Aunt Mace. I won’t try to convince you.”

  The relieved look on her aunt’s face was worth the loss that Nora already felt slip into her heart.

  “Are you sure you want to go out tonight?” asked 4B later that evening as they laced up their boots and got ready to walk the half-mile down to The Strut, a bar located near the airport, a place Nora had told 4B she sometimes frequented.

  “Sure,” said Nora. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing out the cuff of her jeans. She honestly didn’t want to go out, but she didn’t think it was fair to keep 4B cooped up in her small house, or subject her to the geriatric card party taking over her aunt’s kitchen that night. After their talk, Aunt Mace’s spirits
had risen enough to ask her friends to come over.

  “You had a rough day,” offered 4B. Nora had told her about the decision Aunt Mace had made. “We can stay home. You have a million books here. It really isn’t a problem.”

  “I need to get out, I think,” said Nora, though she really would have preferred staying home. But not to read. The best distraction she could think of was in 4B’s arms, but they had already done that most of the day, between visits from friends who were happy to see Nora home in one piece.

  “Okay. But let’s make it an early one. I have plans for you tonight,” said 4B, standing up and pulling Nora to her feet. When they were standing toe-to-toe, she wrapped her arms around Nora’s waist and treated her to a slow kiss.

  “If that was your last ditch effort to convince me to stay home, it worked,” said Nora, a little out of breath when they parted.

  “Too late. I have my shoes on.”

  Before they left for the short walk to the bar, Nora and 4B stopped by to check on Aunt Mace. They were on the back steps, when they heard voices coming through the open window next to the back door.

  “Because you’re a freakin’ cheater, that’s why!”

  “Shut your dern hole, Elphie! The Lord can hear you bearing false witness!”

  Nora stopped 4B on the top stair and turned to face her.

  “You’re in for a treat. What you just heard was Elphie calling Ship a cheater and that was Ship firing a warning shot. Hold onto your hat. The Girls are here for card night.”

  “Aunt Mace has card night?”

  “Actually, every night is card night. But Tuesday night is for money. And it can get ugly.”

  “Big stakes gambling, huh?”

  Nora shook her head with a smile.

  “Penny ante. But they’re serious. Ambulances have been called.”

  “They hurt each other?”

  “Well, it’s never come to blows, but Elphie threw out her back one time, standing up to confront Ship. If I remember right, the claim was Ship purposefully forgot to burn one before throwing down the Turn, therefore cheating Elphie out of a flush.”

  “Are you still talking cards?” asked 4B.

  Nora laughed. “Poker. Texas Hold ‘Em”

  “Oh, yeah. The one with Flops and Turns and Rivers and such.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Maybe we should join them?”

  “What? No way! You do not want to get involved. We’re just going to pop in to say hello to the ladies, and to tell Aunt Mace where we’re headed. Don’t let them rope you in.”

  Nora opened the door just in time to see Elphie flip a plastic bowl of pretzel twists into Ship’s lap. Ship stood up with fire in her eyes, pretzels scattering everywhere, but she stopped cold when she saw Nora and 4B in the doorway.

  “You gals aren’t going to make me call Sherriff Reynolds are you?” asked Nora, placing her hands on her hips.

  Ship was tall—well over six feet—and handsome. Her steel gray hair was neatly clipped in a crew cut, and she was dressed in a long-sleeved work shirt, faded but sharply creased sleeves rolled to the elbow. Worn blue jeans and hiking boots completed the outfit. Ship dropped the finger she had been pointing at the woman sitting across from her and pretended to brush crumbs from her lap. She flashed an apologetic look at Aunt Mace and then smiled innocently at Nora. Nora had always suspected Ship of having a secret crush on her aunt, but to her knowledge, the woman had never even admitted she was gay.

  “Hell, Nora. There’s no need to call the law into this again. I can handle it. Elphie can’t help it that she’s an old bit—” Aunt Mace put her hand on Ship’s arm, and Ship glanced down at it and blushed. “—an old bird. Just a mean, old, squawking bird.”

  The object of Ship’s ire, a slight, old woman in glasses who wore a flowered pullover with beige polyester pants and a thick, gray braid down her back, pulled the cards and pennies piled in the middle of the table toward her, but stopped to wave a finger at Ship.

  “If I’m an old bird, you’re Satan’s Asp, you cantankerous old—”

  “Girls! Stop it now. Nora has a guest. We don’t want to scare her away.” Aunt Mace got up from her chair and shuffled over to where Nora and 4B stood just inside the door. Nora glanced at 4B to see what her reaction had been to the bickering. Nora was relieved to see amusement. Aunt Mace grabbed 4B’s arm with both hands and faced her friends proudly.

  “Ladies, this here is Grace, but we call her 4B. She’s the woman I told you about. The one who kept Nora company after the crash while those incompetent testicle sniffers—”

  “Aunt Mace!” interrupted Nora. Elphie and Ship always brought the worst out in her aunt.

  Aunt Mace snickered and went back to the table. She lowered herself slowly into her chair, and Nora thought her aunt was holding herself like she hurt. It would have made her cry, if the situation around her weren’t so comical. Aunt Mace slapped the tabletop. “Well, they took their damn time finding you.”

  Nora took 4B closer to the dining table, where Elphie guarded her winnings behind the deck of cards she dealt. “4B, the statuesque woman to your left is Ship. She’s Aunt Mace’s best friend from grade school. She also owns the Mercantile downtown.”

  “And she cheats!” said Elphie, sneaking a peek at her cards before she poured more pretzels into the bowl she had upended into Ship’s lap.

  “This lovely lady with the pretzels is Elphie. She used to be the music teacher at the grade school, and now she runs the children’s choir down at the church.”

  “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen you at services in a while, Eleanor.”

  “I was out of town for a while, Elphie, you know that.”

  “By a while, I mean in over a year, Eleanor.”

  “Uh, well, business has been pretty busy…”

  “Are you two girls going down to the tavern?” asked Aunt Mace, saving Nora the trouble of coming up with an excuse for not going to church.

  “Don’t you mean the den of inequity, patronized by ruffians and whores?” asked Elphie. She shuffled the cards and looked at Nora over the top of her bifocals.

  “That’s the place, Elphie.” Nora chuckled. “Do you need anything before we leave, Aunt Mace?”

  “Naw. We’ll be all right. You two have fun. I plan on being a couple of dollars richer and fast asleep when you get back.”

  The walk to the bar, which was near the airport, was half a mile down a well-worn dirt road on an easy downhill grade. The sun hadn’t yet set over the bay, and the weather was perfect. They carried light jackets with them for the trek back to the cabin later that evening. Nora and 4B strolled hand in hand, taking their time as Nora gave 4B a short history of the area where she had grown up. Her parents’ old house was just down the road from Aunt Mace’s and well kept by the current owner, a middle-aged woman named Tabitha, who wrote romance novels. Nora also pointed out where she had gone to grade school—in a small school house across the street from her old house. Before they reached the paved road that ran next to the airport, a pair of bald eagles swooped across the sky and perched in the skeleton of a dead tree on the bank of Glacier River. 4B stopped to watch them and Nora stopped to watch 4B.

  A few minutes later, they arrived at The Strut, which was in an old Quonset hut close to the airport. Although there were only a few cars in the lot, there were about two dozen people in the bar. Nora explained to 4B that Sherriff Reynolds was a stickler on DUIs so if people couldn’t walk it, they begged rides or took a taxi.

  Patrons were scattered throughout the room. Some were sitting around a few of the dozen tall tables clustered in the center of the room, a few were squeezed into one of the booths near the back, and a handful were pressed up against the polished wood bar spanning the front of the room. A couple of guys were shooting pool at one of the two ratty felt covered tables in the back, and a woman with long dark hair, generously streaked with gray, swayed all by herself next to the jukebox. Her eyes were closed and she had a glass clasped i
n her hand, grooving to the sounds of The Grateful Dead. Heads swiveled toward Nora and 4B as they entered the bar, and when they recognized who had just walked in, several people rose to greet Nora, eager to hear about the plane crash the entire town had been talking about for a week.

  Nora introduced 4B to the small crowd and then went on to describe their ordeal right up to the point when they saw the sweet sight of Tack’s plane buzzing through the narrow canyon the morning of their rescue.

  “Crazy fucker!” said Lawrence, the owner of the bar. He’d been sitting on his normal stool at the end of the bar when they’d come in, but had ordered a couple of pints and had wandered over to join the crowd. He handed the beer to Nora and 4B and listened to the tale.

  Eventually, the crowd broke up and everyone went back to what they had been doing, and Lawrence walked Nora and 4B to the bar with their empty pint glasses.

  “Crystal, give these ladies whatever they want all night. It’s on the house. I want them good and drunk when they head home.”

  Nora thanked Lawrence for the drinks and when Crystal lifted her chin in a silent question, Nora lifted two fingers and pointed to one of the beer taps in answer. Crystal’s eyes never left them as she poured two pint glasses of frothy beer from the tap. As usual, she was dressed in a tight black tank top, black jeans and a studded leather belt. A red bandana was knotted at her neck and a thick leather bracelet wrapped around her left wrist. Her bleach-blond hair was spiked perfectly, and the muscles in her well-defined arms twitched as she tipped the pint glasses to pour off the foam. She set the pint glasses on the bar, and in an impressive show of athleticism, she slapped her palms on the wood surface and vaulted the bar without kicking any of the customers or knocking over any of their drinks. She stuck her landing without visible effort right in front of Nora and pulled her in for a hug. A smattering of applause from the guys sitting at the bar broke out and Nora laughed. It was an unexpected greeting, one she’d never seen, let alone received, in the four years of her infrequent patronage of the bar. Nora took it to mean that Crystal was happy to see her alive and in one piece.