Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 37

by Kelly Link

  “That’s not what I mean. A Rembrandt doesn’t disappear, only to show up two, three, eight decades later. These guys need help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  Earle began doodling in his taped-together composition book, like he did when he was thinking.

  “We know when these things were stolen. Some of them, we know what they’ll sell for, and when. What we do, is we go into business. These guys don’t want to wait for their payouts. They just have to. We go back to them, buy the goods marked down a little, and fence them in their future. Far enough in their future we can’t be connected to the crime, but in our past so we know we’ll make a profit.”

  “How are we gonna get money for a trip to the past?”

  “Jesus, Annie, how do we get money for anything?” he grabbed her hands. “That robbery messed you up, I understand. But we made away with a lot of cash.”

  Once Annie warmed to the idea, she insisted they think bigger. Fencing a few paintings was one thing, but if they actually organized the crimes—not to mention the sales—well, there was no telling how much their gang could rake in. Annie and Earle still lived in a tiny studio with a collapsing, water damaged ceiling and a colony of roaches. So it didn’t matter that they began drawing endless diagrams of the ways time can fold itself on the concrete floors with sharpies and charcoal.

  And that’s how Earle and Annie began using time to serve their needs.

  Sometimes, me and Maxine spent time with Mom. She usually stayed at a building not far from school, so we could walk there in the afternoon when she was fit for us and didn’t have work. Life with Mom was nothing like being with Granny or Auntie A. She painted our nails and let us use fancy face masks. They helped her stay beautiful, she said. I couldn’t tell that she needed help.

  One of the things Mom did best was baking cookies. Auntie A obviously couldn’t bake and Granny believed that too much sugar was the devil’s work, so Mom’s confections were a treat. We would bake in a big shared kitchen that smelled like institutional cleaner and rotting vegetable scraps. Mom would have Maxine beat the sugar into the margarine and me chop chocolate and nuts, on account of I was older and safer with a knife and could be trusted not to eat everything before it went into the cookies. When we were done, the entire floor smelled like cookies, and Mom would offer them to her neighbors.

  By the time we were of age to help with cookies, Granny had pretty well given up on Mom and would send Auntie A or another relative to pick us up. Auntie A was agnostic when it came to Mom, so far as I could tell. She didn’t feel the same deep upset and anger as Granny, but she wasn’t exactly inviting her over for coffee.

  “Annie!” Mom said, as Auntie A came into the kitchen. “I’ve missed you.”

  Auntie A hugged her, I imagine out of a sense of family ritual. Mom was the type to squeal and hug people, Auntie A was not.

  “How’ve you been, Lynette?” I remember this day in particular, because Auntie A looked Momma up and down real careful, eyeing her midsection.

  “I’m good, really good,” Mom said, her voice was breathy and light.”Little lonesome since Cliff’s been in jail.”

  “That so? Not seen anyone new?”

  “Annie, I know you all think I’m some big slut who’s hopping into the next bed before the last one’s cold-”

  “Lynette, please, I’m the last one to judge on that account. I just heard on the street—”

  “Arnie? Listen, Annie, I get it, you don’t like him, and at this point I think you’re right. He’s not worth anything. I haven’t seen him in—gosh, it’s gotta be eight, nine weeks. He disappeared.”

  Maxine and I were munching on cookies, real quiet so the grownups wouldn’t remember we were there and tell us to stop before we spoiled our dinner.

  “How you been feeling since?”

  “Like a god damned fool, Annie. Is that what you want to hear? Look, I know you had beef with Arnie. I’m sorry I ever talked to that louse. You were right. OK?”

  Annie looked a little softer, like she was talking to a wayward kid sister, which I guess in a way she was.

  “I don’t want you to feel bad, Lynette. I want you to be safe and fucking take care of yourself.”

  “You should watch your language in front of the girls,” Mom said. We stopped munching, hoping that attention would turn away from us quickly. All the softness jerked free from Auntie A’s face.

  “Lynette, we are not fighting over what is good for the girls. Certainly not while they’re here.”

  “Right,” Mom all but spat. “Because you all know what’s best for them? A religious kook and some freak who’s not even around most of the time because she’s flitting around playing old-west outlaw?”

  “You know why the kids are with your Ma, and you can’t blame me for helping. She’s an old lady and these girls don’t have much by way of family.”

  I could see it was Mom picking the fight, and that Auntie A was probably right, at least most ways. But it troubled me I couldn’t feel pure loyalty to Mom. You want to feel that way for a parent, especially when that’s not how you do feel. I never shook the notion Mom abandoned us, and though she loved us, it was how Maxine loved a doll: She would dote endlessly in our presence. She might even pine truly when we were gone. But it didn’t amount to anything of substance.

  “You are such fucking martyrs,” Mom said, Auntie A smirked at the cussing. “You want to make me feel forever bad for my mistakes. Like I asked you to clean them up. I never wanted your help.”

  “You certainly needed it. They needed it,” Auntie A finally looked at us full on. “Eva and Maxine I see you eating those cookies and you are not to put one more crumb in your mouths—Who would you expect to mind them while you can’t?”

  “Nobody didn’t ask me if I could or couldn’t watch them,” Mom was all pink with anger.

  “Nobody didn’t have to—you just weren’t,” Auntie A was exasperated. I knew she’d had this conversation with Mom before.

  “If me and mine are such a burden, maybe you all should have kept your noses out of it. If I’m so terrible, there are plenty beds in orphanages.”

  Auntie A looked both like she’d just been slapped in the face and like she might slap Mom’s face.

  “You don’t say that Lynette. Never,” she grabbed me and Maxine by the hands. “Come on, girls, we’re going home.”

  I was too stunned to talk, and my eyes watered. From their corners, I saw Maxine grab a handfull of cookies.

  “Yeah, you go ahead and take my kids,” Mom yelled after us. “Maybe if you didn’t take up with a bunch of faggots and dykes you could have your own and leave mine alone.”

  My shoulder was sore from how Auntie A dragged us. Maxine looked up at Auntie A, blinking sweetly. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if Maxine was still too little to understand stuff, or if it was a put-on to make adults feel sorry for her.

  “Are you mad at my Mom?”

  “Yes,” Auntie A said. “I don’t know. No. It’s just hard, Max.”

  “Are we going to go to an orphanage, too? Just like you?”

  Auntie A stopped, even though we were in the middle of the sidewalk, and it was about to rain, and people were walking all around us.

  “No. Are you kidding? Fuck, no, that’s silly. Just—just eat your cookies, and give me one.” Auntie A slowed down as she ate the cookie, no longer dragging us. “I wish your Mom would think things out better, though.”

  The Depot existed in many times: 10 years from now or 50, decades or even a century or two in the past. It was a speakeasy or an office in a nondescript high rise or a warehouse by a harbor or a nightclub or a suburban home. In a couple of notable instances, it was a bank with high-security vaults or a museum. It was the world’s most spectacular auction house. It was a club for criminals. It was Annie Savage’s vision.

  A person can only hop ar
ound time so much before things go wrong: with their brain, with their relation to other folks, with everything they touch. It was best, Annie supposed, to keep a static headquarters—moving only when there was risk of detection. She fielded teams to plunder loot and invited buyers in for auctions. The orgies of cut-throat bidding and skulduggery lasted a week or more. While Annie fretted over the practical, Earle wove panache into the operation. He created runs on 1970s-motel water colors, Faberge eggs, VHS copies of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Annie! and sold The Garden of Earthly Delights no fewer than 47 times. In most iterations, Annie Z worked the door. Ana, as always, handled the things best fixed by a beautiful, charming woman in a snug-fit cocktail dress.

  In the spring of 1990, the Gardner Heist went off without a hitch, and simultaneously—in another time—I was born. Annie S already had buyers for several paintings, including Isabella Stuart Gardener herself. Organizing the Gardener Heist was a highlight of Earle’s career. It was also a personal milestone. Earle was immediately taken with Mikey, one of the two men who actually robbed the museum. Mikey was a brash, butch, small-time criminal, eager for a break. Annie Z recruited him while arm wrestling at a longshoremen’s bar. If Earle crushed on Mikey a bit from the start, seeing Mikey in fake cop uniform with a phony wax mustache—a sort of Tom of Finland drag—drove him wild.

  There was never any presumption of fidelity in Annie and Earle’s relationship. Had there been, it never would have survived. So Earle’s romp with Mikey the night after they unloaded the paintings wasn’t a problem. Nor was it a problem, really, that Mikey started to take up some of the space in Earle’s life that had been strictly Annie’s domain. But between Annie and Earle, there was a growing feeling that they didn’t have or need the same inseparability as before.

  They traveled together one more time, though, to visit me as a newborn. It was just a couple of weeks after the Gardener heist. That night they lay in bed, exhausted and worried.

  “There’s a lot going on here,” Annie said.

  “Yeah,” Earle said. He held her hand.

  “You know, Lynette’s never going to be able to give that kid any sort of decent life. We should do something to help.”

  “One step ahead of you. I put together an account she can access on her 18th birthday. Who’da thought we’d have a trust fund baby in our family?”

  Annie laughed.

  “I love you Earle, and I’m glad you thought of that,” she said. “But I mean actually help. Be there.”

  “We can’t go back and forth all the time. Like you said, there’s a lot going on here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “With work.”

  “Yeah,” Annie took a deep breath before she added, “But also with you and Mikey.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s ok if you want to stay. In fact, it’s really good. But I want to go.”

  The first time I heard this story, I felt guilty. Earle took the adventure and the nice apartments and the glamor and danger; Annie took the family and the run-down neighborhood and occasional religious lecture. Then Annie pointed out she didn’t really give up Earle or any of those things, they were just in the periphery. Plus she had me and Maxine and Granny. A family.

  Granny spent the whole Sunday at church. When Auntie A was away, she invested herself wholly in pious activities, to make up for Auntie A’s assumed sins. Auntie A came in while Granny was rolling biscuits for dinner, earning a lecture.

  “If I knew you were coming back, I’d have baked a cake. Well, you’ll make due with whatever’s on offer, I suspect.”

  “I’m just happy to be back for dinner, DJ,” Annie said. She looked exhausted. “Have you talked to Lynette while I was away?”

  “I had to. When I picked up the kids the other day,” Granny cut tomatoes for the salad while she talked. “I hate it when you’re gone. That girl is a mess. Cliff is still in jail. The good news is as long as she doesn’t take up with someone else, she won’t get pregnant.”

  Auntie A looked at Granny sharply.

  “I know,” said Granny. “You don’t reckon it’s a problem to hop out of your panties for anyone who glances your way—”

  “It’s not that,” Auntie A said. “I figured she would have found someone by now.”

  “Oh, well, there was talk Arnie had his eyes on her, but he dropped off the face of the planet. Good riddance, I say. Better for the neighborhood.”

  “Gotta keep that criminal element out.” Auntie A smiled.

  Granny tutted, “It’s wrong to wish ill on anyone, but unfortunately, I’m sure he’ll show up again. Wish he wouldn’t”

  “Eh, keep the faith, DJ. Maybe this time he’s gone for good.”

  Arnie showed up again, right before I left for college. His little brother had taken over the family business and found Arnie at his old corner. He hadn’t aged the decade or so he’d been gone—heck on the outside he hadn’t aged a day. But something on the inside, maybe his brain, maybe his soul—if you believe in that sort of thing—had gone off. Doctors guessed he hopped through time too much and things got scrambled. He didn’t recognize anyone from the neighborhood—didn’t recognize Mom. And he certainly didn’t mess with her after that. Or before that. Or at any time, far as I can tell. But he remembered Auntie A, or at least remembered her name when he mumbled long, meaningless strings of words.

  After that, I didn’t see Auntie A. I like to imagine she’s at The Depot, reunited with Earle and the Annies and Mikey and whoever else constitutes their gang. I read accounts of spectacular crimes and I search for Auntie A and Earle’s fingerprints: Daddy Warbucks mugs and other tchotchkes suddenly taking on outlandish value, a piece of Sagrada Familia showing up in a Miami nightclub, anything impossible. I go on to imagine that in leaving us, Auntie A has recaptured romance and adventure. And that someday, I’ll wake up, walk into my kitchen and there she’ll be, looking for something to eat, the way you do if you’re in the house of someone who’s family.

  d

  Three Poems

  Catherine Rockwood

  For Sylvia Townsend Warner

  You laid garden walks

  where knowledge knocks us sideways, blurting

  out of a tapestried shooting-blind, speaking

  true, unkind things that can find the heart

  to wreck it into growth. With this intent

  you broke up matted bulbs; reburied them;

  turned silver-tipped horn bullets flanged with rue.

  They enter like keys

  and whip us round.

  War in the archipelago

  Learn boats first, boys.

  A slogan can take flight

  and so fulfill its purpose, but these boots

  and the strong feet within them, well, they’ll sink:

  Sink, the good legs and gonads

  stirred by reforming fervor

  Sink, the smooth waists and ribs

  turned inter-coastal.

  Sink shoulders, clavicles, the angels’ own

  delight: sink, shadowed niche

  below the chanting throat’s chambered vibration.

  Sink, throat. Sink, voice

  and all! or else, if landed,

  who in your faithful company can speak

  this island’s language? Words alter at sea;

  for neighbor—thief. For soldier—enemy.

  Putto Reclining on a Death’s Head

  Fleshy little soul,

  your baby’s face

  and debauchee’s pouched glance

  define the skull

  with its dropped jaw

  upon the hill:

  two white stones in a thaw.

  Photograph © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

  1. Reclining Child and a Skull in a Landscape about 1520.

  Artist: Uni
dentified artist, German, 16th century Chiaroscuro woodcut, printed from two blocks Strauss, Chiaroscuro (1973), no. 53

  Sheet: 24 × 33 cm (9 7/16 × 13 in.)

  Harvey D. Parker Collection—Harvey Drury Parker Fund P1650

  Till the Cows Come Home to Roost

  Howard Waldrop

  Every day General Lew Wallace would sit in his office in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, and try to deal with the aftermath of what was being called the Lincoln County War. It seemed to have involved, at one time or another, the entire population in the year before he’d become governor.

  He got up from his cluttered desk, went across the room and out the side door into the courtyard. He stepped out a ways, and looked up at where the three mountain ranges—Sangre de Cristos, Chisos, and San Juans—marched off into the distance. He sighed. Not like Indiana at all. It was near twilight. He went back inside.

  His secretary, a captain, was standing in the office when he returned.

  “I thought I heard your door, Sir,” he said.

  “Everybody’s awfully damn spooky around here,” said the General.

  “Things have made us spooky, Sir.”

  Wallace nodded toward the stacks of writs, depositions and letters on his desk. “So I am led to believe.”

  “Which do we start on next, Sir?”

  “Not a one of ’em. I’ve done as much as I think I can stand today. Cap’n, and to hear what? Two years?”

  “Two years six months seven days, Sir.”

  “Maybe you could actually explain all this to me?”

  “I’ve been held close to the Palace— er, office, Sir, except for the one time. I doubt King Solomon himself could sort it out.”

  “Then do you have any idea who I should talk to to try to straighten all this out without just putting the whole territory under military arrest?”

  “That depends on whose side of the story you want, Sir.”

  “That’s about what I was afraid of.” The general sighed again. “I suppose I’ll have to do something. We’ll start on it again tomorrow. I’m going to the house. See you in the morning.”