Her face: so familiar but so much like a stranger.
“My camera face,” she’d explained once and demonstrated a fake smile.
We left the TV off for weeks. News reporters sobbed openly on air; producers cut to commercial, not knowing what else to do. They sometimes let the weatherpeople predict the forecast for ten, fifteen minutes, but eventually even the weatherpeople started crying.
The window displays of every bookstore in the worldwere crowded with her books. The Alvin Hatter series:
Alvin Hatter and the House in the Middle of the Woods
Alvin Hatter and the Overcoat Man
Alvin Hatter and the Mysterious Disappearance
Alvin Hatter and the Everlife Society
Alvin Hatter and the Wild-Goose Chase
Alvin Hatter and the Return of the Overcoat Man
Everybody loved Alvin and Margo Hatter.
Six books, six movies, six adapted graphic novels. Dolls and LEGO sets and even a surprisingly popular old-fashioned radio series.
My aunt’s death affected not just the small circle of our family; it spread out, like an infectious sadness, until eventually the whole world was in mourning.
Or at least, that was what it felt like to me.
And driving to her lawyer’s office to hear her last will and testament wasn’t helping matters in the least.
Aunt Helen had an apartment in the city she spent most of her time in (until she got sick, and then she said the noise was too much to stomach), but her lawyer’s office was right in town, the lawyer himself being a childhood friend of hers and my father’s. All of us went at the appointed time. It had been less than a week since Aunt Helen had died, and I kept waiting for someone to call April fool.
The lawyer’s office was downtown in a tiny strip mall that held a handful of other boring businesses. He had a receptionist’s desk but no receptionist, and truth be toldthe place looked like a tornado had torn through it only moments before our arrival. Every surface was covered in manila envelopes, beige folders, stacks of crisp white paper, and coffee-stained mugs. It smelled like the inside of an office supply store (not unpleasant, mostly paper with a little after scent of ink). It was exactly like my aunt to entrust her legal businesses to someone who couldn’t seem to find a dust rag.
“I think he’s actually supposed to be a good lawyer,” Dad said when we’d been standing in the waiting room for a full minute with no signs of life from within the office.
“Mediocre at best, but I get by,” a voice said from behind us, and we all turned as one to find the lawyer—a middle-aged man in a dull gray suit—standing in the doorway, holding a Box O’ Joe and a small tower of paper cups.
“Harry,” Dad said. “It’s been ages!”
“Sal, Marisol,” he said, nodding at my parents. “Are these... ? No, they can’t be. These can’t be your kids. They’re grown-ups! They’re real people!”
“They’re half real,” Dad said, smiling, putting his arm around Abe and me and shuffling us forward like display pieces.
“Lottie and Abe. I have heard more about you from your aunt... I feel like I already know you. Can I hug you? I kind of want to hug you,” Harry said. He juggled the box of coffee and the cups and put his arms around us both at the same time, a weird sort of hug that was also notweird, kind of nice.
“I brought coffee!” Harry said, pulling away. Abe shot me a look that nobody saw except me, a look I could translate perfectly:too much hugging lately. When will the hugging stop?“You guys are so punctual. I love it. Helen was never on time. One of her more endearing qualities, I guess, depending on how you look at it. Better late than early, she always said, but I’m not sure that would have held up in court.”
Harry set the Box O’ Joe and the coffee cups on the receptionist’s desk, and then he crossed the room to a minifridge where he pulled out a small container of half-and-half. We helped ourselves to the coffee and filed into Harry’s office, which was small and cramped with three extra folding chairs he must have moved in before we arrived. We sat drinking our coffee while he fussed around with folders on his desk, mumbling to himself until he found what he was looking for, holding up a big envelope with a small “aha!”
He straightened up in his chair and put the envelope on the desk in front of him.
“We are here to deliver and fulfill the last will and testament of Helen L. Reaves, one of my most favorite humans on the entire planet,” Harry said, pulling a stack of papers out of the envelope. I noticed him share a brief look with my father, a tiny smile that meant something like:Holy shit, this is hard.
“There’s a whole bunch of legal stuff here, but we cango over that in more detail later,” Harry continued. “Basically, fifty percent of Helen’s estate, including all property and physical possessions not including ones specifically listed later on, will be liquidated and donated to various charities and libraries of her choosing. I’ll take care of all that, of course. It’s a substantial estate, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
We were aware. Aunt Helen was listed officially in theGuinness Book of World Records(that had tickled her to no end; we’d spent about three hours one afternoon taking silly pictures of her holding the book in increasingly weird locations around Connecticut) as the author of the best-selling children’s book series of all time.
And she was gone. Sitting in Harry’s office made it so official. This was an outside party, a lawyer, hired to assist in the divvying up of my dead aunt’s things. It made me feel cheated, tricked, like someone was lying to us—because Aunt Helen couldn’t actually be dead. That just wasn’t possible.
