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By Root 755 0

slightly abrasive, but it was an act she’d developed to protect herself. She was all marshmallow below the surface. Not that she hadn’t earned the right, over the years, to be a bit cranky. Her own husband had left her before Cynthia had come to live with her for a barmaid from Stamford, and, as Tess told it, they’d fucked off to someplace out west never to be heard from again, and thank Christ for that. Tess, who had left her job with the radio factory years earlier, found a job with the county, clerical work in the roads department, and made just enough to support herself and pay the utilities. There wasn’t much left to raise a teenage girl, but you did what you had to do. Tess had never had children of her own, and with her no-good husband gone, it was nice to have someone to share her home with, even if the circumstances that brought Cynthia to her were shrouded in mystery, and undoubtedly tragic.

Tess was in her late sixties now, retired, getting by on Social Security and her county pension. She gardened and puttered about, took the occasional bus trip like the one she took last fall up through Vermont and New Hampshire to look at the changing leaves—“Jesus, a bus full of old people, I thought I’d kill myself”—but she didn’t have much of a social life. Not a joiner, not inclined to attend AARP meetings. But she kept up with the news, maintained her subscriptions to Harper’s and The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly and was not bashful about offering her left-of-center political opinions. “That president,” she said to me on the phone one day, “he makes a bag of hammers look like a Nobel Prize winner.” Spending most of her teenage years with Tess had helped shape Cynthia’s attitude and perspective as well, and no doubt contributed to her decision to pursue, in the early years of our marriage, a career in social work.

And how Tess did love to see us. Especially Grace.

“I was going through some boxes of old books in the basement,” Tess said, flopping into her La-Z-Boy after we’d done the hug thing, “and look what I came across.”

She leaned forward in her chair, moved aside a copy of The New Yorker that had been hiding something else, and handed Grace an oversized hardcover book, Cosmo s , by Carl Sagan. Grace’s eyes went wide, looking at the kaleidoscope of stars on the cover.

“It’s a pretty old book,” Tess said, as if apologizing for her thoughtfulness. “Nearly thirty years, and the guy who wrote it, he’s dead now, and there’s lots better stuff now on the Internet, but there might be something in there to catch your interest.”

“Thank you!” Grace said, taking the book in her hands and nearly dropping it, not expecting it to be quite so heavy. “Is there anything in here on asteroids?”

“Probably,” Tess said.

Grace ran down to the basement, where I knew she’d cuddle up on the couch in front of the TV, maybe wrap a blanket around herself while she leafed through the pages of the book.

“That was sweet,” Cynthia said, leaning over and giving Tess probably her fourth kiss since we’d arrived.

“Didn’t make any sense to throw the damn thing out,” Tess said. “I could have donated it to the library, but you think they want thirty-year-old books? How are you, sweetheart?” she asked Cynthia. “You look tired.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Cynthia said. “You? You look kind of beat today.”

“Oh, I’m okay I guess,” Tess said, peering at us over her reading glasses.

I held up a loaded shopping bag with twine handles. “We have some things.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Tess said. “Hand me my loot.”

We called Grace back up so she could see Tess receive some new gardening gloves, a red and green silk scarf, a package of fancy cookies. Tess oohed and aahed over each thing as it came out of the bag. “The cookies are from me,” Grace announced. “Aunt Tess?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Why do you have so much toilet paper?”

“Grace!” Cynthia scolded.

“That,” I said to Grace, “is a fox pass.”

Tess waved dismissively, suggesting it would take more than that to embarrass her. Like a lot of older people, Tess tended to stockpile certain staples. Her basement