As I approach my seventieth birthday, I find myself thinking more and more often of Aunt Henrietta and of the terrible thing my brother, Harry, and I did to her many years ago. Autumn has arrived, and I am growing old; perhaps that accounts for it. I have recently taken to spending an hour each morning on the porch. From my chair, I am occasionally lucky enough to see a balloon or two drift by, high and huge and wonderful, silent as clouds. Sometimes a breeze rattles the sumac leaves just the right way, or I catch a breath of apple cider on the air. Then I think perhaps I understand Aunt Henrietta as I never did when I was young. It isn't regret that I feel exactly-
something more like wistfulness. If only Henrietta had fully respected our childhood view of justice; if only Clotaire the balloonist had respected it a little less.
When Harry was eight and I was ten, our mother fell ill. At that time, we had wonderful lodgings in the city, in an ornate copper-roofed house that overlooked one of the parks. Harry and I were in the habit of sneaking about in the dark after we were supposed to be asleep. One evening early in spring, we peeked around the drawing room doorway. By the warm, uneven light of the fire, we saw Mother in her dressing gown and a quilt, seated in the largest and softest of the armchairs. Father sat beside her on the floor, leaning against her knees, an empty brandy glass tilted in his hand. I had never seen him sit on the floor before. Neither of them spoke or moved, but something about the way they stared into the flames made me feel quite empty and afraid. At that moment, I realized for the first time just how ill Mother really was.
Father's subsequent actions bore this out. In the middle of May we moved to a house in the country, where Mother spent most of her time lying in bed in a sunny room upstairs. The doctor gave orders that Harry and I were to see her no more than an hour each day and that even then we must be quiet and try not to excite her. This news terrified and infuriated me. In retribution, I took to breaking vases and scattering silverware about on the floor while Harry looked on in awe.
Two things happened because of this. First, Harry and I were firmly encouraged to stay outdoors most of the time, which is how we discovered Clotaire. And second, Father sent for his sister, Henrietta. So Clotaire and Aunt Henrietta entered our world together, the same way in which they departed from it.
One of those first country spring afternoons, as we stood with Father on the spacious lawn in front of our new house, Harry and I spied a balloon drifting high in the distance. I had never seen a balloon before and wasn't at all sure what it could be. I still remember just how it looked-shining silver, with a magnificent sun, moon, and stars about its circumference. It belonged to Clotaire, of course, though we didn't know it yet.
I jumped up and down, trying to see it better over the treetops, and cried, "What is it? It's so beautiful!"
"That's a balloon, Catherine," said Father. "There's a man hanging from it in a basket. He's taking a ride."
Harry leapt up as well, his cheeks all aglow, shouting, "Daddy, make him bring it here! I want a ride, too!"
Father laughed. His laughter in those days was brief and quiet and always made me think of Mother, lying pale in her bed. "I'm afraid he's too far away to hear us," he said, reaching down to tousle Harry's brown curls.
Harry squirmed but flashed one of those empty, sunny smiles of his. Father looked down at him, returned the smile rather stiffly, and said, "Come inside now, children. I have a surprise for you."
So, shielding our eyes and pointing at the receding silver balloon, Harry and I stumbled up the path to the front door and ran directly into Father's surprise-Aunt Henrietta. He hadn't told us he was expecting her, and I suppose we must have been playing and thus missed noticing the carriage that brought her from the station. At any rate, the unexpected sight of her ample, stalwart figure in the doorway affected us like a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky. Harry and I were dumbstruck.
Tenacity and the smells of starched lace and lavender hovered around Aunt Henrietta, mothlike. We had never known her very well. She lived far away, visited our house only one week a year, and always brought with her a suit of scratchy new underwear for each of us. She taught at a private girls' school and raised large maroon roses in her spare time. I had two vivid memories of her, both of which at that moment crashed around inside my head like trapped finches. The first was of her slapping my hand as I reached for a third piece of cake at teatime. The second was of Harry's gurgling screams as she held him by the ear and washed his mouth out with laundry soap. He had made the mistake of saying aloud that he "didn't give a hoot about the heathen children in China," a turn of phrase that he had picked up from Father.
I suppose Harry and I must have looked a little bewildered as we stared up at her on the doorstep. She possessed hugely expressive black eyebrows, which she now raised into swooping arches that reached almost to the line of her stone-gray hair. "Children!" she said, her voice warm and sweet as those disgusting fig tarts she loved to eat. "How delightful to see you again."
Father put a hand on each of our shoulders. "Henrietta's come to stay with us until Mother gets better. Isn't that good of her?"
The eyebrows dropped, and a sort of smile crackled its way across Aunt Henrietta's powdery face. "Yes. I've come to help your father look after you for a little while. Won't that be nice?"
I suppose she thought she was doing the right thing. Perhaps she even thought this type of sacrifice would assure her of a place in heaven. After all, she was a solid and confident woman, with lucid ideas of the world. In all likelihood, it never occurred to her that she might only make matters worse by volunteering her services.
Harry and I were too young to see any of this, however. I knew only that Aunt Henrietta's presence at a time like this must mean that my mother was in terrible danger.
I started the new venture off well-with a bloodcurdling scream followed by, "I won't! I won't let you look after me. It's Mother's job. Leave me alone!" I ran straight across the lawn and into the woods, where I found solace in the rough branches of a maple tree. I cried until dark, when, as no one came looking for me, I climbed down and made my way home, feeling hungry and deserted.
Aunt Henrietta's presence in the house caused Harry and me to spend more time than ever out of doors. By the middle of July, when we first met Clotaire, we already knew exactly which trees in our woods were favored by cardinals and which by mourning doves; we had explored every turnstile and rock wall inch by inch and even befriended the great black bull who sometimes grazed in the field adjoining our raspberry patch.
Most important of all, we had learned to guess when the wonderful silver balloon was most likely to come drifting past. It had to be just the right kind of day. There had to be a line of dust shimmering like a halo on the road, and the sky had to look like Mother's blue crystal vase. Then, if luck and the high breeze came our way, we might catch a glimpse of the balloon, shining like an errant moon in the perfect sunlight. Now and then, it came so near to us that we could discern and wave to the man in the basket. Sometimes he waved in return, and sometimes he did not.
One afternoon during a fine round of our favorite game, missionaries and cannibals, we heard a strange sound. Harry and I stood still as rocks and listened. It was a noise like the beating of gigantic wings, accompanied by that odd roar and bellow that bulls sometimes produce when they are angry or afraid.
"Cathy, there's something in the field," whispered Harry. The dry willow branch he'd been using as a cannibal spear dropped unnoticed from his hand. That, and a slight croak in his voice, made the hair on my arms stand straight up beneath the sleeves of my blouse.
In a moment I saw what Harry was talking about-a huge, glowing thing that moved in waves just beyond the raspberries and the hedge. I got down on my hands and knees, crept through our secret hedge tunnel, and peeked out on the other side.
Harry was just behind me, not to be outdone by a girl. "Is it anything awful?"
I made room for him beside me. "Come and see."
Before us in that ordinary field was a sight that visits the dreams of an old woman to this very day. A tall but otherwise unremarkable chestnut tree grew there, and caught in its branches was the grand silver balloon. We saw immediately that the basket, all askew, hung empty. But directly beneath it a man lay in the grass, half propped on his elbows and looking very distressed indeed. Our friend the black bull pawed the ground no more than two yards away from him.
I stood up for a better look and, as sometimes happens with little girls, fell in love straightaway. I had previously thought that no one could possibly be more handsome and dashing than Father, but as I stood watching in the afternoon sun, I knew that Father had met his match. The fellow sported aviator's breeches and puttees and a lovely ivory-colored scarf. His eyes, the dazzling color of robins' eggs, were set in a strong, well-tanned face, and his hair and mustache gleamed like heaps of gold coins. Moreover, he seemed clearly in pain and danger. At once I felt capable of even the most arduous rescue. I floated in visions of befriending him and showing him off to Father and Aunt Henrietta, who seemed to care so little for me that they would let me sit in a tree by myself half the night.
"We've got to help him," I said. Bravely, and I now think rather stupidly, I walked out into the field and flicked a stone at the bull's broad flank.
The bull looked around, distracted but unconvinced, and Harry yelped, "Don't, Cathy! He'll come after us."
"Nonsense," I said, hoping the handsome aviator could hear me. "The bull knows us. See?" And I clapped my hands and cried, "Shoo!" as loudly as I could.
Sometimes I think that God must station an angel on the shoulder of every little boy and girl and that only through that device does any child grow to adulthood. My angel must have been hard at work that day, for the bull turned and humped away as if it had been bitten by a fly.
"Shoo!" I said again, and it lumbered off even further.
Luminous with triumph, I turned to Harry. "Stand right here. Keep yelling 'shoo' and don't stop until I tell you to."
"But, Cathy…" he whimpered.
"Do it, or I'll twist your ear off." Poor Harry. I knew all of his weaknesses, even in those days.
So Harry crouched, all the little blue veins in his neck standing out, and screamed, "Shoo!" while I ran to the aid of the dashing young balloonist.
"Can you stand up?" I asked, breathless with a combination of excitements.
"Oui, mademoiselle, I think so," he replied. Oh, my knees nearly turned to butter.
I helped him up. But he winced and jerked when he tried to put weight on his leg, so I told him to lean on me. Lean on me he did, heavily and deliriously, as we hurried toward the gate in the hedge. He smelled wonderful, like cold air and lightning and peppermint.
When we stood safely on the other side of the gate, I called, "Run, Harry! Run!"
Screaming like a wounded pigeon, Harry tore through after us, even though the bull did not follow him, its attention having apparently wandered from stranded hero to succulent grass. That is how Harry and I at last made the acquaintance of Clotaire, the ace balloonist.
Later that very afternoon, as Clotaire sat before our fire soaking his foot and ankle in an Epsom salts bath, he said a thing which eventually changed our lives. He said, "I owe you a great debt. If there is ever any way in which I can repay it, you must tell me."
The peculiar look in his sky-blue eyes frosted the bones of everyone in the room, even Aunt Henrietta. Her twitchy eyebrows betrayed the nervousness that lay beneath her facade of haughty disapproval. It seemed as if a cold, sharp wind swept past the fire, for the flames, wavered ever so slightly, though the day was still and mild.
An hour or so later, Father got out our touring car, which he showed off at every opportunity, and drove Clotaire to town. The moment they left the drive, Aunt Henrietta turned to us, her face ratlike in the dim light of the parlor, and said, "You're not to have anything more to do with that disreputable vagabond. Is that clear?"
I knew, of course, that Clotaire was a disreputable vagabond. It was the very reason I liked him so much. I already loathed Aunt Henrietta's imperious commands with such passion that any word from her had the power to make me do just the opposite.
I leapt to my feet and cried, "You're not our mother! You can't make us stop seeing him. I hate you. I hate you!"
For which I got my mouth washed out with laundry soap, while Harry stood by, unable to contain a quiet snicker or two. When the ordeal was over, I stumbled teary-eyed up the stairs, sneaked into Mother's room, and lay down beside her on the bed where she slept. I had a dream, which I remember even now. In it, Mother was well again, and we lived in the copper-roofed house that overlooked the park.
I made up my mind that I would do everything in my power to see Clotaire again, as a means of antagonizing Aunt Henrietta, if nothing else. Harry and I commenced spending virtually every waking hour out of doors, playing games of make-believe, always keeping a sharp eye out for Clotaire's mighty balloon.
We actually saw him three more times in the course of the next several months. The first two times, he drifted past above the treetops, waving to us. We leapt in the air and waved back to him. But we could not tell whether he called our names or not, for on both occasions he was ascending, and the balloon's burner roared and gushed flames like a dragon from a fairy tale.
The third time, however, the burner was silent, and Clotaire called down, "I will land in the field!" I was, of course, immediately transported to heights of perfect ecstasy.
I suppose I should tell you that many years later, when I was a full-grown woman, I had a suitor who owned a hot air balloon. I had it on excellent authority that this fellow was an adept balloonist and that his balloon, though it bore an unfortunate resemblance to a large Easter egg, was of the finest make. Yet I never saw him land where he really wanted to, and I never saw him attempt to take off or touch down without at least two strong men on the ground to help him. Whenever I recall Clotaire and that silver ship of his, I am astounded at the amount of control he seemed to have over it. Barring unexpected winds, and even then sometimes, he seemed perfectly capable of piloting his unwieldy craft without any aid whatsoever. That is precisely what he was doing on the occasion I now describe.
Harry and I had already reconnoitered the field once on this particular day, and we knew that the bull was nowhere to be seen. When Clotaire called down to us, we tumbled over one another like a couple of young rabbits as we dashed through the hole in the hedge to meet him. Quite clear of the chestnut tree, the balloon's varnished wicker basket thudded to the ground. Just as it began to rise again, Clotaire jumped out, carrying one of the anchor lines. In the blink of an eye, he pounded a long brass peg into the ground and tied the line to it. That was that, and nothing could have looked easier.
Clotaire said not a word as he stood gazing at us. His smile felt like a candle flame in the darkness, edged somehow with cold wind and thin air. It made me shiver, frightened me and delighted me all at once.
"Oh please, Mr. Clotaire," said Harry, clasping his hands before him, enthralled. "Please take us for a ride!"
I nudged him. "Don't be rude, Harry."
Clotaire rested one hand on his narrow hips and twisted the end of his golden mustache with the other.
"You might not like it. It's a strange world from those heights," he said. How chilly and wonderful those eyes of his were.
I remember my exact reply. Though I didn't know it then, I could not possibly have chosen more fitting words. "Oh, we'd like it fine, wouldn't we, Harry? We like strange worlds."
"Well, we shall see," said Clotaire, and he smiled again, as mysteriously as an Akkadian statue.
Clotaire lifted us over the rim of the basket as easily as he might have lifted two bags of thistledown and climbed in after us. He gave the anchor rope a surprisingly gentle tug; the brass peg pulled out, and we rose skyward.
For many years I have contemplated the rarities of that voyage. Some might be inclined to doubt their childhood memories of such events. But I can tell you this: I was born with a keen sense of what is real and what is not, and you may take my word for it. What Harry and I saw while peering over the edge of that basket was real.
Clotaire fired the burner, and we rose past the treetops, up into the cold blue cup of the sky. Not even the slightest breeze stirred the afternoon air, and when we stopped climbing we hung almost motionless, as if suspended on a string. Below us, we could see our house, the field, and the woods, and further off, the town.
Folding his arms across his chest, Clotaire said, "You do not yet understand about the worlds. Perhaps you never will, but I shall show you anyway."
He stretched out his hand and motioned toward the scene below. "This is one world." Then he snapped his fingers.
Harry and I sucked air as a shadow passed across the sun and a cold draft cut into our bones. I looked up, but I could see no clouds, no hawks or ravens, to account for the shadow. In a moment it was gone.
"And this is another world," said Clotaire.
Twenty-five or thirty cows had suddenly appeared in the field with the chestnut tree. Some of them had gotten through the gate and were grazing on our lawn, which looked unkempt and weedy. The house needed paint. "In this world, you never moved to the country," said Clotaire.
Snap. Shadows fluttered across the sun, and we spied a middle-aged woman and two children speeding down the drive in Father's motorcar. The noise of the engine floated up to us with eerie clarity. "A world in, which your aunt became an avid traveler and learned tolerance from a Katmandese monk."
Snap. "A world in which the rules of civility are not quite the same." Two children looking very much like Harry and me came running across the field. We stared down at them, fascinated. Both of them wore fierce grimaces that revealed sharp yellowish teeth like those of wild rodents. The girl threw rocks at us with her powerful arms, and the boy carried a bundle of pointed sticks.
"Cannibal spears!" cried Harry. "Real cannibal spears!"
"I want to meet them," I found myself saying.
"Meet them?" The sky rang like a crystal bowl with Clotaire's clear laughter. "They would set upon you and kill you at once." He paused, then added, "Besides, there is something else. They are your counterparts. Touch them, and you cease to exist."
The boy threw a spear at us. It fell miserably short, but the inhuman rage on his face made me shudder. A great claw of terror tightened around me then, as if I stood alone in a dark hallway at night. "Take me home! Please, please take me home!" I cried.
Clotaire looked at me, his eyes blue suns, flaming and freezing. He smiled the Akkadian smile, snapped his fingers once more, and the old world lay spread below us again like a familiar quilt.
We descended. Clotaire jumped out, anchored the balloon as before, and lifted us from the basket. No one spoke at first. I watched the rise and fall of his broad shoulders as he breathed, in and out, in and out, the smells of peppermint and lightning.
It was Harry who broke the spell of silence. "Cathy! It's Aunt Henrietta! She's headed this way!"
The magic evaporated like kerosene on a hot sidewalk. Clotaire saluted us and said, "Adieu. I must be going, but we shall meet again."
Blood warmed my cold cheeks as I watched him vault back into the basket in a single liquid motion. Already, I heard Aunt Henrietta calling us, her voice as coarse and furious as a crow's. "Horrid children! No supper for you."
Harry tugged anxiously at my sleeve.
"Clotaire!" I cried. "Be careful. Don't let any counterparts touch you."
Clotaire waved and pulled out the anchor peg. His words drifted down to us above the roar of the burner as the great silver balloon took to the air. "I have no counterparts."
For many nights after that, I lay in bed and tried to puzzle out a reasonable explanation for what I had seen on that peculiar ride. I never reached any very satisfactory conclusion. At any rate, all things, even my magical memories of Clotaire, grew unimportant in the weeks that followed, as the doctor, a man as large and plump as a thunderhead, came more and more often to our house. Sometimes he stayed the night. He and Father would emerge from Mother's room in the morning, faces gray and shoulders sagging. Aunt Henrietta would sit in the parlor with them while they drank strong tea or coffee (Father often added brandy to his) and spoke in whispers.
One afternoon well into autumn, the doctor arrived in a great flurry, his round face gleaming with sweat and his thin, white hair plastered to his forehead. When Aunt Henrietta opened the door, he said, "I got here as quickly as I could." Aunt Henrietta simply nodded and inclined her head in the direction of Mother's room, whereupon the doctor rushed up the stairs two at a time, huffing like a steam engine.
Harry and I raced after him, and would have followed him into Mother's room, only Aunt Henrietta grasped us by our collars and said, "You'll only be in his way." So we waited-I don't know how long, a few minutes perhaps-outside that door, which seemed larger and darker than it ever had before.
When the door opened at last, it was Father who stood there, a faceless silhouette in the afternoon sun that streamed through Mother's casement. He didn't say anything. He looked like a very old man, hunched and weary.
At once I felt as if I had swallowed a great chunk of emptiness. I whispered, "Mother!" and made for the space between Father and the doorframe, thinking to dart through and satisfy myself that my fears were unfounded. But he stopped me, of course. He took me firmly by the arm and closed the door behind him. He stood only a moment in the dark hallway. He never even looked at Harry and me. He simply turned his back and walked down the stairs.
On the day of Mother's funeral, I at first refused to wear the black dress that Aunt Henrietta purchased for me. Standing in my undershirt and bloomers, I tensed every muscle in my face and neck until my whole head shook and my eyes felt as if they would pop from my skull. "I won't! I want the red one with the flowers! Mother wants it that way!"
At first, Aunt Henrietta tried to reason with me. "Your mother had a good sense of what was proper. She'd have wanted you to show your sorrow."
"She hates black. You can't make me wear it!"
Henrietta had a gift for the deep stab and twist. She narrowed her eyes and said, "You had better come to terms with this, child. Your mother doesn't want anything. Neither does she hate anything. She is dead and beyond caring about you or anybody else."
At which point I threw myself on the floor and kicked and screamed until Aunt Henrietta finally got a shoehorn and raised welts on my bare backside with it. No one had ever actually beaten me before, and the whole experience left me so frightened and bewildered that I climbed into the black dress without another word. I tried to tell Father about it, but he had commenced drinking heavily on the day of Mother's death and didn't seem very concerned about my problems.
That night, after we had been put to bed, Harry crept into my room. I lay on the wide casement bench, unable to sit without great discomfort, and Harry huddled beside me. The moon was a bright crescent. Its faint light frosted the hills and whispered through the window onto our hands and faces.
"Shall we run away?" said Harry.
"How silly. We'd starve to death."
"But we can't stay here. She'll kill us."
I stared gloomily out at the night, wondering if perhaps Harry had a point. What happened next I would have been inclined to pass off as a dream, only Harry saw it, too. Far-off, above a distant wood, something large, round, and shiny appeared in the chilly sky, as if from nowhere. It took me a moment to recognize it as a balloon. I strained to make out what color it was, or to discern a familiar pattern of stars around its middle, but in that light I could be sure of nothing. We watched it drift for a minute or two, like a great steel ball somehow set free of gravity. Then it vanished. A prickle of fear and excitement ran through me. Harry and I exchanged one of those looks that signals a complex, shared thought-in this case, the memory of a summer fire guttering from an impossible, cold wind. I owe you a great debt. If there is ever any way in which I can repay it, you must tell me.
"Clotaire!" we whispered in unison.
We spent the night beside the open window, dozing by turns so that we would not miss Clotaire's balloon if it reappeared. After a time, the moon set, and the night grew dark and close, with only a sprinkling of stars to light it. Though I fought sleep, I must have drifted off anyway sometime in the small hours after midnight, for I awakened at dawn to Harry's urgent whispers and his tugging at my shoulder.
"It's him! It's him! Look, there's the balloon."
I rubbed my eyes and looked out across a windless autumn morning. The half-light robbed everything of color. The hills, the woods, the field lay cold and gray. A few birds twittered their morning songs. The sweet reek of neglected pomace in someone's cider press drifted up to us, mingled with leaf smoke. And there, splendid in the faded sky, hung the silver balloon. Blinking, I climbed up on the window ledge and waved wildly, shouting, "Clotaire! Wait, Clotaire."
When I felt certain he had seen me, I turned and bolted out the door and down the stairs. Harry ran after me, his bare feet slapping the polished wooden floors. We stood on the lawn in our nightgowns, waving and calling until the wicker basket touched ground and Clotaire stood before us.
"Hello, my friends," he said softly.
I looked into his face as steadily as I could, straightened my back, and said, "Sir, you made us a promise once."
He nodded and smiled a smile so faint that I could hardly be sure it was there.
"We want you to take someone…"
I was cut off by a shout from one of the upstairs windows. "Catherine! Harry! You shall be thrashed within an inch of your lives for this."
"I don't give a hoot!" shouted Harry, turning toward the house with his jaw thrust out and his hands on his little boy hips.
I squeezed my eyes shut until I saw stars. "I said, we want you to take someone away. To that last world…where the children are cruel and strong. Please!" I opened my eyes. "Take her away forever."
The sun had just broken over the horizon, and light flowed over Clotaire like a torrent of melted copper. His leather puttees, his sturdy breeches, his scarf, his hair, and even his beautiful face, all of him looked strong and hard as metal in that peculiar dawn.
He gazed down at us and said, "Be certain."
"We're certain!" we chorused.
Clotaire went to the wicker basket, opened a small wooden box, and took out a pistol. My mouth went dry. "What's that for?" I heard myself squeak.
Instead of answering, Clotaire grabbed me and held the pistol to my head. I fancied cold fingers closing around my heart. I shall die, I remember thinking. And I shall probably go to hell.
Aunt Henrietta burst from the front door of the house, her dressing gown flapping at her heels and her hair flying. "Save me," I prayed, "oh, Aunt Henrietta, save me!" as the muzzle of Clotaire's gun grew warm from the heat of my temple.
"How dare you!" she cried at first. Then she saw the pistol, and her eyebrows shot up, and she covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh, dear Lord," she said.
"Do as I say, and the child will not be hurt," said Clotaire. "Get into the basket."
"Help!" croaked Harry. "Oh, Father, help us." But Father lay drunk asleep in the far side of the house.
Aunt Henrietta climbed awkwardly over the wicker rim. "Sir, I beg of you, don't harm the children."
"Clotaire…I changed my mind. It's all right. You don't have to take her away." I was sobbing by then.
But Clotaire only laughed, a sound as hard and sharp-edged as glass. "You have made your bargain, my friend. It is past changing now."
He loosened his grip, gave me a small push in Harry's direction, and aimed the pistol at Aunt Henrietta. I doubt that I have ever felt so confused and powerless as I did then, watching Clotaire climb into the basket himself. Everything seemed wrong. I wanted him to take her away, and yet the execution of the act frightened me as much as the idea of her staying. I waited for a flood of satisfaction and release, but none came. Perhaps I had, on that distant autumn morning, my first glimmering of a difficult, grown-up fact. Outside of fairy tales, real justice is quite an elusive commodity.
"You had better keep quite still, madame," said Clotaire as he prepared to fire the burner.
"Where are you taking me?" whimpered Aunt Henrietta, her face the color of smoke.
Clotaire laughed, more musically this time, and said, "A place faraway but nearby, where things are not so very different. A place where you have no counterpart, never have had, and never will."
Then the burner roared. Flames erupted from it, and the silver balloon strained at its mooring. Aunt Henrietta, wild-eyed, clutched the rim of the basket. Clotaire shouted, "Heaven keep you, my friends." He pulled out the anchor line, and they rose-up, up, until at last, when they were smaller than a marble or an eye, they vanished.
Harry and I stood on the lawn in shocked silence. The smells of autumn leaves and fermenting apples washed over us as the birds began to twitter again.
Though sixty years have passed since then, that morning still looms in my mind like a shadow that crosses a field and changes the look of the ground in its path. Though I've led a fine life and don't hold much with wishful thinking, I can't help wondering about the other worlds. Which one would I live in today if Clotaire had said no to us, which one if Aunt Henrietta had not vanished in a balloon?
As things turned out, Father sent Harry and me away to separate schools after Henrietta's disappearance, probably because he thought it would be easier to drink himself into an early grave if there were no children about. He was dead before my twentieth birthday. Harry's gone now, too. He died last year from a heart ailment he never knew he had. As for me, I am left to carry on alone, since I never married. Though suitors courted me aplenty in my youth, none of them had what I was looking for-a certain unthinking impartiality, the ability to stand outside life's complications and laugh at them.
I never saw Clotaire again after that fateful morning. He disappeared with even more elegance than a puff of smoke. Sometimes, sitting here on the porch, remembering the old days, I long for one more glimpse of those robin's-egg eyes set so perfectly in that strong, tan face. I long to tell him that I understand things better now, understand about all the drunken Fathers, and all the Henriettas, and all the children who would be so fierce without them. In the best of all possible worlds, I would die with the scents of lightning and peppermint in this tired old nose. So I keep watch, and hope for one last look at Clotaire's balloon.
