Gene Wolfe: Pandora by Holly Hollander

Anyway Elaine came back about seven that night. My father and I were in his study, where he had his office stuff and his souvenirs and books; and maybe that was his tough luck. She was walking on air. “Wait till you see it! Wait till you see it!” That’s all she’d say, and she kind of waltzed around the room for us. When she stopped, she got my face between her hands and kissed me. I think it was the first time she’d kissed me since I was a little kid.

Right then Bill came in. He was carrying a box about two feet long and maybe eighteen inches wide and a foot deep, and the sweat was standing out on his face like he was about to keel over. He said, “Where you want it, Mrs. Hollander?” Naturally Elaine said on the coffee table, which had a glass top. So Bill set it down in the middle of the floor and straightened up with both hands on the small of his back like he would never be the same. I said, “What’s in it?” and bounced over to have a look.

As heavy as it seemed to be, I expected it to be solid iron, but it was wood—some kind of old, dark-reddish wood with brass corners and wide brass bands and a big, complicated-looking iron lock. It was old, you could see that right away; so old that it made me think about stagecoaches and those western flicks where the bad guys make the driver throw down the Wells Fargo box.

And on the lid, in that big fat curly gold-leaf lettering they used back then (you could still read it, although the gold was tarnished and a lot had been chipped away) it said PANDORA.

It was about two weeks after the Pandora box came that we heard about Uncle Herbert. Those places are very discreet, it seems, because I saw their letter, and to look at it you wouldn’t have thought it came from a hospital or anything like one. I’d have said a classy resort hotel like the Greenbrier, maybe, except that the stationery was too subdued even for them. The paper was about the size of a page in a library book, good paper, not that ostentatious stuff that tries to look like vellum (I’ve never seen real vellum—has anybody?), and the lettering on it was pale blue and no bigger than the fine print on those forms that tell you everything the company won’t do for you. There was a little pale blue pergola with chairs under it, and that was all. Very cool. It was called Garden Meadow; I had heard my father and Elaine talking about it. The way I got to see the letter was by sneaking into my father’s study. He had taken his mail and gone in there, and about five minutes later he came out looking funny, so I thought, oh boy, something’s up.

The fact is I’d done that sort of thing before, and I knew the letter would be in his wastebasket or on his desk, because his secretary, Joan Robush, came out once a week to take care of the filing for him. You can call it being nosy if you want to, or you can call it caring about your family and what happens to them. Or you can call it being a detective. Those things all depend on how you look at them.

Anyway, it said: Mr. Herbert Hollander III is presently experiencing some discomfort. Dr. Peabody has arranged for an overnight visit to St. Mary of the Lake, which has X-ray facilities; and while we feel there is no immediate cause for alarm, we wish to keep you informed.

There was a lot more, naturally; but that was the part that counted. My parents were having a late breakfast on the patio, so I went out there—they got very quiet when they saw me coming—and sat down with them. After ten minutes or so Elaine left because she had an appointment with her hairdresser, and I asked my father if he was going to see his brother.

“How did you know?” he said, looking at me in that way that wilts vice presidents.

“I didn’t know,” I told him, “that’s why I asked. I’d like to tag along.”

“How did you know that Bert is sick?”

“The mail came, and I heard you talking to Elaine like something had happened.”

“Well, you can’t go,” he said, and that was that. Pretty soon I heard the Mercedes purring down our private road, and I was left alone on the patio with the warm summer air, the cold coffee, and some muffins. (I prefer cupcakes.)

I don’t think I ever even wondered whether I ought to go see my Uncle Herbert or not. Here was my father’s brother only about fifty miles away, and I’d never met him, and now he was, most likely, getting set to die. I knew that Garden Meadow was a couple of miles north of a little country place called Dawn, which isn’t really much farther from Chicago than Barton. And I wasn’t really a kid any more, whether my father understood that or not. Sitting there on the chaise, thinking about everything and cussing, I decided that I was going to go anyhow, timing it so he’d be gone when I got there. They’d have to let me in—I was Herbert Hollander’s niece, practically next of kin. All I’d have to do was tell them I’d had an appointment of some kind and couldn’t come with my father, but I came as soon as I could.

The way I saw it there were three ways I could get there. The easy one would be to drive. I didn’t have my license yet, but I’d taken Driver’s Ed that year and the Ford wagon that Mrs. Maas, our housekeeper, used for shopping was in the garage. The problem with that was that I’d be in trouble even if my father didn’t find out I’d gone to Garden Meadow. Mrs. Maas would be sure to tell him, and besides it would have meant waiting around to get the timing right, and I was in no mood to wait around.

The next easiest would be to call up somebody who’d drive me. Les and a couple more girlfriends had cars, and Kris would have given ten bucks to do it. The trouble with that was that it would get out for sure that I had a relative in the crack-up college. For myself I wouldn’t have minded—I act pretty crazy half the time anyway—but I knew my father didn’t want it talked around town and Elaine would throw a fit. Anyway, my big point was that I was grown up enough now to be trusted; and if I let somebody else in on our private stuff like that, I’d be proving right there that they were right and I was wrong.

That left the hardest way. But it wasn’t really so hard, and I had plenty of time. The Chicago, Wisconsin & Northern runs commuter trains—every hour on the hour, after the morning rush—between Barton and Chicago. And it stood to reason that there’d have to be several Greyhounds a day going from Chicago to Dawn and, as they say, points west. So all I had to do was get to Barton to catch a train.

Riding Sidi would have meant leaving him tied up someplace for most of the day and maybe getting him stolen; I wasn’t about to do that. Riding my bike would’ve made a lot more sense, but it would mean parking it at the railway station, a sure tip-off that I’d gone into Chicago to anybody that knew me. That left walking. It’s a little over four miles; but I’d done it before, and besides I figured I might get lucky and be able to hitch a ride with somebody I knew.

Which I did.

I hadn’t more than reached the county road, when here came Larry Lief in his van, and I knew him pretty well because I knew his sister Megan. I stuck out my thumb, and he stopped, and I hopped in. “Give me a ride into town?”

“Certainly,” he said. “How’s your folks?”

“Okay.” I was looking at his profile and trying to decide whether I’d ever seen anybody better looking. It wasn’t easy, but it sure was fun.

“I was out at your place just the other day,” he told me. “You’ve got a nice mother.”

It was a big lie, but I thought he was just being polite, so I said, “Sure.” Maybe my voice wasn’t quite what it ought to have been.

We stopped for a light, and he looked around at me. “You deserve one,” he said; and then, “We don’t always get what we’ve got coming, Holly. None of us.” Then he switched on the radio.