Introduction

At the heart of every story in this collection, Katharine Weber has located a compelling character at a moment when situation, desire, and identity are intersecting and sometimes colliding. Children go door to door selling poison mushrooms. An elderly New Yorker on the brink of losing her freedom bolts for one last dignified adventure. A girl is employed to babysit a sleeping baby she is forbidden to see. A lonely jewelry designer conspires with a graphic designer she has met on jury duty the week before Christmas to introduce her widowed mother to his father. In the title novella, lonely children roaming their Connecticut neighborhood discover a forgotten bomb shelter, which they make their secret headquarters. Jane of Hearts offers Katharine Weber’s readers much to discuss in this lively assortment of her short fiction, each story a precise and nuanced investigation of its moments.

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Excerpt

THISTLES

“I love people more than anything.”

Natalie Oliver looked up from her book at the woman who had broken the silence. There were nine of them still waiting in the jury room for voir dire questioning, seated around the big table as if they were expecting a meal to be served. The jury room was somehow both chilly and stuffy; condensation misted the smeary unopenable window. The repetitively-discussed cold snap seemed to guarantee a white Christmas just three days away. If chosen for this jury, the trial wouldn’t start until early January, they had been told by the court officer who had called out their dozen names and led them to a courtroom, where they had sat in the jury box and listened to presentations by both sides of the case.

Street noise and the faint clanging bell of a scrawny Salvation Army Santa in front of the courthouse steps punctuated the quiet in the jury room. A limp swag of silver tinsel taped haphazardly around the door further signified the season. Natalie could envision the succession of Valentine hearts, four-leaf clovers, Easter eggs, American flags, and Thanksgiving turkeys that would similarly enhance the room’s ambience throughout the year.

The people-lover plucked at the tattered magazines that lay in a heap in the middle of the table that took up most of the room. Nobody else had touched them. Two people were sitting with their eyes closed, like tired commuters. One woman had put her head down on her folded arms and appeared to be sleeping. Everyone else was gazing down at a phone. Natalie was the only person on this jury panel who with a book.

“I love people,” she repeated. Natalie wasn’t certain if the woman was trying to chat philosophically with anyone up for it about her fondness for humanity or her preference for a magazine. Natalie nodded politely, though she hadn’t been addressed particularly. “My late husband liked Popular Mechanics the best,” the talker added. Okay, People, then.

A tall thin man, whom Natalie had noted was wearing a sufficient number of shirts over shirts to qualify as an architect, raised his eyebrows and glanced their way as he continued to pore over personal advertisements in the local counterculture weekly that he had pulled out of his battered messenger bag. He didn’t seem like an “Other News” reader. Maybe he was checking the local live music schedule. Or the snarky restaurant reviews. She thought he had an intriguing, melancholy look to him.

He caught Natalie’s eye, and they grinned at each other for a moment. Oh, hello. Even when he smiled, something in his face stayed serious, she thought. She could feel his gaze lingering as she looked away.

Natalie fidgeted in her seat, unused to having to organize her legs in tights and a skirt. Usually she wore jeans or leggings. Jurors are expected to dress in a manner reflective of the formality of the court proceedings. A jewelry designer and silversmith, she worked alone in her New Haven studio on commission, mostly for New York stores, and at times she went for months without putting on a skirt or dress.

An exceptionally successful new group of carved jade-and-amethyst link bracelets had kept her frantic since September with Christmas orders from her one local seller, an excellent jewelry store on Chapel Street that always gave her a corner of their window display, but those had all been delivered last week. She had been commissioned by a grateful patient to make rose gold cufflinks in the shape of a patella for an orthopedic surgeon, and those, she was told, had been well-received. The last work was on three nearly-finished pairs of asymmetrical cluster earrings promised by the end of the week to the store—these featured a variety of small, low-grade cushion-cut pink and emerald-cut yellow diamonds, stones Natalie had discovered a few years before, quite by accident, while picking up an order of little rough-cut emeralds and rubies from her gem dealer in the back of the largest Diamond District arcade on 47th Street in New York.

Looking for the stones he had set aside for her, the elderly diamond merchant (he had told her once that his hands were no longer steady enough for cutting stones, though he was once known for his talents, so now he only bought and sold) had pulled out the wrong black velvet-lined drawer from his case. When he emptied one of the thick white paper envelopes from the drawer onto the counter tray, she was intrigued by the quick glimpse before he swept them back into the unfolded packet with a practiced hand, muttering to himself about the foolish brifka error. She asked him to empty that one again so she could see these diamonds. He shrugged and obliged her. She traced a fingertip through the swale of assorted diamonds, which were a variety of colors and sizes and cuts, none more than a half carat, some of them tiny, which the dealer dismissed as “low quality strops, just crumbs, a melee—we only sell as a bundle, you can’t choose.”

Odd little diamonds like these: unmatchable, clouded with inclusions, some of them only single cut, are considered inferior, undesirable, and not really worth anyone’s time. Yet all the dealers had a drawer or two of stones like these, even if nobody wanted to sell them and nobody wanted to buy them. And someone, somewhere (probably India or China) had cut and polished each one of them, the smallest being single cut, but the larger stones were full cut. The pale greens and pinks and yellows charmed Natalie inexplicably. All the hours spent, all the hands these inconsequential diamonds had passed through on their way to being merchandise, castoff crumbs indeed compared to the highest-grade stones bought and sold here every day.

Natalie had never particularly liked ordinary diamonds, the ones valued by most people for their clarity and brilliance, and she never worked with them, not only because of price. She thought diamonds were boring. But she was drawn to the subtleties of these unloved little gems, which at first glance most people would probably assume to be citrine, or pink tourmaline. While she sifted through them, the dealer muttered impatiently in Yiddish and then echoed in English—why bother with these useless, left-footed boots for which I give you a good price?

Sold! She had replied. Now she used these odd, tiny, multicolored diamonds all the time, and they had become something of a signature in her work, played cunningly against larger opaque stones like chrysoprase, or agate, or lapis lazuli. She had resisted the temptation to raise her prices, even though she knew she could. People willingly pay more for anything identified as a diamond.

Once she gave these earrings (each pair was set with the same combination of stones but in a different pattern) a little final finishing before adding her tiny maker’s mark, Natalie’s season was over, and in the quiet of her studio she had felt so isolated that she had begun to work on some onyx-and-silver cuff links that she sort of thought she maybe might send to her ex-boyfriend Mark for Christmas, though she doubted he would think to send her a present.

They had gone out for three years, and the break-up at the end of the summer had come to feel like the obvious end point for both of them. Natalie knew from his Facebook page that he was seeing someone new, a presumably divorced or separated graduate student with a young child and better privacy settings than Mark’s. Maybe that was why she hadn’t quite finished the cuff links and probably wouldn’t. His drawer of dress shirts with French cuffs now seemed like an affectation.

The architect-looking guy drummed his fingers in an impatient rhythm on the table. Natalie looked down at her own hands. She rarely wore rings. Bare of any jewelry, they looked capable, but also lonely and plain.

In these recent darkening days leading to Christmas, whenever she tried to make plans with nearby friends, every single one of them seemed to be in the throes of some terrific new romance, paired off with some wonderful, exciting man or woman, committed to this or that holiday party or performance. Their Facebook pages had become unbearable. Any time she went on Facebook she was reminded all over again why she should never go on Facebook. She usually felt in the swim of things, but right now Natalie couldn’t remember when she had ever spent so much time this left out, this alone, certainly not since junior high school. When the summons for jury duty had appeared in her mailbox, it had felt almost like an invitation. Getting dressed this morning, Natalie could only hope that wanting to serve on a jury didn’t automatically disqualify you.

She had read it through so many times she had begun to perseverate the words of “Your Guide to Jury Duty.” Use discretion in selecting your attire. Decorum is maintained in the courtroom; please dress accordingly. Like Miss Peavey’s painfully proper ballroom dancing classes, in other words, minus the white gloves.

Natalie’s old corduroy skirt and a Guatemalan cardigan sweater had seemed exactly right when she put them on, but now she felt dowdy and trapped by the thick material and scratchy wool, not herself. On an average solitary day in the studio Natalie wore leggings or jeans with plain black tops, because in the course of the day she would wear several different pieces of her own jewelry, forever testing out weight, balance, stone settings, clasp hardware, comfort. Today she had selected an experimental pendant in the shape of a patella, on an open-looped chain of small hammered circles, a prototype for a new design.

The architect was staring at her again—no, he was looking at her breasts—or maybe he was scrutinizing her necklace. Natalie tried to intercept his gaze, expecting a sheepish or embarrassed look, but he seemed so intent on whatever part of her he was studying that he remained oblivious to her counter-stare. Natalie realized she was enjoying the attention even though it was verging on too much.

The door to the jury room opened, and the court officer stuck his head in and beamed at the remaining members of the jury pool as if they were exceptionally cooperative kindergarteners, as he had done each time he came for the next prospective juror for voir dire.

“Three down, nine to go,” he said, his eyes roving around the table, counting them. Natalie looked around the room too, imagining the disparate group of characters in a B movie about shipwrecked castaways in a lifeboat.

The architect guy could be the captain—noble, dedicated, but harboring some sad secret. Maybe she could be the lonely socialite escaping her past. Though from different walks of life, though doomed to die here beyond hope of rescue, they were meant for each other.

The court officer (the loyal bosun?) squinted at the document in is hand and called out, “Jablonski, Angela.”

A skinny woman with tattooed eyebrows (murderess on the lam), whose poorly-cast chunky gold topaz ring—it had an uneven bezel—had caught Natalie’s eye, pushed back from the table and stood up, scowling, before sauntering after him. Nothing discreet or decorous about that one, thought Natalie, eyeing her short, off-clean down vest with fur trim. A walking peremptory challenge. The door banged shut behind her.

“We having fun yet?” muttered the small man across the table (the mutinous first mate), who sported a creepy little rat’s tail of bleached hair curling down behind the collar of his jacket. He leaned back in his chair and pretended to yawn. Natalie could feel him trying to attract her attention. The woman who loved People (helpless diamond-encrusted dowager) yawned too.

Under his short denim jacket, the first mate’s T-shirt bulged and rippled as he stretched his arms over his head in a practiced gesture that Natalie thought was calculated to show off his pecs, delts, lats, tris, bis, abs, and whatever else he had developed under there. The captain grinned at her again, and their eyes met in a moment of conspiratorial amusement.

“Lunchtime, people,” the bailiff said, sticking his head in the door. That was quick. The murderess must have been dismissed. “Wear your juror buttons. No discussing the case. Avoid anyone from either table in the courtroom if you see them on the street or in the elevator. Be back here by two. You’re getting more than an hour, folks.”

Out on the blustery street in front of the courthouse, Natalie stood for a moment, clearing her head, trying to decide if she wanted to skip lunch and use the time to walk to her studio and catch up on some paperwork. It was only a few blocks away, but how much could she get done, really, given that walking there and back would use half the lunch break?

“A Natalie Oliver, isn’t it?”

It was the putative architect/captain. He nodded and looked directly at Natalie’s hands where she was buttoning her coat. She drew a blank, followed his gaze, and then got it. Her pendant.

“Oh, this,” she said, fingering the lightly-dimpled silver disc. “Yes, as a matter of fact it is a Natalie Oliver. How did you recognize it?”

“I know her work—it’s terrific. I’ve never seen a piece like this one, but I’ve been looking at it all morning, and it just has that sensibility. May I?”

Natalie smiled and said nothing as he took the pendant from her fingers and turned it over in the palm of his glove. The length of the chain required that they stand much closer than the ordinary street-corner conversational distance between strangers. He looked puzzled.

“That’s odd,” he murmured.

“What’s odd?” Natalie studied his face. In the courthouse she had put him in his forties, but up close in the daylight she realized he had dark circles under his eyes that aged him; he was probably in his thirties, like her.

“No maker’s mark. She always signs her pieces with a little sort of chop mark, an N inside an O. It’s not here, though.” He took off a glove and rubbed the blank back of the pendant with his thumb, as if he could detect the mark that way.

“It’s not signed—this piece isn’t finished. Hey—we haven’t really met, you know.” Natalie looked up again into his rather sad-looking brown eyes. She put out her hand. “Natalie Oliver, actually.”

He let go the pendant and looked up to meet her gaze, stepping back to more ordinary speaking distance between strangers on a street corner. He took off his other glove to take her outstretched hand. “Oh, gosh. You must think I’m an idiot. Peter. Peter Lewis. An idiot who admires your work named Peter Lewis. Your hand is cold,” he added with some concern, holding it for a moment between both of his. “I’ve kept you standing on the windiest corner in New Haven. Hey—you want to get some lunch? Do you know this neighborhood?”

They went up the street to an old-fashioned coffee shop that Natalie frequented regularly for several reasons: It was quick, cheap, and she loved the listing on the menu for “plate of ice cream.” She always had a grilled cheese with tomato. Also, the place reminded her of the Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks. The waitresses, sisters, always made Natalie feel she belonged. Peter had never been in Whitney Dairy before, but Sheila called him sweetheart and Kitty told him he ought to have a bowl, not a cup, of lentil soup with his grilled cheese, because he was too thin, and baby it’s cold outside. As she collected their menus, she informed them that they were ordering a plate of fries, for the table, and they didn’t argue.

“So, it’s not a murder trial, but don’t you think the roofing contractor kind of looks like a hit man?” Natalie asked cheerfully after Kitty had headed to the back to shout their order into the kitchen through the hatch. The case for which they were empaneled was boringly civil, not criminal—a dispute about a leaky shopping center roof.

“We can’t discuss the case!” Peter looked around in mock alarm as if to see if her intemperate remark had been overheard by any courtroom personnel.

“Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry.” True enough. They had been admonished not to discuss the case. She tried to think of a different subject. “Voir dire, funny how American legal procedures are full of Latin and French terms.”

“True dat,” said Peter. “You know, the literal meaning of voir dire. Speak true. Say the truth. True dat.”

On the walk up Whitney Avenue to lunch, she had learned that Peter was a graphic designer, not an architect, but he worked for a large architecture firm, doing all its graphics and signage, so she had been nearly right. He lived in a converted boathouse on the water out past Long Wharf, in a neighborhood Natalie hadn’t known existed. When a slow-moving fire truck passed them, Peter had saluted the driver, who had saluted back. He still knew a lot of the hook and ladder guys, he explained, because his father was a retired firefighter with the East Battalion. Natalie didn’t know the Fire Department had battalions.

“Battalion sounds French.”

“French from the Italian from the Latin,” Peter agreed.

“So have you ever actually answered a personal ad?” Natalie blurted after a moment’s silence, after they had ordered. “You were reading the personal ads in the back of Other News so intently, that’s why I’m asking. Maybe you were studying the typography and the layout. I mean, you don’t seem like someone who would. Answer one. I mean, I wouldn’t. But I love to read them, too. There’s something quaint about personal ads in the back of a weekly counterculture newspaper instead of online. Missed Connections are my favorite. Help. I’m babbling.” Peter’s bark of laughter provided a graceful stopping point for Natalie’s chatter.

“I’m not laughing at you. It’s just the way you remind me of someone, the way your train of associations gets rolling,” he said after a moment. “Anyway, believe it or not, I placed one of those “Other News” ads—that’s what I was looking at—but it’s not for me, it’s for Gus, my father.”

“Do you know someone for my dad?” Natalie quoted. I noticed that one in this week’s ads. Really. Listen: ‘Likes to cook, fixes things that aren’t broken, talks back to six o’clock news.’”

“You really do scrutinize those personal ads,” Peter said.

“Not usually. Actually, I was thinking of answering the ad,” Natalie replied, a little defensively.

“He’s not your type. Way too old. Too grumpy. You can do better.”

“You don’t know what my type is.”

Sheila brought their food and they began to eat.

“Seriously, I was thinking of my mother,” Natalie continued. “She lives in a condo in West Haven near the water. She hates to cook, breaks things, and talks right through the six o’clock news.”

Peter eyed her. “Seriously?”

“Yes. Lillian’s sixty-two. My father died six years ago. I really am serious. But she’s difficult. Not the most easygoing is putting it politely. We don’t get along very well. Or we do, as long as we don’t spend much time together. Then we get along terrifically. But tell me about Gus. Your ad said he’s seventy, right?”

“Right, just last month, actually. My sister flew in from Colorado and we threw him a party with a lot of his Central Station buddies, but he ended up doing most of the cooking. Mom died when I was a senior in high school, and then Gus had this girlfriend for about ten years, the widow of an Engine Four guy, actually. Martha was okay, but then she got cancer and died. That was a couple of years ago.” Peter dipped the last of their shared French fries into the puddle of ketchup on the edge of his side of the plate and ate them absentmindedly.

“So how do we do this?” Natalie signaled Kitty for more coffee. Kitty gave her a secret little pat of approval on the shoulder as she refilled their mugs and cleared empty plates.

“I hadn’t really thought that through,” Peter said, stirring a tiny amount of sugar into his mug with precision. “I just figured I would cook up some way to introduce him if the right person answered the ad.”

“Say I answered it,” Natalie said. “I mean, now what? I think maybe I ought to meet Gus first, to see if it even makes sense. But I’m sure Lillian would never be willing to meet someone this way.”

“They have that in common, at least. The thing is, he really likes women, and he hates being alone. I keep having this fear that he’ll be scooped up by someone who isn’t good enough, that he’ll settle for the next nice lady who comes along, for the company. But Gus would hate the ad, you know—the idea of the ad. I figured I would make up something plausible if anyone answered.”

“You mean like, ‘Hi Dad, I want you to meet your new girlfriend who I just happen to know from yoga class?”

“I think I can do better than that.”

“Has anyone answered?”

“Only you.”

Kitty brought their checks, which they paid separately, and they headed back to the courthouse.

“So, are you interested in jewelry design?” Natalie asked, aware that she was walking a little more slowly than her usual brisk pace, though their time was nearly up. “You seem so observant of every tiny detail, which is pretty unusual for a man.”

“Shockingly sexist remark,” Peter rebuked, but his tone was playful.

“You’re right. But seriously—do you mentally redesign everything you see?”

“Not everything,” Peter said, giving her a sidelong look.

“Shockingly sexist remark,” Natalie said as they continued down the street. They laughed together, both a little self-conscious. “But really,” Natalie persisted, “Have you ever designed jewelry? You have the sensibility for it.”

“No, I don’t know much about jewelry making. It interests me—I’d love to watch you work sometime. But it’s strictly aesthetics for me, not the science of it, the metalwork, hardening and annealing and all that.”

“Sounds like you do know about the science of it.”

“Only a little bit, theoretically. I really like your work. It’s always so balanced and surprising and inevitable. I’m glad Fred Wilton always has a few of your pieces.”

‘Thank you. Seriously.”

“And I do have a strong association that means a lot to me. There used to be someone in my life who loved your stuff. She had several pairs of your earrings, you know the chased vermeil circles? And a pin, one of the ones you did a few years ago, with a swirl of cabochon jade ovals around that little pink diamond…” Peter trailed off, looking pensive.

“Who was she to you?” Natalie asked, resisting the urge to put her hand on his arm. (She also resisted the urge to correct him needlessly—what he called jade was actually chrysoprase.) He looked sad again. They walked a block before he answered. Natalie was beginning to wonder if he was going to say anything at all or just ignore the question, which now felt like one she shouldn’t have asked.

“Look, I really didn’t mean to tell you about this here and now,” Peter said. “I’m going to tell you, because it’s come up, but I don’t want you to feel that you have to react in any particular way, okay? In fact, it would suit me if you don’t react at all.”

“Okay.” Natalie waited.

Peter took a deep breath and let it out. He kept his eyes focused on some middle distance.

“She was my wife. Sarah. She died last year of metastatic breast cancer. She was a cellist—we met because she was at the Yale School of Music, and my firm was just at the end of the big renovation of Stoeckl Hall. She taught cello to kids after school as a side gig, and she came storming into our office because the practice room floors were closed while we installed all the signage and painted all the room markers. Someone in her department had promised her access to her practice room by that date on the calendar, when it was months away, and now, with some delays, the work wasn’t complete, and it was impossible, and dangerous, with those toxic solvents, for anyone to get inside the building. But that promise was a fortunate mistake that changed my life, and hers.

Sarah had looked up the address of our firm, and then she marched straight across the Green and down Chapel Street all the way to our office, which is quite a hike, the other side of the tracks, literally, past Wooster Square, and she had stormed right in to tell us how we had ruined her week and cost her money and she might lose some students and blah blah blah. I was in charge of the signage, so everyone else hid and I was sent out front to deal with her.

My office couldn’t believe I was going out with Crazy Cello Lady when they found out. That was six years ago—we got married after we had been together a year. So that’s why I know your beautiful jewelry so well. She loved it. And the last year of her life was horrible, nothing stopped the cancer, which was in her liver, and then her brain, and then her bones, and she suffered horribly, and I’ve been in hell, and now we’re going back to that small, airless room with those other weird people and we’re not going to talk about it anymore. Okay?”

Natalie took his arm and stopped him. They were at the courthouse. She forced down the waves of sympathy that had been rising inside her and tried to distance herself for a moment. Several other people from their jury pool were going up the steps, including the rich dowager and the mutinous first mate, together, deep in animated conversation.

“Okay,” she said, trying to speak neutrally. “But Peter—”

“Yes?”

“I do want to meet Gus.”

They were back out on the courthouse steps only ten minutes later. The suit had been settled during the break.

“Merry and happy, folks, as the case may be,” the court officer had said when he dismissed them. “Your civic duty has been rendered. Connecticut jury law—one day, or one trial. All done.”

Natalie and Peter had ducked into the same elevator moments later, having concluded simultaneously that they didn’t want to participate in the dowager’s stated plan to swap names and addresses all around.

“I think she’s planning annual reunions,” Peter said. “It’s been such a fabulous experience. I think our group really bonded. I can’t wait to mark my calendar.”

“What’s good for you? How about never? Is never good for you? It works for me,” Natalie quipped awkwardly. That was lame. And the opposite of what she hoped would come next. If it weren’t for Peter, she would have been disappointed that she wouldn’t serve on a jury and go through a trial.

They stood together on the steps again. The moment lengthened.

“I should get back to the office, I guess,” Peter finally said. “So, look. Gus. Do you really want to check him out for your mother, seriously? I’m supposed to go there for dinner tomorrow night. Why don’t I bring you along? Would that be okay?”

“Yes. Whatever. Yes,” Natalie said. “But what’s the cover story? What are you going to tell him about me?”

“I’ll tell him you’re this really interesting woman I met on jury duty, if that’s all right with you. The fewer tangled webs, the better, you know? Anyway,” Peter said, reaching out with his index finger to gently touch the surface of Natalie’s pendant for a moment, “it’s true.”

Gus lived on a winding Hamden street Natalie knew from her marathon training phase a while back, when she routinely ran a six-mile loop through New Haven and Hamden. She had always thought of it as the Leave It to Beaver neighborhood, and she had liked this street particularly, as much for its friendly porches and lawns as for its absence of menacing dogs. Turning the familiar curves and corners in Peter’s ancient Volvo, Natalie realized she hadn’t been out this far in more than a year—Mark wasn’t a runner and he had resented the time her runs took out of a Saturday, and since the break-up she hadn’t returned to her running routine with the same commitment—and she resolved to extend her thrice-weekly short runs in order to get back to these pleasant streets.

“I don’t believe it!” she exclaimed when Peter had pulled in and parked neatly in front of Gus’s house. Street lamps and varieties of Christmas lights glittered up and down the street, illuminating the snow frosting each front yard.

“I know, my parking finesse dazzles most people.”

“No, no, it’s the house. I can’t believe you grew up in the Vermont farmhouse. That’s what I’ve always called it. God, I’ve always loved this house. There’s even smoke coming out of the chimney. I just want you to know this porch is my fantasy of where I would like to have spent my childhood summers reading instead of sitting in a mildewed butterfly chair on the concrete slab behind our little ranch house in Cheshire.”

“It’s the oldest house on the street, I guess,” Peter said, leaning across her to punch open the recalcitrant passenger door. “I don’t think I read as much as you probably did as a child. When I think about summers here, I mostly remember dirt-bomb fights and stickball in the street and trespassing in Mrs. Minetti’s backyard to get to the little muddy creek that flows into the reservoir. It was pretty idyllic. I’m sorry we didn’t somehow meet when we were kids.”

“Oh, we probably did cross paths,” Natalie said. “New Haven syndrome means we have only a degree or two of separation. I’m sure we know people in common, or go to the same dentist. How could you miss Whitney Dairy?”

“We do have a connection, though—I did know your work,” Peter reminded her. “I might be one of your best customers. Hey, look sharp, eagle eye is already checking you out.”

“You didn’t tell me she was a looker, kiddo,” boomed Gus, as he erupted out his front door onto the porch with such exuberance that Natalie was reminded of Drummer, her mother’s slightly manic Airedale, acquired soon after her father’s death. Lillian had loved him mightily. When Drummer was run over in his prime, a hit-and-run, Lillian was so heartbroken she said she would never have another dog.

Gus seized Natalie’s hand and pumped it several times with his two hands and a damp dish towel, hauling her into his house. “You like artichokes, Natalie? There’s an artichoke waiting for you with your name on it that’s better than any artichoke you’ve ever tasted in your life.”

“Wonderful! Thistles for dinner!” Natalie said. “Cynara scolymus.”

“Peter, don’t you let her get away,” ordered Gus. “I like this girl. Another autodidact like you and your old man. If you scare her off, I’ll kill you. Come in, come in, both of you.”

“Remind me, what’s an autodidact?” Peter asked when they were settled in front of the fireplace with wine and a bowl of delicious oily black olives while Gus put the finishing touches on dinner.

“An autodidact is a person who knows what an autodidact is,” Natalie replied. They both laughed. “Literally, a self-taught person. You must know that. Auto, self. Didact, informed person. The sort of person who knows about annealing silver and gold and can tell you the origins of voir dire and battalion.”

“And why are you so specifically well-informed about artichokes?”

“I read up on thistles for some pieces I was working on a few years ago. I was a bit obsessed for a while. They’re vegetables, until they flower and go to seed, when they’re inedible. Or they’re weeds, depending on who wants them. They have hearts. And a choke. And the leaves grow in a Fibonacci pattern. Anyway, my artichoke pieces ended up so abstract—big chased pins, mostly, and some earrings, with little diamonds and lapis lazuli inlays—that most people probably never noticed the thistle form. You probably wouldn’t remember those.”

Peter sat very still, looking down at the rug, his shoulders hunched. Natalie gazed across the room. Several family photos were ranged across the top of an upright piano. Curious, and to give him some space, she got up and walked over to take a closer look.

Of course there was the wedding picture, Peter and Sarah poised at the brink of a life they weren’t going to have for very long. Peter looked a decade younger. Sarah was wearing a pair of Natalie’s diamond and lapis lazuli thistle earrings. Knowing Sarah’s fate, Natalie couldn’t see around it, could only look at Sarah’s picture and see a dead woman, someone whom time had already buried and rushed past.

“She loved those thistle earrings,” Peter said. “She wore them all the time. I gave them to her for our wedding. Something blue.”

“Dinner is ready whenever you are!” Gus sang out from the dining room just then.

By the end of dinner—the artichokes were, as promised, spectacularly delicious, garlicky and tender—Natalie had dismissed any of her fears that Gus was insufficiently civilized for Lillian, though she had begun to doubt that Lillian was lively enough for Gus. And Lillian could be, well, prickly. Thistly. Argumentative. Judgmental. Set in her ways. Who knows? It might work. He could be oblivious to her sandpapery personality, or just enjoy the challenge of charming a playful side out of her mother. How could Lillian not be swept off her feet, or at least, pleasantly tilted, by exuberant Gus? The Lewis men had charm. After all, look at Peter and Crazy Cello Lady, which had begun with outraged yelling.

“We lost Sarah a little over a year ago, you know,” Gus confided to Natalie when Peter had gone into the kitchen for a second helping of Gus’s superb rice pudding. “He’s been really down this month, too, what with Christmas and all. I can’t tell you what a difference you’ve made. He was just dreading it, this time last week. I was afraid it was going to get rough.”

“Hey, no talking about absent parties,” Peter scolded as he sat back down. “I’m right here. I can hear you.”

“I was just inviting Natalie here to come over tomorrow night to keep the Lewis men company on Christmas Eve,” Gus said. “And I think she agreed.” Peter looked at Natalie questioningly.

“That sounds really nice, but I’m supposed to have dinner with my mother,” Natalie said hesitantly.

“Great! Bring her along. The more the merrier.”

This was too easy. They were supposed to be setting Gus up, not the other way around.

“I need to check with her—but it’s just the two of us, nobody else, and I’m in charge of cooking dinner. So I’m pretty sure we can do it.”

“That’s set then. The neighborhood carollers get here around eight o’clock for my famous wassail bowl, so dinner will be later. I’m roasting a goose,” Gus announced. “I always roast a goose. Basted with gin and orange juice, that’s my secret. So you’ll want to be here by seven-thirty for the carolling. Unless you want to come over earlier to help peel chestnuts. We zap them in the microwave—one of the few good reasons to have one of those infernal devices. Does your mother sing soprano or alto?”

“Dad, please, take a breath, give Natalie some space, for God’s sake!”

“My mother is part Jewish, actually,” Natalie said. “So I don’t think she’s done a lot of caroling—it’s never been a tradition in our family. But I always loved the Christmas songs at school assemblies. And she likes to sing old show tunes, like Rodgers and Hart. She might love it, in fact. I guess she’s alto.”

“It’s settled then!” said Gus triumphantly. “You kids will work out any other details. No dressing up.”

“But use discretion when selecting your attire,” intoned Peter.

“I have to tell you, my mother’s voice is better than mine—I sing in the cracks., pretty much,” added Natalie. “I was the kid the music teacher assigns to the triangle, on the grounds that I don’t have to make the sound, just attempt to guess at the beat. So between the two of us, I’m not sure what we would bring to the music part of your Christmas Eve tradition. If you don’t think we should come tomorrow night, that’s perfectly understandable. We could do it another time or something. Whatever.”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer. Straighten her out while I make coffee, okay Peter?” Gus said cheerfully, heading for the kitchen. “It’s all set then.”

“I love trying to follow the way you get from one subject to the next,” Peter said. “I’ll have to see if I can locate a triangle for you, so you can keep the beat for all the carolers. You’re lucky—I had to take clarinet lessons. From Mr. Fallon, who used to spit on my reed for me. Sarah didn’t believe me, but he really did.”

“I believe you. And talk about people whose trains of thought get rolling,” Natalie laughed. “Gus is like Thomas the Tank Engine coming down the track! I don’t see how you can complain about my associative mind. You know I think he’s great, right? I really like Gus.”

“And I really hope you will come tomorrow night,” Peter said, “No one cares if you know the words. Or can carry a tune. Anyway, won’t caroling on that porch fulfill some childhood fantasy of yours?” He smiled at her. “And we get Lillian and Gus together, which is the whole point of this enterprise, right? Say yes.”

“You know, it’s probably going to be a terrible match,” Natalie cautioned over the sudden racket of Gus’s coffee grinding. “I’m warning you, my mother is really impossible. This could be a truly terrible experiment that goes quite wrong.” She leaned across the table to flick a crumb off Peter’s sweater in a gesture that felt entirely right.

“Terrible,” agreed Peter, catching her hand with one of his and holding it for a moment on the tablecloth. With his fingertip he traced the hammered surface of the twisted silver bangle on her wrist. “Out of the question. Idiotic. What can we be thinking? A lousy idea. Doomed to failure. I can’t imagine why we ever thought it could possibly work.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Can you identify all the instances of potential danger in these stories?

2. What is the effect of the way the fictional town of Northbury, Connecticut figures in so many of these stories?

3. Some of the stories are in the first person (including the epistolary “Friend of the Family”). What is the effect of this narrative strategy?

4.The same character appears in some of these stories at different moments in her life. How does your knowledge of certain moments in her childhood this affect your sense of her as the author of the letter in “Friend of the Family”?

5. Did you spot the artifacts that appear multiple times in various stories? Does this affect your reading of the collectioner?

6. Can you enumerate some of the ways the title novella connects to nearly every story in the sequence of stories that precede it?

7. Consider the book cover. Has the meaning changed now that you have read the book? Can you identify the artifacts that have appeared in the stories and then again in the novella?

8. Consider the references throughout the title novella to a number of books, from Alice in Wonderland to The Borrowers to Harriet the Spy. The final note of the novella invokes The Turn of the Screw. Do these literary affinities affect your reading of Jane of Hearts?

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