We had a quiet game, and harmless. We—the energetic crone consulting three outdated guidebooks, and a little boy with a bowl haircut his father administered like a standard “pop” every six weeks—described each other to each other via artifacts, stuffed things. We even did it before display cases containing minerals that, when you pushed the button, lit up with nuclear smirky colors. We each said which rock looked most like the loved one. “There you are.” I pointed, and she smiled as if caught at the end of hide-and-seek. Nodding, she accepted my every valuation as the truest, latest portrait of herself. Alone together in this untrafficked part of the world’s museum, our thoughts seemed permanently set on “Rhyme.” I never felt smarter than when I was admiring my great-aunt’s great underrated intelligence. Her dad had been a full professor, but she never even got to go to one half-day of college! She knew that my mother would make sure I attended good schools. And Aunt was only glad for me. Compared with her utter lack of jealousy, I felt narrow and petty. But I would try—would try to be more like her.

At the Fowls of Paradise, she said I most resembled that bird, the lyre bird. But I heard “liar.” So I was the little liar bird, hunh? True enough. But I hated being called that. After all, my lies exaggerated Muriel into someone very beautiful, and rich, and all but winged. I knew what the truth was; I knew you only break that for Emergencies.

Our innocence attracted erotic aggression. I remember three separate times, after I struggled to open the door of “MEN’S” (male in silhouette), as Aunt stood guard, ineffectually, outside. I remember the tile floors and the urinals almost too tall to achieve. And, I recall, there was some man, mostly a younger one, who posed at the farthest urinal, looking over at me, right at me, smiling, open-mouthed, clearing his throat. I felt accused. And, ever eager to learn the forks, I gave this young man a quick look, as if to apologize for some botched unknown Yankee urinal-etiquette. Today’s young blond guy said, “You seem like a pretty inner-rested little boy. Lookee here, what’ll we do ’bout all this?” And it seemed that “inner-rested” hinted at some calm I falsely showed. Here was a new exhibit; stuffed-looking, it filled me with revulsion, fellow-feeling, grief, yet admiration, and a numbness that made me limp a bit as I scuttled back out to Aunt, still there. Her holding her umbrella with such martial zeal had not prevented my seeing maybe more than I really should.

I sometimes caught her, waiting there, slumped against a wall. I came to understand that, at eighty-some, Aunt’s rushing pace was not natural to her. It was Muriel’s imitation of me, of what she felt a boy my age would like. Her fear of holding me back forced her to bustle and lose breath. And it was exactly this rush-rush state of Auntie’s that my parents and my brother liked to imitate. But it was really me they “did”—her me.