His Owl was now to enter this museum’s walk-in model of a promised major organ. “You might well be as awed as I first was by the sheer scale of the Human Heart,” she coaxed or threatened. I was wearing the little chesterfield coat she’d praised two years ago, even though the sleeves were suddenly short, and I kept pulling them down. I was eight, after all, a small-town kid. And this igloo heart thing’s loud thumping, the shifting of its sleek red roofing ventricles, scared me. There was a line of people waiting to get in; they held their coats and scanned brochures; and they looked so sad. Among them, the throat-clearing young man from upstairs. He seemed nervous to see me out and about. “Do we know what we’re getting into?” I asked, and Aunt smiled, believing I’d been joking; I had not.

Here was a livid practical organ larger than a revolving door. You were expected to mount a gangway servant’s entrance into/through/out of its pumping hollows. I acted chicken till Muriel, clutching her umbrella in one hand and my wrist in the other, dragged me through the thing three times. “There,” she said, “you get the idea.” (I’d like to believe that even as a kid I understood: no act is ever riskier than entering another human heart. Auntie gave me my first guided tour.)

I agreed to stay within its gory walls, to study backlit educational pictures there; Aunt settled herself on the bench circling the rotunda. There, tired parents waited till kids had learned something. When I peeked out, Aunt Muriel waved, but pointed I should go back in and study further. She did this while surveying other adults, maybe hoping to be taken for my mother, or at least Grandma—not just the chaperone. She wore a black cloche hat so out of fashion it forced people to do double takes, then judge, then look, quick, away. I decided that, by now, her style was almost chic, almost—or so I told myself to make our outings seem less observed and feel more fun. I saw how she held her umbrella upright, metal tip set firm on the white tile floor. But Aunt kept its wooden swan-crook aimed outward and, I noticed, pivoting back and forth, as if letting it, some camera or pet, have a good look around. Was she talking to herself? Who had done this to her? What had? Living too hard, or maybe having wished too hard? Or work? Stan? Stan’s running off? Or just plain Time? Had I?