Aunt Evvie! Polly cried in her dream. A vast delight and an even vaster relief-that relief we only know in happy dreams, and in the moment of waking from horrid ones-filled her like light. Aunt Evvie, you’re alive!
But Aunt Evvie showed no sign of recognition. Buy anything you want, Miss, Aunt Evvie said. By the way is your name Polly or Patricia? I disremember, somehow.
Aunt Evvie, you know my name-I’m Trisha. I’ve always been Trisha to you.
Aunt Evvie took no notice. Whatever your name is, we’re having a special today. Everything must go.
Aunt Evvie, what are you doing here?
I BELONG here, Aunt Evvie said. Everyone in town belongs here, Miss Two-Names. In fact, everyone in the WORLD belongs here, because everyone loves a bargain. Everyone loves somethingfor nothing… even if it costs everything.
The good feeling was suddenly gone. Dread replaced it. Polly looked into the glass cases and saw bottles of dark fluid marked DR.
GAUNT’s ELECTRIC TONIC. There were badly made windup toys that would cough up their cogs and spit out their springs the second time they were wound. There were crude sex-toys.
There were small bottles of what looked like cocaine; these were labelled DR. GAUNT’s KICKAPOO POTENCY POWDER. Cheap novelties abounded: plastic dog-puke, itching powder, cigarette loads, joy buzzers. There was a pair of those X-ray glasses that were supposed to allow you to look through closed doors and ladies’ dresses but actually did nothing except put raccoon rings around your eyes. There were plastic flowers and marked playing cards and bottles of cheap perfume labelled DR. GAUNT’s LOVE POTION #g, TURNSLASSITUDE INTOLUST. The cases were a catalogue of the timeless, the tasteless, and the useless.
Anything you want, Miss Two-Names, Aunt Evvie said.
Why are you calling me that, Aunt Evvie? Please-don’t you recognize me?
It’s all guaranteed to work. The only thing not guaranteed to work after the sale is You, So step right up and buy, buy, buy.
Now she looked directly at Polly, and Polly was struck through with terror like a knife. She saw compassion in Aunt Evvie’s eyes, but it was a terrible, merciless compassion.
What is your name, child? Seems to me I once knew.
In her dream (and in her bed) Polly began to weep.
Has someone else forgotten your name? Aunt Evvie asked. I wonder.
Seems like they have.
Aunt Evvie, you’re scaring me!
You’re scaring yourself, child, Aunt Evvie responded, looking directly at Polly for the first time. just remember that when you buy here, Miss Two-Names, you’re also selling.
But I need it! Polly cried. She began to weep harder. My hands-!
Yes, this does i’t, Miss Polly Frisco, Aunt Evvie said, and brought out one of the bottles marked DR. GAUNT’s ELECTRIC TONIC.
She set it on the counter, a small, squat bottle filled with something that looked like loose mud. It can’t make your pain gone, of course-nothing can do that-but i’t can effect a transferral.
What do you mean? Why are you scaring me?
It changes the location of your arthritis, Miss Two-Names-instead of Your hands, the disease attacks your heart.
No!
Yes.
No! No! NO!
Yes. Oh yes. And your soul as well. But you’ll have your pride.
That’ll be left to you, at least. And isn’t a woman entitled to her pride?
When everything else is gone-heart, soul, even the man you love-you’ll have that, little Miss Polly Frisco, won’t you? You’ll have that one coin without which your purse would be empty. Let it be your dark and bitter comfort for the rest of your life. Let it serve.
It must serve, because if you keep on the way you’re going, there surely won’t be no other.
Stop, please, can’t you?”
4
“Stop,” she muttered in her sleep. “Please stop. Please.”
She rolled over on her side. The azka chinked softly against its chain. Lightning lit up the sky, striking the elm by Castle Stream, toppling it into the rushing water as Alan Pangborn sat behind the wheel of his station wagon, dazzled by the flash.
The follow-shot crack of thunder woke Polly up. Her eyes flew open. Her hand went to the azka at once and closed protectively around it. The hand was limber; the joints moved as easily as ball bearings packed in deep clean oil.
Miss Two-Names… little Miss Polly Frisco.
“What…?” Her voice was thick, but her mind already felt clear and alert, as if she hadn’t been asleep at all but in a daze of thought so deep it was nearly a trance. Something was looming in her mind, something the size of a whale. Outside, lightning flashed and flickered across the sky like bright purple sparklers.
Has someone else forgotten your name?… Seems like they have.
She reached for the night-table and switched on the lamp. Lying next to the Princess phone, the phone equipped with the oversized keypads which she no longer needed, was the envelope she had found lying in the hall with the rest of the mail when she returned home this afternoon. She had re-folded the terrible letter and slid it back inside.
Somewhere in the night, between the racketing bursts of thunder, she thought she could hear people shouting. Polly ignored them; she was thinking about the cuckoo bird, which lays its egg in a strange nest while the owner is away. When the mother-to-be returns, does she notice that something new has been added? Of course not; she simply accepts it as her own. The way Polly had accepted this goddamned letter simply because it happened to be lying on the hall floor with two catalogues and a come-on from Western Maine Cable TV.
She had just accepted it… but anyone could drop a letter through a mail-slot, wasn’t that true?
“Miss Two-Names,” she murmured in a dismayed voice. “Little Miss Polly Frisco.” And that was the thing, wasn’t it? The thing her subconscious had remembered and had manufactured Aunt Evvie to tell her. She had been Miss Polly Frisco.
Once upon a time, she had.
She reached for the envelope.
No! a voice told her, and that was a voice she knew very well.
Don’t touch that, Polly-not if you know what’s good for you!
Pain as dark and strong as day-old coffee flared deep in her hands.
It can’t make your pain gone… but it can effect a transferral.
That whale-sized thing was coming to the surface. Mr. Gaunt’s voice couldn’t stop it; nothing could stop it.
YOU can stop it, Polly, Mr. Gaunt said. Believe me, you must.
Her hand drew back before it touched the letter. It returned to the azka and became a protective fist around it. She could feel something inside it, something which had been warmed by her heat, scurrying frantically inside the hollow silver amulet, and revulsion filled her, making her stomach feel weak and loose, her bowels rotten.
She let go and reached for the letter again.
Last warning, Polly, the voice of Mr. Gaunt told her.
Yes, Aunt Evvie’s voice replied. I think he means it, Trisha.
He has always so enjoyed ladies who take pride in themselves, hut do you know what? I don’t think he’s got much use for those who decide it goeth before a fall. I think the time has come for you to decide, once and for all, what your name really is.
She took hold of the envelope, ignoring another warning twinge in her hands, and looked at the neatly typed address. This letterPurported letter, Purported Xerox-had been sent to “Ms. Patricia Chalmers.”
“No,” she whispered. “Wrong. Wrong name.” Her hand closed slowly and steadily on the letter, crumpling it. A dull ache filled her fist, but Polly ignored it. Her eyes were bright, feverish. “I was always Polly in San Francisco-I was Polly to everyone, even to Child Welfare!”