PENELOPE
My family was fortunate to have the Catalfamos in our lives. I visited Auntie Emma and Uncle Rich throughout my childhood—loving long, warm days with my cousins, Guinness and Jameson, but always happy to leave as summer turned to fall. Uncle Rich built bookshelves in my pele tower room, and a desk with an inlaid marquetry surface: two circles depicting the globe, each country I hoped to visit cut out in intricate detail using multicolored veneers.
Auntie Cleo’s wedding to Uncle Isaac was intimate. They married at a New York City courthouse and then we all went to Bella Luna for pasta and tiramisu. As promised, Auntie Cleo defended my father in court, and my father did not go to jail. Thanks to Auntie Emma’s business acumen and my father’s new job at the Miami Botanical Gardens, we got by even after my father’s assets were indefinitely frozen.
Sylvie offered to sellThe Happy Pairto a museum, but my father insisted she enclose it in a rare-book display case. Sylvie ordered a poster of the illustration to hang over their Miami bed and brought the case to her library once a year to show her kids.
Auntie Emma started Peacock Perfumery, and her bestselling product—the Mumberton Pomade necklace, scented with benzoin, amber, and styrax—was so successful that she was able to fund the castle restoration even when my father could no longer do so. (My father’s former neighbor on Indian Creek Island, a supermodel, wore the Mumberton Pomade for months and paparazzi photos of the model in Auntie Emma’s necklace drove sales into the stratosphere.) Auntie Emma even hired Louisa part-time to attempt to restore the octagonal library.
As for me, my mother moved to Caracas; I never lived with her again. The place that suits me is my home on Hibiscus Street in Coconut Grove, Miami. Some nights, Willie sleeps in my room, when my dad and Sylvie crowd her out of their bed.
I was the flower girl at my father’s wedding to Sylvie the summer after the fire. Beatrix Potter’s former home, now a museum called Hill Top, did not host weddings as a rule. But Mac had been close friends with Deirdre, who ran the gift shop, and in his honor, she used her connections to secure a half hour in the gardens that inspiredThe Tale of Peter Rabbit.Angus worked part-time for the National Trust and agreed to look away when we gathered at Moss Eccles Tarn, a lake on the Hill Top property. Beatrix had liked to sit at the edge of the lily-covered lake to draw while her husband fished for brown trout.
Sylvie and my father’s wedding day was sunny and clear. Uncle Rich, Angus, and my cousins, proud groomsmen, stood next to my dad. Florence, Sylvie’s sisters, and I wore lavender dresses.
I opened the latticework garden door (featured inThe Tale of Tom Kitten) and made my way up a slate path, past the rhubarb patch I recognized fromThe Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck. I had a basket of rose petals and felt lovely as I tossed them into the air. The rolling hills were so green they almost vibrated; that color is the one I imagine whenever I need a shot of happiness.
The end of this story is many things, but for me it is this: Ireached my father and held his hand. Together, we stood in front of the tarn and waited for Sylvie. When she began walking up the path toward us, she was accompanied by her sisters, one on either side—the strong women who would become my bonus aunties. Cleo’s freckles had come out in the sun, and Emma’s color was high from her daily walks along the Irish Sea.
That morning at Hill Top, Sylvie Peacock became mine—not my mother, exactly; in name she was my stepmother but that hardly explained our connection. She was my one, and one is all you need.
After their vows, my father and Sylvie kissed and fell into a tight embrace. Sylvie understood childhood sadness. As everyone clapped and cried, Sylvie reached out and gathered me close. Look at me: I was a girl in tight braids, being pulled into warmth by my favorite librarian on her wedding day.
I would never be alone again.
The End
