If.
“Dear God, I hope Abe was always surrounded by people who loved him. And that he didn’t suffer in his life.” Boop knew the odds. “Or in death. Amen.”
Boop heard a tap on the door. She unlocked and opened the door.
It was Georgia. “Doris is out for the count. Are you doing okay?”
“I’m not sure,” Boop said. “I think it’s time to face it all, or as much as I can.” She motioned to the box. “I can’t seem to open it.”
“Is that what I think it is?”
Boop nodded.
“You’ve had it all this time.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll open it for you, if that’s what you want,” Georgia said.
“I do.”
With that, Georgia flicked the latch on the tackle box but left the lid closed. “Ready?”
Boop couldn’t believe she was frightened, as if a physical reminder would have more heft than emotional ones. She was as jittery as she’d once been turning the crank of her jack-in-the-box. But in this box she’d tucked her happiest and her saddest memory—which happened to be the same thing. Love and loss, comedy and tragedy, past and future. It all had the same face, the same voice, the same touch—that’s what would pop out this time.
She and Georgia had hidden the box so carefully that day so long ago. Boop had moved it years later, carrying the box as if it were as fragile and priceless as a Fabergé egg. Then, like the kids say, life happened. Most people might have been surprised at what she’d saved and have thought it an unlikely totem. Yet it had enraged Marvin.
Boop squeezed her eyes tight against the memory of flashbulbs and sunshine; she covered her ears against words of judgment and disappointment. Then she allowed herself to sneak into her past at the moment before her world shifted. Perfume. Pretty dresses. A purple swimsuit.
She opened her eyes. What was she waiting for?
Boop inhaled deeply. “I’ll do it.”
She lifted the lid, and the box unfolded like a child’s pop-up book. Fewer lures in the top tray than she’d expected. A few pennies in the second tray. None of this seemed familiar, but then again, sometimes she forgot what she’d stored in her kitchen cupboards.
But she wouldn’t have forgotten this. Boop’s throat constricted. In the bottom section lay a box of twenty-four Crayola crayons and torn pieces of construction paper in a rainbow of colors, so faded and crackled it was as if they would disintegrate if she blew on them. She removed the crayons and scrambled the papers with a few frenetic slaps. She found a plastic protractor, a six-inch wooden ruler, random lengths of blue and yellow yarn, tongue depressors, and a jar of rubber cement.
This wasn’t her box. She closed it and flipped it upside down. Scratched into the corner with a straight pin were her initials, BCS. It was her box.
“What is all this stuff? Did you know this was in here?” Georgia asked.
“No!” Boop dumped the contents of the tackle box onto her bed, fanned them out, flipped them over, turned the box upside down, and shook it, hoping her keepsake would materialize as if by magic. But it didn’t. Her bed was littered with craft supplies a young Hannah or Emma might have collected then forgotten about by the following summer.
Boop spotted wisps of silky thread caught in a hinge. She yanked them loose and held them toward the glow of her night-light. She exhaled, and the translucent strands of pink fluttered from her breath.
The box was full but empty of meaning.
Boop closed her hands around the delicate fibers and, once again, prayed to find something she’d lost.
She rifled through her memories with the same fervor Marvin had flipped through his Rolodex when he’d wanted to negotiate a deal or beat out his competitor. The last time she’d seen the contents of the box was the weekend of their tenth wedding anniversary.
Ordinarily, Boop and Stuart would spend summers in South Haven while Marvin stayed in Skokie, buckled into his job running the five Peck’s Popular Shoes locations on the North Shore. He was a workaholic before Boop had known what to call it, but she knew he also didn’t share Boop’s affection for her grandparents’ resort and house. She had longed for the familiar food, scenery, and creaks on the stairs. She reveled in watching Stuart play with the children of the children she’d known growing up in town and at the resort. He followed Zaide around, and her grandparents set time aside from working to spoil him.
Boop hadn’t minded time apart from Marvin. It seemed normal to her. The wives at Stern’s spent summers mostly without their husbands, who would join them on weekends.
But the summer of 1961, Marvin was the exception to this rule, belying the norm, the routine, and the odd comfort of distance. He left the stores in the care of his father and stayed in South Haven for a full week, including the weekends on either end. Every time Boop had turned around, there he was behind her. On the beach, in the resort kitchen with Mabel, out in the garden, even while she was making the beds. At first, she’d found it charming, even romantic. Then she realized: Marvin was bored. In Skokie he would divide his time among the stores, golf, cards, and as Cubmaster for Stuart’s Scout den. On Saturday nights they’d socialized as a couple with the neighbors or with people from the synagogue. But in South Haven the lack of an agenda made Marvin antsy.
“I’ll take Stuart fishing. There must be fishing supplies here,” Marvin had said, drumming his fingers on his pants. “Do you know where your grandfather keeps them?”
“Since when do you fish?”
“Since today.”
Boop had been scraping Duncan Hines yellow cake batter into two round pans, greased with
