Kyle never knew anything about his wife’s Aunt Mimi. If she ever mentioned her to him, it was nondescript; not enough for Aunt Mimi to be anything other than one more obscure relative. It was a non-issue when she informed him that her aunt was moving in with her mom and dad. That first day he met Aunt Mimi, she looked at him with an expressionless intensity. 

“Come downstairs and say hi to my Aunt Mimi,” Heather told him. It was Sunday morning and Kyle had just woken up. When he walked into the kitchen, Mimi’s back was turned to him as she was rinsing out a cup over the sink. Heather was sitting five feet away at their round oak table sipping tea. Mimi turned around as soon as Kyle said, “Hi” Her abrupt response seemed more like a reaction to a command than a reply to a greeting. He couldn’t tell if she was confused, maybe surprised that he did not fit the image she had in her head. Her white hair was chopped just below ear level and stuck out about six inches on either side of her head. 

“You’re going to see your brother soon,” she told him. 

“My brother?” he replied. 

“I had a dream last night that you and I and Heather were going somewhere.  Maybe it was a restaurant. Your brother was seated outside as we approached.  Heather said to you, ‘Look, it’s Joe.’”

“My brother’s name is Paul.” Kyle sensed no playfulness in her.  

“It was Joe,” Mimi replied in a no-nonsense tone, the way an accountant or doctor might carry out their work. “Does he live around here?”

“No, he’s in Wisconsin. He lives in LaCrosse.”

“Yeah.  It was Joe.”

Kyle later asked Heather why her aunt had moved in with her parents. She couldn’t give him any kind of real answer. She mentioned something about her aunt getting older but said nothing about her health. About once a week, Heather would drive over to her parents’ house and bring Aunt Mimi back for a visit. Kyle had gotten used to finding her in their townhouse when he got home from work. 

“Heather, can you imagine a seafood dish with some kind of citrus sauce with tangerines?” Mimi asked. 

“That sounds good,” she replied.

“Maybe that’s what it will be.  Or it’s a color too, isn’t it?  Tangerine?”

“Sure. That’s a color”

“Maybe you’re going to be shoe shopping and ask if they come in any other colors and the clerk is going to tell you ‘tangerine.’ And of course, you know the song Tangerine?”

“From the fifties, wasn’t it?”

“Oh no. It’s older than that. It was a WWII song.”  Kyle was eavesdropping from the hallway where he was on a ladder replacing an old light fixture with a more modern-looking, brushed nickel one. He later asked Heather what that conversation was all about.

“She was telling me to pay attention to see if ‘tangerine’ somehow shows up.”

“What do you mean, ‘shows up’?”

“I don’t know. She just said, ‘pay attention.’”

About two weeks later, Kyle and Heather were at an art exhibit. One of the halls was dedicated to an artist who painted huge letters in bright colors on canvas measuring about eight feet wide by twelve feet tall. After looking at a few of his paintings, they grasped the concept. One painting had three letters on the top from left to right:  A S P  Below those three letters were another three:  I R E.  Below those were the letters:  T O H  The last row had:  O P E.  Kyle was the first to see it. 

“Aspire to hope,” he said.  

“Oh, yeah.  Of course.  I see it.” They stared at the next one and both got it almost right away.

L E T
T H I
NGS
HAP
PEN

Right next to it was one that read:

ITN
EVE
RHA
PPE
NED

They moved onto the next one that read:

T A N
G E R
 I N E

“Look,” Kyle exclaimed and waited for Heather’s reaction. She just nodded her head and let a mild smile creep onto her face. “Heather.” He pointed at the painting. He wanted a much bigger response from her but never got it. “Tangerine,” he said. “You got it, right? You saw that?” 

“Yes, of course.”  They kept walking to the next exhibit of a different artist who painted abstract landscapes. Heather gave each piece her full attention and seemed to feel something from each one. Kyle had no more interest in any of the art. He was still hoping for some kind of latent comment from Heather about the Tangerine painting.  When they were getting ready for bed that night, brushing their teeth side-by-side at adjacent sinks Kyle asked,

“Do you think that was just a mild coincidence? The whole Tangerine thing.”

“She said to look for it.”

“That’s my point. She said it was coming. And it did.”

“OK.” For Heather, there was nothing more to say.

“Tangerine is a pretty obscure thing. How many times in our lives do we use that word or read it or see it? This is not a small coincidence Heather. That woman knew something.”

“I know.”

“Why doesn’t it freak you out?”

“I love this about my Aunt Mimi. I feel honored when I can be a part of what she experiences.  But I’m not going to jump up and down about this. This is life. I don’t understand it. I don’t try to explain any of it. It’s really cool and I feel fortunate to be around it.”

“But what is it?  What is she doing?” Heather was done. She climbed into bed, kissed Kyle on the cheek and fell asleep. 

A few days later, Kyle and Heather were driving Aunt Mimi back to Heather’s parents’ home. Kyle looked in the rear view mirror and locked eyes with Mimi. 

“Did Heather tell you that we ran into the Tangerine thing”

“Yes, she did,” was Mimi’s monotone reply. 

“So what’s that all about?” Mimi didn’t say a word. Heather turned around from her front seat and told her aunt. 

“I’m sorry. Kyle just has a hard time understanding.”

“We all do sometimes but we know how those guys from Edmond can be.” Mimi said in a slightly raised voice. Kyle felt a jolt in his gut. He wanted to pull the car over and get out into fresh air and feel his legs move but he knew that he could not succumb to the panic. After dropping Mimi off, he said, “Did you hear her?”

“Yeah, where is Edmond?” Heather asked.

“It’s a little town outside of Oklahoma City.” Heather made some kind of an “I see” noise and looked out the window as if she were hoping to find something interesting or amusing.

“I was born in Edmond,” he announced.

“You’re from Appleton, Wisconsin,” she replied.  t sounded more like a correction than a question. 

“We left Oklahoma when I was a few months old and moved to Wisconsin.”

“Why was your family in Oklahoma? 

“How did she know I was born in Edmond?”

“I don’t know,” she said in an attempt to end the conversation. 

“You didn’t know this about your aunt?”

“Know what?”

“That she has this ability, whatever it is. Was she always like this?” 

“I suppose.” 

“This is uncanny stuff, Heather.”

“No it isn’t.  It’s beautiful.  It’s natural.”

“It’s very odd and extremely unusual.”

“So?”

“So?  It doesn’t faze you?”

“Of course not. It’s one of the things that makes her so wonderful.”

“It doesn’t strike you as odd?”

“It’s not very common but it’s certainly not uncommon. Haven’t you ever met someone who is very lucky with raffles or picking horses or playing cards?  Didn’t you ever know anyone who just seems to know how the ballgame is going to end? They sense a strikeout or a home run coming and announce it in advance.”

“That’s not the same as telling us about tangerine and my brother and Edmond.”

“What difference does it make? It’s one of the wonders of life. I don’t know how any of that works and she probably doesn’t either. That’s just who she is.”

“And you’ve always known that about her?”

“Yes. When I was in kindergarten, our teacher had us draw pictures of our family. I drew my dad in the yard cutting the grass and my sisters splashing in a little wading pool and my mother at the window showing us the pie that she had just baked. And I drew a woman in a white robe sitting on a cloud. My teacher asked me who that was and I said, ‘that’s my Aunt Mimi’. And she knew when I was born. She was playing cards and she got a hand of two nines. At the time, she knew it had significance. The next morning when my mother called to tell her that I had been born the previous night, Aunt Mimi said, ‘At 9:09, right?’ My mother knew the precise time of my birth because the nurses announced it. Yes. It was 9:09. So she and I have a special connection.  Aunt Mimi sensed the moment I came into the world.”

About a week later, Kyle woke up shortly after dawn and went to their bedroom window.  He saw Aunt Mimi walking in circles in their little yard. She was wearing a simple yellow smock and a pillbox hat that only an elderly woman might own. With two gloved hands, she was carrying a small white patent leather purse by it’s handles. She wore shoes that matched her delicate purse. To Kyle it seemed like a homeless person’s attempt at elegance. 

“Your Aunt is outside,” he told Heather and walked away. Heather went to the window.

“Where?” She opened the blinds to get a wider view. Kyle came back to join her.

“She was just there,” he said. They went downstairs and sat in the living room. 

“How would she have gotten here?” Heather asked.

“Maybe your mom or dad dropped her off.” Heather called her mom who explained that she had seen her that morning but couldn’t locate her at that moment. 

“She’s often outside but she never goes far,” her mother explained. They all knew there was no way that Mimi could have walked the seven miles to Heather’s house.  The front door opened and Mimi walked in dressed exactly as Kyle had seen her from the window.

“How did you get here?” Heather asked.

“Can I have a spot of tea?” Mimi asked. That’s when Kyle realized that she was dressed like the Queen of England. Mimi was a staunch Anglophile. After Princess Diane gave birth to William and Harry, Mimi had sent children’s outfits each time and received a very gracious thank you note from Buckingham Palace. On September 8, two days after Mimi had sat sipping tea with Heather and Kyle wearing her queen costume, Queen Elizabeth II passed away at Balmoral after serving as monarch for seventy years and two hundred and fourteen days. The time of death was listed at 3:10 UK Time which was 7:10 AM Pacific Time, nearly the exact time when Kyle first spotted Aunt Mimi from his bedroom window in Chino, California.    

That was the final piece for Kyle. When he moved out to go stay with his brother in Wisconsin, he thought it would be temporary and that’s how he explained it to Heather.  He told her, “It’s just that my head is spinning. Not because of anything your aunt has said or done but because you seem to treat all of this so nonchalantly.”

“Has anyone been hurt or threatened?” she asked. “Has my aunt brought any kind of harm to anyone?”

“I just feel unsettled that you think all of this is just normal.”

“It’s all pretty awesome. There are all kinds of miraculous things happening around us everyday. I marvel at all of it but I don’t feel upset by it. I’m moved by it. When everything blooms in the spring do I feel unsettled? I feel uplifted. Watching a squirrel jump from tree brach to tree branch. Turtles eggs hatching on the beach and the newborns scurrying into the sea. Sunset. Sunrise. Lunar eclipses. Life is miraculous Kyle and sometimes mysterious. But awesome. My aunt is simply a part of all that.  And so are we.”

Nine months went by. Heather and Kyle talked by phone every few weeks just to give each other updates about their jobs, gossip about their friends, share baseball scores with each other, talk about the weather and what they had eaten that day. They never talked about Aunt Mimi and they never mentioned divorce. But Heather had to anticipate the inevitable so she googled “local divorce attorneys” and chose W. Castle. 

“Mr. Castle will see you now,” his secretary said and walked her from the waiting area into his office. 

“Hi. Joe Castle,” he said and extended his large hand. He was tall and wore his thick, straight, caramel-colored hair pushed back to showcase his handsome face.   

“May I call you Joe?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“May I ask what the ‘W’ stands for?”

“William.  William Joseph. Everyone calls me Joe.”

“I like that color of your shirt.” He was wearing a neatly starched, crisp button-down dress shirt. No tie. “What would you call that color?”

“I don’t know. Peach?”

“No. It’s a little too deep to be peach.”

“Well please don’t call it orange. He said. No one wants an attorney who wears orange shirts. Let’s say ……….tangerine. What do you think? Does that sound right?“

“That sounds very right.”

“OK. So let’s call it tangerine.”

“Yes, let’s,” she replied. 

– Garvin Livingston