competent that you're blind. That's the Statue of Liberty." She pointed again.
"I know it's there," he conceded patiently. "You can pretend to see it, if you want to."
She pursed her lips in irritation and stared out over the water. "Your great-grandfather worked these shores," she began. "He came right off a boat, without a dime to his name, and a wife and three children to support." Her gentle tone of voice produced an immediate flush of shame in T.S. She was not the type of woman to talk about the past. In fact, he did not know if he'd ever heard her speak about their ancestors before.
"He worked sixteen, sometimes twenty hours a day," she continued. "And so did your grandfather after him. They endured years of low wages, losing their jobs to the Irish, finding new ones, losing those jobs because they were honest, and getting up at dawn the next day to find new jobs. They worked from sunup to sundown and into the night. Never complaining. Never asking for more."
"That's very admirable," T.S. admitted, trying hard not to let his impatience creep into his voice. He failed.
"This is not a feel-good lecture, Theodore," Auntie Lil told him sharply. "I have a serious point to make."
"Then make it," he suggested. "If you ask me, you're just trying to shame me into doing what you want."
"Not shame you, Theodore. I'm trying to explain why we should be the ones to help out this poor, dead woman."
"Then explain," T.S. said stubbornly, folding his arms and avoiding her eyes.
"As poor as your family was—and we were very, very poor until a generation ago—a Hubbert has never turned away someone else in need. Never. If someone needed help, they got it. It didn't matter if they were Irish or black or even a drunk. Your great-grandmother and her daughters after her never turned away anyone in need. Your mother and I helped your grandmother feed half of upstate New York during the Depression. And it wasn't because we were trying to win our way into heaven, either. We did it because Hubberts have always done it. Because we are blessed. No one has ever lost a baby in childbirth. Damn few of us have died before our time. We have the constitutions of oxen and the good sense to avoid excess in alcohol and religion. And I'm not going to jinx that good fortune now by turning my back on someone in need. So you can help me or you can choose to not help me. But I will be very surprised if you really mean 'no', my dear Theodore. Because if ever there was a Hubbert who has made me proud, it's you. I refuse to believe that you could, in good conscience, walk away from this simple task."
Her lecture finished, she turned abruptly and marched back to the cab. It was the best way to ensure that he would not talk back. But in truth, he had been left speechless. T.S. waited a moment, letting the cool breeze clear his head. He peeked south just as the sun broke out from behind a cloud and did spot a reflected glare in the distance. He sighed. Perhaps Auntie Lil really could see the Statue of Liberty from here. Perhaps he was far too cynical a man.
He shrugged his shoulders in surrender and walked slowly back to the cab, out of habit noting that their small session of family bonding had added a good five dollars to the tab.
"You win," he said simply, shutting the door a second before the impatient driver took off with a roar and cut back east through mid-town. "What do you want me to do?"
Auntie Lil's mood change was instantaneous. She immediately stowed her disappointment away in favor of her favorite activity— fulI-speed-ahead-damn-the-torpedoes-action. Within seconds, her handkerchief was tucked back in her handbag and she had pulled out her small notebook. She held a pen poised above its surface and stared dreamily out the window. There was nothing she loved better than a puzzle.
"We just need a good photograph of her," she finally announced. "Then we can show it around the neighborhood. Someone must know her. How can we get one?"
"Beats me. She's dead. No one knows her real name. We don't even know where she lives."
"Why don't you take a picture of her dead?" their cab driver suddenly suggested from the front seat.
Amazing, T.S. thought, he'd been listening to every word they said and had not