The Balloon Hat

By Franklin Dent

Mr. Pacioli was a quiet little man who wore a tie every day and never left the house without a hat.  The instant a car drove onto his little corner used car lot, Mr. Pacioli could tell within twenty dollars what he could sell it for.  He was a very polite man but had no gift for conversation, and to him there was no connection between a customer’s uncle’s army buddy who claimed he knew Mr. Pacioli from the Knights of Columbus and the cash value of a car.  Whether buying or selling, the car was a thing in itself and had no other value than the number Mr. Pacioli had in his head.

Numbers were a source of comfort to Mr. Pacioli.  When he faced something he couldn’t understand he would look for the numbers behind the problem and all would be well.  Although all the music, candles, incense, and stained-glass windows at St. Theresa’s did not awe him, he would sit placidly in church next to Lucille, his wife, and think about the Holy Trinity.  To him it was beautiful; one indivisible divine essence, three distinct and co-eternal persons.  

He and Lucille were as different as different could be.  She was outgoing and talkative, and loved to have people over to play cards or to enjoy coffee and dessert.  She made time for friends and neighbors, and her kitchen was a confessional for the broken-hearted, the distraught, and the remorseful.  He preferred solitary pursuits.  He read Dante in Italian, could recall much of Euclid’s Elements from memory, and listened to Red Sox games on the radio for facts that he would use for calculating statistics, things like number of times Red Sox batters had hit safely on a 3-0 count with runners on base in late innings after the team had lost the previous game.  Regardless, Mr. Pacioli was devoted to his wife and never stopped courting her.  

Although only nine years old, Rebecca Callahan from next door had already spent nearly as much time in the Paciolis’ kitchen as the sink and the stove.  Her mother and father worked all day, her brother was busy with sports and his newspaper route, the weekends were devoted to keeping up with necessary chores, and everything the Callahans did was rushed and urgent.  It was not so next door where life was simpler, slower, and richer.  She often did her homework at the Paciolis’ dining room table at night, read the newspaper with Mr. Pacioli before school, and shared observations of their little neighborhood in Pawtucket with Mrs. Pacioli while helping out in the kitchen.  Even when the Paciolis had company, Rebecca would sometimes stretch out on the couch to read like it was her own home, occasionally checking on the guests to fill a coffee cup or whisk away an empty dessert dish. 

You couldn’t blame her for feeling at home.  When she came in from school there was a plate of cookies, or brownies, or a fresh pastry for her on the table along with a glass of milk, “Rebecca’s glass,” with pictures of Tweety Pie and Sylvester the Cat on it.  When she came over to do her homework at night Mr. Pacioli put his newspaper down and smiled, called her “Acceber” and asked her how her day had been.  

Rebecca had discovered something about the quiet little man who would divide large numbers in his head for fun.  There was a silly side to his nature.  One evening, Mr. Pacioli reached out to Rebecca with the sports section and called her name.  When she didn’t take the paper, he looked from behind the front page to call her name again and shake the sports page mid-air.  Rebecca sat absorbed in her book, idly winding her hair around her finger. 

“Oh, sorry.  Were you talking to me?” she said, taking the newspaper.

“Your name is Rebecca, isn’t it?”

“No!  It’s Acceber.  Acceber Nahallac.  Don’t you remember my name, Retsim Iloicap?”

He gave her a funny look and kind of laughed in his nose.  That’s how it began.  She was Acceber and he was Retsim Iloicap.  From there they began sharing silly rhymes and making absurd word substitutions.  He taught her all the verses to “What Did Delaware, Boys?” and they would spontaneously erupt in song at inconvenient times.  Thanks to Mr. Pacioli, Rebecca knew that Missa-sipped a Mini-soda, that Dela-wore a New Jersey, that Tenne-sees what Arkan-saw, that Wiscon-sinned by stealing a New-Brass-Key, that Ida-hoed her Mary-land, and that Cali-phoned to say How-ah-yee.  

Their favorite jokes all revolved around the raspberry lime rickey, Rebecca’s favorite summer drink whenever her family went to Narragansett.  Rebecca would make a drawing of a glass with a straw sticking out of it and they would take turns drawing faces on it or adding props to it to create characters and sight gags.  There was Groucho raspberry lime rickey (big eyebrows, moustache, and glasses), Julius raspberry lime rickey (with a toga), Ludwig raspberry lime rickey (long hair and a conductor’s baton), Benjamin raspberry lime rickey (flying a kite with a key dangling from it), and a raspberry lime rickey for Katherine Hepburn, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Mae West, Ted Williams, and Winston Churchill.  “A raspberry lime rickey came to town, fell while looking up into a hole down; the sky so low and the street so up, raspberry lime rickey in a double bottom cup.”  Lucille would giggle at them occasionally and say, “Oh, you two!” but it was a private little world inhabited only by Acceber and Retsim Iloicap, and they had a boundless capacity for exploring it together.  

Mr. & Mrs. Pacioli lived very modestly but they took two long vacations every year, an extravagance they cherished.  Mr. Pacioli did well buying and selling used cars on his little corner lot, and they had no children, so they went to the Florida Keys in the winter and to Maine in the summer.  Rebecca would stand on the porch and wave to them as they drove away and would be waiting on their porch for them the day they returned.  Her job was to look after the house, which meant she made sure that the mail and newspaper delivery was stopped as scheduled, and she walked around the house every day checking the windows and doors to make sure everything was snug.  In the summer she would water Mrs. Pacioli’s bee balm, cosmos, foxglove, columbine, and black-eyed susan.  In the winter she would try to keep the sidewalk cleared as best she could so Mr. Pacioli wouldn’t have to work too hard when he got home from the Keys to remove weeks of bad weather.  In return they brought her souvenirs, postcards, and pictures of each other on the beach, in a sailboat, or fishing, and Rebecca would have one more picture of the Paciolis standing at the southernmost tip of the United States in Key West.  “Ninety Miles to Cuba,” the marker said.

Last year they were on their way to Florida right after Christmas when Mrs. Pacioli died.  Mr. Callahan answered the phone very early one morning and got the news.  Rebecca’s mom called St. Theresa’s and Father Robert offered to take charge of all the arrangements.  A couple days later Mr. Pacioli’s car was in the driveway.  Rebecca wasn’t sure what to do.  She had already cried until she couldn’t cry anymore.  If anyone was going to heaven, Mrs. Pacioli was already there, but Rebecca missed her terribly so she cried from her loneliness.  She didn’t know if she should leave Mr. Pacioli alone or if she should go next door and be with him.  After dinner, she went next door with her mother to see how Mr. Pacioli was doing.  He was just getting ready to eat dinner and had made enough spaghetti with Mrs. Pacioli’s homemade marinara sauce to feed twenty people.  They talked while he ate a few bites and mother put away the rest of the spaghetti with sauce for Mr. Pacioli to heat up for later.  Then Mrs. Callahan and Rebecca cleaned the pots and pans.  It was an awful conversation, all about the funeral arrangements, food, flowers, the time of the wake, the time of the funeral, a checklist of things to be done, but no one mentioned Mrs. Pacioli.  Mrs. Callahan asked four times how he was doing and he said, “Oh, fine.  I’m fine.  Don’t worry about me.”

Rebecca knew better.  First of all, she didn’t expect him to be happy to see her or to call her Acceber or anything like that.  This was very serious.  But, Mr. Pacioli barely looked at her at all and he looked confused.  Mr. Pacioli could rattle off pi to twenty places, explain the Pythagorean theorem to a nine-year-old, and judge how much life was left in an automatic transmission by driving a car around the block.  He never got confused.  Rebecca was worried.  She stayed near him at the wake and heard him say, “I’m fine.  Don’t worry about me,” a hundred times.  She was plenty worried.  After the funeral Rebecca stood on the steps of the church and watched it snow while they loaded the casket into the hearse for the trip to the cemetery.  Everyone marveled at the big white fluffy flakes and how the snow would swirl around in the wind like a spinning ballerina.  The whole world was pure and clean for Mrs. Pacioli’s ride to her final rest.  

That evening Rebecca and Mr. and Mrs. Callahan sat with Mr. Pacioli and a few of the Paciolis’ friends a long time in his living room.  The grownups drank coffee and spoke quietly.  A few fond memories were shared.  A couple of friends wiped their eyes.  And they all went home.  “I’m fine.  Don’t worry about me,” Mr. Pacioli said at the door.

It snowed softly all night and most of the next day.  When Rebecca came home from school she could see that no one had been in or out of Mr. Pacioli’s house all day.  She shoveled the sidewalk all by herself.  It took a long time but she did it, and almost as good a job as her brother had done on their own house.  She knew that Mr. Pacioli was watching.  She even thought she saw him at the window once or twice.  She tried cleaning off his car but she wasn’t big enough so she did what she could and went home to warm up.  She wanted to go see her friend next door but was afraid he wanted to be alone, or worse, that she would be of no help to him.  

Mr. Pacioli had watched her work from almost the first sound of the shovel scraping the sidewalk.  He wanted to invite Rebecca in for hot chocolate to thank her for helping but he didn’t know what to say to her.  He didn’t want her to feel sorry for him so he hid behind the curtains.  He watched Rebecca clear the snow from his sidewalk and thought of all the years he and Lucille had been together, all the evenings filled with her lyrical laughter, her wonderful smile that told him how proud she was of him, all the rowdy cribbage games, the rainy evenings bent over jigsaw puzzles together, all the wonderful holiday meals, leisurely walking home from mass together, the long drives to Florida and Maine, and he knew they were all in the past now.  Shovelful after shovelful, he watched Rebecca struggle with the snow, piling it in a long, low ridge along the sidewalk, and he remembered how bitter it had been to finally accept that he and Lucille would never have children.  With all the joy that had been theirs together, his Lucille never knew the love a mother has for her own child, and now that she was gone, Mr. Pacioli saw every moment of his own life as a vast emptiness, incalculably lonely, with time dragging him slowly toward his own death. 

Finally, she rang the doorbell and waited. He stood behind the door until she turned to leave, then opened the door, and invited her in. Rebecca tried a few times to break the silence between them but Mr. Pacioli seemed uncomfortable so she didn’t stay.  She knew his schedule by heart so it was easy to find an excuse to drop over.  One Saturday afternoon she came over because she knew Mr. Pacioli would be listening to Milton Cross announce the live opera performance from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City courtesy of Texaco.  But Mr. Pacioli said he was too tired to listen to the opera and asked her to come back another time.  

One day in February Rebecca decided that enough was enough.  She knocked on the door before school and walked right past Mr. Pacioli at the door, called a cheery “Good morning!” over her shoulder and disappeared into the kitchen.  “You’re out of milk,” she announced, then returned to the living room and plopped down in Mrs. Pacioli’s armchair.  “Sports, please?” she asked with her hand outstretched.  Mr. Pacioli handed her the sports section.  “Pitchers and catchers report for spring training next week,” Rebecca announced, and they sat in silence reading the newspaper until it was time for Rebecca to leave for school.  That evening she returned and announced to Mr. Pacioli, “I’ve got loads of homework,” before setting her books on the dining room table and turning on the light.  She could see that his dinner dishes were still on the table so she went in the kitchen, drew a sink full of soapy hot water, washed and rinsed the dinner dishes, and left them drying in the drainer as she turned to her homework.  “Whatcha reading?” she asked.  

“Dante,” he replied.

“That’s supposed to be a good book.”

“Yes.”

“What’s it about?”

“I don’t think you’d understand.”

“Betcha. Shiny penny.”

This was something they used to do all the time.  Rebecca would bet Mr. Pacioli a penny that she could perform some ridiculous feat, and when she couldn’t, she would offer him a penny.  He’d look at it and refuse it, saying “No, a shiny penny, like this.”  He would then find the shiniest penny in the house and give it to her.  Even though she lost the bet, she was always a shiny penny richer.  Rebecca had probably made a whole three dollars over the last couple years betting with him but he took the bet anyway.

Mr. Pacioli had told her the story of the Divine Comedy many times but she made it seem like she had only a vague recollection.  “Isn’t that the one where this poet is given a tour of hell and then he comes to paradise and his true love is the one who guides him to a vision of blessedness?”  Even though he was in the living room, and she couldn’t see him, she knew he was crying.  He went into the bedroom, blew his nose, and returned, presenting her with a shiny penny.  She looked up at him and he smiled shyly.  

Things were better after that but Mr. Pacioli still had days when he was too tired to go with the Callahans to mass, or play cribbage with Rebecca, or even feed himself.  There was a big snowfall late in the winter and Rebecca tried to drag him outside to build a snowman.  Undaunted, she made it herself, and put the face, with a carrot nose, walnut eyes, and an apple wedge smile, facing the house so that Mr. Pacioli could see it from his living room window.  He began dressing for work and leaving at the regular time like he used to, Monday through Friday, wearing his hat and his overcoat.  Progress had been made but Mr. Pacioli was still sad.  Rebecca knew that things would never be the same again, but she still thought there was hope for raspberry lime rickey jokes with Retsim Iloicap and spontaneous outbursts of “What Did Delaware, Boys?”  It made her heart heavy to think of him being sad forever.  Then one evening, watching Mr. Pacioli come home from the little corner used car lot, she had a vision.

The next morning she presented Mr. Pacioli with a gift.  “What is this?” he asked.

“It’s a hat.  Do you like it?”

“It’s a balloon.”

“It’s a balloon hat.  Do you like it?”

He held the long, skinny blue balloon that Rebecca had inflated and tied in a circle and looked at her, uncomprehending.

“Try it on,” she insisted.  “Go on!”

He slipped on the balloon hat and she giggled.  “Go look in the mirror,” she instructed him, and followed him right into the bedroom where they stood in front of Mrs. Pacioli’s makeup table and looked in the mirror side by side.  Rebecca giggled some more.  “Do you like it?” she asked.

“It’s a balloon.  You can’t make a hat out of a balloon.”

“Don’t be silly.  I do it all the time.”

He studied himself in the mirror as though looking at a snapshot from long ago.  He had aged and his face was gaunt.  The blue balloon encircling his head made him look like a cartoon Julius Caesar.  Or a martyred saint.

Rebecca returned the next morning with two more balloon hats, one red and the other yellow.  “Here try this one on,” she insisted.  She had tied a second balloon from front to back to form a proper crown for the hat.  He sat in his armchair, reading the paper, and wearing his balloon hat.  

“Here, let me see what you’re wearing today,” she said, checking his suit and tie.  “Yes, definitely the red hat today.  You are wearing it to work, aren’t you?”  She was so serious, and he felt so ridiculous wearing a red balloon on his bald head, that he burst into laughter.  

“No, I’m not wearing a balloon on my head to work.  That’s not a proper business hat.”

“Please?  It goes with your tie.”

After insisting that it would never do for a businessman to wear a balloon hat to work, Rebecca relented.  “Then wear it tonight and we’ll play cribbage.”  And he did.  She wore a new design herself, perfect for spring parties, with yellow and green balloons forming the hat and little, round red balloons dangling around the sides.  

Rebecca brought over a serious black balloon hat the next morning.  “It’s very conservative.  A proper business hat.  Please wear it to work today?”  After she left for the school bus, Mr. Pacioli slipped on his overcoat and hat, collected his things, and started to leave for work.  As he fumbled for his keys he saw the balloon hats on the dining room table.  The black one did look rather conservative to him.  He went to the kitchen for a grocery sack, placed the black balloon hat inside, and was nearly out the door when he stopped, placed his Homburg inside the grocery sack, and left for work wearing his stylish new balloon hat.

Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved