Book Lovers

31

LIBBY CHOOSES A dinner spot in downtown Asheville, a chic Cuban restaurant with a rooftop patio. Yesterday’s storm left the air cool and breezy, a huge relief after the last three sweaty weeks.

The city is lit up below us, halfway between quaint village and bustling metropolis, and the food is divine. Brendan and I split a bottle of wine and Libby even has a couple sips, moaning as she swishes them around in her mouth.

“It kind of feels like we’re in New York, doesn’t it?” she says, eyes misty. “If you close your eyes, just the sounds of all these people, and that feeling in the air.”

Brendan’s mouth screws up like he’s considering disagreeing with her, but I just nod along. It doesn’t feel like New York, but with all of us together, it almost feels like home.

I feel an improbable wave of nostalgia at the thought of running up or down the stairs to a train platform, hearing that metallic shriek, feeling the wind gust through the stairwell, and not knowing if I’ve arrived in the nick of time or if my train just went screaming past.

What’s the weirdest thing you miss about the city? I text Charlie.

He writes back, It used to be having access to a Dunkin’ Donuts within three blocks at all times.

I smile at my phone. The DD-to-person ratio there has to be like one to five. What else?

I miss Eataly, he says, but I wouldn’t call it weird.

If you didn’t miss Eataly, we could never speak again. Because you’d be in prison, where you’d belong.

Relieved to have dodged that bullet, he says. Also not weird but I think a lot about the first day in spring that’s actually kind of warm. How everyone’s out at once, and it feels like we’re all almost drunk from the sun. People in the park in shorts and bikini tops, eating Popsicles, even though it’s like fifty degrees out.

Charlie, I reply. Those things are all objectively amazing.

He takes a while on his next reply. Early-morning commute mariachi bands, he says, or opera singers, or any singing group really. I know it’s not a popular stance, but I fucking love when I’m almost asleep on the train, and suddenly five guys are singing their hearts out.

I love watching everyone’s reactions. There are always some people who are kind of feeling it, and some who look like they’re plotting murder, and then the ones who pretend it’s not happening. I always tip because I don’t want to live in a world where no one’s doing that.

I can’t think of a greater symbol of hope than a person who’s willing to drag themselves out of bed and sing at the top of their lungs to a group of strangers trapped on a train. That tenacity should be rewarded.

I love, I write, your nightmare brain.

And here I thought you were using me for my nightmare body.

And then, a minute later, I love your brain too. And your body. All of it.

I’ve spent ten years guiding my life away from this feeling, this terrible want. All it took was three weeks and a fictional woman named Nadine Winters to pull me right back.

“Don’t make any plans for tomorrow afternoon,” Libby says, kicking my sandal under the table. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Brendan’s looking at the table, almost guiltily. Either he’s not convinced I’ll like my “surprise,” or Libby’s threatened him with murder if he gives it away.

“Brendan,” I say, fishing, “tell your wife she can’t go skydiving while pregnant.”

He laughs and lifts his hands, but still avoids my gaze. “Never tell a Stephens what she can and cannot do.”

The editing job at Loggia flutters across my mind, and Charlie’s voice saying, If I had to pick one person to be in my corner, it’d be you. Every time.

Once again, Libby has me tie a silk scarf over my eyes for the length of our cab ride — driven, unfortunately, by Hardy, but luckily it only lasts five minutes, and then Libby’s wrenching me from the car, singing, “We’re heeeere!”

“Once Unofficial Town Tour?” I guess.

“Nope!” Hardy says, chuckling. “Though y’all really gotta do one! You’re missing out.”

“Funeral for Old Man Whittaker’s fictional dog,” I guess next.

Libby shuts the car door behind me. “Colder.”

“Funeral for the iguana that played Old Man Whittaker’s fictional dog in the community theater play?” I listen for clues as to our location, but the only sound is the breeze through some trees, which could put us approximately . . . anywhere.

“There are two stairs, okay?” She prods me forward. “Now straight ahead, there’s a small ledge.”

I stretch my foot out, feeling through space until I find it. A blast of cold air hits me, and my shoes click onto hardwood floors as we take a few more steps.

“Now.” Libby stops. “Give me a drumroll.”

I slap my palms against my thighs while she unties the scarf and yanks it away.

We’re standing in an empty room. One with dark wooden floors and white shiplap walls. A large window overlooks a thicket of blue-green pine trees, and Libby steps in front of it, vibrating with anxious energy despite her grin.

“Imagine a huge wooden table right here,” she says. “And some wicker plant stands under this window. And a Scandinavian chandelier. Something sleek and modern, you know?”

“Okayyyy,” I say, following her into the next room.

“A dark blue velvet couch,” she says, “and, like, a small canvas tent in one corner for the girls. Something we can leave up, string some lights inside.” She leads me down a narrow hall and then I follow her through another doorway as she flicks on the lights to reveal a butter-yellow bathroom: yellow fifties tile, yellow wallpaper, yellow tub, yellow sink.

“This . . . needs some work,” she says. “But look how huge it is! I mean, there’s a tub, and there’s a whole other bathroom with a walk-in shower. That one’s already been redone.”

She looks to me for some sort of confirmation that I’m hearing her.

And I am, but there’s a dull buzzing rising in my skull, like a horde of bees growing more and more agitated by the uncanny sense of wrongness creeping up my spine.

“There’s an en suite. Three whole baths — can you imagine?” She gestures toward a smear of lipstick on the carpet, beside a full-pot-of-coffee-sized stain. “Ignore that. I already checked and there’s hardwood under it. There will be some damage from the spills, probably, but I’ve always loved a good rug.”

She stops in the middle of the room and holds her arms aloft at her sides. “What do you think?”

“About you loving rugs?”

Her smile wavers. “About the house.”

The blood rushing through my eardrums dims my voice. “This house? In the middle of Sunshine Falls?”

Her smile shrinks.

The buzzing swells. It sounds like No, like a million miniature Noras humming, This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. You’re misunderstanding.

Libby’s hands cradle her stomach, her frown lines firming up between her brows. “You wouldn’t believe how cheap it is.”

I’m sure I wouldn’t. I’d probably fall down dead, and then my ghost would haunt this place, and every night when I rose out of the floorboards, I’d scare the shit out of the owners by asking, Now, how many closets did you say it has?

But I don’t see how that’s important.

I shake my head. “Lib, you couldn’t live somewhere like this.”

Her face goes slack. “I couldn’t?”

“Your life’s in New York,” I say. “Brendan’s job is in New York. The girls’ school — our favorite restaurants, our favorite parks.”

Me.

Mom.

Every last bit of her. Every memory. Every spot where she stood, in some other life, a decade ago. Every window we looked into, our mittened hands folded together, the three of us in a row as we watched Santa’s animatronic sleigh arc over a miniature Manhattan skyline.

Every step across the Brooklyn Bridge on the first day of spring, or the last of summer.

Freeman Books, the Strand, Books Are Magic, McNally Jackson, the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble.

“You’ve loved it here,” Libby sounds uncertain, young.

All those veins of ice holding my cracked heart together thaw too fast, broken pieces sliding off like melting glaciers, leaving raw spots exposed. “It’s been a great break, but Libby — in a week, I want to go home.”

She turns away. Right before she speaks, I feel this throb in my gut, a warning, a change in barometric pressure. The buzzing drops out.

Her voice is clear. “Brendan got a new job. In Asheville.”

I felt something coming, but it didn’t prepare me for this missed-step weightlessness, the sensation of falling from a great height, hitting every stair on the way down.

Libby’s looking at me again, waiting.

I don’t know what for. I don’t know what to say.

What is the correct course of action when the planet’s been punted off its axis?

I have no plan, no fix-it checklist. I’m standing in an empty house, watching the world unravel.

“This is what Brendan kept checking in about,” I whisper, the roar of blood in my ears starting anew. “He was waiting for you to tell me.”

The muscles in Libby’s jaw flex, an admission of guilt.

“The list,” I choke out. “This trip. That’s what this was all about? You’re leaving and this whole elaborate game of Simon Says was some fucked-up goodbye?”

“It’s not like that,” she murmurs.

“What about the lawyer?” I say. “How does she fit into this?”

“The what?”

The world sways. “The divorce attorney, the one Sally gave you the number for.”

Understanding dawns across her face. “A friend of hers,” she says feebly, “who knew about a good preschool here.”

I press my hands to the sides of my head.

They’re looking at schools.

They’re looking at houses.

“How long have you known?” I ask.

“It happened fast,” she says.

“How long, Libby?”

Breath rushes out between her lips. “Since a few days before we made the plans to come here.”

“And there’s no way out of it?” I rub my forehead. “I mean, if it’s money—”

“I don’t want out of it, Nora.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I made this decision.”

“But you just said it happened fast. You haven’t had time to think about this.”

“As soon as we decided Brendan would apply for the job, it felt right,” she says. “We’re tired of being on top of each other. We’re tired of sharing one bathroom — we’re tired of being tired. We want to spread out. We want our kids to be able to play in the woods!”

“Because Lyme disease is such a blast?” I demand.

“I want to know that if something goes wrong, we’re not trapped on an island with millions of other people, all trying to get away.”

“I’m on that island, Libby!”

Her face goes white, her voice shattering. “I know that.”

“New York’s our home. Those millions of other people are — are our family. And the museums, and the galleries, and the High Line, skating at Rockefeller Center — the Broadway shows? You’re fine just giving all that up?”

Giving me up.

“It’s not like that, Nora,” she says. “We just started looking at houses and everything came together—”

“Holy shit.” I turn away, dizzy. My arms are heavy and numb, but my heart is clattering around like a bowling ball on a roller coaster. “Do you already own this house?”

She doesn’t reply.

I spin back. “Libby, did you buy a house without even telling me?”

She says softly, “We don’t close until the end of the week.”

I step backward, swallowing, like I can force everything that’s already been said back down, reverse time. “I have to go.”

“Where?” she demands.

“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “Anywhere else.”

I recognize this street: a row of fifties-style ranches with well-tended gardens, pine-covered mountains jutting up at their backs.

The sun’s melting into the horizon like peach ice cream, and the smell of roses drifts over the breeze. A few yards over, a half dozen kids run, shrieking and laughing, through a sprinkler.

It’s beautiful.

I want to be anywhere else.

Libby doesn’t follow me. I didn’t expect her to.

In thirty years, I’ve never walked away from a fight with her—she’s been the one I’ve had to chase, when things were bad at school or she’d gone through a particularly rough breakup in those dark, endless years after we lost Mom.

I’m the one who follows.

I just never thought I’d have to follow her so far, or lose her entirely.

It’s happening again. The stinging in my nose, the spasms in my chest. My vision blurs until the flower bushes go bleary and the kids’ laughter warbles.

I head toward home.

Not home, I think.

My next thought is so much worse: What home?

It reverberates through me, rings of panic rippling outward. Home has always been Mom and Libby and me.

Home is striped blue-and-white towels on the hot sand at Coney Island. It’s the tequila bar where I took Libby after her exams, to dance all night. Coffee and croissants in Prospect Park.

It’s falling asleep on the train despite the mariachi band playing ten feet away, Charlie Lastra digging through his wallet across the car.

Only it’s not that anymore. Because without Mom and Libby, there is no home.

So I’m not running toward anything. Just away.

Until I see Goode Books down the block, lights glowing against the bruised purple sky.

The bells chime as I step inside, and Charlie looks up from the LOCAL BESTSELLERS, his surprise morphing into concern.

“I know you’re working.” My voice comes out throttled. “I just wanted to be somewhere . . .”

Safe?

Familiar?

Comfortable?

“Near you.”

He crosses to me in two strides. “What happened?”

I try to answer. It feels like fishing line’s wound around my airway.

Charlie pulls me into his chest, arms coiling around me.

“Libby’s moving.” I have to whisper to get the words out. “She’s moving here. That’s what this was all about.” The rest wrenches upward: “I’m going to be alone.”

“You’re not alone.” He draws back, touching my jaw, his eyes almost vicious in their intensity. “You’re not, and you won’t be.”

Libby. Bea. Tala. Brendan.

It knocks the wind out of me.

Christmas.

New Year’s.

Field trips to the natural history museum.

Sitting in front of a huge Jackson Pollock at the Met, asking the girls to please make us rich beyond our wildest dreams with their finger painting.

Laughing at Serendipity until whipped cream comes out our noses. All the memories, and all those future moments, all together, with Mom’s memory hovering close.

It’s slipping away.

The stinging in my nose. The weight in my chest. The pressure behind my eyes.

Charlie tugs me back into the office. “I’ve got you, Nora,” he promises quietly. “I’ve got you, okay?”

It’s like a dam has broken. I hear the strangled sound in my throat and my shoulders start to shake, and then I’m crying.

Tidal waves hitting me, every word obliterated under a current so powerful there’s no fighting it.

I’m dragged under.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, rocking me back and forth. “You’re not alone,” he promises, and beneath it I hear the unsaid rest: I’m here.

For now, I think.

Because nothing — not the beautiful and not the terrible — lasts.