“I’m basically useless, aren’t I?”
“Why would you know how to divide lilies?” said Tommy. “Or prune out deadwood?”
“Pruning out deadwood sounds pretty straightforward.”
Dani was exhausting her.
“Here’s a job. Please go make a pot of tea and take it to Morty. He’ll like that. There’s a box of Lorna Doones in the cupboard over the back fridge. He loves those.”
“Lorna Doones?” Dani laughed.
“I know. Retro in the extreme. That’s Morty. Well, a part of Morty. The Burl Ives part, but don’t tell him I said that.”
For the next three hours, except when he passed her, carrying the assigned pot of tea and plate of cookies, Tommy did not see Dani. She took a bath, answered a few e-mails, and then, as darkness fell, the three of them drank feeble gin-and-tonics by a blazing fire.
On the short drive to dinner, Dani’s spirits seemed to have lifted. He told her a few of Jane’s work stories, the mysteries she solved about the speech afflictions children suffered—and almost always overcame.
But by the end of their meal, he was out of sorts again, critical of everything from the restaurant’s bread to the president’s policies in Afghanistan.
Maybe she’d been insensitive, talked too much about the trip she and Morty took to Hay-on-Wye the summer before, how ecstatic they were to visit a town where books, tumbling from the shelves of shop after shop, seemed to outnumber the stars in the sky. The musty tang of aging paper and ink pervaded even the streets, like a cologne. “Let’s bottle it,” Morty had suggested. “Call it…how do you say bookworm in French? Or Welsh!”
Had it seemed like gloating? Tommy had no idea if Dani and Jane longed to travel (he was right; she hardly knew the mother of her future niece or nephew), but still. Dani had a business to run and probably couldn’t be away for even a week.
She was about to ask him about the shop—knowing that she would be opening a valve to his venting—when he said, “Tommy, are you a lifer in this job of yours?”
She shrugged. “I suppose it’s my golden cage. But you know, it’s rarely boring. And honestly, I don’t miss the city all that much.”
“Yeah, but whose life are you living out here? Yours or his?”
“I love Morty. And his life—which is definitely his, not mine—is one I…enjoy sharing. Not sharing exactly, but…living alongside of.”
Dani shook his head. “You liked living alongside that relationship he had with that gigolo? That looked excruciating to me.”
Tommy was stunned. Her brother had met Soren once, maybe twice. She did remember inviting Dani to come out and stay overnight for one of the many dinner parties Morty and Soren had hosted in their early, happy days. Except that, really, the happiness wore thin even then; it was too dependent on passion—or on dependency itself. The parties gave their partnership a veneer, the reticent house transformed into a bright stage on which they could push back the rockier side of their relationship: the simmering contention and jealousy, the patent inequalities.
“That’s the past,” said Tommy as the waiter poured the last of the wine into her glass. She waved off his suggestion of another bottle. She poured the contents of her glass into Dani’s.
“But you stuck it out. Like for what, ten years?”
“Eight. Morty was on fire then. It was like being in the middle of a book that’s too good to put down. Sometimes it felt like Soren was an inspiration, a muse. Despite everything else.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Get what, Dani?”
“Why you’ve never wanted to go out and have a family of your own. Or just a circle of friends, Jesus! Mom and Dad were deluded in lots of ways, but you know what? When I think about those Saturday nights with Dad’s musician friends all crammed in the living room? Remember how thrilled he was when they found the Brooklyn house and they could entertain in that tiny back garden? Remember his awful beer-making phase? I felt sorry for him, but guess what? The guy knew how to be happy.” Dani laughed. “When I think about their social life, I’m kind of impressed. Jane and I are too busy for much time with friends. But we have them. We have friends.”
“Well, good for you,” said Tommy, feeling suddenly offended. Was he implying she didn’t know how to be happy? “I’m not living in a cave. We entertain. We travel. We go to the theater. I like my life tremendously.”
“ ‘We’? Doesn’t that kind of prove my point?” Dani leaned back in his chair and stared at her.
Tommy saw, for an instant, the hard-nosed little boy who wouldn’t leave the playground, who wrought mayhem at the library, her other home.
“Don’t judge me,” she said, pointedly pulling toward her the folder holding the check, which the waiter had glibly placed before Dani. She stopped herself from saying, I’m not the one who’s always struggling.
They walked silently to the car.
As she unlocked it, her brother gazed at her over the roof. “Look. I’m sorry. I just—” He sighed loudly. “It’s just a difficult time.”
“Don’t be scared about fatherhood,” said Tommy. “And don’t jump down my throat about how I know nothing. Not firsthand. But you’ll do it well. And one of us needs to pass on those Woody Guthrie genes, right?”
Dani smirked. “You’d have to be assuming they skip generations.”
She went to bed that night with a sense of relief; maybe they had worked something out, like a stubborn splinter.
On Sunday morning, she awoke to find that, once again, Dani had been up and already helped himself to coffee and toast. Morty would be sleeping in, so she assumed Dani was out for a walk. He had always needed exercise to keep himself calm. (In all likelihood, had he been a schoolboy now, he would have been diagnosed with ADHD. Morty was constantly fielding questions about “learning challenges” and childhood reading.)
Feeling restless—and because Dani was family—she decided to strip his bed and get a head start on laundry.
His open backpack lay on the blanket chest at the foot of the bed, and when Tommy pulled the covers off the bed, it flipped onto the floor—a corner of the quilt had been trapped beneath it—and spilled. Among the contents, she saw an antique book. She didn’t need to pick it up to recognize it. It was Morty’s rarest edition of David Copperfield, inscribed, with an elaborate sketch, by Dickens’s illustrator, Phiz.
For a moment, she stood without moving in the middle of the guest room, the quilt bundled loosely in her arms. The interior of the house was silent. Tree limbs, now bare, nudged the shingles above her head, a subtle creaking and scraping.
Abandoning the tangle of sheets, she carried the book downstairs. She set it, on a clean linen towel, in the center of the kitchen table. She waited, her back against the counter. At first to her dismay, and then to her perverse relief, Morty showed up before Dani. He spotted the book before he’d even had a chance to say good morning.
As usual, he was fully dressed; he wasn’t the type of artist who relished the luxury of nightwear worn well into the day, not even on weekends.
He looked from the book to Tommy. “Davy’s joining us for a spot of tea?”
“Don’t ask.”
Morty sat at the table and pulled the book toward him. Gently, he opened its front cover and turned its first few pages. He smiled at the whimsical drawing and fond note for which he had probably paid a small fortune.
“I found it in my brother’s bag. Upstairs.”
Morty sighed. “You were snooping?” He didn’t look up from the book, though he closed it.
“No.”
“Where is he?”
“Out somewhere.”
“Still a restless boy.”
“Morty.”
“What do you want me to say? It’s easy to see he’s in trouble of some kind.”
“Trouble?”
“You don’t see it?”
“Men act strange when they’re about to be fathers.”
“Disappointing.” Morty
sighed again. “But you know, I could just put it away—say nothing. We don’t invite him back too soon, but…Tommy, I have no energy for this sort of thing. I’m planning on another good day. I’m nailing swans. Those diabolically long necks.”
“Nailing swans?” She tried to laugh.
“Tommy, he’s your family, not mine.”
She didn’t know how to react. Was Morty being generous—or washing his hands of Dani? But Tommy was appalled. All over again, Dani was the misbehaving little brother handed off to her. She thought resentfully of the way he had praised their parents’ insular life at the restaurant the night before.
“I’ll be in the studio,” said Morty. Abruptly, without waiting for her to say anything more, he went out the back door. He left the book on the towel.
Tommy felt herself breaking down. She reached for her phone and called her brother’s cell. “Where are you?” Her voice shook.
“Walking. In the village. I picked up some doughnuts at that—”
“Please come back now.”
“You okay?”
“Just come back now.”
When he came into the kitchen, through the back door by which Morty had left, she took the bag from him, roughly, and pointed at the table. “This is the end of my trusting you, Dani.”
At first he said nothing. He sat at the table and crossed his arms. “Did you ever? Apparently you went through my stuff.”
“I did not.”
Whether or not he believed her, she didn’t care. She would make him get his things and she would drive him to the station.
“How do you know he didn’t loan it to me?”
“Oh, Dani. Come on.”
“He used me,” Dani said quietly. “And he’s used you. For years. He’s fucking used you up. I wish you could see what your life looks like from the outside.”
Tommy couldn’t stop herself from crying. “A whole lot better than your life.”
“My cue to leave, I guess.” He got up and started toward the dining room, the stairs beyond.
She blocked the door. “No. I’ll get your stuff. I’ll drive you to the station.”
“Tommy, listen to me. Someday—”
“No.” She hurried out of the room and up the two flights of stairs, nearly stumbling on the steeper flight to the attic. Angrily, she emptied the rest of the backpack onto the floor. Had he stolen anything else? He hadn’t.
She heard herself sobbing as she stuffed her brother’s scattered clothing into the pack. Forget whatever he’d left in the bathroom.
In the kitchen, she found him standing where she had left him.
He took the backpack. “You know what? I’ll walk to the station.” He looked sad now, not the least bit belligerent, but Tommy, her emotions shifting between rage and shame, was too confused to speak. Without waiting to see if she would, he left.
Morty didn’t come in for lunch that day. At dinner, he suggested they eat in front of a movie. They spoke a total of perhaps five sentences between their tense conversation over the stolen book and their parting for the night. She had no idea whether he was angry at Dani or disappointed in her—or maybe he was caught up in some private creative turmoil. The thing about living with an artist, she knew, was that an artist cannot leave work aside on a desk or in a briefcase. The mind is the desk, the soul or heart the briefcase.
Tommy stayed up later than usual. She answered the past two days’ requests for Morty’s presence at libraries, schools, and pro-literacy luncheons. All the while, she kept an eye on the tiny symbol in the dock that represented her personal inbox. Nothing. No note from Dani—or from anyone else.
Three weeks later, she drove Morty into the city, to speak at a school assembly. After dropping him off, she decided to drive past Dani’s shop. She hadn’t been there since the opening party, but she knew its location.
Or did she? Wasn’t this the corner? She couldn’t find a parking space, but she drove around the block three times. Had it vanished? Back at home, she looked up the number in her address book; when she called it, that robot woman scolded her for trying to reach an unreachable party.
—
Tie one on. Where the devil does that expression come from? Tie a what on what? A yellow ribbon on an old oak tree? A bell on a goat? An Easter bonnet on a tiger?
But that is what she’s gone and done: tied one on. All by herself. All by her lonesome. Linus looks concerned. He lies under the kitchen table, flat as a schnitzel, staring up at her dolefully.
Dolefully. Where did that word come from in her soggy brain? What can it mean to be full of dole? To have eaten too much canned pineapple?
Merry chuckles. I am chuckling, she thinks, which makes her chuckle even more. “Not to worry, Linus, not to worry,” she whispers in response to his heightened alarm. She starts to lean over to pet him but straightens up when she feels herself begin to topple.
She peers inside the refrigerator. She’d better have something to eat. Something to sponge up the entire bottle of Grüner Veltliner she’s consumed since talking with Benjamin. But nothing has changed since she last opened the door: not counting a dozen condiments, the buffet spread before her comprises a container of vanilla Greek yogurt, a takeout carton of cold sesame noodles, a slab of shrink-wrapped deli pound cake she wishes she hadn’t bought, and, in the bottom drawer, three withering scallions, half a box of cherry tomatoes, and several curls of molted onion skin.
Noodles and tomatoes it is. After that, she will probably be sick anyway.
He is, of course, getting married. He is, of course, having the baby. Ta-da, the package deal!
The worst part wasn’t the news; it was the delicate, tender tone he assumed to deliver it. He actually tried to spiral toward it, asking her about the museum, about Lear’s death, about Linus; she finally severed the small talk with “Benjamin? Can you please cut to the chase?”
Sigh. Disclosure one. Deep breath. Disclosure two.
“Oh!” Merry exclaimed, as if she could exhale all her self-pity, indignation, and regret in one audible gasp. “A shotgun wedding!”
When he said nothing, she apologized. She said she was glad to hear that he was settling into a new life. She was doing the same, she told him. She had some great leads on apartments in Park Slope (lie number one), she’d joined a book group (lie number two), and she was seeing a guy she’d met at a Bard alumni gathering (whopper of the century; in fact, there was no such thing as a Bard alumni gathering).
“Wow, Merry,” he said. “That’s great news, all of it.”
“And the museum is going up on schedule,” she said. (True!) “I’m going to be out-of-my-mind busy for the next year. In a good way. No complaints.” By then, a membrane of tears covered her entire lower face. She wiped her chin before the tears could fall onto her favorite I-am-both-smart-and-stylish dress, Italian raw silk in what she thought of as Tintoretto blue. She had worn it that day to the board meeting at which the architect and two of his minions had given them a progress report.
“Terrific, Merry. I’m so glad,” Benjamin said.
He asked about her mother, though Merry knew he couldn’t have cared less. By the end of the conversation, which lasted all of maybe seventeen minutes, they had managed to be more dishonest with each other than they’d been throughout the entire seven years of their marriage.
Merry wept openly and plaintively, no longer bothering to spare her dress from salt stains. After she was done crying, she fed Linus his dinner. Then she went to the fridge and took out the bottle of wine. It was a good one, a Sepp Moser in a gracefully tapered bottle. What was she saving it for?
She did take out a very nice piece of stemware. Not a wedding present but one of a pair of handblown purple glasses she’d bought at a craft fair in Tivoli, back when she was in grad school at Bard. She had been involved with that violinist at the conservatory. Fede, from Rome. She reasoned that it would be easy to see him go back there, that it would be impractical, imprudent, to aim toward marriage with someone else in
the arts. No, she would wait till she settled in the city and met a man with a much more solid professional future. Like a lawyer. Like Benjamin, whom she would meet a few years later at a dinner party, not on some Internet dating service. All so sensible.
Oh, where was Fede now? How stupid she’d been—and how cruel. Remembering how she had broken his heart was now doubly painful.
She intended to have a single glass of wine, then go around the corner for dinner at the new Vietnamese place. You could eat pho at the long bar. The bartender was young and genuinely kind. His major disappointments, if any, had yet to exert their battering effect on his sweetness.
But she made the mistake of checking her e-mail.
Sol, whose ominous phone message she had accidentally on purpose failed to answer. He’d been too busy at the presentation to take her aside.
I know you’ve been occupied with counsel, untangling the Lear mess. It’s worth a good frontal assault. Scare tactics. But I am skeptical about the c/b ratio. Lear is, in a way, the old guard. He hasn’t made a real splash since that futuristic trilogy. Stuart’s proposal of rededicating the core of the collection to 21st-century children’s books is growing on me, despite my age. Forward thinking, of which I approve. Let’s catch up tomorrow. I’ll have Lez call you to schedule a conference call, maybe pull in Stuart too.
Sol, alas, has a point about Lear. In the dozen years after the third Inseparables volume was published, he was as prolific as ever, and his books always burned up the lists, but he turned more often toward illustrating glossy books (an anthology of modern poetry; a clever historical showcase for teens called Lives of the Secular Saints) and less toward crafting the quirky stories that had made him a star. In brutal terms, he was no longer a maverick. But as much as Merry champions the vanguard, even the avant-garde, she is also a traditionalist; yes, a goddamned romantic. She wants her cake, and she wants her caviar, too.
Now, one soused and very unsensible hour later, she fills a tall glass with water. She takes it, along with her plate of noodles and tomatoes, back into the living room. She turns on the television. She hunts through Netflix for a thriller. “Thrill me,” she says aloud to the screen. “I dare you.”