One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

  “Your father was a handsome man.” She says “was” which means either she thinks my father is ugly now or she knows he is dead, and it can be assumed it is the latter because why would she think my father is ugly now?

  I nod. She nods.

  “Your mother was a lucky woman.”

  “Lie,” I say.

  Her eyes move quickly to look at mine then quickly move away again. She puts the picture back on the shelf and takes a deep breath. “You have my books?”

  I hand over what I have chosen for her: a videotape of the movie Animal House, a paperback (old but reissued) of Love Story, and the copy of Charlotte’s Web I took back from Nellie when her reading group was finished with it.

  Apple Templeton considers them.

  “I don’t have a VCR,” she says.

  “You can borrow one from a friend,” I suggest.

  “No one has a VCR,” she says. Then adds, “And I don’t have any friends here.”

  “Would you like a book on how to make a friend?”

  She squints like she is having trouble seeing. “Love Story?”

  “Love Story is a novel about two people who go to college in Boston”—it can be assumed, since he will not stay in Bourne, that River will return to Boston for college—“but then half of them die.”

  “Uh-huh.” She is smiling a little bit now. “And Charlotte’s Web? What does Charlotte’s Web have to do with writing college applications?”

  “I do not have a copy of The Elements of Style because The Elements of Style got sold when my library closed, but fifty percent of The Elements of Style authors wrote Charlotte’s Web.”

  “I suppose, but—”

  “In addition, Charlotte’s Web is about using writing to change your life and gain admission.”

  “To the county fair.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The county fair is not an institution of higher learning.”

  “Both have cotton candy,” I point out.

  “I don’t think that’s quite right.”

  “Then I have been misinformed,” I say.

  “Truth!” She grins like she made a joke.

  * * *

  On Apple’s way hurrying down the driveway, she encounters Mab hurrying up the driveway. Even though it is sunny out, Mab is carrying a green folder I have never seen before. When she spies and identifies Apple Templeton, she tries to stuff the folder in her jacket. It is too big, but Apple does not notice anyway. They both look away when they pass each other as if they do not like it when people look in their eyes. Mrs. Radcliffe likes to pretend that it is only me who does not like looking in people’s eyes and the rest of their faces, but it is more accurate to say lots of people do not like it. I have just been not looking too hard to see that I am not the only one.

  Three

  Love stories are only love stories if they go somewhere. Really, that’s true of all stories. They require a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rising action, climax, denouement. Conflicts sorted, strife overcome, or challenges succumbed to. Plot. Change. Lessons learned. That’s what makes a story. Otherwise it’s just a description. Otherwise it’s just conceit.

  Maybe the point is that’s true of all stories, but it’s most true of love stories. Boy meets girl and all that. They meet, one of them resists the inevitable, then finally they fall in love. They meet, encounter barriers, love anyway. They meet, encounter barriers, love then lose, love then die. Die then love, sometimes. Love stories often end badly, but their bad ends are what make them good stories.

  Unless nothing ever happens. They meet, but love was never really on the table. They meet but don’t imagine it will be requited or even expressed or even noticed. They meet and one of them loves and then nothing happens next. These are not stories.

  But they’re all the story I’ve got at the moment. If it’s unsatisfying to hear, imagine how unsatisfying it is to tell, to live. But there’s precedent. Think of courtly love. Dante met Beatrice when they were nine, so requited wasn’t on the table for them either, and after that he loved her from afar. He loved her more because he could only love her from afar. The question is why. What did he love about her if they never spoke, never joked together over sunset-colored spritzes, never shared a gelato on an early summer evening, never got close enough to find out if they had sexual chemistry? Modern readers assume she was hot, but modern readers are shallower than Dante. He says she made him a better person; she made him wholer; she made him worthy. He says she brought him closer to the divine and the eternal. Tell me that’s not better than popcorn and a movie and a make-out session in the backseat of a car. Not that I wouldn’t like to make out in the backseat of a car.

  If you look closer, if you go slowly, there can be story even without progress or plot, life in small change, like Dante and Beatrice, like fish swimming hard against the current just to stay where they are. They’re not getting anywhere, neither Dante nor the fish, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t effort, growth, triumph, and beautiful poetry. Trust me, stasis is challenging. And challenge is story.

  So maybe these are my love stories: Girl meets boy, loves him, and makes her sister save him. Girl meets boy, loves him, and makes her sister make him save her family. There’s story there, at least a little. It’s tragic, yes, but the best love stories are. I think you know that.

  And it’s not like I’m not in good company. I am surrounded by tragic love stories. In Bourne there are more than most, but it’s also probably true that anyone who sat in on as many therapy sessions as I do would conclude there are no happy endings.

  Chris Wohl this week is about as good as it gets, and that’s what I mean—sometimes anticlimax is less satisfying but better than the alternative. Sometimes quiet is just like joy. If you squint, you could mistake Chris and his cup of urine and disinclination to chat as cause for jubilation.

  “Leandra had an okay week so I had an okay week.” From the doorway, Chris sounds almost apologetic for not being an emotional wreck, but really he’s just sheepish about what he says next. “I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Nora says.

  “I know.”

  “Then sit down.”

  “But just in case.”

  “So talk about something else,” Nora suggests.

  “Next week, maybe. Probably,” Chris says, then winks at me. “Bye, Miracle Mirabel.”

  I wave and he leaves, and Nora smiles at me. “Speaking of miracles, looks like you and I have a whole unscheduled forty minutes to ourselves. What shall we do with it?” An unanswerable question—there is not a lot to do in Bourne, and anyway I have biochem homework (though it’s true I assigned it to myself)—so it is only luck, or maybe fate, that what happens next happens next.

  A knock on the doorframe and on the other side a woman neither Nora nor I have ever seen before. Which means she can only be one person.

  “Uh, hi. I’m not sure I’m in the right place.” She is little. Not just small. Slight. Winnowed. She has on vertiginous heels which somehow make her look shorter and a skirt straight as a drafting tool keeping her upright. Her face is so thin it’s concave in spots. She looks hungry and, with her movie-star makeup, like she’s overreacting—to this town and its empty afternoon and the weary week that yawns ahead. “I, um, I’d like to make an appointment?” A question at the end, that question being: Is this town so podunk your medical clinic is really just a house and doesn’t even have a receptionist? It is.

  “Sure.” Nora sits behind her computer, pulls up the scheduling tool. “With me or Dr. Lilly?”

  She blinks. “I wanted to make a”—her voice drops—“therapy appointment?”

  Nora looks at her screen. “I’m pretty booked next week. There’s a hole the Friday after next.” Her gaze catches on the woman’s eyes, filled suddenly with tears. Nora looks at me. I nod. “Or, as it happens, I have some time right now—”

  “Perfect,” the woman says, but without conviction,
like at the grocery store when they ask if paper is okay and should they put your receipt in the bag, as if there being a virtually unheard-of opening the moment she seeks it is to be expected, as if the world is nothing but automatic doors that slide silently apart before her as she glides through.

  “I usually take insurance information at the start of the first—” Nora begins, but is waved off before she can finish.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just pay out of pocket.”

  “And, of course, if you would feel more comfortable, my daughter can wait outside.” Nora gestures in my direction, but the woman, who has been struggling to keep her cool eyes away from mine, flicks them over me and concludes it is as if Nora has asked if she’s comfortable being overheard by a lamp in the corner. “Nothing leaves this room,” Nora assures her. But needn’t.

  The woman nods, unconcerned, at least about me. She comes into the room from the doorway and extends her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Apple Templeton.”

  I almost laugh. It’s such an ill-fitting name now that I’ve seen her. There is nothing flushed or full or natural about her. Maybe she’s like a Granny Smith—tart, acerbic, hard, and pallid. Or maybe her parents imagined someone different than she turned out to be which, best I can tell, seems to be the trick of parenting.

  “Nora Mitchell. Please, sit.”

  “Thank you. My apologies for my unfamiliarity with the appointment system. I’m new to town.”

  “I know,” Nora says.

  “You do?”

  “It’s a small town.”

  “It really is.” Apple looks glad to have some corroboration on this point. “In fact, I believe I just came from your house.”

  “You did?”

  “I needed to look through some…” she begins, then trails off, then begins again. “I needed a library. And it seems, in different ways, we’re both living in one. It’s just yours has all the books.”

  “Well,” Nora allows, “some of them.”

  “I was hoping to help my son aspire to what comes next. Your daughter … made some interesting choices.”

  “Which one?” Nora wonders, and it’s a good question actually.

  But Apple looks taken aback. “The librarian?”

  I exchange a smile with my mother. We can imagine exactly how interesting.

  “I’m not sure the materials she selected will be much help,” Apple says, “but I can see you don’t have a wealth of options here.”

  “That’s certainly true.” Entirely neutral. “Help with what?” Which was going to be my question as well, if probably not for the same reason.

  “Parenting’s so exhausting, you know?” Apple sighs. “River did not want to come here. Me neither, I said. But he’s been moody, secretive, short with me and his father. I thought perhaps a reminder that we won’t be here long might help.”

  “You’re leaving?” Not a flicker on her face of the jumping for joy she’d do now if she could.

  “As soon as we possibly, possibly can,” Apple says.

  “You’re not enjoying Bourne?” Nora asks gently.

  “It’s … hard.”

  “I bet. More so than you expected?”

  “I guess, though I couldn’t tell you why. None of it’s a surprise. It’s not like I didn’t know you all were…” She looks embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as I think she should look.

  “I understand,” Nora assures her.

  “And of course, to grossly understate it, it was not my choice to come.”

  “Why did you?”

  Apple shrugs. “Family. You know.”

  Nora smiles. She does know.

  “I begged him to say no to this move, but he never says no to his father. I refused to go, said we were staying in Boston, me and our son, and he could visit on the weekends if he liked, but he said our coming was the whole point. If he didn’t bring us, there was no point in going at all.”

  “Those feelings of anger and powerlessness can’t be helping ease the transition any,” Nora imagines.

  “No. To say the least. I’m just supposed to be understanding when he puts the company before his own wife? When he puts that family before this family? I’m supposed to just overlook the fact that he’s willing to risk our lives to—” She cuts herself off. Takes a breath. “And then there’s my own father if I’m being honest, speaking of family.” She pauses, waves that half thought away. “Anyway, I’m here. I wish I weren’t. And neither my son nor my husband is helping matters.”

  “If you told your husband how unhappy you are, what do you think he’d say?”

  “I have told him. He says I haven’t given it a chance. But some things you know right away, you know?”

  Nora nods. She knows. Then she says, “What if you just returned home? Took your son, left him a note, and went?”

  “He’d go ballistic.”

  “He might be angry at first,” Nora concedes, “but once he sees how much it means to you, don’t you think he might give in?”

  “Nathan never gives in,” says his wife.

  “If he knew how much his family was hurting,” Nora muses, “his wife and his son, I bet he’d nix his plans here and just go home.”

  Apple opens her mouth to reply, but Nora is on her feet suddenly, palm up and out like she wants Apple to wait on a busy street corner. “Actually, before you answer that question”—Nora puts the hand to her mouth and frowns with her whole face—“Apple, I’m concerned I might not be the right therapist for you.”

  River’s mother pales, which you wouldn’t imagine possible.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No, no, of course not. I’d be happy to work with you, but there’s something of a conflict of interest here.”

  “Why?”

  “Your business is Belsum Chemical, no?”

  “His family business, yes.”

  Nora takes a deep breath, then says gently, even apologetically, “There’s some awfully bad blood in this town between us and Belsum.”

  River’s mother puffs out her sunken cheeks. “Which I have to tell you, I never understood until I saw you with my own eyes. Man, you all have some legit complaints.”

  “We do.” Nora nods graciously.

  “But I’m on your side,” Apple protests. “You guys got screwed. I’d want out if I were you. Hell, I want out because of you. Not you specifically, you understand, but…”

  Nora nods again. No one looks at me.

  “Besides, do I have another option?”

  “It’s true I’m the only therapist in Bourne,” Nora admits, “and fifty percent of the medical professionals at this clinic, which is the only clinic in town, but there are a few folks I can recommend who see patients online. You’ll find wifi spotty in Bourne, but it may be better than the alternative.”

  “Which is you?”

  “Me and my conflict of interest, yes.”

  She considers. “I don’t mind. You—all of you—must hate my husband even more than I do.” Apple’s voice is full of awe. “This might be the best therapy I’ve ever had.”

  * * *

  Meeting Apple Templeton at last, listening to her complain about her husband, worry about her son, wish she could ditch this town and the family business and all of Belsum’s plans for here and for us, this would have been enough for one day.

  But on the way to the bar, Nora’s phone rings.

  She glances at the screen and then, because she is driving, puts it on speaker.

  “Russell?”

  “Nora.”

  A whole conversation right there. She already sounds panicked. He already sounds full. He has news—he’s never the one to call; it’s always her—he doesn’t want to tell her but must need her to know.

  “You okay?” She’s a little breathless.

  “Yeah. You?” Him too.

  “Yeah. Just leaving work and going to work.”

  “You driving?”

  “Yeah. You’re on speaker. Say hi to Mirabel.”<
br />
  “Hi, love,” he calls. I wave from the back, not that he can see, not that he expects me to answer otherwise. And then, “Hey Nora, do me a favor?”

  “Anything.” She’s aiming for breezy.

  “Pull over.”

  * * *

  She waits. She waits until everyone gets there. She says nothing as her guys file in. She takes their orders, which she needn’t because she knows them by heart, and serves them calm as ever. She waits until they’re into their second rounds. She does not let her face show fury or fear or even distraction. She does not weep or rend her robes, which are a stained button-down belonging to her dead husband over a pair of faded black leggings, or roll her eyes or raise her voice to either the heavens or the patrons themselves, her friends and compatriots and fellow survivors. She unearths great reserves of strength or, maybe, hunkers down for a long night coming and waits and eventually finally says, light as she’s able, “So. Russell called.”

  Their heads all rise like the bubbles in their beers. They do not need to ask, “Russell who?” They do not need to ask why he called or what he said.

  “Aww, Nora, honey,” Tom begins, but she raises a hand that says stop, that says she doesn’t want comforting or gentleness or her ass kissed, that she’ll cry or scream or probably both if they don’t just tell her quickly what they know they must.

  “The suit isn’t going anywhere,” Hobart says quietly. If she notices he’s used the present tense, I can’t tell.

  “These things take time.” She bites her lips. She interrupted, and she didn’t mean to. She is trying so hard to seem loose, cool.

  “Twenty years?”

  “It hasn’t been twenty years.”