The Bookshop at Water's End

by Patti Callahan Henry

  Guess chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese and Goldfish weren’t good enough for her kids even though I seemed to be alive and well after being fed that usual fare in my childhood.

  I tucked the list into the back pocket of the cutoff jean shorts that Mom would most definitely tell me were too short. Then I stopped because I saw one of my favorite things: a bookshop. It was small, tucked between a gift shop called All Things Seashell and a knitting store, Top Knot. It was a slim doorway, almost something I’d pass if I were in my usual state of rushing, which I wasn’t because what was there to rush to do here? Nothing. Nada.

  Title Wave, the sign read.

  Coastal Theme overload here. The bright blue awning yawned over the window where, in smaller print, was the subtitle Purveyor of Imagination. The window display held an antique desk covered in books. An old Underwood typewriter squatted in the middle of the desk with its little letter-stamped faces looking at me, and I couldn’t help but see a book hidden in the promise of typing.

  I left the cart outside and a blast of arctic air washed over me as I opened the door. A small bell jingled my arrival like some fairy announcement. I took a quick glance and saw that it wasn’t a well-organized store, but the disarray felt welcoming. Music played, a whisper in the background: “Fly Me to the Moon.” A long counter made of old shutters ran along the right side of the store and was covered in pamphlets, bookmarks and tiny reading lights—all the things people would buy without thinking as they were checking out.

  “Welcome,” a voice said, and I glanced around to spy an old woman behind the counter, her white hair fluffed into a cotton ball slightly dented on the right side. She wore red cat-eye reading glasses secured by a purple string that looped down by her chin and disappeared behind her neck. “Make yourself at home,” she said, but she squinted at me like she didn’t really see me as much as know I was there.

  “Thanks,” I said and wandered farther in, the door swishing shut behind me. I wanted to make myself at home. The store was bigger than it appeared from outside, with cozy white oversized chairs that just begged to be curled in and green metal café tables with matching chairs scattered around as if a party had just ended. There wasn’t a coffee bar or sweets shop. Just books stacked to the ceiling and wall to wall and piled on the floor.

  Suddenly I knew where I would spend the time hiding from Mom, Lainey and the kids: here. Right here.

  Books. They were the only place in the world where I could be Piper and not Piper at the same time. I didn’t have to leave myself, but I could be someone else entirely, without the hangover.

  I know. I know. I took Psych 101. It sounds like escape is my go-to thing in the world—to be drunk or to disappear into a story. And maybe it’s true, but I didn’t see it that way. I just didn’t, right then, exactly like being Piper Blankenship. I believed I would like myself again. Or I hoped I would. But I didn’t today.

  I wanted to unzip myself and let the real Piper out to go find another life. And I could do that in a story—a good one, anyway.

  I slipped into the fiction section and ran my hands along the book spines but didn’t choose one. Instead I went to the poetry section and picked out a Marjory Wentworth book. I checked my cell for Ryan again, which was ridiculous and slightly embarrassing, like I had a tic. I approached the checkout counter and the old lady with the white hair glanced up from her reading.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” She stared at me funny, like there was food on my face or toilet paper stuck on the bottom of my shoe and she didn’t know how to tell me.

  “I did find exactly what I was looking for. This is a great bookshop.”

  A little chitchat about this and that, and about how she knew my mom and Lainey when they were little girls, and I was back outside in the sweltering heat. I rolled the wagon for only a half block and then stopped under the yellow striped awning of the grocery store. The Market, it was called. At least something here wasn’t trying to be too-too cute.

  Hand-painted signs announced: Organic! Fresh! On the sidewalk, zinc buckets spilled over with fresh wildflowers—zinnia and thimbleweed, doll’s eyes and bellflower. I knew my wildflowers; Mom was obsessed (when Mom loved something she didn’t just love it, she obsessed). Then there was the fruit, plump and seductive, resting in large wooden crates. I lifted a peach and my fingers dented the skin. Juice trickled along the side of my hand and quickly, without thinking, I licked the side of my wrist. The sweetness of the fruit filled my mouth.

  “You planning on paying for that?” a deep voice asked.

  I peered up, embarrassed, at the face of the best-looking boy I’d seen in months—a rugged guy who looked like he’d just played a soccer game on the beach, all smiles. He was African American, and as beautiful as if he’d been carved from the air he misplaced. His dreadlocks were long enough to almost touch his shoulders, but not quite yet.

  “Honestly?” I said. “I was hoping to eat it before anyone noticed.”

  He laughed and then tried to appear serious. “Maybe I should call the very bored Watersend police on you, give them something to do.”

  “That’d be great,” I said. “Perfect way to start the summer.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Hey, I’m Fletch. And this is my parents’ place. You new here?”

  I noticed everything about him in one flash: His left front tooth was slightly crooked, slanted toward the middle. His T-shirt was a faded green and advertised a long-gone county fair. His face was clean shaven, and then, stunningly, there were his eyes, blue and so bright they seemed to be made of the sky.

  I looked away because I realized I was staring too hard and too long. “Yep. I’m new around here.” I faked a thick southern drawl. “Just for the summer.” I took a bite as if to prove my point. “Thank you for not arresting me. And your folks, too, I guess. I’ll pay for it with the groceries. God, this is a good peach.”

  “We know how to make ’em around here,” he said, imitating my fake accent but with a much better drawl. He jostled the bag to his other arm. “Let me know if you need any help.” He disappeared inside and I took another bite, allowed the juice to roll down my chin before I wiped it off with the back of my hand.

  I took inventory of my morning—the river coursing behind the house, the beach only steps away through a wildflower-strewn pathway, a bookshop and a market with fruit so fresh it burst from the skin. So far, not quite as crappy as I’d imagined. But there was still plenty of summer left.

  chapter 7

  BONNY BLANKENSHIP

  It was time to go. After all the planning and fixing and painting and packing, it was time. Piper was waiting for me in Watersend and Lainey would arrive in two days. I threw my suitcase on the bed and the corner of it smacked into a framed photo of last year’s family Christmas card. It was a card that portrayed the kind of holiday glee advertisers post on their websites to sell cards—that’s how family-idyllic we appeared. The frame tumbled facedown with a crunch, catching the edge of the nightstand and toppling onto the carpet.

  Christmas card framing—it was just one of our many traditions. We kept the card framed until the following year when a new one would be displayed after January first. If we took a photo today it would show me, once Charleston’s top ER doctor, brokenhearted and jobless, so consumed with panic attacks and anxiety that even a ringing phone sent me to deep breathing. A woman who often dreamed of the night Mr. Rohr died, although the patients changed into people I knew.

  Lucas? He certainly wouldn’t pose for the photo now that I’d finally told him I was leaving. I couldn’t give him the absolutes that he wanted—the bullet point plan—because all I knew was that I was going to Watersend for the summer, where I would wait to hear about the job in Atlanta. I couldn’t tell him anything after that, not because I was keeping it from him but because I had no idea at all. And Piper . . . well, she might be in the photo, but she would not be smili
ng. Definitely not smiling. Maybe we could add her campus police mug shot.

  That’s how, lickety-split, as my mother would have said, life changes.

  I packed while Lucas was on a business trip that wouldn’t bring him home until the next day. I’d told him about Atlanta, but that I might not have the job at all anymore. Meanwhile, I was headed to our rental in Watersend with our daughter until I knew the next steps we needed to take. A time-out. A reprieve from the pain. This news was received about as well as one could expect—meaning he ranted, gnashed his teeth, threatened to “clean us out” and not to allow Piper to go with me.

  He also believed I’d change my mind when I calmed down. “Don’t make a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion,” he’d said. As if any of this was temporary.

  The bedroom was in shambles. It occurred to me that we didn’t really know what was in our drawers until we threw that drawer across the room. Which was what he’d done as he’d packed for his trip. I hadn’t picked it up yet. In fact, I wasn’t planning on it.

  I wasn’t mad that he tossed his top dresser drawer across the room. I understood. But that didn’t mean I didn’t think it was a crappy thing to do. Vengeful. And I didn’t have much patience for vengeful from anyone else because I was punishing myself enough as it was.

  War zone as the bedroom was, it was still achingly familiar: Painted a pale blue with all-white linen bedding. Silver lamps and frames sat on the bedside tables where I’d placed them. A faded Aubusson rug covered the hardwood floors, and photos of our wedding and of our daughter at various stages of life hung on the walls. A candle, gardenia scented, now burned to the bottom of its glass container, was on the bedside table along with the endless pile of books I’d been meaning to read. When I allowed myself to dwell on the energy and time and effort I’d invested into making this home what it was for us, and then when I registered its undoing, it was enough to make me feel nauseous and free-falling, as if I were stuck on a thrill ride at a cheap carnival.

  Focus, I scolded myself, and I glanced at the packing list I’d made the night before in a fit of organization. But I couldn’t focus. I just wanted to get out of this house, a house I’d designed and built and decorated and thought I’d never want to leave.

  I tucked my folded shirts into the corner of the suitcase and had just grabbed a pile of shorts when I heard the chime that signaled the opening of the front door.

  God, I thought with a begging need, I know I don’t deserve it, but please let it be a friend.

  “Bonny?”

  It was Lucas. God was definitely not in the business of granting me any wishes.

  “Up here,” I called.

  His footsteps, the ones I’d heard for twenty-two years, sounded on the hardwood stairs. Each family member had a distinct footfall. Piper was light on her feet, almost like she was dancing. Lucas, he had a bad ankle and his steps were heavy and uneven. My stomach rose in fear. He was going to light into me again. How quickly, how very quickly, what had once caused me to smile—his approach—now sent the fight-or-flight adrenaline flowing. My throat constricted like someone had a stranglehold on my neck. I sat on the bed and waited. I held my own hands; wound them together in a knot.

  He threw the bedroom door back on its hinges and stood there with his hands balled into fists at his sides—a parody of the angry white male in his professional clothes and ruddy complexion turning ruddier.

  “You just left it like this?” He pointed at the cuff links, receipts, golf scorecards, loose change and socks scattered from rug to hardwood floor.

  “Yes.” In the past few years, I’d learned better than to say more than a word or two of defense, as it only enraged him more. I would let his accusations pass over me, water over rock.

  He shook his head in disapproval, which used to bring me to tears but now only made me want to throw the lamp at his head, which of course I wouldn’t do. He squinted as if I blinded him. He hated me—I’d deceived him, kept the truth of my leaving from him. He was both humiliated and hurt.

  “I’ll be gone in an hour. I’m so sorry,” I said for the uncountable time. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It was a mantra.

  And I was sorry.

  Lucas stomped to the dresser and opened it with such rough hands that the drawer popped out and landed on the carpet in a spew of T-shirts and boxers.

  “Fuck,” he cursed.

  I didn’t know him.

  Once, at a cocktail party, I’d heard a woman in a sparkling gold-beaded dress say, “You don’t really know your husband until you divorce your husband.”

  It had seemed inane, red wine nonsense. Of course you know the person you live with, I’d said. But that sparkling woman was right, because Lucas was like a raging animal now, and any approach caused harm.

  He whirled toward me, his face contorted. “I know I’ve said this before, Bonny, and I guess I’ll keep saying it until I believe it. But I can’t believe you’re doing this to our family.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. What could one more explanation possibly do? I’d tried so many times that I could bury us both in all the reasons. If words could have healed, if all the thousands and thousands of words we’d said could heal, they would have done so by now. If I could apply sentences as I did bandages and medicine in the emergency room, we would be well. But we weren’t. We were broken.

  “You have nothing to say?” He turned back to his dresser and opened the second drawer without spilling it this time.

  “I think I’ve said it all, Lucas. This is what you wanted all those times you were mad at me and you said you wanted out or when you were disappointed or frustrated. Now it’s here. I have no idea what to do or say now. I’m empty.”

  “I’m sure you are.” He turned to me again and pointed at my suitcase on the bed. “You’re running away. Can’t even stick around to face the hospital verdict or repair our life.”

  I twisted my wedding ring, which I hadn’t yet removed. “That’s not fair.” I shifted my eyes to his. “Lucas, I know you hate me. I know you’re angry. I know. But please, I’m begging you, don’t be so cruel. I have so little reserve. I can barely . . .”

  His body deflated as if he’d been blown up by the anger and then someone had opened the release valve. I watched as his face fell and his eyes filled with tears. Maybe the anger was better because the hurt that puddled in his eyes made me dizzy with shame and regret—these were the times I saw the hint of the man he used to be, the man I’d fallen in love with. I turned away.

  “Bonny.” His voice cracked with anger or sadness, I couldn’t tell which. Then he went for the jugular—not his disappointment, but my parents. “Your parents. Do you think they’d approve? They never wanted you to go back there.”

  “Their reasons aren’t my reasons, Lucas.”

  “You’re not being logical. You aren’t listening to reason,” he said. “You can’t start over without bringing the past with you. You can’t just throw it all away because you want something new. It’s juvenile, Bonny. And Percy, what does he want?”

  My brother, Percy—he lived in Austin, Texas, and coached high school football. He’d been so very young when we’d gone to the river house that his memories were nothing more than cloudy dreams. The house meant nothing to him beyond what monetary value he would gain when I sold it.

  “He doesn’t care, Lucas. You know that.”

  “Then why should you? Let me ask you something, Bonny.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He leaned forward and tapped his chin as if in some exaggerated courtroom gesture. “Were you fixing it up to sell it or to move there?”

  “What?”

  “If you were planning on taking a job I didn’t know about. And moving to Atlanta, which I didn’t know about. Were you lying about fixing that old piece of shit to sell or were you planning on going there all along?”

  �
�I’m still planning on selling it. Just like every other one of Dad’s rentals.” Even as I said it, feeling its rounded truth, I also wondered if underneath the truth there was a subtle desire to keep it. Why had I saved it for last?

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “I can see why you wouldn’t believe me. I get it, I didn’t tell you about Atlanta, but . . .” I glanced at the broken family photo, at his paraphernalia scattered on the floor. “Do you want to keep living this way? I don’t. I just don’t. I decided to leave when I applied for that job. And now I can’t stay, Lucas. Not with us this way, and I don’t want to sit here in this angry house waiting to find out if I killed a man. I don’t know what will happen . . . I’m going there to wait until I know more or find out about my job.”

  “God, I hate who we’ve become,” he said.

  “Me, too. That’s why I’m leaving.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Bonny.”

  “I didn’t either,” I said and forced myself to meet his eyes. “But I do now. And it’s done.”

  He came and sat next to me on the bed. Gus, our lopey terrier, slobbered and circled the room as if he knew something terrible might happen. I clicked my fingers and he came to sit next to me. I buried my fingers in the fur of his neck and scratched while we talked.

  “Tell me again exactly what you want,” he said.

  I’d told him so many times that I could have done it in my sleep. I could say it all backward. “I’m drowning, Lucas. I don’t want the old bitterness that has eaten away at our life. I want to find some balance. I want to continue to be a doctor, but I don’t yet know if I can or how I will or even where. And most importantly, I want to help Piper. She failed her freshman year and she has an obvious problem with her excessive partying. She can’t go back to school . . . We have to figure out what to do.”

  “And you think all of that will happen in a mythical childhood home.”