The lady sitting next to me on the plane reminded me of her. I thought about what she had said to me about homecomings. I once edited a book by an author who had fought in the infantry during the Vietnam War. The book shared his emotional journey of going back to see the places where he had served. There was now a McDonald’s where there had been an intense firefight and he’d lost his leg and two of his best friends. I remember how his book made me feel. In some ways I felt the same anxious anticipation as Wendy slowly drove down my childhood street.
The house’s lights were off, leaving the home dark and still as if it had died along with my father. The yard’s only illumination came from the fingernail October moon and the vintage-style streetlamp that straddled the property line between my father’s home and the ivy-covered brick house to the south. In the dim light I could see that someone had already left a vase of flowers at the front door.
Wendy pulled into the driveway, put the car in park, and shut off the engine. The quiet of the moment struck me. Not just between us, but the whole new world. Downtown New York is never really quiet, something you sometimes forget until you’re away from it.
I suddenly wondered whether my father’s body was still inside. They wouldn’t have left it for me, would they? It was as if Wendy had read my mind. “He’s gone,” she said, adding, “the funeral home picked him up.”
I turned to her. “Was anyone with him when he died?”
“I was. And a nurse from hospice. He was in a lot of pain, so we had him on a morphine drip.” I could see tears again welling up in her eyes and, still looking away from me, she furtively brushed a tear from her cheek.
“I’ll get my luggage,” I said.
Wendy opened the hatch while I walked around and pulled out both bags and my carry-on. Wendy got out of the car and walked to the house’s side door and unlocked it using a key from her key chain. She propped open the door, then went to get the one suitcase I had left.
Passing over the threshold was like entering a time machine. I flipped on the kitchen lights then stepped up into the kitchen.
The first thing I noticed was the movement of the Black Forest cuckoo clock on the wall next to the refrigerator, its carved-wood pendulum swinging from side to side above the brass pinecone-shaped counterweights. The clock had transfixed me as a child. My father had brought it back from Germany, and it was unlike any other cuckoo clock I’d ever seen. It had three blue butterflies on its face that moved along with the rest of the clock’s mechanics. For the longest time I thought the butterflies were real. It was a constant in the magical thinking of my childhood.
Butterflies were a theme around our house. My father collected butterflies the way some people collect thimbles and little souvenir spoons. He gathered them in different varieties all around the house, from carved olive wood to plastic ornaments. When I was little, he told me they were “flying flowers” that had set themselves free from the constraints and stems of life. I believed him. I used to believe everything he said.
The house smelled antiseptic and dank, like a nursing home or some other place with sick people.
Wendy followed a little way behind me as I walked through the house. I passed through the kitchen to the small dining nook on the southwest corner of the house. There were the same oak table and chairs I had sat at with my cereal or Malt-O-Meal every day before school.
In one corner of the room was a glass menagerie case with porcelain figurines—soft-curved German Hummels and the larger, glossy Lladró pieces. Most of the sculptures were of butterflies or little statues of girls with butterflies. I remembered most of them from my childhood—especially one of a father holding his daughter’s hand. As I looked them over, there was only one I didn’t remember. It was a statue of a veiled bride holding a bouquet of roses. It seemed a little out of place in the collection. I wondered when he had purchased it.
I moved from the dining area to the front room. There were two couches in front of a tiled fireplace with a painted mantel and bronze lion-head andirons. There was a large framed picture of me above the fireplace. It was a picture I’d never seen before.
As I stood there, I remembered the flowers someone had left outside on the front porch. I went to get them and suddenly froze. Standing near the front door, I had a flashback of my father holding my mother down as she screamed for him to let her go. My heart started pounding heavily. That experience was indelibly branded on my mind and soul. It was the last time I saw my mother alive.
I fled the discomfort of the living room, down the short hallway that led to the bedrooms. I looked in the bathroom. The old tulip and windmill wallpaper had been stripped and painted over in a neutral taupe. The original black-and-white honeycomb floor tile remained. When I was seven years old I was fascinated by how much the tile looked like chicken coop wire, and one morning I began tracing between the lines with a Magic Marker, an act that earned me a rare spanking from my mother and a lengthy time-out.
The room next to the bathroom had been my parents’. The door was shut, which is how I remembered it. It was the home’s inner sanctum and I rarely went inside. I grasped the brass handle and opened the door. I was hit by a rush of cold air. The room was freezing.
“Why is it so cold in here?” I asked Wendy.
“I cracked the windows to air out the room,” she answered. “It smelled bad.”
I stepped farther inside. “This is where…” I didn’t finish.
After a moment she said, “I stripped the sheets and washed them. They’re in the dryer.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Wendy walked past me and shut the window on the far side of the room. On top of a mahogany chest of drawers was another Lladró, one of a young girl holding a bouquet of butterflies. It was next to a postcard-sized, silver-framed photograph with the word Yellowstone. The picture was of my father and me in front of Old Faithful. I was probably four years old at the time, and I was sitting on his shoulders watching the spout. The picture, the closeness, felt foreign to me.
I took a deep breath and turned back. I’d seen enough. I walked out of the room and across the hall to my old bedroom. I opened the door and flipped on the light. The light switch was still encased in a whimsical, nursery-tale plate that had somehow survived my childhood: Mary and her little lamb.
My room was, as my father said, exactly as I’d left it. The memories were thickest here.
The bed was a wooden poster bed with a princess canopy. As a thirteen-year-old, I had crawled under the bed on that horrible night my mother had fled our house. I woke later in my bed, to tense, emotional voices. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, my father’s sister was there. She was talking in low tones with my father, who then left the house. I remember hearing the side door slam and the angry roar of the car engine as he drove away. Most of all, I remember the overwhelming fear I felt as I wondered if he or my mother would ever come back.
I woke the next morning and jumped out of bed to see if my parents were there. All I found was my aunt sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. She looked as solemn and gray as I felt.
“Where’s my dad?” I asked.
“He’s still sleeping, honey,” she said. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, as if she’d cried all night.
“I’m here,” my father said, walking in behind me. He looked worse than my aunt. He said to me, “Noel, I need to tell you something.” He exhaled slowly, then said, “Come to my room.”
I followed him into his bedroom, wondering where my mother was. We both sat on the side of the unmade bed, my feet dangling above the floor. I remember watching him, his eyes welling with tears, wondering what awful thing would come from his mouth. It was worse than I’d imagined. Worse, maybe, than I could have imagined. The nightmare I hoped was ending had only begun. My mother, he told me, was dead. Nothing would ever be the same.
My dresser, which was glossy white like my bed, was covered with photographs of me, most of them taken when I was y
ounger. My father was a shutterbug back when people still took pictures with cameras. Most of the photos were of me dancing; I could trace the evolution of the costumes through the years, from a feathery yellow duck costume in my first dance class to a pink tutu and ballet slippers in my early teens. In one of the pictures I was wearing a middle school cap and gown with a gold honor-student stole.
I walked over to the closet and opened it. My high school clothes were still there. Even the stole was there. I once read that in Victorian etiquette, if a child were to die, the parents would persist with the daily routines of life as if the child were still there—even setting a plate at the dinner table for the deceased. That’s what my return felt like. My room was a mausoleum, a holding place for the dead remnants of my childhood and the beginning of the end of my family. The death of a home. I stepped out of the room, turning the light out as I went.
I found Wendy in the kitchen. She was crying again. When she could speak, she said, “He tried to hold on for you. His last words were ‘Tell Noel I’m sorry.’ ”
“Sorry for what?”
“Not being here for you.”
I leaned against the sink. “I never thought I’d make it back here.”
“Neither did your father.” At this the tone of her voice changed. “But he hoped. He always hoped.” She sighed loudly. “The man had a lot of misplaced hope.”
I couldn’t tell from her comment whether she was trying to shame me. There was a distance to her, but maybe it was just grief. She had just lost the person she’d spent more time with than anyone else. Someone she clearly cared about. In a way, the bookstore was their home.
“What will you do with the bookstore?” I asked Wendy.
“I’ll keep things running,” she said softly. “That’s what your father asked me to do until you decided what you wanted to do with it.”
I looked at her quizzically. “What I want to do with it?”
“I presume he meant he was leaving the bookstore to you.”
This was something I’d never considered. “He should have given it to you.”
“Blood is thicker than water.”
“Not always,” I said.
She frowned. “I’m going to go. I’ve got inventory in the morning.”
“You’re going in to work?”
“There’s a lot to be done.”
Her loyalty amazed me. “Thank you for picking me up tonight.”
“You’re welcome.” She paused slowly and looked around the room. There was something melancholy about her gaze, as if she were anticipating that she would never see this house again. I supposed there was a good chance she wouldn’t. Her gaze fell back on me. “Your father’s keys are in the drawer next to the refrigerator. The car keys, house keys, the back shed, everything.”
I wondered how she knew all this. “Thank you.”
“Also, I wrote down the Wi-Fi password. It’s that folded paper on top of the fridge.”
“Thank you,” I said again.
She turned and walked out. A minute after she left, her car still hadn’t started. I looked out the kitchen window to see her leaning against her steering wheel. It had started snowing, and thick flakes collected on her car. It was several more minutes before she started the engine, turned on the wipers, and backed out of the driveway. Welcome home.
I was startled by the cuckoo clock as it suddenly erupted in a fury of activity, the small cuckoo chirping twelve times while the butterflies’ wings flapped in unison.
“Hello, little bird,” I said. We had history, that bird and me. I used to stand beneath the clock and wait for its appearance.
Across from me was a framed quote on the wall:
Enjoy the little things in life for one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.
—Kurt Vonnegut
My father collected quotes, and he especially loved those from Vonnegut. I think his favorite Vonnegut quote was
To be is to do—Socrates
To do is to be—Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do—Sinatra
It was as if all the emotions I’d run from hadn’t really died but had existed in this timeless place, clinging to the joists and drywall, waiting for my return to resurface.
I went to my bedroom, lay back on the bed, and cried.
That night I had a dream. My father was standing by the side of my bed with my mother. They just stood there silently, holding hands, looking at me.
CHAPTER two
Take a good book to bed with you—books do not snore.
—Thea Dorn
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2015
I woke to the incessant clucking of the cuckoo. The room’s blinds were closed and were glowing against an already high sun. I leaned over and grabbed my phone from the nightstand to check the time. I had forgotten to charge it. It was dead.
I pulled back the sheets, got the charger from my backpack, and plugged in my phone, then went to the kitchen, looking up at the now-silent clock. It was noon. I’d slept for almost twelve hours.
I opened the cupboard where my father had once kept the coffee. I wasn’t surprised that it was there. My father was a man of habit. The location was the same, but his taste in coffee had changed. Like most Americans, he had gone from the ubiquitous grocery store brand to a more exotic blend—Kona Vanilla Macadamia Nut.
As I put the coffee on to brew, I heard my phone beep. I walked back to my room to see who had called. I had two text messages and four missed calls, two of them from local numbers I didn’t know. There were three voice mails. The first text was from Jerica Bradley, one of my more popular authors. It simply said:
What did you think of revision?? Tossed the LI
LI. Jerica’s abbreviation for “love interest.” Haven’t read it yet, I thought. Some of us need sleep.
The other text was from a number with an 801 area code, but there was no name attached.
Your father’s funeral will be this Saturday. I left you a phone message.
I went to my voice mail. The first message was from my roommate, Diana.
“Hey, Noel, it’s Diana. Hope your father is okay. Sorry to bother you during this, but Darrin is moving back in next Wednesday, so I’ve got to get your things out. When will you be back?”
I groaned and went to the next voice mail.
“Noel, this is Wendy. Your father’s funeral will be this Saturday at the church on Parleys Way or Boulevard, whatever they call it. It’s the one by the house.
“The viewing starts at nine a.m. and the funeral begins at eleven. I’ll have a place saved for you at the front of the chapel. Your father had his funeral planned out. He didn’t put you on the program but asked me to give you the chance if you wanted to participate. Call me at this number if you have any questions. Bye.”
It was just like my father to have his own funeral planned out. He was planful.
I was stuck here until Saturday. The good news was that there wouldn’t be many distractions, and I could actually get some work done without all the meetings my supervisor, Natasha, loved to pile on us. I had a lot of reading to do.
The last voice mail was from Jerica Bradley. Jerica had a crusty smoker’s voice that sounded chronically angry—which was basically true. She was one of those authors that every publisher wanted but no one wanted to work with. She was best kept in the basement writing books—not just so she could write more, but because her book signings usually left her readers offended and disillusioned. After meeting her, longtime fans would, out of principle, stop buying her books. Her torturous personality wasn’t just reserved for her readers and publishers. She once walked out of Today’s greenroom just twelve minutes before her appearance for the stated reason that she didn’t like their coffee selection, leaving me and her publicist, Hannah, to do damage control with the show’s producers. Not surprisingly, she hadn’t been invited back.
“Aaaah, Noel, it’s Jerica. Your girl told me you were out. I dropped off my manuscript. I think it’s good. Wh
at am I saying, I’m always good. Let me know when you’ve read it.”
Jerica was the last of my authors—maybe the last author in the world—who still delivered paper manuscripts. I had asked her many times, pleaded with her, to just email them to me, but she wouldn’t. I dialed her number. As usual, she answered on the first ring.
“Noel, honey, it’s me. Jerica.”
I know, I thought. I called you. “Good morning.”
“It’s afternoon, honey. Did you get my manuscript?”
“Not yet. I’m out of town. I haven’t been in the office since Monday night.”
“No, honey, that doesn’t work for me, I dropped it off yesterday morning with your girl. Where are you?”
“I’m in Utah.”
“Good Lord, what are you doing there?”
“My father passed away.”
“Oh. That’s a shame, isn’t it? So, when will you be back? I want to know what you think of the rewrite. I tossed William to the scrap pile. I never liked the man. I think the flow’s better. When do you get back?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “My father’s funeral is Saturday.”
“You won’t be back until Saturday? Do I really have to wait that long? Trust me, there’s nothing in Utah worth staying for.”
“No, I won’t be back until Sunday at the soonest. You know, you could always just email your manuscript to me and I’ll read it today.”
She groaned. “Oh, not that again. You know I don’t do that.”
“I’ve forgotten why that is.”
“It’s not how I do things. Just hurry back.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said.
“Good girl.”
Jerica always hung up without saying goodbye. And I always felt like a dog when she said “Good girl.” In fact, she’d say it to her dog and me in the same sentence. Her dog, Pinot, was a teacup Maltese poodle, which I was more familiar with than I’d like to be. Jerica lived in SoHo, so, on the rare occasions when she agreed to do a book tour, she did a fair number of signings in Manhattan. For local events it was customary for me to escort her, a responsibility I had fulfilled on more than a dozen unpleasant occasions. As I said earlier, she wasn’t the kind of author a publishing house liked to parade.
The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection Book 4) Page 2