The Bookish Life of Nina Hill: The bookish read you need this summer!

by Abbi Waxman

  “Great,” said Nina. “But the camel?”

  Annabel shrugged. “It’s not mine. It’s here for the wedding.”

  “Was it invited?”

  “No,” said a voice behind her, and Nina turned to see Lili, looking resigned and amused. “It was sent in place of someone who was invited, but what I’m supposed to feed it, I have no idea. It came with a guy who backed it out of a horse box, handed me the rope, and said, ‘I’ll be back in three hours.’ ” She looked at Nina. “You saw the invite; the RSVP was yes or no, not yes, no, or send a camel.”

  The camel turned and regarded them thoughtfully, found them boring, and turned away again.

  “Well,” said Nina, looking around at the rugs and cushions. “It sort of goes with the theme. And at least it didn’t bring a plus one.”

  A tall man came over with two buckets of water, which he placed in front of the camel. Annabel’s little sister, Clare, was behind him.

  “Hi, Nina,” she said. “Did you meet the camel? Isn’t he lovely? They didn’t tell us his name, but I’m calling him Humpy Bogart. Did you know camels don’t actually store water in their humps, that they’re just big mounds of fat? Like boobs?” Behind her Lili covered her face and the tall man snorted.

  Nina nodded. “And did you know that they can drink up to forty gallons of water in one giant slurp?”

  The tall man frowned. “Maybe I should have brought bigger buckets.” He had an accent and smiled at Nina. “I’m sorry, my name is Edward. We haven’t been introduced.”

  “This is Nina,” said Clare. “She’s my guest. I invited her.”

  Edward nodded. “Lovely, so happy you’re here. Clare, you better find out where Nina’s sitting and show her to her . . . uh . . . rug.”

  Clare reached out and took Nina’s hand. “Come on, let’s look at the chart. The show will be starting soon.”

  Nina followed her. “But I still don’t understand about the camel.”

  “Me neither,” said the little girl, “but my mom said Aunty Rachel knows a lot of strange people all over the world, because she’s a smuggler of rare and beautiful things”—she ran that last part all together, so it sounded like rareandbeautifulthings—

  “and one of those people sent the camel.” She glanced up at Nina and made a face. “It’s not for keeping, though; it’s only for looking at.”

  “Bummer.”

  “You said it.” Clare paused and lowered her voice. “I’m thinking maybe the camel stays.” Nina could see the cogs turning.

  They reached the front of the meadow, where Clare tugged Nina up to a large display board. They’d passed dozens of people, all of whom were lolling, exactly as the bride had planned. So far, so good.

  Clare studied the board. “Where are you?” Nina, looking over her head, quickly spotted her name.

  “I’m on rug fourteen. With . . .”—she read out some names—“Mike and Angie, Eloise and Frances, and Frances and Michael.” She smiled at the little girl. “Two Franceses?”

  Clare nodded. “They’re easy to tell apart. One is bigger than the other.”

  “But if they’re both called Frances then I can use the same name for both, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Because they’re easy to tell apart.”

  There comes a point with young children, Nina had learned, where it was best to say OK and walk away.

  “It’s a good rug,” said Clare, like a maître d’ leading a guest to a special table. “They’re garden club people, apart from the other Frances, who’s a friend of my mom’s.”

  Nina arranged her features in a friendly expression, getting ready to be introduced to strangers. For some reason, she wasn’t feeling as anxious about it as usual. There was something about being outside that kind of gave you more room. Perhaps she should move into a tent.

  “Hi, Clare,” said a larger, older woman who was sitting on the rug Nina and Clare were clearly approaching. “I thought you were a bridesmaid.”

  “I am,” said Clare.

  “Well, shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

  “I am ready.”

  Both the lady and Nina looked at Clare, who was, Nina realized, wearing Peppa Pig pajamas with a long pink slip over the top. The kind of slip Elizabeth Taylor wore in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; the kind with lacy bits and straps.

  “And very nice you look, too,” said another woman, who looked vaguely familiar. “I bet that’s your favorite dress.”

  “It is,” beamed Clare, glad someone was on the ball this evening. She turned back to Nina. “These are the Franceseses.” She stumbled over the pronunciation, and tried again. “Francesssess. Franceses.” She sighed. “They have the same name.”

  Both women smiled. The older one reached up a hand. “I’m Frances from Gardening Club,” she said. “This is my wife, Eloise.” Another lady who looked pretty similar to her waved lazily.

  “And I’m Frances from school,” said the other one. “Don’t you work at Knight’s, on Larchmont?”

  “Yes,” said Nina, “I’m Nina Hill,” and she reached out and carefully shook both their hands.

  Frances-from-school beamed. “I’ve seen you there lots of times, of course. I live around the corner, and my kids and I are there at least once a week.”

  Nina recognized her now. In Nina’s head she was “nonfiction and parenting” because those were the books she bought, and her kids were (she thought hard, and placed them) young adult, early chapter and picture books, respectively. This Frances was the kind of woman who made you feel welcome, even if you were both in a strange situation. She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, which was an odd choice for a wedding, but the invitation had said “wear whatever you want.” Frances caught her looking and grinned.

  “I don’t know Rachel, the bride, very well, but I know Lili, and she assured me Rachel really didn’t give a fig what people wore. So I went with a clean version of what I wear every day, because it makes me comfortable.” She looked around. “And I guess I’m not the only one.”

  It was true. People were dressed in everything from cocktail dresses and black tie to, in at least one case Nina could see, footie pajamas. On an adult.

  Clare had already run off to do her bridesmaid thing, and presently a voice could be heard over a loudspeaker.

  “OK, people.” It was Lili. “We’re going to do this thing, so try and find a rug, yours preferably, but any is fine, and let’s get these folks married. Rachel has insisted that everyone stay on their butts while she walks through, because she says she intends to dawdle.”

  Frances leaned over. “Isn’t this fun? The camel was a lovely touch.”

  “I heard they spit,” muttered the other Frances. “Ten dollars someone gets it in the eye before the evening is out.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” said a man who was lounging on the other side of the rug, presumably Frances’s husband, Michael.

  But Nina wasn’t listening. She was looking at Rachel the bride, who was incredibly beautiful, wearing a vintage ’70s cream linen suit, and looking like a million bucks. She was making her way across the meadow, with Clare and Annabel behind her, wearing their favorite outfits and no shoes. Nina realized the haphazard arrangement of rugs was actually a way for Rachel to pass by each one on her way to the front, and people were handing her single flowers to make up into her bouquet. She was thanking them, greeting them, and even occasionally bending down to kiss people. It wasn’t the most formal wedding ceremony Nina had ever been to, but it was already memorable for its friendliness. At one point Rachel looked toward the front, where the bridegroom and best man were waiting.

  “I’m getting there, babe,” she called. “I just want to say hi before I’m too drunk to recognize anyone.”

  The bridegroom, who looked like he might already have had a few, waved his hand at her. “Take your time, Rach. We’ve got the rest of our lives.” Then he grinned at her, like an idiot.

  Next to him, the best man was talking to Lili, who was wi
ping tears from her cheeks and watching her sister and her daughters make their way across the grass. Then the best man turned to look at Rachel, too, and that was when Nina realized this wedding really wasn’t going to be business as usual, and not just because of the camel.

  The best man was Tom.

  The vows took quite a while, because they were wide-ranging. Nina’s favorite was a promise to always set up the coffee maker the night before, followed by a paired promise to never let them run out of half-and-half.

  Finally, the officiate said, “For their last vows, Rachel and Richard have asked to read the lyrics of their favorite song.”

  Rachel said, “Richard, we wrote our vows together, and they mean a lot to us. But we also know when someone else has put it better, so here goes.”

  She cleared her throat. “I’m never going to give you up.”

  He replied, “Never going to let you down.”

  She said, “Never going to run around and desert you.”

  Nina turned to Frances and raised an eyebrow.

  Frances shrugged. “It is a classic song of their childhood, I suppose.” They both watched as the happy couple finished up by promising never to tell lies or hurt each other, then Frances added, “The great philosopher Richard Astley knew a thing or two about commitment.”

  “He’s in the Guinness Book of World Records,” said Nina, unable to help herself. “His first eight singles reached the top ten in the UK; he’s the only male singer to do that. As far as I know, the record still stands.”

  Frances patted her arm. “Good to know.”

  Nina peered into the picnic basket and pulled out a packet of Pocky, those little biscuit sticks with chocolate on them. Again, a big improvement over chicken breast or mushroom vol-au-vents. There were sandwiches in the basket, and bread rolls, and cheese and fruit and enormous bars of chocolate. Tiny pastries in a tin. Meringues shaped like flowers.

  “What’s in the other basket?” she asked Frances.

  Frances lifted the lid, then turned and grinned at Nina. “It’s a cooler pretending to be a basket. It’s full of ice cream bars.”

  Every so often a waiter would come around with fresh drinks, and although Nina had switched to fizzy water after the toasts, she was feeling as buoyant as everyone else. The sun had gone down, strings of lights had come on, and it really was magical.

  Lili appeared and sat down on the rug next to her. “Is it the right Tom?” she asked, getting to the point.

  “Yes.” Nina nodded. “But I don’t really understand.”

  Lili hugged herself. “Well, when I looked up the team, I saw his name and thought it was entirely possible there was more than one Tom Byrnes in Los Angeles, right? I knew Richard had a brother named Tom, but he and I had never met, and you and I had never really met properly before that night. It was a long shot.”

  “Yeah,” said Nina. “Kind of unbelievable.”

  “And yet these things happen,” said Lili. “In my experience they happen more than you’d think. So I invited you to the wedding, and if it was supposed to be, then he would be the right one.” She shrugged and looked around. “Besides, there are lots of single men here because most of the people who work for Rachel are young guys who lift stuff, so if Tom wasn’t the right Tom then you still might meet someone nice.”

  “Clare said your sister was a smuggler?”

  Lili laughed. “She’s an importer of art and artifacts. She works with museums and private collectors, but one time when Clare was visiting her at work, Rach told her she was a smuggler, and then it was funnier to leave it like that.”

  “Let’s hope Clare doesn’t grow up to work for the IRS.”

  “Wash out your mouth,” said Lili, and got to her feet. “Have fun tonight. Tom seems very nice, and Richard is fantastic. We’re definitely improving the gene pool in the family by adding him.” She looked around. “Wait . . . where’s the camel?”

  It turned out Clare had the camel and was trying to persuade it to climb into the back of her mother’s car. It further turned out that camels are not easily persuaded, particularly if you want to fold them up like umbrellas and squeeze them into small spaces, so Clare wasn’t getting very far.

  Once she was separated from Humpy, under duress and with a lot of heated tears, she revealed she’d had four ice cream bars and two bags of gummy worms, and then threw up all over the back seat of the car. Nina offered to go hunt down a damp cloth and a roll of paper towels and headed off. While she was talking to a helpful waiter, Tom came up behind her.

  “Hey, Nina, fancy meeting you here.” He’d spotted her after the ceremony, but he’d had to go and pose for fifty thousand wedding photos, and it had taken him until now to come find her. “I’m not sure how you are here, I’ll be honest.” He blushed slightly. “I mean, I’m really glad to see you.” Smooth move, ex-lax, he thought.

  Nina had her arms full of paper towels, which was good because she could hand him a roll and explain the Clare–camel–gummy worm situation as an opening conversational topic. That way maybe he wouldn’t notice how flushed her cheeks were.

  “So, let me get this straight,” he said, as they crossed the grass. “You’re here at the invitation of Clare, my new sister-in-law’s niece, who has been overcome by sugar and attempted camel-napping, and we’re on our way to provide assistance.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” replied Nina. “Her older sister is one of the girls who was staring at you last week at the bookstore. She’s in my elementary book club.”

  “Wow, it’s a small world.”

  “No,” said Nina, spotting Lili and Clare still sitting on the ground by their car, the camel chomping the grass nearby. “It’s a very big world, but Larchmont is very small.”

  Clare was looking much better, so Tom led the camel back to its original spot while Nina helped clean up and Lili explained to Clare that no, she couldn’t have more ice cream now that she felt better. No, even though she’d made room by throwing up. No, even if it was probably the gummy worms that had caused the trouble. And no, she couldn’t have a camel.

  Tom and Nina decided it was probably best to back slowly away. Lili clearly had this under control.

  “Congratulations, by the way,” said Nina, as they meandered across the grass. People had started dancing now, in an area near the front, and many of the rugs were empty.

  He looked at her, puzzled.

  “On your brother’s wedding. Congratulations on your new sister. I don’t know her, but Lili is really nice. And her nieces, as you saw, are great.”

  Tom grinned. “I only met them myself very recently.”

  “Oh? Richard and Rachel haven’t known each other very long?”

  Tom shook his head. “No, they met last summer, although apparently Richard had seen her before and kind of fell in love at first sight. Then, when he spotted her again, he went for it.”

  “Wow. That’s . . . bold.”

  Tom shrugged. “That’s the Byrnes family for you. Overconfident. We’d rather try hard and fall on our faces than not try. It’s my mom’s fault; she’s insane.”

  Nina paused. “Actually insane, as in mentally ill, or mad as a hatter insane?”

  Tom laughed. “Well, I’m not a psychiatrist, but she’s definitely mad as a hatter. She likes to try lots of new things and get out there and do stuff. She skis, she skydives, she rides horses, she runs marathons.”

  Nina smiled but said, “She sounds exhausting.”

  Tom nodded. “She can be. Richard is like her, my sister, Amelia, is even more like her, and I’m a little bit like her. I’m not so adventurous.”

  Nina looked up at him. “And your dad?”

  Tom was watching where he walked, trying not to trip over any of the rugs. “I’m more like him. He’s . . . normal. He likes to watch my mom do all this stuff, and cheer her on, but not actually break his leg falling off things.”

  “Does she break her leg a lot?”

  Tom shook his head. “Not lately.�
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  They had wandered across the whole meadow now and stood watching the dancers.

  Tom turned to her. “Would you like to dance?”

  Nina shook her head. “I’m not a good dancer. I love music, but I get nervous and then I mess up.” As if I needed to underscore my lack of adventurousness, she thought.

  A slow song came on. “Girl Talk,” by Julie London.

  Tom smiled. “You can’t mess up a slow dance. Come on.”

  Nina shook her head but let herself be tugged onto the dance floor. “This is the most sexist song ever,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Tom, pulling her close and starting to dance. “It is, but follow me and don’t think about it.”

  “I can’t not think about it,” said Nina, although she was following his steps and enjoying the feeling of his arms around her waist. She’d had to put her arms around his waist, too, as he was too tall for her to hold him around his neck. “We chew the fat about our tresses and the neighbours’ fight . . . honestly.”

  “But her voice,” said Tom, bending his head so she could hear him over the music. “Her voice is the most beautiful thing in the world.”

  Nina smiled and looked up at him. “It is. She really did have the most . . .”

  And then he kissed her. Properly. And it was just as well he was holding her, because otherwise she might have lost her balance.

  Over on the side of the dance floor, Clare turned to her mom and held out her hand. “Told you!”

  Lili sighed and pulled a gummy worm from her pocket. “You win.”

  Clare chewed and watched Nina and Tom, who were still kissing. “I knew they were going to kiss. I could tell.”

  “How could you tell? You’re six.”

  “I watched you and Edward. People who are going to kiss do it with their eyes first.” Clare shrugged. “You can see it coming a mile off.”

  Tom and Nina pulled apart and looked at each other silently, and Clare held out her hand. “See, still kissing. Worm me.”