Surprise Me

by Deena Goldstone

  She glances into the rearview mirror to see Avi eating his breakfast in a sort of rhythm of his own making—one nibble of apple, one bite of the granola bar, one nibble of apple. His attention is focused on whatever game he has made up for himself, and he doesn’t look up to meet her eyes. He’s never bored, her son. In that way he carries his father with him, even though he looks like Isabelle: long-limbed (he will be tall) and brown-eyed, with a cap of straight blond hair rapidly darkening to match Isabelle’s color.

  Art is waiting for them as they pull up at 8:25, late again. Seeing him standing calmly beside the wooden gate painted with stars and the moon—a tall, angular man with a strong profile and a shock of gray hair—Isabelle marvels yet again at how the perpetual motion that is Casey came from the steady serenity that is Art.

  “Just making sure you guys got here all right,” Art says with no judgment in his voice as he opens the door of the Jeep. Quickly he unbuckles Avi from his car seat, swings him up and out of the car, and deposits him safely on the sidewalk. “My man!”

  “We had a shorts crisis,” Isabelle tells him from the driver’s seat.

  “Mommy made these with scissors!” Avi is bursting with his news. “Come on, Grandpa!” he yells as he runs up the cement path, more painted stars leading the way like stepping-stones to the front door of heaven. “School’s started already!”

  “Sorry,” Isabelle mumbles. “The mornings get away from me.”

  “No worries.”

  “Have you heard from him?” She knows she shouldn’t ask. Art would tell her if Casey had contacted them, but she can’t stop herself.

  “Papua New Guinea, you know.” Art shakes his head. “Halfway around the world. The earthquake and then the tsunami…”

  “All the thousands of people left homeless and all the villages washed out to sea and all the little old people floating dead and bloated in the water like guppies at the top of a fish tank.”

  “Isabelle,” Art says kindly, in the gentlest of admonitions.

  And she stops. She knows her comments offend Art’s Quaker sensibility, but she’s so deep-down mad at Casey, and Art and Louisa are the closest things she has to him.

  “He’ll call when he can, I know,” she backtracks now. She appreciates Art, loves him really, for stepping in and being present every day for Avi, and so there are conventions they must observe: no criticisms of Casey, who’s doing God’s work; no airing of her own trouble with it, because her unhappiness tests Art’s loyalties. She smiles now and Art smiles back. Better this way; harmony is restored.

  On to Full of Beans on College, where amid the hordes of Berkeley students, who look twelve to her—so young, when was she that young?—she gets a large cappuccino and a bagel. And then on to Noah’s Ark, where she usually opens the bookstore by nine o’clock.

  It’s too early to have many customers. She’s told Meir that—nobody comes in until almost eleven—but he likes the idea that the store is open at nine just in case, and Isabelle manages to do that for him most days. He arrives after lunch, and that is Isabelle’s favorite time of the day. They sit behind the counter together and talk about the books they have read or what they hope to be reading, or Isabelle will tell an Avi story because Meir is such an eager audience. Or he will tell Isabelle what happened in the store after she left the day before or what he’s planning to cook for dinner. Anything and everything is fair game for conversation, except Casey, because Isabelle already knows without a word being spoken how Meir feels about that subject.

  As they talk Meir eats junk food—Doritos and Mallomars, most days—and Isabelle pours one cup of coffee after another from the Mr. Coffee they keep going on the counter. Each tells the other to take it easy on their vice of choice, but neither acts on the suggestion, their conversations too engrossing to pay much attention to curbing appetites.

  Yesterday during a midafternoon lull, while they were sitting at the front counter on their tall stools, Isabelle relayed the conversation she had had with Deepti about Avi’s night terrors.

  “It’s a neurological condition, fairly common, that will resolve itself as he grows.”

  “That’s a relief.” In his heart of hearts, Meir claims some small familial connection with Avi—an older uncle or a surrogate grandfather—although he would never presume to voice it.

  “A huge one.”

  “You guys got used textbooks?” a Berkeley student, long hair tied in a ponytail, wearing sandals, calls from the half-open front door, not willing to commit to coming in if the answer is no.

  “Back wall.” Meir points as he tells him, and the kid saunters in.

  “We were sitting on the porch last night as we were talking,” Isabelle begins again. She has an agenda here. Meir can feel it. “It’s quiet on our street, you know.”

  “I do.”

  “And the only sound was the television going in your sister’s half of the house.”

  “Isabelle…” he says in warning. Meir knows where this is heading and doesn’t like the destination, but Isabelle plows ahead.

  “She falls asleep in that BarcaLounger every night, Meir, all alone in there, watching one stupid television program after another. Nobody visits. I hardly ever hear the phone ring—”

  And a customer stops them, bringing a Moroccan cookbook up to the counter, which Meir rings up.

  “Do you carry any new books at all?” the woman asks. “I’m looking for Summer Sisters by Judy Blume.”

  Meir and Isabelle look at each other. This has been an ongoing debate for years; she thinks Meir should expand their inventory and he is reluctant to make any change.

  “It’s on the Times bestseller list!” the customer adds, as if she’s announcing the Nobel Prize. “She’s written an adult novel. Interesting, don’t you think?”

  Bestseller list? Judy Blume? What does Meir know about the bestsellers, or current authors? The past is where he is comfortable.

  “We’re thinking about expanding into that area,” Isabelle says pointedly, her eyes on Meir.

  “Yes,” he says, “we’re thinking about it.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful! Then I could get everything I need right here!” She takes her used cookbook, slips it into her cloth bag.

  “Thank you for coming in,” Meir and Isabelle say in unison, and smile at each other. “She’s making me redundant,” he adds, pleased nonetheless.

  And their customer, with her heavy gray braid swinging across her back, pushes open the front door, the welcome bell jingling as she passes through, and is gone.

  “Popular fiction!” Meir says with a tinge of horror, but Isabelle is not to be derailed. She picks up their previous conversation right where they left off.

  “Why don’t you just pick up the phone and call her?” She is fed up with this brother-sister feud.

  “Call Fanny?!”

  “Or come over. I’ll make dinner for the three of us—you, me, and Fanny.”

  “Oh, heavens, no! She’s the most disagreeable of women. I don’t even want to talk to her—why would I want to eat with her?”

  “She’s your sister.”

  “An accident of birth I try to ignore.”

  “Meir!”

  “When was the last time you called your mother?”

  “That’s a completely different situation. She stopped talking to me.”

  “Bingo!”

  “But Fanny is all alone.”

  Meir shrugs.

  “What is it about Jewish families?” Isabelle asks sincerely. “There’s always a feud somewhere.”

  “At least one a generation.”

  “An uncle who hasn’t talked to his brother in forty years, a cousin who’s disowned a son for some long-forgotten transgression. Why do we hold such grudges?”

  Meir shakes his head at the vagaries of family. “You can’t tell the heart whom to love, I guess.” He looks longingly at Isabelle, whose back is turned as she rings up another customer’s purchase. “It goes its own way, however in
convenient.”

  This morning Isabelle takes her customary place behind the front counter, alone until the afternoon. She spreads cream cheese on her bagel, takes another large shot of caffeine—oh, if only she could mainline the stuff—and opens her laptop. And there it is. A response from Daniel.

  Isabelle,

  What happened to Melanie? Are you writing?

  Daniel

  That’s it. That’s all. Not How nice it is to hear from you after all these years or Tell me about your son or any other pleasantry. No, he cuts to the chase. Well, that’s Daniel, isn’t it? When has he ever made small talk? Should she tell him the truth? Will he disown her? Be disgusted with her lack of dedication? But then she remembers what Stefan told her that morning in Lathrop Hall when she was waiting outside Daniel’s office with cappuccinos: He’s got writer’s block, you know. He can’t help himself, so good luck with his helping you.

  Maybe there will be some compassion there for her lack of productivity. Maybe…She deliberates, but in the end she answers Daniel because she wants him back in her life, however peripherally. And she answers honestly, because there has always been that between them—honesty—and she honors it, however difficult.

  Daniel,

  Sometimes I write a little. But not very often and never about Melanie. She is an outlaw and I shop at the co-op, stack books during the day, and play Chutes and Ladders. How can I begin to understand Melanie?

  My son often wakes up screaming at night so I don’t sleep much now. It’s called “night terrors” and it will pass as he gets older, but right now there’s always the possibility that this night will be the one. And so I stay awake and wait.

  It feels like I’m on watch, and writing feels to me like disappearing into another world, and so they are in conflict. Right now it has to be that I am in this world, our world, with my son. He’s only three.

  Isabelle

  —

  DANIEL HAS COME BACK TO BEV’S for lunch. He couldn’t stay away. He needs the Internet access. He needs to see if Isabelle has answered his question—Are you writing? And she has! With a hunger that animates him, he reads her answer. Ah, her life is all about her son. He knows what to say. He writes:

  Isabelle,

  Having spent the past several years with my son—my clueless, hopeless, unhappy son—I realize I sacrificed him to my ambition to write. It’s a loss I mourn every day.

  I know you will do better with your son.

  Daniel

  Daniel,

  Are you telling me not to write?

  Isabelle

  Isabelle,

  Of course not. Just not to be stupid about it the way I was. Selfish. Heedless. Unconscious, really, I now see.

  But I know you won’t be. You’re made of better stuff.

  Daniel

  Isabelle reads that last e-mail between customers. Oh, Daniel, I am not. Look at what I did—got pregnant when I didn’t want to, tied myself to a man who has no need of home, who flees into danger rather than away from it.

  But she writes none of that to Daniel. If she puts it on paper, then it’s tangible and she’ll be forced to face it. If she doesn’t actually say it—to Daniel or Deepti (who already knows it, Isabelle suspects) or to Meir (who is waiting for her to say something along those lines, she is sure)—then there’s still hope that one day Casey will tire of this life, one day he will want them, his small family, more than he wants to fly off to Mongolia.

  Instead she writes:

  Daniel,

  I think you have a completely skewed idea of who I really am. You remember that eager, hopeful, yearning student who knocked on your door many years ago, the one who blossomed because you believed in her dream to write.

  But something happened to that girl.

  Isabelle

  Daniel answers her immediately.

  Isabelle,

  What happened?

  Daniel

  And alone in Noah’s Ark—no customers at the moment, Meir’s presence several hours away—Isabelle ponders Daniel’s question. How to explain what has happened? She starts typing without thinking, without allowing her better judgment to stop her.

  Daniel,

  It’s not just Avi’s birth, although that changed everything. Being a mother shifts all the priorities. (I can hear you saying, Good, that’s what I didn’t do with my son.)

  It’s that I took a risk. I became another person for a short while. I let myself love Casey without restraint. I refused to be cautious. I embraced the moment in a way I was brought up to avoid. I dared to believe life could be glorious.

  And I was proven wrong. That’s why it’s so hard for me to write. It takes a leap of faith, and I no longer believe I can do it.

  Isabelle

  Isabelle hits Send and stares at all the shelves and shelves of books that other people have managed to write, despite their life conditions, despite their bad choices, despite their doubts, and she knows somewhere deep inside her that she’s trying to explain away her most basic flaw: that she’s a coward.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The main street of Winnock consists of a stretch of red brick buildings three stories high, leaning shoulder to shoulder as if holding each other up, positioned on either side of the two-lane road that takes people into and out of the small town. Traditional stores, rooted in Winnock for generations, are mixed with shiny new boutiques which cater to the weekenders up from Boston and other Massachusetts cities.

  On the east side of the street, in a line, are seven shops. First is Le Breton’s Gourmet Foods, open just a year; then Better Living Realtors, and Sewell’s Pharmacy with its white bead-board facade nailed over the original brick and a front window packed with ace bandages, stomach remedies, and blood pressure monitors. Next is Bev’s Bakery, painted a cornflower blue as a welcome call, and then the dusty, rarely open Antiques and Collectibles, the Granite State Diner with its red neon sign, and finally, on the end, Chatterton’s Ice Cream Parlor, where the teenagers from Winnock and surrounding towns hang out, clogging up the sidewalk and adjacent parking lot.

  Six stores line the west side of the road: first a bookstore, Leighton’s, recently opened, to Daniel’s delight, which sits directly across from the gourmet shop, then Don & Tom’s Hardware, in operation since before World War II and stocking everything from drill bits to Tupperware. Bike-orama is next in line—sales and service—the Winnock Arts & Crafts Gallery, the post office, and, at the end of the block, a small local grocery, owned by Gordon Tibbett, which caters to those families who would never buy the foie gras or paper-thin prosciutto or loquats flown in from the Caribbean that line Le Breton’s shelves.

  The town is just the right size for Daniel. Now he never has to contend with crowds or traffic or unwanted intrusions on his private space. Leaving people alone is an art form here in Winnock, universally practiced. How fitting, Daniel thinks, that Alina, with her unerring instinct for solitude, found her way here.

  What he didn’t expect is that he would be the beneficiary of that decision. At first he didn’t see the isolation as an asset. When Alina pointed out the road into town and told him he’d have to walk the two miles, Daniel felt it as an impossibility. All that open space. Just the thought of it set his heart racing.

  But what were his choices? If he wanted to eat, he had to find a way to get into Winnock and buy food. One option was to ask Alina to drive him, but she had made it very clear that she was far too busy to be concerned with his life. “You’ll have to fend for yourself” was a blunt and unambiguous message, exactly what his daughter must have felt decades before, Daniel understood, when he abruptly moved out of the family house and his children’s lives.

  Alina had made it quite clear that she wasn’t inclined to help him out in any way. He could ask again. He could explain about his condition, but he had just enough of a shred of dignity left not to plead for mercy.

  And so that left the only other option: walking into town on his own.

  That firs
t day, that first attempt, felt to Daniel like he was walking to his own execution, even as he knew how ridiculous he was being. What was being asked of him but putting one foot in front of the other along a perfectly delineated path? His rational mind tried to rein in his rampaging anxiety, with no success.

  His heartbeat ricocheted into overdrive as soon as he set out. He was immediately sweating and felt dizzy and breathless and had to sit down twice on the blacktop with his head between his knees because he was sure he was going to pass out on this desolate road with nothing beyond it but vast fields of grasses and chaotic wildflowers. How glad he was that there was no one to witness his foolishness, his crippling inadequacy.

  But then the road dipped into a large section of woods, and once inside the dense trees—blue spruce and fir trees which towered up to the sky and shut out the sunlight, maple and oak trees whose green leaves shaded and cooled the air—things got a little better. Daniel felt sheltered by the trees. Protected somehow, given a respite from the open space before and after. It astonished him that he was outside a building and yet his rapid heartbeat and ragged breathing had begun to ease a bit.

  He made it into town that first day, exhausted from the physical exertion and the emotional distress, and ashamed. It wasn’t a walk he wanted to repeat, and yet he had to, and each time the woods provided the oasis he needed to gather himself, to continue on. An astonishment.

  Over the weeks and months, the imperative to buy food to keep his body alive slowly worked to bring his spirit alive. He began to sing as he walked. At first it was a hedge against his rising panic, then it became a necessary component for the whole enterprise. He walked and he sang to himself, songs from his youth chosen for their appropriateness or irony, depending on his mood—Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never,” Dinah Washington’s “What a Difference a Day Makes,” Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely.” On particularly bad days, he would make himself sing out “We Shall Overcome,” even though he felt it was some kind of blasphemy.