by Sarah Jio
It’s after eight when I open my eyes the next morning. Last night was beautiful and awful at the same time. My left arm hurts from holding heavy trays of food at Antonio’s, and my heart hurts too. I can’t ignore the dull ache inside when I think about the look on Gavin’s face when Adrianna walked into the kitchen. We had shared a beautiful moment, but it slipped away. I’m not sure if I’m strong enough to wade through the murkiness of this complicated relationship. No matter what Gavin says, he and Adrianna still have unfinished business. That was written all over her face.
My phone rings a moment later. I don’t recognize the number, and I pick it up cautiously. “Hello?”
“June?” I know her voice instantly, and it paralyzes me. “June, you picked up. I’ve been trying to call you for so long. Mom says you’re in Seattle.”
Amy’s voice is nervous, hopeful.
“June,” she says, speaking to me as if I’m standing on the railing of a bridge and liable to jump at any moment, except we both know it’s the End Call button she’s most concerned about. “June, don’t hang up. Please forgive me, for everything. There’s something I need to—”
“Amy, it’s too late for that,” I say, pulling the phone away from my ear. I stare at it for a moment. I think of Ruby and Margaret and their sisters. I think of the ways they kept trying. Could I? Should I? I shake my head and hit the End Call button quickly, before I can reconsider. I don’t want to hear her apologies, or anything else. It doesn’t matter. Her words can’t change the past. If my work has taught me anything, it’s to move forward decisively. I made my decision about Amy years ago, and there’s no going back.
I sigh, and as much as I don’t want to think about Amy, my mind goes there anyway. Her voice has caused all sorts of memories and emotions to rise to the surface. And at once, I am ten. Amy is six. We’re at the bookstore. Ruby’s upstairs making sandwiches, and Amy and I are playing a game of Old Maid on the floor. I cheat and let her win, as I always do, and then I praise her card-playing skills.
“June?” she asks. “What’s an old maid?”
I scrunch my nose and think for a moment. “An old lady who doesn’t get married, I guess.”
“Like Ruby?” Amy asks.
“No,” I reply. Even though Ruby never got married, I’d never think of her as an old maid. I think of her life as carefully planned. If she wanted to get married, she would have. “No,” I say again. “Ruby’s not an old maid, in the same way Mom isn’t an old maid.”
Amy nods. “Mom has lots of boyfriends.”
It’s true, there is no shortage of men in Mom’s life, and yet, none of them ever stay. Amy’s father left when she was two weeks old, Mom said—and mine? Well, I asked her once and she frowned and said something vague like, “He didn’t want to be a father.”
“I wonder why Ruby never got married?” Amy asks curiously.
I shrug. “Maybe she didn’t want to. Not everyone wants the same things.”
“Well,” Amy continues, reaching for the doll beside her, “when I grow up, I’m going to marry a handsome prince and live in a castle.”
Amy and I suddenly notice a customer standing over us. A young woman. She has shoulder-length dark hair that’s swept back with a headband.
She kneels beside Amy. “My mother grew up to marry a man that was as wonderful as a prince. They lived in a house that looked like a castle.”
Amy beams at the woman, but I don’t trust her. She addresses us with familiarity, but we don’t know her. I remember something Ruby said once to me: “If anyone comes into the bookstore and asks you to leave with them, do not go. Come find me immediately.” It frightened me at first, but I’d recently seen a story on the TV news about a little girl taken from her home by masked men, and I figured that my aunt was probably just protecting us from kidnappers.
“Did she live happily ever after?” Amy asks eagerly. “Your mama?”
The woman eyes me carefully before turning back to Amy. “No,” she says. “No, someone ruined her fairy tale.”
The woman hands me an envelope. “Can you give this to Ruby?”
“OK,” I say cautiously.
I hear Ruby’s feet on the stairs. The woman rushes to a car waiting on the street before Ruby can get a glimpse of her.
“Who were you talking to?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know, but she asked me to give you this.”
Ruby takes the envelope and tucks it into the drawer of her desk. She doesn’t speak of the incident again.
A chime sounds from my laptop, jarring me back to the present. I see a new e-mail from May Magnuson, Victoria Magnuson’s daughter, and I open it quickly.
Dear June,
I’d like to speak to you, but we must do so in person. I’m traveling in Europe now, but will be back in a few days. Would you like to come to my home on Queen Anne? Contact my assistant, Kerry (copied here), for directions. There are a great many things we need to discuss.
Best, May
I don’t know what to make of the e-mail, but I immediately send a note back suggesting a meeting Tuesday and inquire about directions.
Later I go for a jog around the lake, but circle around on the side street to avoid passing Antonio’s. I don’t want to face Gavin, or Adrianna. Not yet. I don’t know if I have the heart to insert myself into their story. Their story. I shudder. How silly I was to think it was Gavin’s and mine.
It takes me a little while to find the first edition of The Little Island, but when I do, the letters are there, waiting for me.
May 9, 1946
Dear Ruby,
I am feeling better, thank you. After two weeks of being an invalid, I am out walking again. I can use my left arm, too, which comes in handy more than you’d ever expect (try tying your left hand behind your back for an hour, and you’ll experience my personal misery!). It amazes me how much we long for something we previously did not appreciate when it is gone.
Roberta and I went to the zoo! I admit to employing a bit of trickery to get her there. (I’m calling all of this Operation Sisterhood, I should add, and I’m having a great deal of fun coming up with ways to melt the ice between us.) We were walking along Sixtieth, and I suggested we take a shortcut to the café where she thought we’d be dining. And voilà, the entrance to the zoo just happened to be on the next block. I coaxed her into coming in with me, and you know, we ended up having a marvelous time. Side note: Just like it is impossible to feel grumpy with someone in the face of yellow tulips, it is also true of monkeys. I implore you to take Lucille to the zoo and have a heart-to-heart in front of the monkey cage. Just try it!
And now, on to the matter of this bookstore. Your bookstore! I must say, I am flabbergasted, if not wildly happy for you. My only regret is that I didn’t wire you the funds to open the shop before Anthony did. I do hate the idea of this man being so intertwined with your life and work; though, as you say, you do love him. And I need to trust you on this count.
It is difficult for me to trust men, especially men I am feeling romantic toward. I seem to have such abysmal judgment when it comes to reading their character. When I feel they are being honest, true, it usually turns out that they are not. For instance, Bill Gaston, a man I fell truly, madly, deeply in love with in Vinalhaven last summer, turned out to be married. When he left his wife, I thought it might be for me. But by the time I returned to the island the next season, he’d moved on to someone else, who, I might add, is about half my age.
I suppose the consolation prize I received was a long-standing love of Vinalhaven—and all of the Fox Islands area, for that matter. It’s hard to understand exactly why I am enamored with this place. The climate is harsh (and I often think of myself as the young Marguerite in Calico Bush as I tend to the grounds). And the locals, mostly lobster fishermen and a few retired quarry workers (the area once supplied granite to most of the post offices in the country), th
ink of me as quite an eccentric. Nevertheless, I’ve just purchased my first, and only, house here. For that reason, I have taken to calling it the Only House, as I have no interest in owning multiple dwellings. No matter how much wealth I accumulate, I abhor the idea of collecting homes like pieces of jewelry. I shall only have one home, and for me, it’s a simple cottage with small rooms and no modern utilities. My “boudoir” is outside in the back, where I’ve set up a pitcher for fresh water, a mirror, and an assortment of French milled soaps. I keep my butter and eggs in the well, where the ground temperature chills them, and, for convenience, I bury my wine bottles in the banks of the nearby rivers (you should have seen the look on my friends’ faces when we went out for a walk and stopped at the riverbank, where I pulled out a perfectly chilled bottle of chardonnay).
Sometimes I think of my life as a great big story. Each silly thing I do is a new paragraph. And each morning I turn to the next chapter. It’s fun to think of life that way, each day being an adventure of the grandest proportions. If I can give you any advice, my dear, and I am unworthy, at best, to be doling out such wisdom, I might just say this: Whenever you’re down on your luck, and when things aren’t going the way you like, remember that you are the author of your own story. You can write it any way you like, with anyone you choose. And it can be a beautiful story or a sad and tragic one. You get to pick.
Every time I see my story tinged with unfortunate events, even when such unfortunate events seem to simply happen to me, I remember that I am ultimately the author of my life. My dear friend, in many ways, you’ve helped me see that I can end a bad chapter early. I can start a new one. I can write myself a fur coat, and a lovely little hotel room in Paris with a view of the Seine.
And so can you. Just remember, all right? We are both authoresses.
Well, I am rambling on when I intended on packing this letter with all the important questions of your new venture, most important: May I come to do a book signing? It cheers me to think of paying you a visit, opening a bottle of champagne after the store closes (or perhaps before?), and toasting your good fortune.
Remember: monkeys.
With love,
MWB
May 15, 1946
Dear Brownie,
It cheers me greatly to know that you are on the mend. I can’t imagine not using one of my arms, just as I cannot imagine a world without you in it.
Monkeys! Oh, you are genius, indeed. I’m already dreaming up an Operation Sisterhood of my very own. I fear that things between us are more far gone than the troubles you describe with Roberta, but I do think it’s worth a go. If I could just get her to laugh more, to see me as she used to, to trust me again. I’ve never stopped loving her, and I suspect she feels the same about me. I just need to excavate those feelings. And the zoo sounds like the ideal place to do it. Come to think of it, I have a neighborhood friend who runs the primate cages at the Woodland Park Zoo here in Seattle. I wonder if he could arrange a private viewing?
Life in Seattle is well, very well. Though we will never marry, Anthony and I feel like a couple of newlyweds. It’s silly, I know, carrying on this way about a man who will never be my husband. But we share a bond, a love, that may not be matrimonial, but it is beautiful and, I feel, everlasting.
Anthony comes over every evening for supper. I cook for him in the little apartment over the bookshop. Last night I made trout and deviled eggs. I’m not much of a cook, but I’m trying, and Anthony is a dear. He’ll eat anything I make, even the horrible Swiss chard casserole I baked last week (or, more accurately, “Swiss charred casserole”).
I love our evenings together. We read by the fire, or we’ll shelve the books that have just come in. I can’t reach up to the top shelves, so he tucks them away (at least, until the new rolling ladders are installed next week).
When the clock strikes eight, though, our little world crumbles. He hasn’t stayed over yet, though I wish he would. He always goes home to Victoria.
I try to be understanding. I try to trust him, believe in him. And I do. Especially last night when he took me into his arms in the doorway of the shop and said, “You are the only woman I love, and the only woman I will ever love.” But it never gets easy seeing him walk out the door. And I always watch with tears in my eyes. Each night, he leaves our world to go to another, one I do not understand.
Well, enough of matters of the heart for a moment. I’m happy to report that Bluebird Books has officially opened its doors. Oh, Brownie, it is just the sort of store I’ve always envisioned. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases. A big roaring fire with two wingback chairs to warm yourself while reading. Anthony had a carpenter make little chairs for the children for story time, which I host every Wednesday morning at ten, and there’s a rocking chair for me.
It is late, and I’m about to turn the lights out and head upstairs. I almost hate to go out on a serious note, but the strangest things have been happening in the evenings. I saw the flash of a camera on the street yesterday, and then a car sped off. This afternoon, a man came into the shop. He was looking around in a way that seemed his intentions were other than looking for children’s books. I hate to sound paranoid, but this activity worries me. I hate to think that . . . Well, I don’t know what I’m getting at other than to say I’m a little put off by it all. I don’t want to worry Anthony, so I’ve decided not to mention it.
This world can be wonderful and worrisome at the same time, can’t it, Brownie?
Wish you were here. Yes, please come to Seattle. I will host the most lavish party for your reading.
With love,
Ruby
P.S. Thank you for what you wrote about being the authors of the stories of our lives. I have never heard anyone put such a thought into words so succinctly and so wisely. I shall remember it always, especially during the rainy season.
I set the letters in a little basket by Ruby’s bed, where I keep each pair I discover, and I think about why she might have selected these pages for me to read. She’s trying to tell me something. She’s trying to teach me something she wasn’t able to before she died. I lean back against the headboard of the bed and tuck my knees into my chest. Operation Sisterhood. Is this what Ruby had in mind for Amy and me? Was it her hope that we would salvage our relationship because she wasn’t able to do the same with her sister? Or maybe it’s something else, something more personal, directed only at me. I think about Margaret’s words. Whenever you’re down on your luck, and when things aren’t going the way you like, remember that you are the author of your own story. You can write it any way you like, with anyone you choose. And it can be a beautiful story or a sad and tragic one. You get to pick. Yes.
Her words gnaw at me for some time. I think of my office in New York, Arthur, and the rest of the team at the bank. I can picture them sitting around the conference room table. I see myself there too, with a shrewd, tense look on my face. My heart rate quickens when I realize that this isn’t the beautiful life story Margaret alluded to, nor is it the story I want to write for myself. I take a pill from the prescription bottle and wash it down with a sip of water. “Ruby?” I whisper into the air. “Are you there? Are you listening? I want to rewrite my story, but what happens if I don’t know how?”
Chapter 9
I stand in front of May Magnuson’s house at nine thirty on Tuesday morning and from the front stoop, I gaze up at the massive white Georgian colonial with Ionic columns reminiscent of the White House. Precisely trimmed boxwood hedges frame the front garden, which is lined with white and pink impatiens, not a petal askew. I’ve always thought of them as beautiful flowers. Ruby used to keep them in terra cotta pots in front of the bookstore. As a child, I once asked her why they are called “impatiens,” and she looked up from the rusty green watering can and said simply, “because they remind us to be patient. Nothing good ever comes from rushing.” I close my eyes and sigh—yes—then ring the front doorbell. My heart beats
rapidly as I hear footsteps inside.
The door opens and a young woman stands before me. “You must be June,” she says in a businesslike tone. “I’m Kerry, Ms. Magnuson’s personal assistant.”
“Yes, hello,” I say, following her inside the home.
The woman indicates a room across the hall, and I follow. “Please have a seat,” she says. “Ms. Magnuson is just finishing up in her office and will join you momentarily.” I’m struck by her formality. “Would you like a cup of coffee while you wait?”
“No, thank you,” I say. “I’m fine.”
Alone in the room, I survey my surroundings. There’s a fireplace, unlit, on the far wall. Hanging above is a formal family portrait: a man in a suit, a beautifully dressed dark-haired woman, and their young daughter. No one is smiling. There’s a Jack Russell terrier seated at the foot of the man. Even the dog looks stiff.
A crystal vase of lilies rests on the coffee table in front of me, and I pause to admire them.
“Mother loves lilies,” a woman says from behind me. “We keep them in every room.”
I turn around quickly to see a middle-aged woman standing in the doorway. She’s slim and wears a navy-blue pantsuit. Her brown hair is cut blunt at her shoulders and a floral scarf is tied around her elegant neck in a tidy knot.
“Does your mother live here, with you?”
“Yes,” May says a little guardedly, as if my question has raised her hackles. She takes a seat on the sofa across from me. The vase of lilies on the table stands between us like a referee. “Mother’s in good health, for ninety. She still gets around, with the help of her nurse.” May arranges a stack of magazines on the table so their spines are perfectly aligned. “And she likes things to be just so.”
I think about Mom, and even though I’ve spent my life annoyed by her laid-back, forgetful ways, I find myself grateful for her in light of the alternative: rigidity.
“So,” May continues. “I must say, I was quite surprised to receive your e-mail.”