The Book of Someday

by Dianne Dixon

  “I was wondering where that went,” David says.

  “Did you do this?” Livvi is marveling at how beautiful it is.

  “I asked a friend to do it for me,” he tells her. “I needed a pattern.” David has slipped into the driver’s seat and closed the car door.

  An airport security officer is tapping on the Volvo’s hood, indicating that the car can’t stay parked at the curb much longer.

  David quickly tells Livvi: “There’s a Japanese legend that says the making of a thousand cranes will bring you your heart’s desire.”

  “What a lovely myth,” Livvi says.

  David seems both confident and heartbroken. “It’s how I’m going to spend my time—while I’m waiting for you to find a way to come back to me.”

  Livvi is thinking how fragile the little bird is. “How many have you made so far?”

  “Three. I started my first one that night—the night we got back from New Jersey.”

  That night. For an instant, Livvi has returned to it. And to the memory of the patch of frozen ground separating her father’s house from the sidewalk. His house, and its coldness, were behind her while she was running toward the warmth of David’s arms. Then, later, in David’s beach cottage, she was being held with such devotion. Such honesty. When he said, “I love you. Do you think you could ever love me?” and she told him, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  And now, as she’s sitting beside David, recalling his question and the joy that was in her answer, there are tears in Livvi’s eyes. I’ll never forget that night, she’s thinking. It was when I closed the door on my past. And when I opened my heart to David.

  It was when everything changed. That night was both the beginning, and the end.

  Jack

  Passaic, New Jersey ~ 2012

  It’s beginning. The end.

  In almost imperceptible increments, Jack’s body is becoming lighter. And there’s another sensation too. Like the tug and sway of a train pulling away from the platform.

  It’s dark where Jack is. Not midnight dark. Closer to end-of-twilight dark. There’s just enough illumination for Jack to see AnnaLee. She is walking away from him. He’s trying to tell her, “Bella came. She came all the way to New Jersey—to see me,” but he has no voice. So of course AnnaLee doesn’t hear, doesn’t turn around. And Jack is relieved. How could he face her if she did? She would look into his eyes and know that he had, again, been a coward. That he hadn’t had the courage to speak to Bella. He’d only had the cringing need to know she was there and standing at his side, one last time.

  Jack had been unable to open his eyes, engage his child. Frightened that, if he did, he would draw her closer to him. And if she came too close, she would smell his awful scent—the rot that had begun in him on the night AnnaLee died.

  His fear of exposing that lingering odor held Jack prisoner for most of Bella’s life. And made him afraid to give himself to her. Afraid that if she caught even a waft of it, she would understand its source and know the truth about him.

  His need for self-protection—for distance—is the reason that, in all the years of her growing up, Jack never once called his daughter by the pet name her mother gave her on the day she was born. He never called her Bella. He always called her Olivia.

  The decay that began in Jack with AnnaLee’s death, and the stain it left on his soul, were the reasons that less than two months after AnnaLee’s funeral he ran to Santa Ynez and locked himself away. And locked Bella away. He did it so no one could come near him and his motherless child, and somehow recognize what he had done.

  The swaying, trainlike motion is picking up speed now. The end of twilight is becoming the beginning of darkness for Jack. At the edge of the darkness he’s in the house in Santa Ynez. Sitting on the top step of the porch. The sun is warm on his skin (which at the moment of AnnaLee’s death went cold, and stayed that way). Bella is three years old. She’s in a little blue dress. The sun is making the curls in her hair glitter like gold. She’s playing with a pair of dolls, one large and one small—and she’s asking, “Where did my mommy go?” Jack is saying the first thing that’s coming into his head—because it’s a sliver of the truth—and a sliver is as much as he can risk. He’s telling Bella, “Your mother was all dressed up and she went to a wonderful party.” And when Bella asks, “Is she coming back?” the scent of decay in Jack is so strong it sends him scuttling to the bottom of the porch steps. While he’s saying, “No, she’s never coming back.”

  And now Jack is remembering how he had continued to hide himself from Bella—for the rest of their days together. Relentlessly keeping her at arm’s length. With the exception of that one awful morning—when he had lifted her up by her hair.

  That morning was an aberration. He thought Bella was gone—the way AnnaLee was gone. He’d been wild with guilt and grief. When he looked down and saw his little girl in that rectangular space, folded into that topless box where she was hiding, it was like looking into a coffin. He was in a frenzy. He had to reach in and pull her out and throw her free of it.

  For the briefest instant, he had felt heroic. Like a rescuer. Then he realized he had touched her, let her come too close. And as Bella stood there in her faded nightgown, gazing up at him, needing things he couldn’t give, he was thinking of AnnaLee’s coffin—and of what he’d said about AnnaLee, to Bella. “…She went to a wonderful party.”

  Now, as Jack is moving into the mouth of what seems to be a velvet-black tunnel, he’s wondering, When did it happen? When did the story change and AnnaLee become a brassy party girl who ran away? Was it when Calista began to tell it? Yes. It was. And I let her tell it that way. Because it gave the story an ending that kept me safe.

  Jack wants to scream. Like a lunatic. Again, he has no voice. But the need for this scream is reminding him that he is—in actuality—a lunatic. It’s reminding him that after AnnaLee’s funeral he lost his mind. Eaten alive by what he’d done on the night she died. Spending the rest of his years raging through the house in Santa Ynez. Crying out in pain. Smashing windows. Driving his fists into walls. Never stopping until his body failed and he began to die—and was too weak for lunatic screams and a madman’s violence.

  A pool of wavering light on the wall of the velvet-black tunnel has gradually widened and encompassed Jack. He is gone from the tunnel. He’s in Glen Cove. In his old leather chair in the living room, reading.

  The house is quiet. Then there’s the sudden noise of breaking glass. The sound of a window being shattered. Muffled commotion. Scuffling footsteps, muttered conversation. Someone, more than one someone, inside the house, and coming nearer. Jack’s heart is racing. AnnaLee and Bella are alone upstairs.

  Jack is terrified. He switches off the reading lamp and listens. A loud thump from the kitchen sends a scare through him. He’s scrambling out of his chair, stumbling toward the phone—it’s on a table across the room, near the entry to the hall. He needs to call the police. To call 911. He’s dragging the phone toward the hall, his hands like rubber, fumbling with the dial, his attention on the noise in the kitchen.

  He’s about to press the first number, the nine—and there’s a crashing sound. Whoever is in the house is coming toward the hall. While Jack is ducking back into the safety of the living room, he still has the phone’s receiver to his ear. It seems as if there’s someone else on the line. As if, on one of the other phones in the house, someone is listening.

  And from the kitchen—scuffling sounds. Low voices. A man muttering the word fuck. Then, a few seconds later, the noise of a woman’s high-heeled shoes coming down the stairs. Stepping onto the hallway floor.

  Jack is dropping the phone, glancing toward the hall. Seeing semi-darkness. And AnnaLee. Still dressed for the gala in her glittering gown. She’s letting out a spine-chilling scream.

  And Jack is running. Dashing across the living room. Blindly pushing open one of the glass-paned terrace doors. It’s swinging shut behind him. He’s outside the house.

  Frantica
lly gulping the night air.

  Realizing what he has just done.

  He’s turning around, racing back to the door. But can’t get it open. It’s jammed. He’s smashing the glass with his hands, reaching through—trying to grab the handle on the inside. His hands are running with blood; he can’t get a grip. He’s terrified, convulsing, like he’s having a seizure.

  From somewhere inside the house—a single, horrendously loud gun shot.

  Jack is losing control of his bowels, shitting himself. Trying to run for help. Water from the lawn sprinklers has pooled on the terrace, and he’s slipping. Falling onto the flagstones—his shoulder breaking—pain radiating down his arm. But he can still hear the echoing sound of the gunshot. And he’s up and running. Across the wet grass. Slamming into the untrimmed limb of a tree—opening a gash on his forehead. His lungs are on fire.

  The noise of a second gunshot is booming inside the house.

  He’s halfway across the yard. Soaked in blood and excrement. His neighbor, a broad-shouldered dentist, is coming toward him. The blood is pouring from Jack’s face and hands. He’s strangling on his own stench, the smell of his cowardice. Desperate to hide his awful smell from this man, he’s shouting, “Go back. Call 911!”

  The neighbor is galloping away. Jack is hearing the squeal of tires on the road in front of the house—he knows the intruders have fled.

  What Jack does not know is that later, when the television cameras arrive, his wounds will be interpreted as the marks of his courageous fight to save his family—and he will be called a hero.

  The pool of light in the velvet-black tunnel is shrinking then flaring wide again. And Jack is seeing himself—with his ruined trousers and bleeding face—going back into the house. Where AnnaLee is on the hallway floor.

  She is in the dress that’s shimmering like a column of starlight and she’s wearing pale-colored high-heeled shoes fastened with a strap at the instep, each strap anchored by a single pearl button. Her arms are outstretched, bracelets glittering at her wrists. A thin silver band encircles her head, and in the band there’s a plumed white feather. Her hair is hidden beneath a caplike, chestnut brown wig. Her face is in shadow. Only her lips are visible. They are bright with the fiery-red lipstick she wore to the gala. And they’re parted. As if making way for a scream, which, when it comes, will be the sound of unadulterated horror. She is looking toward the foot of the stairs. Toward the last thing she must have seen before she died. Bella. Moving out of the shadows. And into the sights of the gunman.

  The pool of light on the tunnel wall is vanishing. Jack is going into darkness now. Traveling swiftly toward a narrow, unlit portal. He’s not sure if it’s the door to heaven, the entry to hell, or the gateway to oblivion. In spite of knowing which destination he deserves, he’s curious, and the tiniest bit hopeful.

  A cold draft is passing over Jack. And as his spirit is leaving his body, he’s seeing AnnaLee. In the garden swing. Surrounded by coral-colored lilies. One of her legs bears a neat line of surgical scars—the marks made by Jack—when AnnaLee had been a broken ballerina and he was a doctor, a healer.

  Jack’s heart is shattering as he’s calling out to AnnaLee, knowing he has no voice, no way for her to hear him say, “I was a coward and a failure. But oh how I loved you. How I wish we could do it over again. How I wish that instead of simply making it possible for you to walk, instead of giving you a life that kept you chained to the ground, I could have—just once—seen you dance.”

  Epilogue…Livvi

  Livvi is in the aisle seat of the plane that is carrying her back to California—and wondering how long it will take to fold a thousand squares of golden foil into the shapes of a thousand cranes. Wondering if at some point along the way David will abandon the effort and open his arms to someone else—and ask what he asked Livvi in the shimmering moonlight, “Are you ready for me to take you home?”

  As New York, and David, are dropping away beneath the wings of the swiftly moving plane Livvi is closing her eyes. And imagining:

  …She’s with David, and their children…children who have Livvi’s passion for books and David’s graceful, generous spirit. They’re living in a house that’s traditional and lovingly furnished, unpretentious—very much like Evelyn’s house. Which is so much like Mrs. Granger’s—the house of Livvi’s dreams. It’s Christmas and the air outside is brisk East Coast air, and the air inside smells like fresh pine, and cinnamon. Livvi and David and their children are surrounded by family—by Evelyn, and David’s open-hearted parents and his pretty sister, and his dozens of cousins. The house is noisy. Happy. Lit with love. Livvi is gathering her children around the Christmas tree but she’s seeing the lights on the tree dimming, the happiness in the house fading—Grace isn’t there. The loss, the emptiness, is unbearable.

  That feeling of emptiness is jolting Livvi out of her daydream and bringing her back to the present.

  Bringing her back to Grace.

  Grace’s hand is resting in Livvi’s. Warm and gentle. The red-inked symbol of Livvi’s heart is in Grace’s open palm.

  And Grace is asking: “What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m thinking about a long time from now—someday when you’re all grown-up and have gone off to conquer the world.”

  Livvi is picturing the future…her hair is the slightest bit gray, and she has gained a few pounds. But she’s still trim and in good shape—at fifty. She’s in New York. Andrew is probably waiting for her in a nearby hotel. She’s on Madison Avenue. In a store called Bauman’s—a genteel showplace for rare and beautiful old books. She’s holding a first edition of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and wondering what it must have been like to possess that kind of talent. Now she’s glancing up from the book—seeing David walking past the window, outside, on the sidewalk. There are lines in his face. He’s wearing glasses. But he is essentially unchanged. He is still—in every aspect—sweet, perfect, David. Livvi is straining to see if there’s a wedding ring, but he has an umbrella in his hand, and she can’t. She’s running toward the door. Pushing it open. Calling to him. Wanting to tell him where life has taken her—wanting to know where he has traveled. But he’s already disappearing into the crowd of people on the sidewalk. He’s already vanishing.

  And a woman’s voice is telling Livvi: “Your little girl is adorable.” It’s the flight attendant—handing Livvi a cup of coffee and glancing toward Grace.

  While Grace is saying: “Livvi, how do you spell Evelyn and gether?” Grace is busily working on a drawing. A thank-you to Santa for her Christmas present, the glittering butterfly wings. “I want to write ‘it was nice being two gether with Evelyn.’ I know how to spell two, but I don’t know how to spell gether. Or Evelyn.”

  Livvi gives Grace the spelling of the words—and hears Evelyn’s voice saying, “You didn’t come away from your beginnings broken and ugly. Miraculously…you’ve come away strong, and filled with love. Find your purpose, Livvi. Use the power of that love to fulfill it.”

  And Livvi tells Grace: “We’ll have a beautiful life, you and I. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do…”

  Livvi is murmuring this while thinking, Everything will be fine because I was wrong about having my back to a cliff. We’re not alone, Gracie. The world is full of people like Evelyn, and Sierra, and Bree, and your Uncle James. And David. And hundreds of others we haven’t even had the chance to meet yet. People who are strong and willing to help. We have a safety net, Grace. All around us.

  Grace is glancing up at Livvi with that familiar cautious expression. “You’ll never leave?” she asks.

  “I’ll never leave. No matter what. No matter who tries to make me.”

  Grace’s caution has been replaced by a smile that’s wide and bright. Radiantly happy.

  Livvi is at peace.

  Grace goes back to her drawing.

  After a few minutes, Livvi opens her laptop and begins to type.
r />   Grace is curious. “Are you doing work?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “I’m starting the first chapter of a new book.”

  While Livvi is slowly running her fingers through the silk of Grace’s hair, Grace asks: “What kind of story is it?”

  And Livvi says: “It’s a love story.”

  Reading Group Guide

  1. The Book of Someday opens with a quote from poet Antonio Machado: “Traveller there is no road, the way is made by walking.” How does this quote relate to what takes place in the novel? Why do you think the author chose it for the opening page?

  2. When she’s a little girl, Olivia makes a list that contains dreams and wishes for her future. Some of the wishes on her list come true in very unexpected ways. Of the dreams for your life that you had when you were younger, what was the one that came true in a way that surprised you the most and changed your life the most?

  3. As the story unfolds, Livvi finds herself faced with incredibly difficult decisions. Choices that are life changing—for her and for other people. Do you think Livvi’s commitments to the promises she made as a child are helping her in the choices she makes as an adult? Or are they hurting her?

  4. Do you see Livvi as a woman who is strong and self-directed? Or a woman who’s allowing her past to have too much influence on her future?

  5. When Grace first appeared in the novel, what was your reaction to her? In Livvi’s place, what decision would you make about Grace?

  6. When Sierra is talking about Livvi’s connection to Grace, she says Livvi is just beginning her life and that Livvi’s responsibility is to herself and her own happiness. Do you agree?

  7. At the end of the book, as Livvi is being offered the chance to make her sweetest dreams come true, should she let anything, even her feelings for Grace, stop her from claiming those dreams?