One True Loves

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  Hollow and empty are terrible ways to feel when you’re used to being full of joy. But it’s not so bad when you’re used to feeling full of pain.

  Hollow feels okay.

  Empty feels like a beginning.

  Which is nice, because for so long you have felt like you were at the end.

  You ask your parents for a new bed. You feel childish doing it. But you don’t have any money because you have not pitched a story in a very long time and you quit working at the blog.

  Your parents don’t understand why you’re asking and you can’t quite explain it to them. You just say, “This one is tainted.” But what you mean is that you feel like it absorbed your suffering. You know it sounds crazy but you believe your pain is in the mattress and you don’t want to absorb it back into your own body.

  You know it’s not that simple. But it feels like it is.

  Two weeks later, you have a new mattress and box spring. You watch your dad tie the old ones to a friend’s truck. You watch him drive down the street headed for the dump.

  You feel better. Freer.

  You realize this is called superstition.

  You’re OK with that.

  You know that you will never truly be free of the grief. You know that it is something you must learn to live with, something you manage.

  You start to understand that grief is chronic. That it’s more about remission and relapse than it is about a cure. What that means to you is that you can’t simply wait for it to be over. You have to move through it, like swimming in an undertow.

  Toward the end of Marie’s maternity leave, your parents come down with food poisoning. There is no one to open the store. You offer to do it. They tell you that you don’t have to. They say they can ask one of the sales clerks. You tell them you’ve got it under control.

  When they say thank you, you realize that you have missed being relied upon. You remember the pride of being useful.

  You wake up early and you take a shower and you get in the car. When you put the key in the door of the bookstore, you realize that Jesse is gone but maybe your life is still here. Maybe you can do something with it.

  Three days before Marie is supposed to return to the store, she tells your parents that she doesn’t want to come back to work. She has tears in her eyes. She says she’s sorry that she’s disappointing them but she just wants to stay at home with her babies. She says she can’t imagine spending her days away from them. Your parents are caught off guard. They quickly become supportive.

  That night, you overhear them talking about it. You hear your mother console your father, you hear her tell him that the store doesn’t have to go to you or Marie. She says it’s going to be fine.

  The next day, they start looking for a new store manager.

  You know what you need to do.

  You sit them down at the kitchen table that night and you ask for the job. When they ask if you’re sure that’s what you want to do, you say you are but the truth is somewhere in the gray area between yes and no.

  Surprised but pleased, your parents agree, saying nothing would make them prouder.

  Now, you have a job.

  And then, slowly, day by day, minute by minute, at such a snail’s pace that you can barely register that anything is happening at all, you find a life’s purpose again.

  It is right there, in Blair Books, the very place you’ve spent your life running from. It is in the children’s reading nook and the messy stockroom. It is in the curated display table at the front of the store and the bargain bin in the back. You look at the bookmarks. The ones that say “Travel the World by Reading a Book.”

  You have already seen the world.

  Marie and Mike bring the girls over for dinner one Sunday, and right before dessert, Mike mentions that they have an appointment with a hearing specialist on Tuesday. That night, you overhear your parents saying that it’s about time. You realize that you spend so little time with your nieces, so little time with your sister, that you didn’t realize the twins have stopped responding to the sound of their names or to loud noises.

  You resolve to call Marie after the appointment. You are going to be an attentive sister. You are going to be a good aunt.

  Marie answers the phone in tears but you are able to piece together what has happened.

  Your nieces are going deaf.

  It has something to do with a gene called connexin 26.

  You go over to Marie’s house that night and bring her what you used to love on a bad day. You bring her Diet Coke and Ben & Jerry’s. You find a flavor with coconut and chocolate because you know her favorite candy bar is an Almond Joy. She puts the ice cream in the freezer and leaves the Diet Coke on the counter. But she hugs you so hard you think it might leave a mark. You hold her and let her sob.

  You move out of your parents’ house into a studio apartment in Cambridge. You say you’re moving out because you want to live in a brownstone but the truth is you’re moving out because Olive agrees that it’s time for you to start to meet people. Any people. New people.

  Five months into your job as the manager, you sit your parents down and pitch them on selling e-books and e-readers. You outline how to do it. When they tell you that you’re great at your job, you start crying and you miss Jesse. Happy moments are the worst, that’s when the ache is strongest. But you wipe your eyes, get back to work, and when you put your head on the pillow that night, you consider it a good day.

  An old college friend of your father’s comes into the store looking for him but he’s not in. The man sees that you are the manager and asks your name. You say your name is Emma Lerner and the man frowns. He says he knows Colin always wanted one of his girls to take over the store. You say that you are one of his girls. The man apologizes for his mistake.

  Marie and Mike buy a house down the street from your parents. Mike will have to commute far to the sporting goods stores but Marie thinks it’s important to be near your parents.

  After she’s settled in, you call her and ask her if she’d like to take a sign language class with you in Boston. You tell her you’re excited to learn how to talk with your hands. She agrees and it is the only time she takes to do something out of the house, without her children. After a few weeks, you realize that you are your sister’s entire social life.

  One day after class, Marie asks if you’d like to stay out and get lunch. You take her to a Mongolian barbecue place and you run into Jesse’s older brother Chris. You say hello and you catch up and you are surprised to find that you do not cry.

  As you and Marie are walking back to the T, she asks if you’re okay. As you’re explaining how you feel, it hits you like a ton of bricks. For years now people have said to you, “May his memory be a blessing.” You realize, finally, that’s exactly what it is.

  You are happier to have known him than you are sad to have lost him.

  You wonder if grief is less chronic than you think. If remission can last for years.

  You go to the hairdresser one day and she asks you if you’ve ever considered highlights. You tell her to go for it. When you walk out of the salon, you feel like a million bucks. You start scheduling future appointments.

  Your parents partially retire and give you the store. You are so proud, so happy, so eager to take it over that you decide to change your name back. You are a Blair. You haven’t ever been more proud to be a Blair. The day your new license comes you cry and look up to the sky, as if Jesse is there, and you say, “This doesn’t mean I don’t love you. This just means I love where I come from.”

  When Marie finds out the store is being handed over to you, she gets upset. She accuses you of taking it from her. You tell her you’re just picking up the ball that she dropped. The two of you erupt. She’s yelling and you’re yelling. In anger, she screams, “Oh, please. We all know you’re the favorite. Perfect Miss Emma who does everything exactly as Mom and Dad want.”

  You start laughing. Because it’s so absurd.

  But then you
realize it’s true.

  You have become the person your parents always wanted you to be and you’ve done it almost entirely by accident.

  You didn’t think you wanted to work with books or live in Massachusetts or be close to your sister. But it turns out you do. That’s what makes you happy.

  And then you say to yourself, Wait, no, that’s not right. I can’t be happy.

  Because you don’t have him. He’s gone. You can’t be happy, can you?

  And then you stop and truly ask yourself, Am I happy?

  And you realize that you just might be.

  You apologize to Marie. She apologizes to you. You spell out, “I was being an idiot,” in sign language. Marie laughs.

  Later, you ask her if it’s a betrayal to Jesse to feel good, to like your life now. She just says, “Not at all. That’s all he’d want for you. That’s exactly what he’d want.”

  You think she might be right.

  You take off your wedding ring and you put it in an envelope of your love letters and pictures. You will never let it go but you do not need to wear it.

  You go back to your hairdresser and ask her if she thinks you’d look good with a pixie cut. She says you’d look great. You trust her. You go home, newly shorn, and you aren’t quite sure what to make of yourself.

  But then Marie sees it and tells you that you look like a movie star, and when you look at yourself in the mirror again, you sort of see what she means.

  Six months later, you decide to take up the piano.

  And just by walking into a music store, you set a whole second life in motion.

  I could have started by trying to take piano lessons. But I decided to just leap into it. I wanted something to do with my hands at home. It was either piano or cooking and, well, cooking seemed messy.

  So I found a secondhand-instruments shop in Watertown and drove over on a Sunday afternoon.

  The doors chimed as I walked through them and they caught on themselves as they closed behind me. The store had a leathery scent to it. It was filled with rows of guitars. I found a magazine stand and rifled through it for a minute, unsure of what I was actually looking for.

  I suddenly felt uncomfortable and completely out of my element. I didn’t know what questions to ask or of whom to ask them.

  Standing there surrounded by a sax, trumpets, and a series of instruments I couldn’t even name, I realized I was out of my league. I was tempted to give up, to turn around and go home. I took a step away from the magazines and bumped right into two bronze drums. They made a clang as I accidentally knocked them into each other. I straightened them out and looked around to see if anyone saw me.

  There was a salesman a few feet over. He looked up at me and smiled.

  I timidly smiled back and then turned to the magazines again.

  “Hey,” the salesman said. He was now standing right next to me. “Are you a timpanist?”

  I looked up at him and I saw the recognition in his eyes at the very same time it clicked in mine.

  “Sam?” I said.

  “Emma Blair . . .” he said, taken aback.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “Sam Kemper. I don’t even . . . I haven’t seen you in . . .”

  “Ten years or more, maybe,” he said. “Wow. You . . . you look great.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You do, too.”

  “How are your parents?”

  “Good,” I said. “Really good.”

  It was quiet for a moment as I stared at him, surprised at how much he’d changed. I was trying to remember if his eyes had always been that stunning. They were a warm brown that seemed so kind and patient, as if they saw everything with compassion. Or maybe I was simply projecting what I remembered of him onto his face.

  But there was no doubt that he’d grown up to be an attractive man. His face had angled out a bit, had grown some character.

  I realized I was staring.

  “Do you play the timpani now?” Sam said.

  I looked at him as if he were speaking French. “What?” I said.

  He pointed to the bronze drums behind me. “I saw you by the timpani; I thought maybe you had started to play.”

  “Oh,” I said. “No, no. You know me. I don’t play anything. I mean, except for when they made us learn ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ on the recorder, but I hardly think that counts.”

  Sam laughed. “It’s not exactly the timpani, but I think it counts.”

  “We all can’t play a bajillion instruments or however many it was that you play,” I said. “Six, was it?”

  Sam smiled shyly. “I’ve picked up a few since then, actually. Most of them amateur-level, though.”

  “And here I just have the recorder. Oh!” I said, suddenly remembering. “I also played the finger cymbals in the fourth-grade holiday concert! So there’s two.”

  He laughed. “You’re an expert, then! I should be asking you questions.”

  I played along with him, pretending to be a humble genius. “Well, finger cymbals are pretty basic. You mostly just want a pair of cymbals that will fit on your fingers and then you hit them together to make a clanging noise.” I hit my own pointer fingers together enthusiastically to show him. “Finger cymbaling is really about confidence.”

  He laughed again. He always made me feel like I was the funniest person in the room.

  “And from there, the sky’s the limit,” I said. “I know a girl who started out on the finger cymbals; now she plays the actual cymbals.”

  I grew slightly embarrassed, as if because he’d laughed, I’d taken that as license to perform a stand-up comedy routine. But he laughed again. A hearty laugh. And my anxiety faded away.

  “Actually, all of that is a lie. I mean, I did play the finger cymbals but . . . I’m considering learning the piano. Hence, why I’m standing in the middle of this shop looking really confused.”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding his head. “Well, if you want my opinion . . .”

  “I do,” I said. “Yours is exactly the opinion I want.”

  He smiled. “Then I think you should get one of the Yamaha PSRs in the back by the drum machines. They’re only sixty-one keys and they aren’t weighted, but if you’re just starting out or you’re not really sure you’re going to make it a lifelong passion, I think it’s silly to spend four hundred bucks on a keyboard. But that’s just me.”

  “No, that’s great advice. Would you mind showing me one of the ones that you’re talking about?”

  “Oh,” he said as if he was surprised that I was actually listening to him. “Sure. I think they have one back here.”

  He turned around and headed toward the back of the store. I followed him. “Do you still play a lot of piano?” I asked him.

  He nodded as he looked back at me slightly. “For fun, yeah,” he said as he stopped at a short black keyboard on a stand. “This one would probably be great for you.”

  I hit a few of the keys. They were silent except for the dull thunk of the key physically hitting the board.

  “I don’t think it’s plugged in . . .” he said.

  “Right. That makes sense.” I was legitimately embarrassed that I’d tried to play an unplugged keyboard, perhaps the most embarrassed I’d been since a few months prior when a customer told me my fly was down. “How much is it?”

  “Oh, uh . . .” He bent down to look at the price tag. It was about half as much as I’d assumed I’d have to spend.

  I decided to seize the day and go for it.

  “OK, I’ll take it.”

  He laughed. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You have to start somewhere, right?”

  “I guess that’s true,” he said.

  Quiet settled over us.

  “Wow,” I said. “I can’t believe I ran into you.”

  “I know!” he said. “What are the odds of that?”

  “Well, if we both live in the same city, I guess fairly high.”

  Sam laughed. “I just assumed you were out in
California somewhere.”

  I nodded, unsure just how much Sam knew. “Yeah, well, you know.”

  Sam nodded somberly. “Yeah,” he said, a dryness in his voice. “I hear you.”

  And now I knew that he knew it all. And my impulse was to get as far away from him as possible as quickly as I could. “Well, my parents will be so happy to hear you’re doing well,” I said. “Thanks for your help, Sam. It was great to see you.”

  I put my hand out and watched as Sam was surprised by my ending the conversation.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” he said.

  And then I excused myself and headed to the register.

  “Did anyone help you with your purchase today?” the woman behind the counter said to me as she handed my credit card back.

  “Hm?” I asked her. I took it and placed it back into its spot in my wallet.

  “Did any salespeople help you decide on your purchase today?” she asked.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sam helped me out. He was great.”

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s no one that works here named Sam.”

  For a minute, I thought maybe I was in a ghost story.

  “Sam Kemper,” I said. “He just advised me on this keyboard.”

  The woman shook her head, unsure what I was talking about.

  I turned around, shifted my gaze from left to right, then stood on my tippy toes to get a better view. But I couldn’t see him anywhere. I was starting to feel like maybe I was crazy. “Like six feet tall, wearing a black shirt, a little bit of stubble . . .” The cashier looked at me like she might know who I was talking about. I pushed forward. “Really nice eyes?”

  “Oh, yeah, I know who you’re talking about.”

  “Great.”

  “That guy doesn’t work here,” she said.

  “What do you mean he doesn’t work here?”

  “He’s a customer. He comes in a lot, though.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. I’d been talking to him as if he were a salesman the whole time. “My mistake,” I said. “I’m an idiot.”

  She started laughing. “No worries.” She handed me my receipt. “Do you need help bringing it out to your car?”