by Amy Meyerson
“First of many, I hope. It’s nice of you to come.”
“Of course I came,” he said, surprised that I might think he wouldn’t. That made it more obvious the other people who should have been there and weren’t. “I can’t say I agree with your decision to keep the store open, but you are your uncle’s niece. Billy would have done the same thing.” We stood shoulder-to-shoulder watching the line crawl toward Sheila, “What else have you got planned?”
Elijah nodded along as I explained the book clubs, the other readings, an advertisement we’d put out in LA Weekly. I expected him to tell me it was an expense we couldn’t afford.
“I know an editor there. I bet we can get a piece about the store.” He made a note to ask his secretary to look into it before shaking my hand goodbye. “Good luck to you,” he said as though I needed it.
After Elijah disappeared onto Sunset, Malcolm found me against the history section, marveling at the line of women still waiting to meet Sheila. “What did The Vulture want?”
“Actually, he offered to help.”
“You’ve made an ally of our foe,” he said, impressed.
“I seem to have that effect on people.”
Malcolm winked at me before dashing back to Sheila and the steady line of readers hoping for personalized inscriptions.
It was nearly midnight by the time we had the chairs stacked on the tables, the floor swept clean. Sheila waved goodbye as Malcolm escorted her onto Sunset. I’d hoped she might have a renewed energy after the last customer lingered out with her signed hardback, but Sheila had turned to Malcolm, her lips lined in red wine, and pronounced she’d never been so tired in her entire life. As if to prove her point, she collapsed against Malcolm as he helped her outside.
Once I was alone, I turned my phone back on, certain I’d have heard from Jay. He would apologize in an emoji I’d never seen before or leave a rambling voice mail where he’d call me all sorts of cruel names, and in his madness I’d see how much he desired me. I had one text from Joanie. Sorry I had to run out. Sheila’s totes amazing. Let me know what she says about Billy!
I walked alone upstairs to Billy’s apartment, hugging my sweater against my chest, warding off the cold that had collected in the stairway from the back door, propped open all night. I loved how nights in LA had a bite to them no matter how hot the days were. It reminded me that despite the lawns and urban blocks, the free-flowing water from the tap, Los Angeles was a desert, arid and stubborn. I almost called Joanie to tell her about my fight with Jay, but I didn’t want her to reaffirm her theory about long distance, to confirm my suspicion that something had transpired we couldn’t undo. I didn’t want her to try to convince me that I was overreacting, either. I considered calling Mom. She would have grown quiet in that concerned way where she thought I’d made a mistake yet refused to say so. I wanted Mom powerfully in that moment. But whoever I would get, it wasn’t the Mom I wanted. So, I kept climbing the stairs, to my dead uncle’s apartment, protecting myself from the cold, and for the moment that had to be enough.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sheila was an hour late for our coffee date. I’d woken at dawn, too animated for sleep. Jay still hadn’t called, but I wasn’t thinking about him. As I lay awake in Billy’s bed, waiting for the familiar sounds of Charlie cranking up the gate, of the grinder hammering beans, I could only think of the story Sheila was going to tell me. She had to know what happened to Evelyn, if her death was somehow Billy’s fault.
At ten minutes after we were supposed to meet, I bussed tables to distract myself from the fear that she’d forgotten. At twenty after the hour, I persuaded a girl to buy a memoir I’d never heard of, its metaphorical title revealing little about the book’s subject. When the clock finally hit thirty minutes late, I admitted to myself that Sheila wasn’t coming, that the wine had been abundant and she was probably still in bed. Thirty minutes later, she burst into the store.
“I had an emergency this morning. It’s no excuse, but that’s why I’m late.”
“It’s fine,” I assured her, relieved that she’d turned up at all. I found her a cup of tea, and we settled into the table along the back wall, the most private, which oddly made it the least desirable to our customers.
She grabbed my hand. “It’s not okay. My mom was always late. She showed up to my high school graduation after I got my diploma.” Sheila dropped my hand. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been so embedded in the past I’m having trouble extricating myself.”
Mom had never been late to any event in my entire life, but someone was missing from my graduation. I hadn’t seen Billy in over six years at that point, and still I’d wanted him to see me walk across the stage. Did Mom want him there, too? Had she noticed his absence not only at my graduation, but at every big event that had passed without him: her fiftieth birthday, the anniversary of their mother’s death, of Evelyn’s?
“Miranda? Did I lose you?” Sheila asked.
“Sorry, you got me thinking about my mom.”
“How is Susan?”
“She’s good.” My automatic response. “Actually, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her in a while.” I waited for Sheila to offer me some sage advice about mothers, despite the fact that I hardly knew her. When she didn’t, I asked her, “You and Billy were friends for a long time?”
“We met in the mid-’80s. In grief counseling. We both left rather quickly for our own reasons.” Sheila said that everything about group had exhausted her. Even its name, Grief United, as though losses could be shared. “Fragments of pain aren’t like pieces of a puzzle.” She blew into her mug, creating waves across the jasmine surface. “They can’t fit together to form something grander. Knowing that others, that strangers, suffered, too, it didn’t make me feel less alone.”
Sheila said no one made her feel less alone, not her sister, her friends, her therapist, not even her aging Labrador, who trudged around the house, searching for Daniel. If Daniel’s own dog couldn’t make Sheila feel less alone, she didn’t see how a group of depressed middle-aged widows could help her resolve her grief. She saw her sadness that way, as something that could be reduced but never vanquished.
“Refill?” Lucia asked, extending a carafe of coffee toward me. I held my cup to her without looking up. Lucia watched us, wary of our intensity. She tiptoed to another table.
“So why’d you go, if you didn’t think it would help?” I asked.
“Same reason as Billy. I promised my sister.”
For the first week, Sheila had listened without speaking. The group leader, Pamela, had given them an assignment to visit somewhere important to their loved ones. As the group discussed their beloveds’ favorite places, Sheila imagined that she had gone to Muscle Beach. Daniel liked to watch the men bench press. It calmed him. It reminded him that he didn’t need to grow his muscles to feel safe. Sheila wondered if something else had given him strength, whether he’d still be alive. Sheila had expected group to be more like the AA meetings she’d attended with her mother, counting the days since their loved ones had died to gauge their progress. This group kept their beloveds alive. They didn’t suppress them like addictive desires.
“Malcolm,” Sheila shouted suddenly. “The table’s clean.” I swung around to find Malcolm wiping the pristine table beside us, covertly listening to our conversation. “We’re trying to have a conversation here.” She and Malcolm held each other’s gaze until he relented and cleaned a table that was actually dirty. “He’s so nosy,” Sheila said to me.
From my experience, Malcolm generally left people alone. If he was listening to our conversation, my interest in Sheila or her interest in me must have unnerved him. Maybe he was even afraid Sheila would tell me something he hadn’t.
“Come on.” Sheila stood. “Too many spying eyes. Besides, I’m in need of a walk.”
I followed her out of Prospero Books. We stood on the corn
er outside the store, waiting for the walk sign to light up. I turned back. Malcolm was standing at the picture window, watching us leave.
The light changed, and I followed Sheila across the street. I wondered if Malcolm was still watching us. I liked to think he was, his eyes trailing me until we were out of sight.
“I’m thinking of getting one of those walking desks,” Sheila said as she unlocked a Prius parked outside the coffee bar. “Hemingway used to stand when he wrote, not that I think I’m Hemingway.”
She opened the driver-side door.
“I thought you said we were walking.”
“Don’t you know in LA you have to drive in order to walk anywhere?” Sheila smiled deviously.
I got in the passenger side and Sheila pulled into traffic on Sunset. We passed a diner that had been renovated to look like the old lunch counter it had replaced, an old church that had survived the changing neighborhood, the desolate stretch of Sunset between Silver Lake and Echo Park.
“I’ll give it to Pamela,” Sheila said, tugging the wheel like she was driving in a video game. “Her assignments were really thoughtful.”
For the next assignment, Pamela had asked them to do something their beloveds had always wanted, but had never gotten to do. Then they visited their beloveds’ favorite museums, listened to their favorite music, read their favorite books. While the pain didn’t go away, Sheila looked forward to the meetings, to the ways she could share Daniel.
Sheila turned onto Park Avenue and parked by the lake. At the center of Echo Lake, fountains shot water toward the sky, bisecting downtown’s skyline. Yellow paddleboats puttered in the blue waters, careful to avoid the beds of lotuses.
“The lake didn’t used to be this blue.” I followed Sheila through the grass where couples and homeless men lounged. “It wouldn’t have been able to hide the bodies.”
We followed the sandy path around the north side of the lake. Sheila said she’d remained the group’s newest member for two months, which she’d liked. It had prioritized her voice. But before long, a new mourner had arrived.
Billy anxiously walked into the airless hall where group met, wearing a dirty white undershirt and faded jeans. Sheila might have mistaken him for a homeless man, had it not been for his watch. Matte black dial. Steel. Rolex.
I’ve been staying with my sister and her husband since it happened, Billy explained to the group, fiddling with the face of his expensive watch. The group had enough experience with it that they didn’t ask who had died, how it had happened. I’m starting to scare them. And the baby.
“You, dear,” she explained. The baby didn’t feel like me. It was a time before I had my own memories, a time when I had to rely on my mother’s. Now, I could trust Sheila’s version of the past instead.
Why do you think you’re scaring them? Pamela asked.
They stop talking each time I enter the room. The baby cries every time I go near her.
Those who love us often don’t know how to help us, Pamela said. We have to help ourselves first.
I’m not sure I can, Billy said.
You have to try, Pamela said.
For the next several weeks, Billy remained silent, hands folded in his lap, erratically tapping his foot as the others shared their beloveds’ favorite words, their most embarrassing possessions, as they gave away the clothes they’d always hated. Part of Pamela’s strategy was to awaken forgotten moments, to abandon distractions. Less is more, she advised, reminding Sheila of writing teachers. During these sessions, Billy never spoke, never brought any mementos of his beloved. Sheila didn’t even know who had died.
“It might sound odd,” Sheila said. “But Pamela’s whole thing was to focus on the memories. We knew the intimate details of the dead, the way their feet smelled and how they snorted when they laughed, but we never told each other how they died. I was glad for that. It might have turned into a morbid competition if I thought someone else’s husband had a more painful death than my Daniel did.”
No one in the group mentioned the cancer that ravaged their beloveds’ bodies, the fatal car crashes, the heart attacks. Still, they talked. Only Billy sat there, mute. Distant.
I don’t think it’s right, Sheila had overheard one woman whispering to the others as they waited for Pamela to unlock the door. Each week we pour our hearts out and he just sits there.
He makes me uncomfortable, a potbellied man agreed. I don’t like talking in front of him.
During the session, Sheila watched Billy, trying to determine what about him unnerved the group. When the potbellied man held up an olive-green scarf, unraveling at its center, Billy didn’t look up. The man explained it was the first and only thing his wife had ever knit. Billy didn’t chuckle at the story. He continued to study the face of his watch, counting the minutes until he could leave. Sheila realized that was what scared the group. Pamela’s tactics weren’t reaching Billy. They might never reach him.
Each week, Sheila watched Billy, wondering why he kept coming. Sheila saw the sleek car that pulled up to the stucco building at the end of each session, how Billy hopped in the passenger seat like a child being picked up from school. Of course. The power of sisters. The fear of their disappointment.
Sheila continued to watch Billy, feeling a pull toward him that it took her weeks to identify as sexual attraction. It was unlike the desire she’d felt for the stranger she’d taken home from a bar or the fellow writer whom she’d allowed to seduce her at a conference. Billy existed for two hours a week. She could linger over his lovely eyes, she could admire the softness of his lips, emboldened by the fact that she would never act on her desire.
Then Billy came in too distressed not to talk.
He’s actually suing me, he told the group. He doesn’t need the money. Why is he doing this to me?
“Evelyn’s father?” I remembered Elijah saying that Evelyn’s father had sued Billy over her estate.
Sheila nodded and continued her story.
People grieve in different ways, Pamela said, watching Billy pace. The group fidgeted. They were supposed to be sharing their beloveds’ favorite foods. Instead, Billy had been talking breathlessly for half the meeting about his wife’s father, how he was suing Billy for their home, for Prospero Books.
He doesn’t even read, Billy screamed. What’s he going to do with a bookstore?
A bald man stood. If he’s going to keep going on like this, I’m leaving.
Billy stared at him, confused. I listen to you talk about your wife’s needlepoint. Her calligraphy. Her homemade jam. I think you can do me the same respect and let me say my piece.
Those were assignments. Where is your favorite food? Did you bring anything?
There’s an order to this, a woman dressed in earth tones said.
And how is that working for you? Billy asked. Does all this make you feel better?
Okay, let’s take a step back, Pamela intervened. Billy, why don’t we let someone else share?
After my husband passed, his mom tried to take our dog away. Sheila didn’t realize she was talking until everyone turned to look at her. She didn’t even like dogs, but she wanted to shift some of her suffering onto me. You have to feel sorry for him, that he’s too afraid to face his grief head-on.
Billy watched her. The air between them electrified. The room dissolved. Time stopped. Through their gaze, they relayed everything they wanted to do to each other.
Would anyone like some cake? a woman in cashmere said, breaking the silence. She shifted the birthday cake she was holding in her lap.
That’s a great idea, Pamela said.
“It was incredible how Billy unhinged everyone.” We passed the boathouse café where couples shared sandwiches and glass bottles of soda.
Thank you, Billy said to Sheila as they walked out of the meeting. You seem to be the only person in there capable of thinking for herse
lf.
I don’t think that’s fair, Sheila said.
I don’t very much feel like being fair, Billy said.
“I’ll never forget the next meeting. They hadn’t wanted him there, but they were irate when he quit. They were jealous, really. He had the conviction to follow himself.”
He has the audacity not to show? the bald man had said. He berates me, then doesn’t even turn up.
We can’t control those around us, Pamela advised, only ourselves. The group nodded. Sheila heard a familiar dogma, similar to religion, similar to AA.
After that meeting, Sheila couldn’t go back to Grief United. She wasn’t sure whether Billy had ruined group for her or if he had made her realize what she already knew—Pamela’s tactics were helpful to a point but redundant in the end. She was ready to move on to the next stage of grief.
“I didn’t expect to hear from him again,” Sheila said as we rounded the corner of the lake nearest the highway. We could hear the cars idling in traffic above, smell the sourness of their exhaust. “But a few weeks later, he left a message on my machine.”
They met at a café on Main Street in Santa Monica where Sheila often wrote. Billy was wearing a collared shirt, tucked into khakis. Sheila wore a black tunic over equally dark pants. Her hair was wild and frizzy. Since Daniel died, she’d stopped dyeing it. When she spotted Billy, she wished she’d put on tinted moisturizer, lined her eyes with a little color. Instead, she looked tired and old. Billy looked young and composed.
There was a deposition this morning, Billy said. It’s such bullshit, but my lawyer says I have to take it seriously. The more disagreeable I am, the longer this will go on. Billy explained that Evelyn’s father was a conservative man who had tried to shape Evelyn into someone she wasn’t, who still aimed to control her, even in death. He can have the house and the cabin, I don’t care about that. The bookstore, he’s never even been there. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost that piece of her.
You won’t. Sheila put her hand on his. She did this without thinking. When she was about to pull back, Billy rested his other hand on top of hers. I know it’s difficult, but you can’t give in. If you let him have any of the life that belonged to you and your wife, it validates his anger.