The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (ARC)

by Abbi Waxman

  The door to the store opened and Polly came in. Liz turned and frowned at her.

  “Good afternoon, Polly.”

  Polly grinned. “Liz, it’s nine thirty. There’s no one in the store except you two and Jim, and Jim’s here often enough that if there had been a rush—which there never, ever is—he could have filled in for me.”

  Liz clicked her tongue but let Polly come over and hug her extravagantly, then went away hiding a smile. Polly was the other spinster of this parish who worked at Knight’s, although spinster wasn’t as accurate a description of her as it was of Nina. Polly was an actress. She worked at Knight’s as a way to actually support her passion for movies, both being in them and watching them.

  She had come to LA when she was nineteen, a beautiful and hopeful girl with lots of charisma and even more talent, and then spent ten years nearly making it. If she’d never gotten anywhere she might have given up and been content to have given it a shot. However, in common with thousands of others, Polly would occasionally get a part in a commercial, or a pilot. She was always auditioning and getting called back, and would be frequently “on avail” (meaning that she was short-listed for something and had to keep her schedule free for a day or so while they made a final choice between two or three girls). It’s this occasional hit of success that makes for a real addict. The breakthrough was always imminent; there was always something about to happen. In the dim interstices between flashes of hope you make your life.

  Polly had been working at Knight’s for a little over a year, and she and Nina had become friends, despite the fact that Polly never read books and only knew about plots from movies. For example, in the Harry Potter series, she had no idea Peeves the poltergeist even existed, or that Ludo Bagman wasn’t a luggage outlet, because those characters were totally cut out of the films. Being a lover of drama, Polly was deeply amused by Nina’s sudden family situation.

  “Oh my God, you should write a screenplay!” She laughed out loud. “Not that anyone would share screen time with so many other people. You’d have to pare down the cast.”

  “The whole point is the numerousness of them,” Nina said, dryly. “Numerosity?”

  “There are a lot of them.” Polly nodded.

  “Yes, there are. I’ve only met one of them, although he was pretty awesome.” She told Polly about Peter.

  “Lucky,” Polly said. “I had to borrow a gay relative from our neighbors.” Her eyes misted over. “He took me shopping for prom.” Another thought came to her. “Are any of these new family members handsome single men?”

  “I have no idea. I’ll have to ask Peter and consult my chart.”

  “There’s a chart?”

  Nina nodded. “It’s laminated.”

  “Well, did you Google your dad at least?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but pulled out her phone and got to work. Nina was used to her, and kept on unpacking book deliveries that had arrived that morning. There was no point telling Polly she’d already looked online, and besides, Polly was a whiz at searching.

  Her patience was rewarded. “Wow,” said Polly with the air of that guy in the movie who is finally going to tie all the pieces of the plot together and whose refusal to do so up till then has led to either comical misapprehensions or mortal peril. “William Reynolds, your dad, was a very social butterfly.”

  Nina nodded. “Thus the three wives.”

  “Plus possibly innumerable girlfriends?”

  Nina turned up her hands, both of them holding books. “Unproven, but suspected.”

  “With evidence.”

  “Sitting on the floor in front of you.”

  Polly turned her phone to face Nina. “Here’s the most recent wife, by the way. The actual widow.” She digressed. “If you’re not married to someone and they die, are you an ex-widow?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Nina, looking at the image on Polly’s phone. “What’s her name? I can’t read it from here. I knew I should have memorized that chart.”

  “It’s Eliza,” said Polly. She read, “William and Eliza Reynolds attend the blah blah blah.” Eliza was beautiful, and not as young and bimbo-ish as Nina had imagined. Why had she imagined a bimbo? she chided herself. Honestly, had feminism taught her nothing? Why shouldn’t a younger woman fall in love with an older man? Despite his enormous wealth and success?

  “I don’t know why you’re not more curious about your dad,” Polly said. “This is precisely why the Internet was invented.”

  “To research fathers?”

  “Yes.”

  Nina sighed. “I did look him up; there wasn’t all that much there. He was a serial cheater and abandoner of children. What more do I need to know?”

  Polly shrugged. “Maybe he was really good at skiing and you’ve never even tried it and you could have had an entire Olympic career because you’re naturally disposed to be good at it.” Polly was charming, but not super grounded in reality. “Or,” she said, warming to her theme, “what if he had some inheritable condition?”

  “I did think about that, but male-pattern baldness isn’t something I’m concerned about.”

  “What about hemophilia?”

  “Well, firstly, hemophilia is carried by women and only dangerous to men, so I would be fine …”

  “Think of your children!”

  “… and you’d think anything important would have cropped up by now.”

  “And there’s where you’d be wrong. I think you should talk to all of them carefully, and see what kind of hand you’ve been dealt.”

  “I think you’re nuts.”

  Polly shrugged. “That might be true, but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  • • •

  Polly apparently had more pull with Fate than either of them realized, because that afternoon she and Nina looked up to see an incredibly handsome man walk through the door and approach them both with a great deal of purpose.

  They all looked at one another, and then the man said, to Nina, “You must be Nina Hill.”

  Polly audibly hissed, but Nina wasn’t going to let her down. Chicks before dicks. “Yes, I am, and this is Polly Culligan.”

  He looked at her and, to be fair, did pause for a half second, but then he came back to Nina.

  “I’m your brother. Archie Reynolds. Our father slept with your mother when my mother was pregnant with me.”

  It’s possible that someone somewhere has written cogent advice about how to respond to a statement like that, but if they have Nina had never read it. So she stuck out her hand and said, “Pleased to meet you.” Then she said, “Your mastery of pronouns is impressive,” and regretted it. Struggling to recover, she added, “I’m sorry about the infidelity thing, but you know, I wasn’t there at the time.”

  He nodded. “I understand that. You presumably arrived a few days or so later.”

  “Are you an obstetrician?” asked Polly, curiously.

  “I’m sorry?” said Archie.

  “Well,” Polly shrugged, “we seem to be talking about the pacing of conception, and I thought maybe you had some expertise or something, because you know, we just met and usually men like to take girls out to dinner before they talk about making babies.”

  There was a pause. Nina hadn’t been able to stop herself from imagining a Schoolhouse Rock!–style sperm and egg animation, so she didn’t have anything to say, but her brother laughed and had the courtesy to blush. His hair was very dark red like Nina’s, and, like her, he blushed well.

  “You’re right, I’m being incredibly rude.” He looked around, as if suddenly realizing he was in a public place, but fortunately for him the store was empty. “I only just found out where you worked and …” He trailed off. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have marched in like that.”

  Nina shrugged. “I would probably have done the same.”

  “But you didn’t,” he said. “Are you able to come and have a cup of coffee or something?”

  Liz had Apparated, as she frequently did. Honestly, she
could be McGonagall’s sister. “Go ahead, Nina,” she said. “We’ll struggle along without you. It will be hard, but we will try.”

  Nina made a face at her and reached under the counter for her phone/wallet combo thingy.

  Archie and Nina went across the street to the Belgian place, and Vanessa grinned at Nina when she handed them menus.

  Nina burst her bubble. “Vanessa, this is my half brother, Archie.”

  Her dark eyes took him in, and after a second she nodded. “I didn’t know you had family in town.”

  “That makes three of us,” he said, before Nina had a chance to. She narrowed her eyes; a brother who stole her lines was something she hadn’t considered. They both ordered, also the same thing, then sat there and looked at each other with open curiosity.

  “You look like me,” Nina said, after a minute. “A guy version, obviously.”

  “Thanks for clarifying,” he said dryly, “and, actually, you look like me. I’m a few months older, remember?” He pulled out his phone and flicked to the gallery. “And to be truthful, we both look like our dad.” He handed her the phone. Their father, apparently, standing with his arm around the shoulder of a younger Archie, smiling for the camera in a pro forma way: point, smile, click, move away, drop the smile, get on with whatever important thing you had to do. You know the smile. William Reynolds had been handsome; his hair was thick and the same color as hers and Archie’s, but his eyes were difficult to read. Maybe they’d been easier in person, but Nina was never going to find out.

  She said, “I don’t recognize him at all. I never saw a picture, never heard his name, never even knew my father was American.” Their food arrived. “The whole thing is blowing my tiny little mind.” She shook out her napkin, her mouth watering at the smell of her croque madame. Grilled cheese in any form was her spirit animal.

  Archie pronged a lettuce leaf and chewed it thoughtfully. “Yeah, me too. Can I ask you about your mom?”

  Nina nodded, also chewing. She watched her new brother, noticing additional similarities between them: the cheekbones, the eyelashes. How strange, to have a brother all of a sudden. She remembered a friend of hers who had an older brother in high school, and how awesome that had been for her and all her friends. A steady supply of boys one or two years older, paraded through the house for their inspection. Damn, that would have been nice to have; maybe it wouldn’t have taken her so long to lose her virginity.

  Archie sipped his water. “What’s she like, your mom?” He paused. “The home-wrecker.”

  Nina frowned at him. “That’s not fair; she didn’t wreck your home at all. In fact, she had nothing more to do with your dad once she found out he was married.”

  “True. I withdraw the home-wrecker comment. But what is she like?”

  Nina thought about it. “She’s cool. She’s a well-known photographer; you can look her up online. Candice Hill. That’s how I usually find out where she is and what she’s up to. She’s Australian and travels all over the place, which is why I never knew where my dad came from. She never, ever mentioned him, except to say she wasn’t sure who he was. Apparently, it was preferable for me to think she was promiscuous than it would have been for me to know my father, which is a weird choice.

  “I didn’t see much of her when I was a kid, and see even less of her now. She loved me, I guess, but she was busy.” Nina took a bite of her croque madame and shamelessly talked while chewing. “She carried me around everywhere when I was the size of a loaf of bread, but once I needed regular meals and got too big to sleep in a hotel drawer, she found an apartment here and hired Louise.”

  “Louise?”

  “The greatest nanny in the world. Her own kids were at college, and her husband irritated her, so she moved into our apartment to take care of me. Once I went to college, she moved to Georgia, to be closer to her grandchildren. She’s my family, my regular cast member. My mom is more like a guest star.”

  “And now our father is like a character the other ones talk about.”

  “Right, but one that never shows up. He’s Godot. Or Guffman.”

  “Charlie in Charlie’s Angels.”

  “Norm’s wife in Cheers.”

  Archie smiled. “Well, he was around all the time when I was little. He worked a lot, but when he was there, he was really there. He had that way of making you feel you were the only person in the world. As long as you were right in front of him.”

  “He was a lawyer, right?” Nina had seen that online but wasn’t sure she was remembering correctly.

  “Yeah, entertainment lawyer. He and ten thousand other guys in this town. He inherited money from his parents, then made lots more, threw parties, went to parties, drank a lot, glammed around, the usual thing. He was larger than life and really smart. I loved him. When my mom died, he was devastated.” He frowned. “But now all I can think of is how he had you the whole time and never paid any attention to you at all.”

  “I think that was my mom’s doing, not his.” Nina paused. “Do you think your mom knew about me? Do you think he told anyone?”

  “Well, he told Sarkassian, because he put you in the will. He must have thought about you. He was pretty buttoned up; it’s highly unlikely you slipped his mind.”

  Nina waved at Vanessa and ordered an iced coffee. Archie did, too. “Are you ordering the same thing as me on purpose?”

  He shook his head. “No, I guess we like the same things. We’re like one of those twin studies, where they look at twins who were raised apart and yet turn out to have both married a woman named Darla.”

  “Not the same woman, hopefully.”

  “No, that would really be too coincidental. Were you a happy kid? Did you have a good childhood?”

  Nina shrugged. “More or less. I was shy. I’m still shy. I wasn’t good at making friends. I got anxious a lot. Honestly, it would have been nice to have sisters and brothers and cousins and stuff back then. Now I’m not really sure what to do with you, although it feels nice to have a family for the first time.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “But maybe it’s too late for me to really be part of yours.”

  He shrugged. “If you got married you’d join one.”

  “True.” Nina thought about that. “I could always pretend I married into you, so to speak.”

  “We could throw a wedding.” He laughed. “One thing that can be said for our family is that we love a wedding, or a birthday, or really any excuse for a party. We’re a sociable lot, mostly.”

  Nina fake shuddered. Or at least, she faked a fake shudder, because inwardly she was actually shuddering. “I am not a party person. I’m an introvert.”

  “Don’t worry,” Archie responded. “You can always say no.”

  Nina went back to his question about her childhood. “You know, as a kid I felt alone a lot, but I also really liked being alone so, you know, it was fine. I spent a lot of time reading and lying on the living room rug watching TV. What about you?” The iced coffee arrived, and they toasted each other instinctively.

  Archie took a sip and sighed. “It was happy at first. I remember hanging out with my mom a lot, and kids from the neighborhood, but then my mom got sick and it got sad. I was still pretty young, but old enough to feel bad I couldn’t do more to help. I got good at making tea. I got good at giving foot rubs.” He looked at the table. “I think I did more physical caring for another person during that period than I’ve ever done since, although I love my wife and son very much.” He met her eyes again. “Not sure what that says about me.”

  They paused to consider this, then Nina plowed on. “And what about Eliza, your stepmother and now the widow?”

  Archie shrugged. “We only really got together—all of us—at the holidays, usually at our dad’s instigation, so I don’t know if we’ll even do that anymore. I don’t know her very well; they live on the other side of town.”

  “Santa Monica?”

  “Worse: Malibu.”

  “Might as well be Mars.” They both nodded. Los An
geles is a big city, as everyone knows, but there is an even bigger divide between the West side and the East side. To get from east to west you have to cross under the 405 freeway. There’s a stretch of Olympic Boulevard where you can see the 405 just ahead, a parking lot in bridge form, where it can take you over an hour to go one or two blocks because a portion of the traffic is going up the ramp to get on the freeway and blocking the way for everyone else. People have gone insane on that stretch.

  Whenever Nina was stuck there, which was rarely, because she would rather have filled her ears with flaming dog turds than go to the West side, she thought of that Andrew Wyeth painting Christina’s World, where the young woman is lying on the hillside, dragging herself up toward a barn in the distance. That same sense of desperation and struggle and reluctant acceptance permeates the very air in that part of town. It is purgatory. Or limbo. Sartre said hell was other people, but that was only because the 405 hadn’t been built yet.

  “How long were they married?” Nina realized she’d probably have to meet this woman; she might as well know more about her.

  “Oh, a long time. Since 2000, maybe? Millie is ten, and she was born quite a few years after the wedding.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I’m not so good at dates.”

  “Millie is our half sister?”

  He laughed. “You get used to it. We end up just using everyone’s name and not worrying exactly how they’re related unless someone asks.”

  “Do people ask?”

  “Sometimes. People will say, is this your son, or is this your father, and you have to say, no, the little one is my brother and the older one is my nephew. Most people ignore it, but some people think about it for a minute and either demand a full explanation, which is a pain, or realize for themselves it means your father never stayed married for very long, and it gets awkward.”

  Nina looked at him. “Like now, you mean?” It actually didn’t feel awkward; it was as it had been with Peter. A weird feeling of knowing someone already; a total absence of the usual pressure she would feel with an attractive man; a kind of comfort.