The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

by Abbi Waxman

  Nina was exhausted. “Which was?”

  “How long do you need to be alone?”

  Nina couldn’t sit anymore; she lay down and pulled the quilt over herself and closed her eyes. “Can I call you in a week or so? It’s all too much; the family, and now work is terrible . . . I need a few days to think and sort it all out.”

  His voice was clear. “You’re not sure if I fit into your life right now?”

  Nina shook her head, unable to find the right words.

  She must have drifted off, because when she opened her eyes again, he was gone and Phil was sitting in the chair instead.

  “Rough day?” asked the cat.

  “Terrible,” she replied.

  “I can catch you a mouse if you like,” he offered. “Protein is good for you.”

  “I’m good,” she said, closing her eyes again.

  The cat watched her face and yawned.

  “Liar,” he said.

  * * *

  Much later, Nina woke again and lay there in the dark for a while, trying to sort out the inside of her own head. She reached for her phone and dialed a familiar number.

  “Hey, Lou.”

  Her nanny’s sleepy voice answered, “Hey, you.” Their traditional greeting, a rhyming couplet that always made Nina feel loved.

  Louise murmured, “It’s late, baby. What’s going on?”

  Nina looked at the time. “Sorry.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You all right?”

  “Not really.”

  Nina heard a sigh, then a rustle of sheets. “Hold on, let me wake up properly, get myself some tea, and call you back. Gimme five.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nina sat up and rubbed her face. She piled her pillow behind her head and scratched the sheet until Phil stretched and made his way up to her side. He curled around her hand and kicked her with his bunny back feet. The phone rang.

  Louise’s voice was much clearer. Nina could imagine her soft gray hair, her lined but still lovely face. Her yellow mug of tea. “OK, baby, let me have it.”

  Nina took a deep breath. “Well, the first piece of news is that I have a dad.”

  Louise said nothing for a moment. Then, “Well, I never reckoned your mom was the Virgin Mary type, so that makes sense.”

  “She never said anything about him to you?”

  “She never said. I never asked.”

  “Oh. Well, he’s dead.”

  Louise laughed. “Easy come, easy go. You found this out when?”

  “A month ago, maybe. Something like that. I have a brother and three sisters and nieces and nephews and cousins.”

  “Well, shoot,” said Louise. “That might have been nice to know. Just think of all the birthday presents you could have got.” Nina smiled. Louise continued, “But you must be freaking out. All those people.”

  “Yeah, though they’re mostly really nice.”

  “Great.” Louise waited. “So . . . ?”

  “There’s something else. I met this guy.”

  A low laugh. “I knew there was a guy in here somewhere.”

  Nina started babbling. “And I really like him but it’s too much. There’s problems at work, then there’s all these new people I need to get used to, so I sort of broke up with the guy, I mean, not really broke up, but kind of, and that’s fine, but he was really wonderful so maybe I should have . . .” Her voice faltered. “I don’t know. It used to work to close it all off, but it’s not working so well anymore.”

  Louise sighed, and Nina heard her take a long sip of tea. She waited.

  “Well, honey, you can’t expect the same tricks to work your whole life. When you were little and things got to be too much, you’d put your hands over your ears and sing, but if you do that now you’d get some funny looks, plus you’d know that when you dropped your hands the problem would still be there. Magical thinking only works for children. And politicians, maybe.”

  Nina’s voice was small. “So what do I do?”

  “I don’t know, baby. The first thing you should always do is . . .” Louise waited.

  “Nothing. The first thing you should always do is nothing.” Nina supplied the answer Louise had often provided over the years.

  “That’s right. Wait a day or two and see what happens. Life needs space, just like you. Give it room.” The older woman paused. “How’s your anxiety?”

  Nina shrugged, not that Louise could see her. “Bad.”

  “It’s only doing its job, poor, overenthusiastic thing. I still remember what that therapist said: Anxiety is what kept us alive, back in the day. It helps us know when things are wrong, when situations are dangerous or people mean us harm. It’s just sometimes it gets ahead of itself, right?”

  Nina nodded. “I know.”

  “So, do nothing, let yourself calm down, take some deep breaths, and wait. Your anxiety will pass; things will get clearer. If this guy is meant to happen, he’ll happen.”

  “What if he can’t handle my anxiety?”

  Louise sounded firm. “His loss.”

  “He doesn’t make me feel anxious. He makes me feel good, actually.”

  Louise laughed. “Then don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow, baby. Don’t worry about how it might go wrong; just let yourself be happy.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Most things are.”

  “Does everyone else feel like this?”

  “Like what? Worried? Uncertain? Hopeful and cynical at the same time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure they do, baby. That’s how it feels to be alive.”

  “It’s not a good feeling.”

  “Well, who knows what a fish feels; it might be even worse.”

  “And definitely wetter.”

  “Right.” Louise’s voice was soft. “Get some sleep now, and call me tomorrow. You like being on your own, Nina, but you’ve never been alone. You know that, right?”

  Nina nodded, holding the phone tightly. “I know. I love you.”

  “I love you more. Kiss Phil for me. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Bye, Lou.”

  “Bye, you.”

  Twenty-four

  In which Nina becomes an object of pity.

  It’s hard to keep a secret in Larchmont. After Polly’s outburst at the Festival, it took approximately three hours for every single person in a ten-block radius to know that Knight’s was in danger of shutting down. Someone started crowdfunding. Someone else posted on social media that the forces of evil were triumphing and that the existence of literacy was under attack. Someone else made soup for Liz, and on Monday morning brought it to the store.

  Liz was disgusted by this outpouring of support.

  “It’s just a bookstore,” she said, having spent twenty minutes calming down the soup-giver, who’d been coming to the store for a decade and considered it central to her children’s middle-class experience. “I mean, it’s adorable, and I’m always glad to take free food, but all we need is more people to buy more books.”

  Nina looked at her. “I think we need more than that, don’t we? We need to pay six months of back rent, un-triple-mortgage your house, and buy back the kidney Polly already sold on Craigslist.”

  Liz made a face. “She only sold the promise of a kidney. I think she may have discovered a new financial vehicle, actually. If I had early-stage kidney disease, I might be open to taking out a rent-to-buy option on someone else’s organ.”

  “Organ sale is illegal in the United States, although it is legal in Iran.”

  Liz snorted. “Of course you know that.”

  Nina shrugged. “I’m shocked you don’t.”

  Polly had called earlier to say she was going on a job hunt in the Valley, which Nina and Liz took to mean scouting for a porn job. They talked her out of
that, and she appeared a little before lunch, dressed head to toe in black.

  “Did someone die, or are you auditioning for a role as an elderly Italian grandmother?” asked Liz.

  “I’m in mourning for the store,” said Polly, bowing her head, although probably just to show off the elaborate French braid she had going on. She had incorporated black ribbon, and Nina was reminded of the horses that pull hearses at state funerals. This may not have been what Polly was going for, but that’s the law of unintended consequences for you.

  Liz snorted. “Get to work, you two. Make the books look pretty. Smile, but look pitiful. When people ask if we’re closing, shake your head softly and suggest they buy a boxed set.”

  “You want us to prey upon the pity of our customers?”

  “Yes. Exactly that.”

  Liz disappeared into her office and reappeared a moment later shrugging on a jacket.

  “Where are you going?”

  Liz headed for the door. “I’m going to go home and change into something a little more ragged.”

  * * *

  Over the next few days, business did pick up quite a lot, particularly as several local celebrities posted on social media and people showed up hoping to see them in the store. Failing that, they bought books and took selfies. Nina didn’t think it would be enough, but it was nice to be busy. It helped distract her from the deafening silence from Tom.

  She had texted him a day or two after the Festival, just to say hi, she hoped he was OK, she was feeling better, and had he seen that the final for the Quiz Bowl had been scheduled . . . ? Bupkes. Sound of crickets. She couldn’t blame him; she’d been pretty specific that she wanted to be left alone, and she could hardly complain he was taking her at her word. But she missed him.

  Polly had calmed down and was accenting her black with the occasional pop of color. She’d also been auditioning a ton and was waiting to hear back from a national commercial for flea prevention (for once, she wasn’t up for either the part of the cat or the flea, so this was progress) and a web series about a young woman taken over by the spirit of an old Jewish guy called Morty (the series was called Mortyfied, and probably shouldn’t have made it past the stoner joke it had clearly once been). Liz had been uncharacteristically quiet and spent most of her time in the back room, clearing out papers.

  * * *

  On the Saturday morning after the Festival, Nina did something she rarely did: She headed west. There was so little traffic in the early morning that she was in Malibu before ten, and as she rounded a corner and saw the ocean for the first time, even she could feel her spirits lift.

  Eliza and Millie lived in one of those houses that didn’t seem all that impressive from the front but that kept going once you were inside. Rooms opened up, hallways turned corners, and eventually Millie led Nina to her room at the top of the house.

  “Nice view,” said Nina, somewhat unnecessarily. The bedroom had one glass wall, and the floor-to-ceiling view was of the Pacific Ocean across a canyon dotted with olive trees and native California oaks.

  “Yeah,” said Millie, clearly over it. “It’s pretty.”

  Then Nina turned from the view and realized the entire back wall of the room was filled with shelves. It was like walking into a smaller version of her apartment; the same organization, the same careful lining up of spines. In many cases, the same books, just less heavily read.

  “That’s an even better view,” she said, walking over and tilting her head to read titles. “Le Guin, excellent; Susan Cooper, yes; Ruth Plumly Thompson, nice . . .”

  “I’ve read all of them,” said Millie. “The ones I haven’t read yet are by the bed.” She looked rueful. “Mom made a rule that I can only have six ‘to be read’ books at one time, otherwise she says it gets out of hand.”

  “Six is a good number. And presumably once you’ve read one you can get another?”

  Millie nodded. “Is that how you do it? Six at a time?”

  “Basically.” Nina nodded back, although she meant shelves, rather than individual books. “Do you read books in order?”

  “Yes, if there is an order. If there isn’t an order, I read them in the order of publication.” The child paused. “Sometimes, of course, the first one I read isn’t the first one they wrote, and then I feel a bit bad.”

  Nina laughed. “I’ve met lots of authors at the bookstore, and I’ve never met one who cares which book of theirs you read first. They’re just glad you read one.”

  “Really?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Do you have a favorite book?” Millie plonked herself down on the rug. There was a beanbag that had seen a lot of leaning, and a floppy rabbit that had seen a lot of coreading. Nina suddenly thought of Lili’s daughter Clare, and her dog. Maybe reading alongside someone was more comforting than she’d considered. She thought of her mom, who’d never read with her, and of Lou, who’d read with her every night. She thought of Tom. She stopped thinking.

  “I have lots of favorite books, because I have lots of moods and I have a favorite book for every mood.”

  “What do you like when you’re happy?”

  “I like the Jeeves and Wooster books, by P. G. Wodehouse. Jeeves is a valet, and he works for this guy who’s an idiot. They’re funny.”

  “What about when you’re sad?”

  “It depends if I want to stay sad or cheer myself up.”

  “Cheer up.”

  “Mysteries. Everything always works out.”

  “My dad liked mysteries, too,” Millie said.

  Nina sat down next to Millie and pulled over a pillow for her elbows. “Really?”

  Millie shrugged. “Yeah. But he liked all kinds of books.” She paused, then got to her feet. “Come on, I’ll show you his library.”

  Millie’s room was one half of the upper story of the house; the other, right next door, was her father’s library. Or office. Or something. Again with the shelves, and a comfy chair overlooking the ocean that was almost more impressive than Nina’s.

  Unlike Nina’s, these shelves were not organized.

  “I was always asking if I could at least put them in alphabetical order,” said Millie, almost apologetically, as Nina made her way along the books. “But he said he liked to drift along like a cloud and pick something that leaped out at him.”

  “Hopefully not literally.”

  Millie giggled. “Yeah, and he didn’t really look like a cloud, but that was what he always said.”

  It was an extraordinary mix. Austen was there, as was Trollope, and Dickens, and Stephen King, and S. J. Perelman. Dorothy Parker squeezed up next to Joan Didion, and Chinua Achebe made room for John Grisham. Lots of mysteries, and so-called popular fiction, and nonfiction on topics ranging from mountaineering to working at Denny’s. Many she had read; others she hadn’t. She thought of her own shelves and what the titles might tell someone about her, realizing that she now knew more about her late father than she might ever have known, even if she’d met him.

  Millie was watching her. “He loved books, like we do.”

  Nina nodded.

  “You would have liked him.”

  Nina ran her fingers along the spines of her father’s books, pausing at a well-worn copy of The Human Comedy, by Saroyan.

  She smiled. “Well, I like his books, which is essentially the same thing.”

  Millie hugged her, suddenly, and Nina hugged her back.

  “I miss my dad all the time,” said the little girl, her voice muffled in Nina’s sweater. “But I’m glad I got to find you.”

  “Me too,” said Nina. “Very glad.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Later, after lunch, Millie wandered off to work on some project involving a tree, a plastic rabbit, and a dollhouse chandelier, and Nina found herself alone with Eliza. She swallowed and asked the quest
ion she’d been dying to ask.

  “Did you know about me? Before, I mean?” She pushed her hair behind her ears, nervously.

  Eliza looked surprised and a little sad. “No, I didn’t. If I had, we would have met years ago.” She drank some water and moved the glass around on the tabletop, making lines of half circles like the tracks of a snake across sand. “It was a shock, because I thought William told me everything.”

  Nina looked at her. “Everyone describes him so differently.” She paused, unsure. “He was one guy, but there’s no consensus about what he was like. For Peter’s mom, he was a blowhard who drank too much; for Millie, he was the kindest man in the world who made endless time for her.”

  Eliza shrugged. “People change. There’s forty years between the William that Peter’s mom knew and the William that Millie knew. Parents get stuck in the amber of childhood, right? Whenever my parents visit, I feel myself becoming a cranky fourteen-year-old. I saw William through the lens of being his wife; I look at Millie only as her mother . . . You see what I mean?”

  “Sure. So I’ll never see my dad properly, only through the filter of other people’s opinions.”

  “Or maybe it’ll average out and you’ll be the only one who sees the real him.”

  Nina laughed. “Maybe there is no real thing for anyone. Maybe all of us change depending on where we are and who we’re with.”

  “And that’s why you like to be alone.” Eliza looked at her and smiled.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Because you prefer who you are when you’re alone.”

  Nina shrugged. “It takes a lot of energy to be with other people. It’s easier to be myself when there’s no one else there.”

  “Some people take energy; some people give energy . . . Occasionally, you get lucky and find someone whose energy balances your own and brings you into neutral.” She paused. “My God, I’ve been in Malibu too long. I said that completely without irony.”

  Nina laughed. “It was really convincing. I think I even heard a tiny temple bell ringing somewhere . . .”