All of Us and Everything (27 page)

They drove on in silence, each feeling battered.

Liv had moved to the backseat and Atty to the front. Nick stayed in the front with Augusta still behind the wheel. This put the three sisters side by side.

At one point, while stalled in traffic, Ru said, “Can you imagine all the things that had to happen in each of our lives—and the timing of all of it—that got us into this car at this exact moment. I mean, there's no other moment in our lives when this would have happened. Only now.”

No one responded, not that it needed a response, but each of them thought of their current life situations—Herc Huckley's box of letters surfacing in Hurricane Sandy and getting delivered to the front door, a husband falling in love with a Parisian dentist, the ending of a stint in rehab, a trip to Vietnam in order to escape a doomed engagement, the firing of an antique musket at parents' weekend, a lonesome apartment in a retirement village…It was a miracle made of many intricate mechanisms, gears locking into gears and turning, seemingly, of their own accord.

Ru received a text from Teddy Whistler that invited her to crash a wedding with him.
There's always extra cake at those things.

She texted back, asking if he planned to try one more win-back.

Depends,
he texted.
Will Whistler be in a heroic mood like in days of yore? Or has he grown up at long last?

After a minute he added,
Which would be better for your next book?

“Shit,” Ru said aloud.

“What?” Esme said but only out of knee-jerk politeness. She didn't care what was going on with Ru. She was about to meet Darwin Webber after all these years. She kept sucking in her stomach and pulling down her shirt, which she regretted wearing because it kept riding up.

“Nothing,” Ru said. Maybe she wasn't a liar as much as she was a thief, robbing people of their best stories and then using them, for profit and, worse, to avoid living her own life.

Liv stared out the windshield thinking that today was the future, that her mother was driving them, physically, literally, and unalterably into each singular next moment. She was high.

After an hour or so, Atty held her hand up to the old plastic vents in the dashboard. “It's not blowing cold air anymore.”

“Sometimes this happens,” Augusta said.

Nick rolled down his window. “We'll have to air-condition the old-fashioned way.”

Esme rolled down her window. “My face is going to melt. My hair is going to be an unmitigated disaster.”

“What's the plan of approach here?” Nick asked.

“You're going to apologize to Darwin Webber,” Esme said.

“He's probably going to be pretty scared,” Liv said, and she laughed.

“What did you say to him anyway?” Ru asked her father.

“I don't remember,” Nick said.

“Yes you do,” Augusta said.

“I might have told him that I had certain connections that could make things unpleasant.”

“You said you'd kill him, didn't you?” Atty said.

“I don't think it's good to surprise people in these kinds of situations,” Nick said.

“Situations where you've already threatened their lives?” Esme asked.

Liv leaned back and said in a mock-deep voice and, for no apparent reason, a British accent, “I was shot at close range in a bathroom in the Vienna opera house…”

Nick looked over his shoulder at her, stunned. “Is that how this is going to go?”

“Parenthood is ultimately humbling,” Esme said. “Didn't you know that?”

As they got closer to Great Neck, Esme pulled out her phone and directed Augusta off the highway and into the town itself. But then she handed the phone to Liv. “Here, you do it.”

Liv handed it to Ru. “I can't read blipping dots like this.”

Ru handed the phone to Atty. “Front seat navigates.”

“She can't read or she'll get sick again,” Esme said.

Atty handed the phone to Nick. “You've survived in the jungles of Zaire,” she said in a British accent, “
you
do it.”

Liv laughed.

“I guess I'll get used to it,” Nick said.

“We'll just go in,” Esme said softly. “Hopefully he's working, and if he's not, I don't know. But if he is…”

Nick put on a pair of bifocals. “Take the next right.”

“We'll wait in the car,” Ru said. “You don't need an entourage.”

“It's about us,” Esme reminded her.

“Everyone needs an entourage,” Liv said.

“Seriously?” Atty said. “Six of us are going to walk into a cabinet store together? All at the same time? Descending like a plague?”

“A Plague of Rockwells,” Liv said.

“We're clearly not a plague!” Esme said.

“You know there's a chance that you, Esme, are a hazy memory,” Liv said. “I mean, isn't college hazy?” Esme was staring at her, obviously hurt, so Liv quickly added, “Not to be a bitch, I'm just stating a
possibility.
”

“We were
in love.
He
disappeared.
” Esme was pinching her thumb and index finger in Liv's face like she was about to do a charade clue for a bird's beak. “Do you understand?” She was over-enunciating.

Liv nodded then shook her head, which undermined the nod, and then shrugged a little, which further undermined the nod—it was an affirmation mudslide.

When they were a mere three blocks away from Parks Cabinetry, Atty spotted an antiques shop that had a special faded sign reading
RARE BOOKS
in faded gold lettering. “I'm still missing seventeen, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, and forty-nine,” she announced, and they all knew, by now, she was talking Nancy Drews.

“It's okay if our childhood isn't completely replicated,” Liv said.

“This has gotten personal,” Atty said, and Liv wondered if it was some attempt to replicate her mother's childhood because Atty couldn't replicate her own.

“I could use a minute to freshen up,” Esme said. “Mom, can you pull in?”

Augusta hit the aged blinker and cranked the wheel, clipping the curb.

“I'll be fast.” Atty climbed out of the car and slammed the door. She jogged to the entrance then froze, one hand on the old-fashioned handle, peering into the shop with her other hand cupping her eyes.

“What's wrong with the kid?” Nick asked gently.

Esme held a hairbrush but simply pushed its rubber-topped needles into the palm of her other hand. “Doug's only Skyped with her seven times since he didn't come back. That's it. Seven.”

“I can't understand it,” Nick said. “If I could have, I'd have been there. Tell 'em, Augusta. I would have.”

Augusta looked teary-eyed. She nodded. “He would have.”

Atty opened the door and stepped inside. The shop was lightly air-conditioned by rumbly window units. Like most antiques shops, furniture was set up in small arrangements, framed paintings stacked against the walls, coats and stoles and hats hung on hat racks, and glass display cases jammed with bobbles. It stank of moth-bitten wool, dusty wood, varnish, and silver polish.

Atty walked to the counter where an old man sat in front of a heavy turquoise 1950s-style Eskimo-brand electric fan. He was sorting pennies, maybe looking for valuable ones.

“Do you have any Nancy Drews?”

He nodded. “Yep, far corner. Under the boxed squirrels.”

“Squirrels?” Atty said.

He nodded again, holding a penny under a green accountant's light. “Under the boxed squirrels.”

Atty had given up on finding the taxidermied tea-sipping squirrels that had been filled with water during the storm, but maybe she'd given up too soon. She moved quickly around settees and creepy prams with doll babies in them to the far corner.

And there she saw a stack of Nancy Drews hip-high, and on a shelf above them was a glass cabinet case of two squirrels—in a boxing ring, wearing little red boxing gloves and high-waisted silky boxing shorts.

Atty, feeling a little disoriented, knelt down, turned her head and started skimming the stack of books for the ones she was missing.

And there was number seventeen. She inched it forward, trying to stabilize the books on top of it, and finally yanked it free.

Atty held the book to her chest and pressed one hand to the squirrels' glass case—one squirrel was baring his small teeth. She thought about how they were once wild and free, now boxed up and boxing. It reminded her that she was a girl in the closet and she was the closet, too. She felt suddenly like she was locked in a glass box on display somewhere no one would ever see her. She looked at the squirrels' small fake beaded eyes—so dusty they no longer looked wet or real—and she imagined that, beneath the fur and padding, their little lungs still sipped air and their hearts pittered.

She Instagrammed and tweeted the squirrels but couldn't think of anything to say so she wrote,
No comment.
She felt dizzy again. She sat down in a pale blue wingback. Two measly blocks away from Parks Cabinetry now, she was keenly aware that she was about to be led into some alternate universe where her mother never met her father because she'd fallen in love with and married Darwin Webber and they lived here together in the shit-town of Great Neck with some other daughter or son or big fat brood of happy children being raised in a love-struck home.

She felt so sad that she was afraid she was going to barf again. Could sadness make you throw up?

She fit her hand in her front pocket and pulled out the ziplock bag. She popped it open and pulled out one of the Valiums.

She wished she had her ginger ale, but she didn't really need it. She glanced at the man behind the counter. He was consumed by the task of sorting pennies.

She put the pill on her tongue and swallowed it dry.

What if it was expired? What if her aunt had held on to it for so long that it was worthless? She decided to make sure it worked. She whispered, “Fuck it,” and put the second pill in her mouth and swallowed it too.

Then she sat there, noting that she didn't like the way her thighs mushed against each other, and hoped that everything would change.

She sat there for a few minutes until she heard the door swing open. “Atty?” It was her mother.

“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter asked.

“No thanks. I'm fine.” She heard her mother's voice—it sounded far, far away. “Atty?”

Atty told herself to stand up and she stood. She told herself to act the part—like the squirrels were acting the part of boxers. She shouted out as happily as she could, “Taxidermied squirrels!” she said. “Almost like the ones that were lost in the storm! They're here!”

The glass case of taxidermied squirrels wouldn't fit in the back of the station wagon. It had to be secured to the roof with bungees and twine. Atty was the only one overjoyed by the find, but they faked it—the unspoken, collective understanding that the kid was going through a rough time, let her enjoy the stuffed squirrels.

Augusta drove the final few blocks to Parks Cabinetry even more slowly to keep the squirrels safe. The car was quiet, almost prayerful.

Eventually, Augusta said, “This is it, right?” And everyone looked at the sign.

“Yes,” Nick said.

She put on her blinker, slowed nearly to a complete stop, then inched into the parking area. When she finally parked the car, there was a collective sigh of relief and everyone quickly got out except for Atty.

Esme walked to the front-seat passenger's door. “Are you okay?” she asked her daughter.

Atty nodded, but she wasn't okay. “I feel weird,” she said. “But weirdly good.”

“Good,” Esme said. “How many books until the collection is complete?”

Atty held up three fingers, but in a way she never had before—thumb, index, and middle fingers. It made her feel foreign, like she could become someone new.