The Book That Matters Most (11 page)

“What does that even mean?” he asked.

She shrugged, shook a Valium from its bottle, and swallowed it with a gulp of juice. She was aware that her husband was watching her take the pill. He didn't believe in taking drugs to feel better—one of their many petty disagreements. “You don't need to get stoned to be happy,” he'd told her more times than she cared to remember. “No,” she'd correct him, “
you
don't need to get stoned to be happy.” As if to score a point, she took a second pill, and gave him a small smile.

“Mama, what will we do all day without you?” Lily asked, obviously on the verge of tears.

“Aunt Beatrice is coming to take care of you!” She said it like they'd won a prize.
Aunt Beatrice!

“No!” Ava groaned. “She doesn't pay attention to us.”

From the corner of her eye she saw her husband frowning. She sighed. It was true, her sister wasn't the best babysitter. She didn't even like children very much. But Charlotte had been so distracted that she hadn't yet lined up any babysitters for the summer and until she did Beatrice would have to suffice.

“Mama, don't leave. Please please please,” Lily was whining, and Ava was saying, “She's so boring!”

But the Valium had already started to kick in, and the noise of her life didn't make her tense or angry or depressed like it did without the pills. Instead, there was a low hum somewhere deep in her brain and her limbs felt loose and rubbery.

“They want end caps and window displays,” she told her husband. “I've got to set everything up so we're good to go for pub date next week.”

“It sounds like a terrible book,” he said.

“It's all right,” she said.

Ted didn't like books very much.
Any
books, never mind one about a philosophical seagull. Over a decade ago, when they lived in Manhattan and she was working at the Strand bookstore on Broadway and Twelfth, she would come home excited, a bag full of review copies and hard-to-find used books. She would lay them out on their enamel-topped kitchen table as if they were precious things. They
were
precious things, she reminded herself now. How she'd hated the way he shoved them aside to make room for his own textbooks; he was getting his MBA then, poring over facts and figures at that table long into the night.

The memory of it made her pause to tenderly touch his arm, and he looked up at her almost gratefully. This was the time when she should feel guilty for lying, wasn't it? For falling in love with another man? But she didn't. Instead, Charlotte scooped up the rotten avocado pit suspended in water and tossed it in the trash.

“Does this ever really work?” she asked no one in particular.

“Susan's mom grew one this big,” Ava said, holding out her hands to show Charlotte.

“Susan's mother doesn't work,” Charlotte said. She slung her macramé hobo bag over one shoulder. “She has time to grow avocados.”

“Off I go,” she added.

When she bent and kissed the sweaty top of Lily's head, Lily grabbed her arm and began to wail.

“Don't go! Don't go!”

She had to pry away Lily's fingers, and then hurry out the door before Lily blocked it; the child had done that before.

It wasn't until she was outside that she realized in her haste to escape that she hadn't kissed Ava goodbye. She stared at the front door, the muffled sounds of Lily crying inside coming through the open window. No, she couldn't go back inside. She'd bring
Ava something special this afternoon, a shell or a shiny beach stone. An apology.

H
is dark green Valiant was already in the motel parking lot, waiting. The sight of it always made her smile. A Plymouth Valiant! An old-man car, she liked to tease him. He liked when she teased him. Not like Teddy, who looked wounded if she ribbed him, even gently. Sometimes she had to tell him, “That was a joke,” and even then he had to force a smile. Across the street from the motel lay the ocean, sparkling blue in the bright sunlight. A line of cars already waited to enter the beach's lot, inching slowly forward.

She pulled over just outside the motel parking lot to reapply lipstick and smooth her still damp hair. In the mirror she caught sight of her heavy-lidded eyes and flushed cheeks. The extra Valium had made her slightly woozy and sleepy, in a good way. God, it was hot today! The smell of her sweat filled her car. She dabbed at her chest and neck with some crumpled Burger Chef napkins, then tossed them on the floor and continued into the parking lot, sliding her beat-up Citroën into the spot right beside him. She didn't move until he realized she was there, his face lighting up at the sight of her. Before he could get out of the car, she got out of hers, and entered the Valiant on the passenger side.

“Good morning,” he said.

Charlotte grinned at him. “Good morning, you,” she said.

T
he crackling sounded faraway at first, but then grew louder and more persistent. Someone was shouting too, and for a moment she thought she was home and her daughters were calling to her,
or crying. But no, the voice was a woman's and what she was saying, over and over, was, “Do you read me? Do you read me?”

He jumped from the bed and grabbed his pants from the floor.

It was still morning, but late, and the sun streamed in through the crack where the drapes didn't meet. The air conditioner chugged noisily, and from the radio came “Brandy, you're a fine girl . . .” and now he had a walkie talkie pressed to his ear and he was saying, “Roger.”

She couldn't focus on what the voice on the other end was saying. Her head throbbed and her mouth was so dry that even licking her lips didn't help. Pulling the thin sheet from the bed and wrapping it around her shoulders, she went to the bathroom and filled the plastic cup with water, drinking it straight down. She was on her second glass when he appeared in the doorway, already dressed.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but some kid died and it looks like maybe she was pushed or something.”

“I thought Lee was covering for you,” she said, hating how needy she sounded. Jesus, a kid had died.

“He was. But not for something like this.”

She nodded.

He wrapped her in a hug. “I know,” he said softly.

He released her and was heading out of the bathroom already.

“I love you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I don't.”

He grinned. “Well, now you do,” he said.

She watched him walk out of the door. This was what it would be like to be married to a cop, she thought, and as soon as she thought it she chastised herself. Married? She hardly knew him. They'd met a few months ago when he came into the bookstore
to buy a present for his wife.
The Stepford Wives
. He'd had it giftwrapped with the paper that looked tie-dyed and orange ribbon. “Have you read it?” he asked her, and she told him she had and that it was a strange gift for a man to give his wife. He came in again the next week, and this time he bought
The Winds of War
. “Do you think I'll like it?” he asked her, and she said, “I have no idea what you would like.” And just like that he was lingering until the store closed and she was locking up and then bringing him into the back room and they were making love, right there.

Marrying? That was ridiculous. But the idea had somehow taken hold. The whole way home that hot hot morning, she was imagining it: how she would tell Teddy and how she would even give him custody of the girls and be the one to have them on weekends and how she would sleep next to this man she hardly knew every night feeling safer and more herself, finally.

By the time she turned onto her street, she felt like she was already, in her imagination, halfway to this new better life.

But then she saw him standing by a squad car with the light on the roof slowly turning, and an ambulance with the back doors gaping open, and Ava alone on the sidewalk and a small still figure on a stretcher.

She slammed on the brakes and got out of the car without even turning it off, and ran toward him.

Hank looked at her emotionless, blank.

“Ma'am,” he said. “I'm afraid I have some very bad news.”

Maggie

Maggie wanted to tell Julien to lay off the drugs. Not completely, of course. But every time she decided it was time to tell him, he filled the little pipe, and heated it, and she couldn't ask him to stop. Instead, she climbed on his lap to get it sooner. She parted her lips and inhaled deeply. One day, she smoked it and her brain felt like it exploded, knocking her right off the bed, onto the floor.

“Too much,” Julien said. “Forgive me.”

He picked her up in his arms and laid her back on the bed and rolled onto her. She hardly felt him make love to her. Her heart
beat so fast she felt like a hummingbird. She tried to think of the word for hummingbird, but couldn't. Letters floated through her mind:
c, b, i, i
. . . She struggled to connect them, to make them form a word, as Julien's movements grew faster, his breath heavier.

The next time he came to her, after they ate the boeuf bourguignon he made for her, standing by the stove stirring and tasting it while she drank wine and smoked a joint, waiting, when he brought the little pipe to her, she said, “Make it like you did last time.”

“That was too much,” Julien said gently, kissing her on the neck and the collarbone. “I'm making sure you are safe,
mon petit radis
.”

She eyed the pipe, now on the table so that he could caress her breasts, kiss them.

“I'm keeping you safe,” he murmured.

“All right,” she said. “Thank you, for protecting me.”

Julien smiled up at her.

“But now look what you've done,” he said, pointing to his erection. “You will have your pipe when we finish, yes?”

Panic rose in her. She could taste it, the panic. The pipe seemed to gleam in the winter sunlight.

“Like last time then,” she whispered.

“No, no. It was too much,” he said.

“Please,” she begged. “Please.”

“Tell me you love me,” he said. “You haven't told me you love me in too many minutes.”

She licked her lips.

“I love you,” she said. “I love you so much it hurts.”

“In French,” he said. He picked up the pipe, put it back down.

“Je t'aime,”
she said, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt.

Julien clucked his tongue. “You sound like you love the little pipe more than you love me.”

“No!” she said, too quickly.

“But you want it.”

She licked her lips again. Sweat trickled between her breasts and under her arms. She could smell it. The smell of desperation.

“Beg for it,” Julien said, smiling.

“Please—” she began.

But he was already shaking his head.

“That's not begging,
ma petite chatte
,” he said.

She climbed onto the floor, onto her knees. She looked up at him, grabbed his hands in hers.

“Please,” she said, her body trembling, her voice trembling. “Please, Julien. Please. Please. Please.”

“Shh,” he said, bending her over the back of the pink sofa so that she could see the pipe, waiting for her. She stretched her hand out but couldn't reach it.

She felt like she might burst out of her skin. She felt like she might scream.

But then he finished, slumping over her, murmuring to her.

Finally, finally, he was lighting the match under the bowl of the pipe. Her eyes burned, eager, desperate. She could feel them shining. He patted his lap, and she crawled across the sofa and rested her head there. It smelled like sex and sweat. She parted her lips, and he taunted her, moving the pipe close, then jerking it away.

“Please,” she begged again. “Please.”

Finally, finally he put it to her lips and she bit it so he couldn't pull it away.

“Like last time,” he said.

“I love you,” she said before she inhaled.

Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her body jerked. But he was there, holding her tight.

S
he got an email from her brother in Uganda. He was there protecting the last remaining mountain gorillas in the world. It was sometimes very hard for Maggie to be the sister of such a person.

She stared at the screen.

Dear Maggot,

I'm staring at a bowl of obusera (don't ask) and dreaming of the drunken spaghetti we had in Florence when Mom and He Who Will Not Be Mentioned dragged us around Italy. In August. You lost your retainer. I practically lost my mind. But we had that spaghetti. Insert orgasmic emoticon here. And of course thinking of Florence makes me think of you. Have you gone back to that place? I looked it up for you (because that's what big brothers are for!) and it's called Osteria de' Benci, in case you get a hankering. Mwirima, my favorite silverback, wandered into the souvenir shop today, scaring the shit out of the family from Michigan. Definitely the highlight of my day. If you actually wrote me back for a change, that would trump Mwirima's appearance.

Love, Wills

Maggie smiled. She could picture Will checking for typos and punctuation errors before he hit Send. She had tried to explain to him that you don't write an email the same way you write a letter, reminding him that salutations and signoffs aren't necessary.
She would tease him about this, if she answered him, which she probably wouldn't because what could she possibly say to him? That oh by the way, I left school and I'm being kept by an old dude in Paris? And also, I've developed quite a taste for heroin? How are your gorillas?

How could such opposite people come from the same gene pool? Will was cursed with being overly responsible, too neat, too cautious, a worrier. Maggie lost things, all the time—keys, cell phones, her passport, her wallet. She courted trouble, always falling for the wrong guys, taking too many risks, experimenting with things Will, three years older, still hadn't tried. Maggie had bungee jumped and hitchhiked and dropped acid. She'd most definitely had sex with more people than he had, which wasn't hard since he'd only been with Sally Greer, his college girlfriend.