How Could She Read online

  “My friend Mabel met her boyfriend through a roommate-search app,” Katrina said.

  “Oh! I just remembered something.” Geraldine refused to meet Barrett’s eye as she sprang off the chair and headed for her bedroom door.

  Once she was safely alone in her room, the sensation of despair only became more piercing. Barrett was Geraldine’s third roommate in four years to move on in order to cohabit with a significant other. Geraldine had attended two weddings that resulted from these departures. Gracelessly she dropped to her knees and pulled a blue plastic crate out from under her bed. She flipped through a couple of photo albums and spiral notebooks filled with diary entries before she even fastened on what she was doing. Some animal instinct had pushed her to find the composition journal with the marble-patterned cover that she’d started writing in some years ago. It was a greatest-hits of sorts: Only the very lowest of Geraldine’s lows occasioned an entry in the Book of Indignities. And now she was faced with what might be the greatest indignity of all: She didn’t even have her book. In one of the more poorly thought-out gestures of her life, she’d lent the journal to Sunny, who’d vowed to return it once she’d illustrated the scenes in it. The closest Sunny had come to keeping her promise was emailing Geraldine a picture of her Cray-Pas rendering of one of the original indignities: Dad Moves to Alberta, Age 3. That had been two years ago. Surely she wasn’t still working on it.

  Geraldine collapsed on top of her bed, her coral tendrils fanning out on the duvet’s cloud print, and felt stupid for letting Barrett’s news take her unawares. That’s what men did, even the sweet ones. They left. She tried to figure out which was worse, Barrett’s forthcoming abandonment or the added disgrace of needing to remind Sunny to return the journal. Sunny forgot things only when it suited her, when she didn’t stand to gain anything. The book was probably stashed away with a jumble of treasures Sunny had picked up on one of her international jaunts and some dried-up art supplies.

  The only way Geraldine could imagine reclaiming it was to finagle her way into Sunny’s house. An invitation to stay at Sunny’s for any longer than the length of an afternoon had not come in years and years. Geraldine pictured herself looking like some deranged assassin as she marched through a throng of Sunny’s bubble-dress-clad admirers at one of her painfully curated all-women get-togethers to demand she hand over the composition book. She could picture Sunny’s disorientation, her nervous chuckle as the reed of her body tilted five degrees away from her friend as she realized the magnitude of Geraldine’s sense of injury. Sunny had been kinder to Geraldine during her darkest hour than anybody else, and certainly kinder than she needed to be to somebody who had no way of repaying favors. She’d been there for Geraldine during her crack-up and had bequeathed her Toronto apartment, with its crooked floorboards and plastered-off fireplace, to her friend. But on some level Sunny had to know the truth. Holding on to the journal was a means of keeping Geraldine in her place, serving as insurance against Geraldine’s ever thinking, God forbid, that she was equal to Sunny.

  Geraldine flexed her toes and pried off her woolen reindeer socks. Even her feet were in a state—her nails overgrown and patched with the aquamarine remains of a pedicure. How had she ended up here? If only the question were rhetorical. She knew her mistake. When Barb had asked her to come down and work for her at the CBC’s New York bureau, Geraldine should have jumped, not said that she wasn’t looking to leave Toronto. There was a time following her decision when Geraldine had nearly forgotten about Barb’s offer. Now she thought about it constantly, occasionally while crying in a bathroom stall, her one refuge from Blankenship Media’s open-plan office.

  Geraldine could feel her mouth quivering as she took in her surroundings. The painting that Sunny had included in her holiday card, a jubilant mess of seed shapes in pinks and blues, leaned against a scented candle on top of her bureau. Geraldine rolled onto her side, facing away from the dresser. If only she had said yes to Barb. Geraldine would have made a stellar deputy. Few possessed her talent for executing the vision of those ranking above her while buoying the morale of all those underfoot. To think of where she’d be at this very instant in her parallel life, of whose voices she would be overhearing in the next room. No—it would be a single voice, and he’d be talking to her. Geraldine looked up at the ceiling and crossed her arms over her torso, more straitjacket than hug, and rocked herself as tenderly as she could manage. New York was her solution, but it was also six years in her past.

  2

  The sidewalk was paved with half an inch of slush, but Rachel walked down Lafayette Street with an uncontainable bounce. She couldn’t help feeling encouraged. It wasn’t just that she was having lunch with her agent, Josie. The greater victory lay in, for once, not having been the one to initiate the face-to-face. Rachel had nearly deleted the email from Sabrina, Josie’s assistant who sent the agency’s biannual author-sales reports—or, in Rachel’s case, returns. This time there was no spreadsheet attached. Sabrina was simply asking if Rachel might be free to have lunch with her boss and suggested a date four weeks away.

  After Rachel confirmed, all her lingering fears were squashed when Sabrina replied, “Great. Give that little guy Leo a squeeze from me!” That Rachel’s baby was a girl and her name was Cleo did not matter. Rachel had to believe that Sabrina would not bother to break her ice-queen façade if she were setting up a client termination. And Rachel was fairly positive that getting fired never happened over a nice lunch.

  Rachel and Josie hadn’t broken bread since they went out to celebrate the publication of The Girl from Bird Street, Rachel’s fourth book, which was no longer in print. The publisher hadn’t even bothered to press whatever button made it available as an ebook. This stung, but Rachel was done Googling the competition. Now she Googled the competition from the Clinton Hill writers’ space, where she spent three days a week working on a new novel, one that was totally different from any of the semiautobiographical ones she had written in the past.

  Rachel felt a fluttering in her stomach and pulled out her phone to double-check the restaurant’s address. A text had come in from her old friend Geraldine. The message couldn’t possibly rate an immediate read; Geraldine lived in Toronto. Then again, Geraldine was careful about international texting rates and ordinarily emailed.

  Rach, I have a meeting with Barb McLaughlin on Feb. 15, a Wednesday. Do you think I could stay over a couple nights? xx

  As if you need to ask! Rachel typed. If you can get away from work, stay through the weekend! As she wove her way through a knot of SoHo tourists outside the Supreme shop, Rachel’s mind cast back to Barb, who’d been her first editor at Province and only tolerated Rachel’s contributions because the men who ran the magazine told her to. Barb had covered the war in Afghanistan, whereas Rachel’s beat was Rachel, which meant she wrote about her adventures in pet-sitting or embedding as a dance-floor motivator at a Forest Hill bar mitzvah.

  Rachel had run into Barb a couple of years ago at a holiday party thrown by the Canadian consulate. It had been an elaborate affair in a Sutton Place town house, with a raw bar and a trio of fiddlers flown in from New Brunswick. Rachel hadn’t received an invitation from the consulate since then, she now realized. The office must have removed her from the guest list when they learned she wasn’t actually Canadian.

  Barb had been quite drunk and uncharacteristically nice to Rachel at the consulate reception, cupping Rachel’s cheek in her warm palm. “Still got that cookie face! Does everybody tell you that you could be Debbie Harry’s daughter?” Barb frowned. “You never took yourself seriously is what killed me.”

  Rachel bristled at the memory and turned right on Bond Street. There was truth to what Barb had said. And now here she was at thirty-six, killing herself to make up for lost time and get the world to take her seriously. Which might never happen. At least Rachel had Cleo and a husband she loved. Not everyone could say as much. Even Sunny had married somebody who alw
ays looked stiff in party pictures, with his groomed hair and rictus smile. Could Sunny possibly love Nick, much less want to be alone with him?

  Rachel glanced at her phone and saw another text from Geraldine.

  That’s so nice of you. If you and Matt want to go out for Valentine’s Day, I’m happy to babysit!

  Rachel’s heart moved a little at Geraldine’s selflessness. Whenever Geraldine came into town, Rachel put her up on an air mattress wedged between the changing table and the diaper pail in Cleo’s room. Geraldine never showed up empty-handed, never brought up that camping out in Cleo’s room was a far cry from the Gramercy lodgings she’d enjoyed when she’d come to New York with Peter.

  V Day is nearly a month away, Rachel replied. I wish you’d come sooner! The city is sad without you. xxxxxxx

  Rachel swerved around a woman handing out samples outside a pop-up cheese shop and kept walking. How crazy that Peter had been free to seduce Geraldine more or less out in the open and nobody seemed to fault him for his borderline-pervy management practices. It was just the way things were.

  The restaurant’s façade was free of an address, the only signifier a snail-like glyph on its awning. Rachel watched a pair of men with fashionable laptop cases descend the restaurant steps while she unfastened the hood of her winter jacket and pushed it over her shoulders. She glanced at her phone and made sure it was not yet one o’clock. She had time to go to the bathroom and tidy her frizzing bun.

  But the second that Rachel set foot in the restaurant, she saw Josie waving at her from the back of the room. Her hair, which used to be in a side-parted lob, was now shorter and blonder. She sat at a corner table already crowded with vegetable-laden plates, a few of which were so delicately arranged that the produce appeared to sway.

  “I’m obsessed with this place,” Josie said when Rachel took her seat.

  “I’ve been wanting to come here.” Rachel unfolded her napkin and draped it across her lap. She should have worn a cool top; nobody could see her floral skirt. “With Cleo on the scene, my feasts consist mostly of avocado puree and chicken nuggets.”

  Josie narrowed her eyes. “Hilarious.”

  Rachel felt a slightly sad stirring within. It had been so long since she’d seen Josie that she’d forgotten about her agent’s tic. You could announce a cancer diagnosis and Josie would pronounce it hilarious. Perhaps it was her way to compensate for her obvious inability to laugh.

  “You’re probably wondering why I asked you here,” Josie said, and Rachel felt her stomach twist. “I’ll be honest. An author of mine found new representation and said it was because I wasn’t sufficiently present.” Her gray eyes widened to convey her feelings about her former client’s expectations. Rachel was sure it was Cassie Burkheim who’d dumped Josie. Cassie was a twenty-something prodigy who wrote bestsellers about fairies and was perpetually on the road. She and Rachel had met through Josie and kept up a rich Twitter friendship. Cassie was always threatening to bring Rachel to one of her YA conferences. “So,” Josie said, “I’m doing check-ins with all my people. And you, missy, are one of my people.”

  “I never think of you as absent,” Rachel forced herself to say. “You’re always there when I need you. And I know I’m not exactly bankrolling your lunch tour.”

  “Well, neither was he,” Josie said. Huh. So Cassie was off the list of potential dumpers. “I have faith in you,” Josie declared. “You’re going to figure it out.”

  “I actually might have already. I’m nearly done with something different.” Josie stopped spreading white-bean puree on her toast. Rachel drew in a bracing breath. She had one chance to hook Josie on the project. “It’s about a young mother in a Gypsy community in Queens,” Rachel went on. “You know how when you’re riding the subway and a young woman comes onto the car begging for money while she’s holding a toddler’s hand or has a baby strapped to her chest? I always wondered how they can do that to their children, and this is a tragic saga of immigration and the ties that . . .” Josie’s head had begun to bob up and down, and she wasn’t looking at Rachel anymore. “You hate it,” Rachel said.

  “No, no, I love tragedy. I’m just surprised to hear you’re ready to move out of the teen market.”

  Rachel felt heat rise in her cheeks. She’d messed up her pitch. This was supposed to be a YA book—just not another supposedly funny one that was doomed to fail.

  “I’m not moving to adult,” Rachel replied. “The main character is sixteen.”

  “Oh,” Josie said. “I find that what’s working in the market is stuff like Cassie Burkheim’s books. Things that are supernatural and sexy. This sounds different, but we can try.” Light came to Josie’s face. “Check him out,” she whispered. “Jake!” Josie clasped her hands excitedly and rose to hug a sinewy boy-man. He had on a clean white jacket, his straw-blond hair twisted into dreadlocks.

  “Jacob Marsden, meet another client of mine, Rachel Ziff. Rachel, Jake is going to write the most incredible cookbook for Clarkson Potter.”

  Rachel took another look at him. “This is your restaurant? It’s delicious.”

  “Josie better be making a killing for you,” Jacob said with a grin.

  “We’re working on it,” Josie said.

  Rachel forced her shoulders to remain straight. Josie’s and Jacob’s heads tilted closer together, and Rachel was suddenly left on her own. Her boss, Ceri, would take her back full-time, wouldn’t she? Ceri ran Cassette, the magazine where for two days a week Rachel “edited” but actually rewrote other women. Basically she was a word janitor. Rachel didn’t hate the work. She didn’t really care about it one way or the other, which was probably why she was good at it. Egos didn’t ship magazines. Rachel could go to social-work school, the way everyone else who’d lost their way, suddenly on the wrong side of thirty, seemed to. Or she could lean harder into what she knew best and try to write a book about sex-crazed adolescent fairies.

  “You should come see the kitchen,” Jacob insisted. “We installed a woodstove that my brother and I salvaged up in the Maine backwoods.”

  Josie’s eyes filled with lust. “Do you mind, Rachel?” Before Rachel could determine whether Josie was asking her to join them, her agent stood up and assured her that the bill was covered. “We’ll do this again soon,” Josie said as she departed the table.

  Left to her own devices—literally, she realized—Rachel speared her fork into a cumin-dusted carrot coin and consulted her phone. Nothing from Tanya, the babysitter; just another message from Geraldine, who must have switched phone plans. First meeting about a new job in . . . too embarrassing to admit. I’d better not die before it happens.

  Eat lots of greens and don’t jaywalk! Rachel fired back. Seriously, this is so exciting. xx

  Rachel meant it. She had grown to believe that Geraldine was never going to move on from the weird job for which she was exquisitely overqualified. She was going to die recycling second-rate content for memorabilia magazines that moldered on airport newsstands and in hospital waiting rooms. Rachel secretly thought that only somebody with Geraldine’s brittle upbringing would accept her present circumstances. Geraldine’s mother, a night nurse with a soft spot for hockey players, was never that emotive, and her father was alive but not present.

  Rachel was happy to give Geraldine whatever support she needed. Besides, she liked having her old friend around. In the presence of Geraldine, Rachel instantly returned to a twenty-five-year-old girl-about-town. Rachel had been somewhat miserable in Toronto, yes, stressed out about work and dating as if it were a high-intensity aerobic activity. But her beauty was in full flower then, and even the people who didn’t want to kiss her used to find her intriguing. It was nice to be reminded of that.

  And there was always news about Sunny, whom Geraldine invariably saw during her visits, at some preposterously glamorous event. Rachel would listen to Geraldine’s recaps and chew over the details like a dog
sucking marrow out of a bone. Information about Sunny was bitter poison to Rachel’s sense of self and sanity, yet she couldn’t get enough.

  Rachel looked up to see a busboy bearing down on her table. “Are you still working on that?” he asked. Rachel swallowed the bread she’d been absentmindedly chewing and fumbled to her feet. She took the long way out so she could pass the kitchen and wave good-bye to Josie through the kitchen door’s porthole window. As Rachel made her approach, it swung open, barely missing her face.

  3

  She doesn’t even drop hints anymore,” Sunny said. Her elbows were on the tiny marble table, her chin propped on her fists as she mulled the rather startling email she’d received earlier that morning. Geraldine understood how busy Sunny was, but perhaps they could get a tea. “It’s like she enjoys throwing my inhospitality in my face.”

  “When she used to ask if she could crash at our place, you always came up with excuses for why it was a bad time for a visit,” Nick reminded her.

  “That’s not true,” Sunny said, knowing full well that she hadn’t put Geraldine up in two years, not since Rachel, her regular host, was thirty-seven weeks pregnant and bedridden. “I’m going to tell her she should stay with us. It just might be hard with my show, but I can make it work.”

  When Geraldine had last been in New York, in early November, Sunny had blown off their afternoon snack date at the last minute, citing a migraine. The truth was she had just a regular headache and too much work to do.

  “Don’t tell her to stay if you don’t mean it. You’ll regret it.” Nick emptied the remnants of a sugar packet into his cup.

  “By which you mean I’ll drive you crazy with my groaning.” Sunny gave him a playful kick.

  Sunny and Nick were at a window booth in Nero’s, the table strewn with the New York Post, the New York Times, and the FT. The couple’s breakfast consisted of double cappuccinos that they were nearly done with and croissants that they habitually ordered and tore apart without finishing, as if they might find a wonderful toy inside.