How Could She Read online

  “What about the furniture?”

  “It would cost more to ship than any of it’s worth.” Sunny could hear Geraldine’s hurt in the ensuing silence and had to remind herself that the possessions she was belittling were her own, not Geraldine’s.

  “So everything must go,” Geraldine said with an air of defeat. “I’ll do my best not to get too sentimental.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” Sunny said. “Just find a new tenant and we’re golden.”

  “Oh—there’s one thing I was looking for,” Geraldine said lightly. “Do you still have that book of mine—the journal I made, with all my life’s indignities?”

  Sunny felt her jaw clench. “I need to get that back to you, I know. It’s in the country. I can picture exactly where it is—on the bookshelf, right by the almanacs,” she assured Geraldine.

  “The material keeps on coming, I’m afraid,” Geraldine tossed off the line.

  She made good on her promise, lining up a couple of teachers whom Katrina and Barrett knew. She also arranged for Goodwill to take away the furniture the new residents didn’t want and, despite Sunny’s protestations, mailed a package containing a few belongings she said she couldn’t bear to throw away. A dozen or so old magazines, a ski trophy Sunny had won as a child, and the quill-shaped medal Sunny had received at the Canadian Magazine Awards, just days after her expulsion from Province.

  A wisp of irritation crossed Sunny as she unearthed the award from the package. Geraldine had to know that Sunny would not want this reminder of that time in her life, which had been abjectly humiliating. At the awards dinner, Sunny’d had to sit at the same table as Geraldine and Peter, who got to keep their jobs, as well as Ed, the one who’d told her that he couldn’t afford to keep her. She’d given a gracious speech, reserving her anger for when she was by herself, and thrown the medal into the back of a kitchen drawer.

  Even if Geraldine had been trying to be thoughtful, the gesture grated on Sunny. So rather than thank Geraldine for going to the trouble, Sunny began to compose an email to Rachel. As she started to type, she felt a quickening that only a new friendship could provide. She and Rachel had hung out a few times now, but never in each other’s home. They’d met for one more coffee, and Sunny had taken Rachel to a friends-and-family breakfast at a new hotel restaurant on the Bowery. Buzzed on free lattes, they talked about their shared love of Shelley Duvall and whether there was such a thing as a “Pilates body.” And, of course, they spoke of Geraldine.

  “Nick and I are having friends over for drinks on Saturday night,” Sunny wrote. “Any chance you can make it?”

  * * *

  • • •

  The doorbell didn’t ring until after eight, at which point everybody was seated around the table wearing lobster bibs. The drinks Sunny and Nick had hosted had bloomed into a full-on dinner party, with Nick’s surprise delivery of a crate of lobsters and the arrival of not only Laird and his new wife, Reineke, but also Yves, a real-estate developer who spoke not at all and only stroked his shirt collar, and Nick’s sister, Barbara.

  “That must be my friend Rachel,” Sunny said, feeling a flip of excitement in her belly. “I invited her for drinks. I didn’t think she was going to make it.” She had lost hope of Rachel’s being able to extricate herself from her family duties.

  “Shall we pretend we didn’t here that?” Nick glanced at his watch. He was a tiny bit drunk on gin and tonics, and when he was drunk, he could be a tiny bit mean. He had already chased out a couple whom Sunny had invited for cocktails by thanking them for stopping by in that way he did that telegraphed his readiness for somebody to leave. “It’s past cocktail hour,” Nick said. “And we can’t fit another for dinner.” But Sunny was already halfway across the parlor floor.

  She opened the door to find Rachel standing on the top step, bundled up in a fur-trimmed parka. Her blue eyes blazed in the March night. Next to her stood a stubble-faced man with heavy eyelids and a sleeping toddler slung over his shoulder. He was beautiful, embarrassingly so.

  “Are you Matt?” Sunny said, almost in disbelief. Geraldine had spoken of Rachel’s husband as a cute nerd who liked to surf. Sunny had pictured a generic-looking white man with a heavy backpack, very grad-student, not unattractive or bad but nothing to get excited about.

  “My brother, Jesse,” Rachel supplied. “He’s been helping me out. Matt’s stuck at home on a Skype call. His adviser is in China.”

  Sunny took another look at Jesse’s eyes and pulled her cardigan tighter around herself. “I thought you weren’t coming,” she said to Rachel. “We actually started eating dinner a while ago—”

  Rachel’s face flooded with alarm. “Oh, no! I thought it was a cocktail party.”

  “It was,” Sunny said, confused. “I invited you for drinks, but that’s turned into dinner. I’m sure we can throw something together—”

  Sunny inhaled Nick’s oatmeal soap and knew that he had come up from behind. He placed his hand on Sunny’s shoulder and pressed down tighter than usual. “What’s going on?”

  “You must be Nick,” Rachel said. “I’m Rachel, and I’m so sorry to be butting in. I totally misunderstood the invitation. I thought you were having a party, which is why we’re so late.”

  “I’ve told you about Rachel,” Sunny said speedily. “The children’s-book writer.” She hoped Rachel wouldn’t catch that she had chosen to put it this way, rather than saying she was a teen writer, which wouldn’t interest Nick. She was protecting her friend, was all.

  “It’s my fault,” Jesse said. “I kidnapped these two for the afternoon, and my truck had some last-minute difficulties.”

  “We went up to Beacon for this mega yard sale, and then we spent three hours in a frozen-yogurt shop waiting for triple-A.”

  “I think we’ve been to that yard sale.” Sunny squeezed Nick’s hand. “It’s where you got your chess set?”

  The child jerked up with a start, and Jesse cupped his hand over the back of her head, calming her and drawing her body back against his. The girl rearranged her cheek against her uncle’s shoulder and went completely still. She was so beautiful, Sunny thought.

  “You’re all welcome to come in?” Nick’s voice was pitched somewhere between politeness and agitation. Sunny could feel his hot breath on her neck. Now Laird’s wife was hovering in the foyer, looking at the newcomers as if they were feral animals.

  “No, no, we don’t want to ruin dinner.” Rachel was already backing down the stairs. “Wait, I have something for you.” She reached into her tote and came up the steps to hand Sunny a brown paper bag filled with something heavy. “It’s nothing,” Rachel said. “I just saw them at the sale and thought you could do something with them.”

  “That was so sweet.” Sunny brought the bag close to her chest and peeked inside. It was filled with buttons of all shapes and colors, glinting like so many precious coins. Sunny remembered the rag dolls she used to make as a little girl and wished Agnes were the sort of child who found enjoyment in the same things Sunny used to.

  Before she shut the door, Sunny peered down the street and noticed a blue Ford pickup parked a few buildings away. It looked defiantly out of place on her block. She turned and went back into the dining room, where she found Nick and his sister already seated with Laird and Yves. They were working on their mushroom soup, as if nothing had happened.

  10

  Oh, goodie, an orange.” Geraldine pinched the wedge out of her drink. “I don’t think I’ve had a single piece of fruit since I’ve been down here.”

  Jeremy tilted his head quizzically. “Should we ask for more? We don’t want you getting scurvy.”

  “No, thank you. I’m perfect. Everything is perfect.”

  Geraldine had been in town for less than four days and was in a slightly manic state. Here she was, in Union Square, sipping on a pale cocktail that tasted faintly of lavender while a w
oman she was fairly certain was Gwyneth Paltrow picked at her dinner some twenty feet away. Growing up, she’d felt a certain kinship with the actress, who also had an ugly G name. The blonde turned her head, and Geraldine could see it was a very birdlike woman and not the actress, though she refused to let that deflate her.

  Geraldine and Jeremy had been emailing some during her final weeks in Toronto. She’d written him first to thank him for having her over to dinner, and a few more messages had followed. He was funnier than she’d previously given him credit for, and nicer, running on nerves and insecurity. He sought her approval on the tattoo design he was considering for his right arm and made her promise not to tell anybody that he’d thrown out his back while jumping rope. For her part, Geraldine had sent him an Etsy listing for sock stencils she thought he’d get a kick out of and a photo of the crowd at the good-bye party Barrett had thrown for her at a bar on College Street. There’d been a Rush cover band, and Katrina had baked a fondant cake decorated with orange flower petals.

  Now Geraldine and Jeremy were perched on tall stools at the copper bar in a fake French brasserie whose ornate wall paneling reminded Geraldine of her grandparents’ knockoff Tiffany lamps. Jeremy was nursing his back injury with a murky drink that came in a tumbler lined with black lava salt. He puckered his mouth every time he took a sip. The low lighting was meant to flatter, though it made him resemble a sinewy ghoul.

  “You’ve been keeping occupied?” he asked.

  “Too occupied,” she said. “It’s amazing what a fuss people will make when you’re coming and going. I have a dinner plan every night until next Thursday.” Geraldine had been working her way down a list she’d made up of everybody she’d ever met in New York and at this point had to stop saying yes to lunches if she wanted to get anything done during the day.

  Her network, loose as it was, included nearly fifteen people. She still hadn’t reached out to Rachel or Sunny to set up a plan. It hadn’t been her intention to distance herself, yet now that she’d managed to go this far without clinging onto them, she was hoping to last until Sunny caved in and called her and apologized for not being more hospitable, which was, admittedly, a bit of a fantasy. Especially now that Sunny and Rachel had their new friendship to keep them busy. A friendship about which, unbelievably, neither of them had said a word to Geraldine. Jeremy had told her he’d seen the two of them at a party at one of Nick’s hotels. Geraldine was not impressed. It would have been so much easier if they’d just gotten along with each other all this time, rather than make Geraldine play monkey in the middle. And they’d finally decided to run off together, without her. Geraldine was angrier at Rachel, of course, since she considered her to be the closest of her New York friends. Whether this closeness was bound up in Rachel’s being the most available of her New York friends was something Geraldine did not wish to dwell on.

  Geraldine liked to play the phone call in her head. When she told Sunny that she’d actually already been in town for a couple of weeks, staying at a hotel downtown and socializing with several people Sunny knew, would Sunny invite her over—not for the usual tea on her front steps but an actual meal? When Sunny was about to move to New York, Geraldine had done as much for her, organizing a dinner party in honor of Sunny’s twenty-seventh birthday. Sunny was already spending quite a bit of time in New York, meeting with principals at design agencies, contributing postage-stamp-size illustrations to a few magazines Geraldine had never heard of before. It was clear to all her Toronto friends that they were about to lose her.

  Though she was no cook, Geraldine had decided to make a classic Valencian paella. It was late February, the weather still treacherous. She’d braved the snow and gone to the posh cook shop on Yorkville Avenue and special-ordered a pan that came from Barcelona and took up the entire stovetop. She’d insisted on making every component of the meal by hand, taking two days off work to create a spread of tapas and exotic salads and saffron flan. The food had turned out surprisingly well—thanks in large part to the power of expensive olive oil and Maldon salt. This was not lost on the group, a dozen or so of Sunny’s friends as well as Peter’s brother, Will, and his wife, Lia, who were involved in the New York art world and whom Geraldine had thought Sunny might like to meet. Rachel had come, too, since leaving her out would have been more work for Geraldine than including her.

  The night had been beautiful, all snowflakes and candlelight, and they all did their part to keep the banter effervescent. And yet Geraldine felt ignored. Then she realized that it was not simply a feeling but that it was what was actually happening. Nobody was trying to talk to her. Not Rachel, who was flirting with one of Sunny’s exes, and not Peter, who was bending toward Sunny like a flower into the sun. To be clear, Geraldine’s jealousy was not sexual. She wasn’t even mad at Peter but at herself. Geraldine was not Sunny, never would be. Even if her paella was out of this world, she was hopelessly earthbound.

  Seated at the far end of the table, watching everyone else watch Sunny cozy up to Peter’s sister-in-law and talk about “the eternal problem” with Toronto’s art museums, it dawned on Geraldine that Sunny hadn’t said a single word to her since arriving. Were they even actual friends? Rachel eventually wised up to what was happening and shot Geraldine a look that was intended to be kind but that filled Geraldine with shame. She always defended Sunny when Rachel brought her up, but it was getting harder and harder to maintain that Sunny was just an introvert who had her own strange ways.

  Geraldine managed to hide in the kitchen for a good twenty minutes, pretending to prepare dessert. She was able to pull herself together and sang during the birthday-cake portion of the evening. Sunny was one of the first to leave. When Geraldine walked her out at the end of the night, the guest of honor made no mention of how little the two had spoken, no gesture to the trouble Geraldine had gone to. She simply said the flan was excellent and landed a kiss close to Geraldine’s ear.

  Even Rachel hadn’t known what to say. On her way out of the apartment, she’d rubbed Geraldine’s shoulder. “I’m sorry she did that. That was weird.” An awkward silence followed. “The food was delicious, at least.”

  At one thirty in the morning, while they were still cleaning, Peter asked Geraldine why she expected more from Sunny. Their conversation devolved into an infuriating fight, about Geraldine’s inability to connect with how things really were, how some people were just one way and some people were another way and that was something Geraldine needed to accept if she was ever going to grow up.

  “And the place where you’re staying?” Jeremy asked now. “It’s okay?”

  Geraldine gave an animated nod. “It’s great—and it’s just a couple of blocks away from here. I can get to the Strand in four minutes, and I don’t have to text anyone to make sure they’ll open the door when I come home. Now I just need to make some other friends, is all. Adults can make friends here, right?”

  “Friends is the last thing you should be worrying about,” Jeremy said. “You have a way with people. I think I know your secret.” He looked straight into Geraldine’s eyes. “You ask good questions.”

  “Really?” Geraldine said, scrunching her nose. “I was raised to think asking questions wasn’t nice. My mom was always telling me it was rude to be nosy.”

  “That’s crazy,” Jeremy said.

  Growing up, Geraldine had to obtain most of her information by riffling through her mother’s mail or listening in on her phone calls. She was fifteen when she snooped on a heated call between Joanne and Bruce—she never thought of the two of them, as a pair, as “her parents”—and learned that her father had gotten a better job and was offering to pay for Joanne and Geraldine to take a vacation. “We’re just fine” was her mother’s refrain, words Geraldine could mentally hear her saying more easily than “I love you.”

  “And work?” Jeremy asked. “What’s the latest?”

  “I’m busy,” Geraldine said. “I’m writing podcast pr
oposals and doing some work for my old boss up in Toronto.” She smiled. “You have no idea how good it feels to call him that. I’m sure the feeling is mutual. That’s the only reason I can think of that he threw me freelance work.”

  “He wants to make sure you don’t starve and come crawling back?” Jeremy said.

  Geraldine nodded. “I’m doing a better job than I have in years.”

  A man in a tight blue suit came over and asked if they would like a table. “Up to her,” Jeremy said, turning to Geraldine.

  It was a shared-plates kind of place, and the menu was filled with combinations that seemed designed to intrigue rather than entice. Watermelon figured into a couple of the options. So did nigella seeds. Jeremy ordered for them both, four dishes and a bottle of Riesling that wasn’t remotely sweet.

  “So?” Geraldine asked. “How’s . . . I’m blanking on her name.”

  “Renata? She saw a psychic.” He winced.

  “Oh, no.”

  “He told her she would have a son within a year, so we got to have a premature family-planning conversation. I didn’t see that coming. There’s a lesson to be learned there.”

  “That psychics are the worst?”

  “The scum of the earth.” Jeremy gave Geraldine an adoring look, and she proceeded to tell him her astrologer story. His name was Braham, and she’d met him at a party, shortly after Peter had left her. “He told me he knew Peter—they’d met at some event—and that Peter was a classic Gemini with a dual nature. Braham was off duty, so I guess he could say whatever he wanted. Then when I told him my birthday, he laughed and said of course I’d been clueless to what was going on around me. Like the whole thing was my fault because I was born on December fifteenth.”

  “Sagittarius?” Jeremy clinked glasses with her. “Man-horse represent.”

  The portions were tiny, and even though Geraldine had been careful with the wine, she felt tipsy when they went outside. The digital clock on a parking meter said it was 9:55.