All You Need Is Love (23 page)

I hold the package with one hand and lift my hair off my neck with the other. Then I pretend to shake a Magic Eight Ball and read the response, “Highly Doubtful.”

“Got it,” Jacob says. “I won’t ask again.”

He comes over, gives me a quick kiss on both cheeks — how very Euro — and we part ways. “Hey,” I say, “It’s like that song…”

He looks at me over his shoulder, his green eyes catching my gaze and holding it. “Yeah — I know the one.” He whistles
though we’ve got to say goodbye for the summer
…I wish I could remember the rest of the lyrics.

Then, when I’m back in the car, I do. The song is about saying goodbye for the summer, promising to meet up again in the fall. I sing out loud and am glad Jacob isn’t around to hear me.

Goodbye, campus, see ya, semi-circle of buildings and dorms I won’t have to deal for three solid months, ciao cheesy yearbook images of blonde girls on the wall by the quad, jocks in full action mode on the field, the drama crowd in stage make-up, and the candid shots that highlight cliques and display now broken-up couples. I sound jaded, but I’m not. Even though I make fun of the yearbook, it means something — it has a full year cycle in it — the you you were in September all the way to the you that’s holding the completed book now. My yearbook remains unsigned but stashed in my trunk so I can show it to Arabella.

Every step I take is one step closer to the Vineyard and Arabella. Arabella who was supposed to call me but hasn’t. Or was I supposed to call her? No, it’s her turn. Who cares. I call her cell phone but don’t leave a message when she doesn’t pick up.

Then I try the café. When Doug answers he says, “Slave to the Grind Two” so fast it sounds like “Slimed to the Greentoop” which I make a mental note could be a song title. Songs — songs I need to “lend” to Jacob. Wait — back to the phone.

“Hi, Doug, it’s Love Bukowski.”

“Ah, the famous Love,” he says, unaware perhaps that he has said “the famous Love” each time he’s spoken to me and it’s past getting old. “We’ll be seeing you tomorrow I hear?”

“Yes, I think so. Is Arabella around?”

With the sound of the milk frother in the background, Doug says, “Nope. She’s left for the day.”

“Oh — I’ll try her upstairs then. Do you know that number?” There’s a phone number for the apartment but we are so reliant on cells I haven’t bothered to write it down.

“She’s not there, either. She’s staying at your friend’s house.”

“My friend?”

“Henry,” Doug says like he’s reading it from a piece of paper which maybe he is, “Henry Randall’s. She said it was more comfortable there.”

Henry Randall’s eleven bedroom mansion is more comfortable than our linenless, pillowless un-airconditioned tiny apartment? Really? No shit. Thanks for telling me. I say this in the polite way, my overly cheery, “thanks, Doug!” like he’s provided me with anything but annoying info and hang up.

I drive to Mable’s gripping the wheel like it’s Arabella’s shoulders. Is she just having fun or hooking up with him? And if it’s the later, does it bug me?

Do I expect to have anything romantic with Henry? My solid answer is maybe. I can’t rule it out. But more than that, I was hoping Arabella would like our simple flat, enjoy using the same one pot for pasta and oatmeal. But maybe she’s too highbrow. Or maybe I’m just not there yet, not yet in full serve the coffees all day, hot tub and bonfire at night mood.

I get to the post office and fill out the customs form, hesitating where it says contents. Do I write school work? Academic papers? Final project? Or just printed matter?

I go with the last one and slip my letter in before I seal it up.

To: Poppy Massa-Tonclair

From: Love Bukowski

Enclosed please find my novella. I know, it’s not exactly whatone might call traditional, but please allow me to explain. It’s not really a true novella, nor is it poetry, nor song. But this, my journal, isn’t a cop-out. On the contrary, this journal is the truest part of me, the realest story of my life so far. I’ve edited nothing, except for a couple of names for privacy’s sake (theirs, not mine), and if you just give it a chance, you’ll find everything you asked me to write about is all there. That I’m all in there. Please consider it my final paper, my big project. You asked for the truth, and this is it. I’m sending it registered mail; it’s hard to part with it — but it’s yours for the reading.

Thanks, Love.

Once I pay for the postage and hand it over, it’s like a huge weight has been lifted from my mind and shoulders. My past, my project, is out in the world. And I am temporarily rid of it. I never did give those lyrics to Jacob and now I’m glad I didn’t. He can hook up with random boarders or date darling sophomore debutantes, but he can’t have all those parts of me. My words are mine — or now, Poppy Massa-Tonclair’s. And I can move forward rather than rereading and trying to make sense of what happened prior to now.

Using my emergency key I have yet to free from my key ring, I unlock the front door to Mable’s apartment and go upstairs. Through the window below, Ula is visible in her matronly apron (hey, is it a wonder that those two words rhyme?) and Slave to the Grind is bustling with the pre-summer need for creamy ice coffee and frozen lemonade. I want to peer in and see if the tin we set up for a big donation to the Avon Foundation has been filled, but I don’t let myself get off track. Instead, I take the steps two at a time and unlock the other door and push it open with my knee.

It’s not the first time I’ve been back. Mable asked me to come back and get her a book or a sweater at different points, but it’s the first time I’ve been here alone since the funeral. And though I expected to walk in and find some box — not necessarily with a bow around it — with my name on it, there’s nothing. No dishes in the sink, no box of information for me. Just Mable’s old things. The detritus left behind after a life is finished. I walk around, lightly touching things, leaving my fingerprints on the dusty television top, moving one of her throw pillows back to the couch from where it had fallen on the floor.

Only now do I see how empty her place is. Nothing’s been removed but before, when I used to visit, when we ate lo mein tucked up together on the couch or listened to her old albums on the floor in her room, the apartment felt full, crammed with stuff. But it wasn’t — that was just Mable and her lively presence, I guess. I wander through, expecting to hear my dad’s footsteps any second. Then I remember something — something weird.

I look under the sink where all the cleaning supplies are. In back of the half-empty bottles of blue Windex and Mop n’ Glo (“You be mop, I’ll be glo,” Mable used to say and we’d laugh our asses off as we cleaned and took on other personalities) is a ceramic pot (hey, maybe it was made by Mrs. Dandy-Pantinko’s brother! Or maybe my life just isn’t quite that circular).

I lift the lid and find a twenty dollar bill — Mable always said to have an emergency twenty at hand — and a key. I take it out and hold it in my palm. It’s one of those tiny ones, from a filing cabinet, and I remember last fall finding Mable shoving something in a drawer and telling me to mind my own business, which isn’t something she did all that often.

I go to her desk in her bedroom and think how sad the unmade bed looks. I start to pull the sheets and over up but then feel freaked out and sad at the same time — won’t it look worse if it’s made? And when was the last time someone slept here, anyway? The key unlocks not the first, not the second, but the third cabinet drawer I try and inside is…just a stack of old electricity bills.

What was I hoping to find? A message from her or pictures, something I don’t have? I don’t know what. But possibly this is one of the feelings you’re left with, just this aching need for more than you can’t ever satisfy.

I close the drawer and start looking through the bookshelves for the few items I will keep. Mable left instructions that all her household goods be donated to charity after I had a chance to look through and take anything I wanted. So all the albums will come home with me even though I don’t have a record player, some books, maybe an article of clothing if I can handle having it. The material objects aren’t what I need and I guess Mable knew that, and it’s not like keeping her yellow chipped teapot will help me. But maybe it will so I grab it and put it in my pile of stuff to keep — I can take it to the Vineyard and think of her while I sip cranberry tea out of a mug made by a hippy potter.

“Hey, Dad,” I say without turning around. I heard his key in the door and the big footsteps on the stairs.

“Not quite.”

I turn around and see Miles, with his still defeated face, plaid cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and pants too heavy for such a warm day. “Hi, Miles, what’re you doing here?”

“Your dad called me to help lift — I’m just a mover, I guess.”

“You know you were more than that,” I say but then don’t say anything else. It’s not my place to dissect their on again off again romance nor its remains.

He looks around and notices the cabinet under the sink is open. He closes it with his foot and looks at me. “Wrong place.”

Miles has never been a man of many words, in fact Mable used to say he spoke in two word sentences and I think she was right. “Meaning?” I say, giving him one word for his two.

“Record player.” Two words.

“Oh.” One word. I walk to the record player and when I see what’s underneath the dark plastic cover, I talk in a steady stream of many more words than one.

“Oh my god, this is just the kind of thing I was really hoping to find like maybe what you’d have in a movie except this is obviously my real life. But I was — am — just so happy. And sad. But tell me what it is…”

I hold a big, sealed envelope that has my name on the front. The contents of this packet are unknown to me and I start to undo the tab at the back flap when Miles stops me. “She made me promise.”

“Promise what?”

“When I went to see her all those times, at Mass General…it wasn’t just to visit. She had some things she wanted you to know, some items that…but it was under the condition that you not just tear into it.”

I stop myself from ripping the thing open and rub my palms together so I won’t be tempted. “So how long do I have to wait?” I tear up a little and my vice wavers. “I don’t know how long I can — I mean, years?”

Miles responds. “No. She had a plan. Let your summer unfold. That’s what I’m supposed to tell you.
Unfold.
And then this part…” he points to the envelope. “You can open when you start your college tour.”

“She was supposed to go with me,” I say sadly, imagining her singing in the passenger seat.

“Now she will be,” he says. “Really.”

Dad comes in right when Miles is saying really and stares at the big envelope. I’m in defensive mode so I clutch it to my chest and say, “It’s for me. Mable left it
for me
.”

“I know she did,” Dad says and even Miles looks surprised. “I knew her too well to think she’d give up having the last word about anything…are you opening it?”

“Not now,” I say. “I’m supposed to let my summer
unfold
.”

Downstairs at Slave to the Grind, Louis sips her latte, waiting.

“Dad’s still dealing with the papers up there,” I say and sit down next to her at the counter that faces the street.

“He’s having a rough time,” she says and looks to see if I’ll agree or not.

I nod. “We both are, but I think you’re right. Maybe it’s worse for him.”

Louisa pushes her hair back from her faces and fiddles with the wooden stirrer. “I don’t think you can really compare one person’s grief to another’s…but it’s my feeling that David — your dad — feels very alone.”

I consider what she said and then respond. “You mean because hes been a single parent and now his only version of a co-parent is gone?”

“Partially that. But also — you. You’re leaving, and that’s rough on him.”

“But I’m supposed to leave,” I say. “Kids grow up and change and move on, right?” As I say it, I feel sad, guilty, and wonder if being apart this summer is a good thing.

“Of course you’re supposed to move on. That’s the mark of good parenting, that you’ll be self-sufficient and confident without him. But it doesn’t make it easier from his point of view — he’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss him, too,” I say. “Thanks.”

Louisa points to the street where my dad waves to us to come outside. “For what?”

I hop down from the stool and wait for Louisa to wrap one of her trademark scarves around her neck and throw out her coffee cup. “For being there — for him. And for me, too, I guess.” I don’t want the moment to be too public service announcement, too cloying, so I shrug.

Louisa shrugs back, aware that if we push too hard at closeness, our carefully built relationship might topple. “No problem. Now if you don’t mind giving me a ride back to Cambridge, that’d be great.”

“Sure,” I say and we head outside to where my dad is, in our newly formed, but somewhat workable triangle.

Back at home, Dad and I sit with the video on pause.

“Are you sure you don’t want to?” I ask. I wanted him to see the final cut of my video project of Mable.

Dad shakes his head. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m just not ready.”

“You don’t have to be sorry — I get it. But it’s not supposed to be a eulogy. It’s supposed to celebrate her life.” Dad nods but looks so sad. “Although I guess it would have been better to film before she got sick.”

“I think you did a wonderful thing, Love. And I really do want to see it. At some point. Maybe in the fall, okay?” He doesn’t add that this summer is supposed to heal us or make it better or just put time and days in between the loss and the present, but I know what he’s saying.

“And I know Mable told you more about…” he very obviously has trouble deciding what to say next, “Galadriel.” My turn to nod at him. “And I guess I think it’s time you did know more. But…” he sighs. “But it’s a little scary for me.”

I furrow my brows. “Why? It’s not like she has anything over you, Dad.”

“Maybe not,” he says. “But can I ask one thing?”