Goodnight June: A Novel (7 page)

He runs to her side and lifts the box from her arms, and I feel, suddenly, that I don’t belong here. She has striking features: full lips, big brown eyes, and high cheekbones. She’s about my age, maybe a little younger. I wonder if she’s Italian. Her long, shiny dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She doesn’t wear makeup. She’s the type of woman who doesn’t need to. A natural beauty.

“Oh,” she says as soon as she sees me seated at the table. She turns back to Gavin as if I’m not there. “I didn’t know you had company.”

“Adrianna, this is June,” he says. “Our new neighbor.”

She scrunches her nose. “Neighbor?”

“Her aunt, Ruby, passed away recently and left June the bookstore.”

Adrianna forces a smile. “Oh,” she says. “I think Lillian said something about a new owner.” She finally turns to me. “I’m really sorry about your loss.”

“Thank you,” I say, still stunned by her presence.

Gavin turns to me. “Lillian and her husband own the toy store across the street, Geppetto’s.”

“Yes,” I say cheerfully. “I knew them as a child.”

Adrianna busies herself with the eggplant. She stands at the sink and begins running each under the faucet. “So I hear you’re selling the bookstore,” she says to me. Her tone is friendly enough, but her words sting somehow.

I’m startled for a moment. I haven’t told anyone about my intentions for the bookstore, and suddenly I feel on the defensive. What will Gavin think? “No,” I say quickly. “I—”

Gavin leaps to my rescue. “You shouldn’t listen to neighborhood gossip, Adrianna.”

I smile, but I feel a pit in my stomach, wondering what the locals must be thinking about me. Did someone overhear my conversation with the moving company? Were they tipped off by my profession? And then my mind turns to Gavin and Adrianna, their past and present.

“It’s OK,” I say quickly, trying to defuse the tension in the room. And I realize I don’t have any idea who Adrianna is. His girlfriend? His sister? Please let her be his sister. “So you’re Gavin’s—”

“Business partner,” he says quickly before she can respond. “Adrianna and I co-own the restaurant.”

I nod. I feel immediately foolish. They’re either married or dating, or maybe it’s more complicated than that. In any case, I have the keen sense that Adrianna isn’t happy to have me in her kitchen. I stand up and brush the flour off my hands. “Thanks for the cooking lesson,” I say to Gavin. “But I should get back to the shop. I have so much work to do.”

He frowns. “But you haven’t gotten to taste any of it.”

Adrianna eyes the table, then turns back to the freshly washed eggplant that she’s setting on top of a cutting board at her right.

“It’s OK,” I say. “Another time.”

“All right,” Gavin replies, disappointed. “Don’t be a stranger.”

I nod as I walk out the door to the dining room, and then back out to the street. I unlock the door of the bookstore, and I walk inside.
What just happened in there?
I decide to keep to myself from now on. It’s always easier that way.

I spend the day sorting through boxes of books, alternating between trying not to think of what Gavin talked about in the restaurant’s kitchen and analyzing his every word.

I work through lunch, stopping at two to eat a stale bagel I picked up at the café the day before. I think of Arthur, and how impersonal our working relationship is. He knows nothing about me, and all I know about him is that he’s married to his job (which is likely why his wife left him ten years ago). Do I want to end up like that?

At five, I’ve successfully cleared out nine boxes, when my stomach growls. I think about ordering pizza, or maybe taking a cab to the Whole Foods Market a few miles up the road. I walk upstairs to grab my purse, when I hear a knock downstairs. But when I make it down the staircase to the door, there’s no one there, just a large paper bag on the doormat. I reach for it, then latch the door again. Inside is a steaming hot takeout container with my name on it, beside a bottle of Italian wine. There’s slip of paper folded in half.
June, you have a lot on your plate, and on your mind. Gnocchi always brings comfort. Enjoy + sweet dreams.—Gavin

I smile and sink into the wingback chair by the fire, then pull out the box of gnocchi. There’s a cloth napkin wrapped around a knife and fork, and I eagerly take a bite, closing my eyes as I let the flavors swirl in my mouth. Food has never tasted so good, and I finish the gnocchi, then run upstairs and find a corkscrew in Ruby’s little kitchen. I bring it down with a tumbler and pour myself a glass.

In that moment I think of my sister. I think of our first dinner in the apartment we shared briefly in New York. I was so happy that she’d come out to live with me. I was thirty and she was almost twenty-six. A job as an assistant at a fashion house lured her east initially, but she didn’t end up staying in that job, or any other, long. Amy was always letting herself be lured by greener pastures, only to find that the grass there was just as mucky as in the last place. But on that night, it was a new beginning for her. Her future was filled with new potential. I remember her talking about becoming a fashion designer. I made enchiladas, and we shared a bottle of wine. Ryan joined us at nine thirty, when we were both giddy and happy. I close my eyes.
Ryan.

I shake my head as if to dismiss the memory, and I think of Ruby again. I feel an urge to read more of her story, and Margaret’s. In her last letter, Margaret wrote about a revelation she was about to share. What? I remember the mention of
Make Way for Ducklings
, and wonder if this could be the location of the next set of letters. I go to the shelf and find the book, but there are no envelopes inside. I scan the surrounding books, and there is only one copy.

I sit down, deflated, and decide to turn back to the other two books I found letters in. I flip through their pages. What’s different about these books? They’re old, yes, but there are many old books in the shop. Then I think to look at the copyright page of each, and remember how Ruby taught me to identify first editions. I see the telltale “1” on the number line in
The Poky Little Puppy
, and then turn to
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
, with its copyright date of 1901 and the words “First Printing.” That’s when I know. Ruby chose the first editions to leave her letters in. Just as I thought, she
has
left me a scavenger hunt.

My heart races as I begin searching for a first edition of
Make Way for Ducklings
. I know it must be here, somewhere. And then I think, if I were Ruby, where would I keep the first editions? I remember that I found
The Poky Little Puppy
high on the shelf, so I walk to the ladder and decide to look there. After an hour of searching, I almost give up, when I spot a green dust jacket poking out over some shorter books. I reach for it, and sure enough, there is a duck and her six ducklings on the cover. I think of the scene at the lake today, and I feel a surge of emotion. I open the spine, and there, just as Ruby left them, two letters are tucked inside.

I reach for the first, from Margaret, and climb down the ladder to the chair, where I read with anticipation.

March 27, 1946

Dear Ruby,

Mother came to visit again yesterday. She cast a disapproving glance at a copy of
Runaway Bunny
on the table and indicated (in so many words) that I ought to go back to university to finish my degree, become a teacher. It’s what the “spinsters” of her generation would do, she said. I didn’t tell her that I gave up teaching after that disastrous semester as a student teacher. (The best thing about that experience was gaining your friendship.)

While I did not truly believe Mother’s words, I absorbed them, and they all but deflated me. They had power over me. I woke up today with no zeal for my work. Her sentiments plucked the spirit and creativity right from me.

That’s what I must tell you: I’ve decided to set writing aside, at least for now. Not because Mother has won, but because I feel lost, and I’m afraid I can’t find my way.

That, and the voices of my characters just . . . stopped. I can’t hear them anymore, Ruby. All I hear is my own grating thoughts. Is there anything more horrid than being trapped inside yourself with nothing but your own insecurities?

No word from Roberta. I’m thinking about sending her flowers if I don’t hear from her by the end of the week. You’re right about sisters. We must take them as they are, even if they drive us mad.

Well, I must be off now. Crispian is gnawing at my pant leg. It’s an hour past his usual afternoon walk. So I will walk, and I will consider my future.

Maybe I should become a dog walker?

Your lost friend,

Margaret

I shake my head. How could she write that about sisters? We must “take them as they are, even if they drive us mad”? It’s a sentiment I can’t subscribe to, even when I press my mind to try. In the end, there’s still the pain so raw, it almost stings. What would Ruby and Margaret have done in my shoes? Would they have felt the same?

I turn to the next envelope, from Ruby, and I pull out the pages inside.

April 11, 1946

Dear Brownie,

Oh, I wept reading your words. It breaks my heart to see you in such distress. I want to reach through these pages and embrace you, my friend. I want to let you cry on my shoulder. I want to comfort you and encourage you to carry on. How can I convince you to ignore your mother’s sentiments? How can I make you see that her world is not yours, just as yours is not hers?

Can you imagine yourself as a housewife, with a maid and a cook and a gaggle of children running about? You’d go mad! No, it isn’t a husband you need, nor a “respectable” job. You must be free to pursue the work you so love doing, work at which you shine, I might add, brilliantly.

Family relationships are the most challenging, aren’t they? I know this well. After weeks of the silent treatment, I showed up on Lucille’s doorstep yesterday. Miraculously, she let me in. We made small talk over tea, but we’re talking. For now. It’s a good step forward. I may never be able to share certain parts of my life with her (my relationship with Anthony, for instance, which she’d disapprove of emphatically), and I’ve come to terms with that. It is not worth upsetting her. And by upsetting her, I would, in turn, only upset myself. We feel our families’ judgments more keenly. Even if we disagree with their declarations. It is because we love them, or in the most general terms, because we come from them, that we wonder if their words, even the most inflammatory of them, might be true. We question ourselves. We may even forsake ourselves to prove them right.

I will do anything in my power to see that my sister and I don’t become strangers. Because I fear that would be a failure I could never recover from or forgive myself for.

Now, back to this nonsense about you ceasing to write. Think of all the children of the world who might stop reading, children one, five, ten, twenty years from now who are destined to hold a copy of one of your future works in their hands and be dazzled by those stories. If you stop writing, they lose that chance.

I’m sure that if you wait, your characters will start whispering again. They’re still there; they’re just a little frightened. Give them room to come out again, and give yourself the quiet space to hear them.

Every life, every story, has peaks and valleys. You are walking through a low spot now. Perhaps it’s foggy in the valley. And maybe you can’t see the path anymore. But it’s there. Keep walking on it. You’ll find your way. And when you come through the thicket, with little rabbits hopping about, there will be a clearing, and the sun will be shining down on you with rays that will warm you and inspire you again.

What if Einstein had stopped inventing? What if Bach had stopped composing? What if Edison had given up on the lightbulb? What I’m trying to say is that what you do is beautiful and worthy to children of the world (young and old), and you must carry on. Please, promise me that you’ll press on, keep trying?

And, I have a bit of lunar inspiration to share with you: I was reading a passage in a collection of folklore. Of course, in our culture, we refer to “the man in the moon,” but according to Chinese legend, it is a rabbit that lives on the moon. I was looking out my window last night, and, Brownie, I saw it! There is a little rabbit with floppy white ears leaning over a mortar and pestle. I shall never look at the moon in the same way again.

Keep your chin up, and when you’ve lost your way, look at the moon and think of me, for I believe in you.

Yours,

Ruby

T
he next morning, after a long gnocchi-induced sleep, I kneel down along the south wall and reshelve the picture books neatly, the way Ruby would have liked. And then I shake my head. What am I doing? If I’m going to sell the shop, I need to take the books
off
the shelves, not put them back. I sigh and stand up, right before I hear Ruby’s jingle bells at the door.

“Did you like the gnocchi?” Gavin asks, poking his head inside the store. I smile, and try not to worry what Adrianna will think of his being here.

“Yes,” I say, nodding. “Yes, thank you. I loved it. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything so heavenly.”

Gavin takes a few steps toward me. “Comfort food at its finest,” he says. He rubs his forehead. “Listen, I’m sorry about yesterday.”

I play dumb. “What do you mean?”

He scratches his head in an adorable way. “The way Adrianna acted,” he says. “I hope it didn’t make you feel . . . uncomfortable.”

“No,” I lie. And then I think of Ruby, and the confidence in her letters gives me the strength to face my feelings head-on. “Actually, it did make me uncomfortable,” I say. “Because I . . .”

He takes a step closer to me. The bookstore is quiet, and I can hear the dripping sink upstairs. “Because you like me?”

At first I feel annoyed, but his smile defuses me.

He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, and my neck explodes in goose bumps. “Well, I like
you
,” he says. There’s a moment of pause, and my stomach flutters.

“But Adrianna,” I say. “I don’t want to interfere if—”

“You’re not interfering with anything,” he assures me, pointing to the chairs by the fire. “Want to sit down? I’ll tell you the whole story.”

I stare at the flames as he speaks. I’m afraid to look at him, for fear of what he’ll say. Their past could dictate our future.
Future.
I turn the word over in my mind and let it whisper, taunt. “We were engaged,” he begins. I gulp, taking in his words.
Engaged.
“I met her in culinary school. She was studying to be a pastry chef. We hit it off right away. She’s from a big Italian family. And I didn’t know anyone out here. They welcomed me instantly. We spent all our time together and after two years, getting engaged just seemed like the natural progression of things. So I proposed.” He sighs. “It’s funny, when I asked her to marry me, I remember having this sort of out-of-body experience. It was like I was seeing the whole thing play out like a movie, not like it was actually happening to me. I watched this guy get down on one knee and ask this girl to marry him.”

He shakes his head. “But I didn’t feel what I was supposed to feel. I kept waiting to, expecting those feelings to develop. I told myself I’d wake up one morning and it would all feel right. And then we opened the restaurant, and our futures were even more cemented. We would be married and we would be business partners.” He stares ahead solemnly. “But six months ago, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. I had a dream of being married, being happy. I looked over at Adrianna asleep beside me, and I knew I had to tell her. She’s a wonderful person. But she isn’t the person for me.”

“Wow,” I say, suddenly feeling a surge of sorrow for this woman who was so cold to me just yesterday. After all, I know what it feels like to love someone who can never truly return your love.

“So we called off the engagement,” Gavin continues. “Because we had the restaurant together, we had to figure out a way to make things work. At first Adrianna took it really hard. I mean, I know it’s still hard for her. But she’s accepted it.”

“You don’t think she’s just waiting and hoping that you’ll change your mind?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“It has to be so difficult on her to work with you every day, hoping that you’ll decide that you made a big mistake.”

“Honestly, I just try not to think about that,” he says. “I actually thought she was over everything until I saw the look on her face when she walked into the kitchen yesterday.”

“It can’t be very healthy to work together,” I say. “Considering your past.”

Gavin nods. “I worry about that every day. But we both love the restaurant. We love our work. I keep thinking that we can rise above it all.”

“But it’s not that easy,” I say, thinking of Amy. The wound is still raw, even five years later. “When you go through something as painful as what Adrianna has experienced, you don’t just bounce back. She can’t just flip a switch and see you as a friend after loving you for so long. A woman’s heart doesn’t work like that.”

He nods again, solemnly. “I’ve been patient. I haven’t seen anyone else. I knew it would be too hard on her. But we’d had a great month. She told me she met someone at Joe’s and they were going on a bike ride around the lake. I thought she had healed. And when I met you,” he says, searching my face, “I can’t explain it. . . . I was drawn to you.”

I smile and open my mouth to speak, but no words come out.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” he says quickly. “I’m not asking you to make any big decisions. I’m just asking if I can . . . get to know you better. Can I?”

I nod. “Yes. Yes, you can.”

“Good,” he says, grinning. “Listen, we’re having a big night tonight at the restaurant. The first Friday of every month, we have a jazz band in, and we do a new pasta dish. Why don’t you come, be my guest? I mean, if you want to.” He stands up and eyes the door. “Tonight, then.”

I return his smile. “Tonight.”

The door closes, and I wish Ruby were here now. I want to run to her and let out a girlish scream and share the type of innermost thoughts that she shared with Margaret Wise Brown. It’s true; I’ve had few strong female friendships in my life, but I always had Ruby. I wonder if she’s here listening. I wonder if she’s watching me, cheering for me. And then I remember the last pair of letters, the mention of
Runaway Bunny
. I begin my search with anticipation, and then I locate a first edition high on a shelf across the room. The dust jacket is brittle and cracked. I open the spine, and there they are, two letters waiting for me.

April 26, 1946

Dear Ruby,

You are not only a bookseller but a healer. That hangover of mother love (if you could call it that) I told you about turned into the flu, but reading your pages was like medicine, for body and soul.

Thanks to your encouragement, I’m back to writing, and I must say, this idea of the rabbit in the moon is an intriguing one. You’ve stirred up all sorts of inspiration. I’m envisioning a little bunny child in a nursery. And on each page, there will be the moon. It’s not so much a concept as it is a feeling right now, but it is growing on me. It may come to nothing, but I will be patient and listen to the characters, and when they start whispering, I shall be ready to write their words down. If it ever becomes a book, I would like to dedicate it to you, my friend.

As I suspected, the flowers worked. Tulips, to be exact. I ask you this: Can anyone continue holding a grudge in the face of yellow tulips? I think not. Roberta received them and phoned me straightaway. She apologized for being so overly sensitive (and if I may add, critical) at our last meeting, and while relations between us are tense at best, at least we’re speaking again. In time, I hope she’ll grow to accept me as I am. It’s all I can hope for. After all, in both of us are the wonderful memories of childhood that we created together, always arm in arm. Gazing at the stars, skipping through the forested acres beside our home, dreaming of life beyond the picket fence. Adulthood has suppressed those memories for her, I believe, but I think I can resurrect them in time. I think I can make her remember. And in turn, I think I can make her remember that beneath these adult bodies with their adult habits and preoccupations, we are still those same little girls.

You briefly mentioned Anthony in your last letter. I must admit, I’d hoped you’d write more. I have been worried about this relationship of yours. I know you are wildly in love with this man, but I must admit that I fear he will break your heart. It seems odd for me, someone so uncustomary, a rule breaker, to give such practical advice. But friends must be practical for each other, especially when we won’t be practical for ourselves. So, I hope you will write me more about this man. In the end, if you trust him, I will too. But I do fear that going down the path of this love affair will only leave you with an irreparably broken heart. (And I’ve been down that path so many times, I’d be negligent for not mentioning it.) Promise me that you will protect yourself from such heartbreak?

I suppose my mood may be tinged with my own personal concerns. My doctor found a tumor in my left breast. I will need to undergo surgery next week, and then, well, I don’t know what. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. At least I’m writing again. And dreaming. And smiling, most of the time. That’s all that really matters.

To lighten my spirits, the members of the Bird Brain Society hosted a Mad Hatter party last week. We all wore the most outrageous hats and had tea and crumpets and laughed until we hadn’t an ounce of laughter left in any of us. That was nice.

Sometimes I fear we take ourselves too seriously. I looked at myself in the mirror the other day, and I saw my mother staring back. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was eleven years old in pigtails? I’m still her, of course—the girl in pigtails. I just have to remind myself that she’s still living in this aging body of mine. I’ll be damned if I lose touch with my inner child. It is my deepest fear, you know—that and being deemed utterly unlovable.

I shall be looking to the mailbox daily for your next letter, so write soon, my dear friend.

With lots of love from New York City,

Brownie

P.S. Today I received a telegram from one of my publishers addressed to “Miss Margaret Wise Brows.” I’m thinking that this is a much better name for a children’s book author.

April 29, 1946

Dear Margaret “Wise Brows,”

(Ha!) That is quite a typo. Tell me truly, how are you feeling? I cannot bear to think of you ill. I pray that this letter finds you resting and recovering from your surgery. Does the doctor worry that it’s serious? Has the tumor spread? Oh, what you must be enduring at this moment.

I wish I could be there to nurse you back to health, but your muse has not forsaken you. You are writing again! Stories are the air you breathe, and that air is laden with sustenance and spirit.

And such a brilliant strategy to send tulips. I concur, they are the happiest of flowers. It is truly impossible to hold a grudge in their presence. I think I shall try this with Lucille. Wish me luck. And on that note, what you wrote about sharing childhood memories with your sister made me think of my own, specifically the time Lucille and I packed up our knapsacks and “ran away” for the day. We made it a few miles down a dusty road and spent our last coins on chewing gum before our father found us climbing a tree in someone’s yard and brought us home. You know I saved the chewing gum wrapper from that expedition? I still have it in my jewelry box after all these years. It symbolizes my first adventure in the world, and I shared that with Lucille. I wonder if she even remembers?

I have some big news to share with you, and I must admit, I’ve been holding out on telling you. I know you’re concerned about Anthony, as any good friend must be, and despite all the warning signs you see, and despite my better judgment, I have fallen head over heels.

And, I almost don’t know how to tell you this. I’m giddy with excitement. You know how I’ve always dreamed of owning my own bookstore, a children’s bookstore, specifically? Well, Anthony offered to buy me one of my very own. This turn of events is most unexpected, and I must admit, I’m still getting used to the idea, but it is true. He found space in a terrific brick building near Green Lake, with a darling apartment on the second floor. He wants to outfit it with furniture and books (my first order shall be to Doubleday, for a box of your latest release,
The Little Island
!). And guess what? I accepted.

I know what you must be thinking, but I assure you, Anthony’s intentions are only to make me happy. He is the kindest man I know. He told me he loved me, and that this was his way of showing it. He said there are no strings attached and that if I decide to end our relationship, I may go on running the store (my name is on the deed).