Surprise Me (21 page)

First a hand to cup the curve of his head, to feel the warmth of him, the steady draw of his breath in and out, then Isabelle lays the quilt on the floor and curls up beside his bed. It’s only here that she can sometimes fall asleep.

—

DANIEL RECEIVES ISABELLE
’
S E-MAIL
first thing the next morning. He’s become an early riser now that he’s settled in the New Hampshire countryside. With no one to wake him and no morning responsibilities, he’s still out of bed by six. By seven o’clock he’s at Bev’s Bakery, where Bev makes cappuccinos for the Boston weekenders and strong, simple dark coffee for the locals. He takes his with a cinnamon bun and an Internet connection. By nine o’clock he’s back home at his kitchen table to begin his day’s work.

He has become regular in his habits, and he’s writing, but he has no idea what. It started the day he arrived, when he found Isabelle’s eight pages about Melanie, and before he even unpacked, he sat down and began an e-mail to her. Of course he’s never sent it or any of the others he’s written since. But he’s found himself writing more, bits and pieces, then scraps of ideas that have nothing to do with Isabelle, nothing ever fully realized, but he continues on.

At first he thought he was wasting his time, but that notion no longer bothers him. With no real hope of publication—where is his book agent? he has no idea; would his last publishing house even read a new manuscript he submitted? who knows?—Daniel is free to write whatever comes to him. And he finds the isolation of his cottage and the lack of demands coming from the rest of the world, particularly his daughter, as a sort of tonic—they spur him on to write. The act of doing it is what matters to him now, he has come to realize, not the finished product.

There is something about this time in Winnock that is reminiscent of the first time he began to write, more than twenty years ago, when he had left his first marriage (and his children, he reminds himself) and lived alone on the top floor of a rooming house, in that shabby room with the peeling wallpaper and the bathroom down the hall, and worked sporadically hanging drywall. He had totally fucked up his life, he felt, and no one would have disagreed with him then. Or now.

Out of that nadir came his first book, the one about his father, the one he had to write before he could move on. He sees now how freeing that feeling of hopelessness was. He could write because no one would ever have expected it of him and because he expected nothing to come of all the hours he spent in front of the typewriter.

Two years now living in Winnock, he is a familiar figure at the bakery’s round window table, head down over his laptop screen, a thick white mug of Bev’s arabica coffee at his elbow. People refer to him as “the writer,” or “that writer fella,” but nobody is really interested in what he has written or might be writing now. People mind their own business in New Hampshire. Their state motto is “Live Free or Die.”

When Daniel sees Isabelle’s e-mail in his in-box, he sits back in his wooden chair, surprised, and suddenly awash in rusty emotions. He contemplates the screen for several minutes. It really is from Isabelle, even though he’s never sent even one of the scores of e-mails he’s written to her over the past two years. Oh, Isabelle—she remembers him! She’s written!

A large, handsome woman, chestnut hair mixed lightly with gray, cut chin length and pushed behind her ears, a white apron tied around her ample waist, coffeepot in hand, refills Daniel’s mug without being asked. Bev knows his likes and dislikes by now, at least when it comes to his morning routine, and she is in the habit of quietly pouring his coffee, nodding but not speaking, not intruding. For all she knows, he may be in the middle of creating.

What little pride Bev allows herself rests with her ability to sleuth out her customers’ needs, to listen, to observe, to make the bakery a welcoming place. Her women friends would say she carries that kindness into the rest of her life, as well, but Bev isn’t so sure of that. She has a kind of New England reserve, she knows, a strong spine that has seen her through the chronic depressions and early death of her husband. She fears that sometimes what she calls her “Yankee backbone” gets in the way of her softer instincts.

This morning Daniel is sitting back in his chair, a look of surprise, then pleasure, on his face, and he glances at Bev as she tops up his coffee. “One of my former students just e-mailed me.”

“Good for you,” she says, pleased for him. He seems so solitary; a communication from someone, anyone, can only be positive.

“Yes,” Daniel says quietly, “good for me.” And he leans forward and clicks on Isabelle’s name. Whatever she has to say, he is eager to read it.

Daniel,

I think it’s been over three years since we’ve been in touch. I have no idea if this will reach you or whether you’ll even want to respond.

Daniel stops reading and looks up, out the window of the bakery to the empty sidewalk. Directly across the road is the Winnock Arts & Craft Gallery, and he can see a set of Alina’s wine goblets featured prominently in the window display.

Could Isabelle seriously think he wouldn’t respond to her? He can’t think of anything he’d rather do. How could she doubt that? Human relationships are baffling and impossible, he concludes again, for at least the hundredth time in his life. Navigating them is a skill he has never been able to master. Not with his children or his ex-wives or his former students. All except for Isabelle. She was different, so how can she start her e-mail with that statement? He shakes his head and continues on.

You must think I’ve dropped off the face of the earth, if you’ve thought about me at all.

Bev gives him privacy, remains at her spot behind the bakery counter, watching as he reads the entire e-mail and begins typing a response. Daniel is endlessly fascinating to her—a writer, with a lifetime of interesting stories in his face. Over the past two years his early-morning visits have become the highlight of her day.

—

THAT SAME MORNING IN ISABELLE
’
S
Oakland duplex is as hectic as every morning seems to be. She has overslept again. Her late-night vigils often translate into mornings conducted in overdrive, Isabelle behind the eight ball before the day has even begun.

Her first task is to get Avi up and dressed, which usually includes coaxing—he doesn’t like to leave the warmth of his Power Rangers quilt—and a lengthy discussion about what he will wear. The child has clear preferences in almost every arena of his life. Some days everything must match—blue jeans, blue shirt, blue sneakers. Some days he decides he has to have shorts, even though all his shorts are in the hamper, casualties of finger painting or mud play or who knows what. Lugging the laundry to the Laundromat is Isabelle’s least favorite household chore, and it is only when the choice is a trip to Washworld or a nudists’ colony that Isabelle manages to get them some clean clothes.

This morning there are no clean shorts—no surprise—and the discussion turns to what would be an acceptable alternative. Finally, in desperation because they’re going to be late, now very late, Isabelle takes scissors to a pair of Avi’s old jeans, and he is thrilled.

“Awesome!” He is beside himself. “Wow, new shorts!” All day he will tell anyone who will listen, “My mommy made these shorts with scissors!” as if Isabelle is a wizard to have accomplished such a feat.

Isabelle, exhausted already at 7:55 in the morning, feels only relief to have solved the problem. “Okay, into the car. Grandpa is waiting for you.” Even though Isabelle doesn’t have Casey on any sort of regular basis, she has Art and Louisa, Casey’s parents. And Art’s alternative school, A Circle of Friends, where Avi spends the day and thrives.

“And Dylan,” Avi reminds her. His best friend in Miss Dorothy’s class, Dylan, makes everything okay, and Avi knows he is already at school waiting for him.

“And Dylan,” Isabelle agrees as she shepherds her son into the Jeep, pulling on a sweater as she does, barefoot, her shoes stuffed into her purse, handing Avi a granola bar and an apple for breakfast as she buckles him into his car seat.

“Mommy, put on your shoes.”

“I will, pumpkin.”

“Right now or your feet will catch a cold.”

And she has to stop and show her conscientious son that she has in fact put on her shoes.

As she maneuvers the Oakland streets from Telegraph Avenue to 51st Street to Broadway, and then a right turn onto 41st, where Art’s school is located, she wonders, as she has many mornings before, when her son started taking care of her. And how she has become such an incompetent person.

She glances into the rearview mirror to see Avi eating his breakfast in a sort of rhythm of his own making—one nibble of apple, one bite of the granola bar, one nibble of apple. His attention is focused on whatever game he has made up for himself, and he doesn’t look up to meet her eyes. He’s never bored, her son. In that way he carries his father with him, even though he looks like Isabelle: long-limbed (he will be tall) and brown-eyed, with a cap of straight blond hair rapidly darkening to match Isabelle’s color.

Art is waiting for them as they pull up at 8:25, late again. Seeing him standing calmly beside the wooden gate painted with stars and the moon—a tall, angular man with a strong profile and a shock of gray hair—Isabelle marvels yet again at how the perpetual motion that is Casey came from the steady serenity that is Art.

“Just making sure you guys got here all right,” Art says with no judgment in his voice as he opens the door of the Jeep. Quickly he unbuckles Avi from his car seat, swings him up and out of the car, and deposits him safely on the sidewalk. “My man!”

“We had a shorts crisis,” Isabelle tells him from the driver’s seat.

“Mommy made these with scissors!” Avi is bursting with his news. “Come on, Grandpa!” he yells as he runs up the cement path, more painted stars leading the way like stepping-stones to the front door of heaven. “School’s started
already
!”

“Sorry,” Isabelle mumbles. “The mornings get away from me.”

“No worries.”

“Have you heard from him?” She knows she shouldn’t ask. Art would tell her if Casey had contacted them, but she can’t stop herself.

“Papua New Guinea, you know.” Art shakes his head. “Halfway around the world. The earthquake and then the tsunami…”

“All the thousands of people left homeless and all the villages washed out to sea and all the little old people floating dead and bloated in the water like guppies at the top of a fish tank.”

“Isabelle,” Art says kindly, in the gentlest of admonitions.

And she stops. She knows her comments offend Art’s Quaker sensibility, but she’s so deep-down mad at Casey, and Art and Louisa are the closest things she has to him.

“He’ll call when he can, I know,” she backtracks now. She appreciates Art, loves him really, for stepping in and being present every day for Avi, and so there are conventions they must observe: no criticisms of Casey, who’s doing God’s work; no airing of her own trouble with it, because her unhappiness tests Art’s loyalties. She smiles now and Art smiles back. Better this way; harmony is restored.

On to Full of Beans on College, where amid the hordes of Berkeley students, who look twelve to her—so young, when was she that young?—she gets a large cappuccino and a bagel. And then on to Noah’s Ark, where she usually opens the bookstore by nine o’clock.

It’s too early to have many customers. She’s told Meir that—nobody comes in until almost eleven—but he likes the idea that the store is open at nine just in case, and Isabelle manages to do that for him most days. He arrives after lunch, and that is Isabelle’s favorite time of the day. They sit behind the counter together and talk about the books they have read or what they hope to be reading, or Isabelle will tell an Avi story because Meir is such an eager audience. Or he will tell Isabelle what happened in the store after she left the day before or what he’s planning to cook for dinner. Anything and everything is fair game for conversation, except Casey, because Isabelle already knows without a word being spoken how Meir feels about that subject.

As they talk Meir eats junk food—Doritos and Mallomars, most days—and Isabelle pours one cup of coffee after another from the Mr. Coffee they keep going on the counter. Each tells the other to take it easy on their vice of choice, but neither acts on the suggestion, their conversations too engrossing to pay much attention to curbing appetites.

Yesterday during a midafternoon lull, while they were sitting at the front counter on their tall stools, Isabelle relayed the conversation she had had with Deepti about Avi’s night terrors.

“It’s a neurological condition, fairly common, that will resolve itself as he grows.”

“That’s a relief.” In his heart of hearts, Meir claims some small familial connection with Avi—an older uncle or a surrogate grandfather—although he would never presume to voice it.

“A huge one.”

“You guys got used textbooks?” a Berkeley student, long hair tied in a ponytail, wearing sandals, calls from the half-open front door, not willing to commit to coming in if the answer is no.

“Back wall.” Meir points as he tells him, and the kid saunters in.

“We were sitting on the porch last night as we were talking,” Isabelle begins again. She has an agenda here. Meir can feel it. “It’s quiet on our street, you know.”

“I do.”

“And the only sound was the television going in your sister’s half of the house.”

“Isabelle…” he says in warning. Meir knows where this is heading and doesn’t like the destination, but Isabelle plows ahead.

“She falls asleep in that BarcaLounger every night, Meir, all alone in there, watching one stupid television program after another. Nobody visits. I hardly ever hear the phone ring—”

And a customer stops them, bringing a Moroccan cookbook up to the counter, which Meir rings up.

“Do you carry any new books at all?” the woman asks. “I’m looking for
Summer Sisters
by Judy Blume.”