The Book of Someday (5 page)

Micah is in the center of the bed. Sitting cross-legged, leaning over her laptop. She’s wearing a black camisole and loose, satin pajama pants. Her hair is in disarray and her fingers are flying over the computer keys, pursuing a frantic Internet search. She’s startlingly pale and seems diminished, as if she has been struck by a force so violent it has left her less tall, less present; somehow, less real.

Jillian has put Micah’s coffee on the table beside the bed. And now she’s saying: “Other than taking a lot of pictures and getting the new gallery space finished…how was your month in New York?”

Micah can hear that Jillian doesn’t intend to let this question go. She glances up, keeping her tone neutral. “New York is New York.” Micah isn’t in the mood to talk. She wants to get back to her web search and finish it while she still has the courage. The simple act of entering the query information has begun to make her tremble.

Jillian is gathering up Micah’s scattered clothes from the floor. Keeping her eyes on Micah. “So. No problems in New York?”

Micah takes a careful breath. “What makes you think there might have been problems?”

“There were phone messages this morning. A whole lot of them.” Jillian is street-smart. Cagey-tough. A born and bred Boston southie. The rasp in her voice has steel in it. The sound of that steel is putting acid into Micah’s stomach as Jillian is explaining: “The messages are from a doctor’s office. They said it’s important not to lose any time and that you really need to call them back.”

Jillian walks to the side of Micah’s bed and gives Micah a determined stare. “Why would they be saying that?”

Micah doesn’t respond; she isn’t ready. The situation is too complicated. There are scores that need to be settled before she can know what to do about her cancer. Before she can decide whether she deserves to live. Or to die.

“Miss Lesser, I need you to tell me what’s going on.” Jillian’s statement isn’t a request—it’s a demand.

In spite of that, Micah shakes her head. The answer is no.

“Look,” Jillian tells her. “This is the thing…me and you both know you get off on making your own rules—going over the top. Seeing what you want and taking it. You’re pretty much roaring hell-on-wheels. I’m not asking you to do anything about that. I know you can’t. It’s just who you are. All I’m saying is…I care about you.”

For the briefest fragment of time, Micah is again in that long-ago, late-summer garden surrounded by coral-colored lilies—experiencing the feel of that heartfelt embrace.

While Jillian is insisting: “Miss Lesser, you’re gonna tell me what the doctor wants with you. ’Cause I’m owed that and you know it.”

Micah does know it. And knowing it has made her look away, look down. And in looking down, she has seen the black camisole. The lovely curve of its neckline along the top of her breasts. Her eyes are suddenly hot with the threat of tears.

After the threat has passed, when Micah turns back toward Jillian, the look they exchange holds a defiant kind of respect and admiration. But very little, if any, tenderness.

Jillian continues to stubbornly stand beside Micah’s bed. “I’m not leaving till we get this done, Miss Lesser.”

Hearing the words “Miss Lesser” in the context of this conversation is putting Micah on edge, highlighting the awkwardness that exists between herself and Jillian. Jillian is Micah’s most trusted employee; she has either seen or spoken to Micah every day for five years, and is quite possibly the closest thing to a friend that Micah has. Yet Jillian has never called Micah anything but “Miss Lesser,” and Micah has never made any attempt to change that. She has never taken the time to say, “Call me Micah.” Now, it seems too late. Too difficult.

“I’m waiting for you to give me what I’m owed,” Jillian is insisting. “I’m waiting for you to tell me what’s going on with you, Miss Lesser.”

Micah braces herself. And then in a manner that’s calm to the point of being cold, she says: “Breast cancer.”

Jillian is equally calm: “You gonna die?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”

“What’re you gonna need? What can I do for you?” No sweetness from Jillian, no sentimentality—simply rock-solid loyalty.

It’s by sheer force of will that Micah is managing to sound unemotional as she tells Jillian: “I’ll need you to keep an eye on things for a while. At the gallery here in Boston. And the one in New York. You know how to handle all the day-to-day stuff.”

“Okay,” Jillian says. Then she asks: “Does your new partner, the guy who’s gonna run the New York gallery, does he know about the cancer?”

“No. I don’t want anyone to know.”

“That’s fair.” Jillian shifts her weight from one foot to the other but doesn’t move from the side of the bed. “So what happens now?”

Micah has returned to the laptop: the results of her search. She feels as if she’s going to pass out. There—on the screen—are the first small clues. The beginning of the trail that will eventually lead her to people she’s terribly afraid of. People to whom she needs to make restitution. And the people from whom she needs to hear the truth about who she really is.

There is a rising sense of apprehension in Micah as she’s telling Jillian: “I’ll be going on the road. To settle some debts.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Not for a while,” Micah says. She suspects that locating the people she needs to find will require a lot of time and effort.

“Once you go, how long you gonna stay gone?” Jillian asks.

“I’m not sure…as long as it takes.”

“Well, if you’re gonna be gone for a long time, there’s something you and me need to discuss—just in case. Something that’s got nothing to do with business, or the galleries.” The steel has disappeared from Jillian’s voice; she’s suddenly nervous. “Miss Lesser, if something unexpected happens, and you’re not here, you better tell me what you want to do about the woman—”

The Woman. The most important person in Micah’s life. The one who once looked so spectacularly beautiful in a silver dress and pearl-button shoes. At the mention of her, Micah has flinched. As if she’s been stung by a scorpion.

An inordinate amount of time passes before Micah responds, in a whisper. “Leave her alone. Let her stay where she is. For as long as possible.”

It is a devastated whisper. Full of regret.

AnnaLee

Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986

“You not going to regret? You sure?”

The tone of this question, delivered in Mrs. Wang’s clipped English, is both sincere and ambivalent. The excited reverence with which Mrs. Wang is holding the blue-and-white porcelain vase is making it evident that she wants a swift, profitable close to this transaction. While the way she’s looking at AnnaLee suggests a sort of reluctant empathy.

In reply to Mrs. Wang’s inquiry about regrets, AnnaLee gives only a quick shake of her head. She’s overwhelmed. By loss. By the vacant place on the mantle. Where up until a few seconds ago, the porcelain vase had always been.

“I know this hard for you.” Mrs. Wang is cradling the vase in a way that’s apologetic and slightly awkward.

She’s standing behind AnnaLee, their images reflected in the beveled mirror above the fireplace. Diminutive, delicate Mrs. Wang who at age sixty retains only a trace of the magnificence that once made her the raven-haired toast of Shanghai. And tall American-born AnnaLee, who has hair the color of wheat and a quiet prettiness that, at age thirty-three, is in full bloom.

AnnaLee is thinking how very different they are, she and Mrs. Wang. But when AnnaLee looks more closely, when her eyes and Mrs. Wang’s meet, she’s startled to see how much they share—the staggering amount of disappointments, and sorrow, that is in each of them.

“We all on same journey, only riding different horses.” Mrs. Wang’s voice is gentle with compassion.

It fills AnnaLee with longing. For her mother. For the comfort of being, even for a little while, someone’s child again.

In that same moment Mrs. Wang is discreetly glancing back toward the mantle—looking at a second blue-and-white porcelain, a perfect match to the one she has in her hands. “More money if you sell both,” she’s saying. “Much more valuable to people coming in my shop, to collectors, if they can have pair, not just single one.”

There’s an ache in AnnaLee as she asks: “How much more?”

“I could give you more than double. Three maybe four times as much. Very desirable as pair. Very valuable.”

AnnaLee reaches for the vase, then pulls back and softly says: “These porcelains were my mother’s wedding present from my father. He carved this mantle himself so she could have the perfect place to display them.”

Mrs. Wang nods curtly and says: “This a very fine home. Full of story. Full of history. It should be kept just so.”

And AnnaLee is thinking,
You
have
no
idea
what
a
rare
place
this
is, Mrs. Wang. My parents built it when they were newlyweds, it’s where they planted their roots and conceived their only child. It’s where I was born. Where I was loved so well when I was growing up. Where, now, I’m raising a baby of my own. This is the home my parents entrusted to me when they passed away. It’s a sacred space. And I’ve begun to loot it. Because I don’t know what else to do. And every time I sell you even the smallest piece of it, Mrs. Wang, I’m selling off a part of my soul.

Every detail of this stately house in Glen Cove, on Long Island, is a treasure to AnnaLee. The wide staircase and the rolling lawns. The gracious fireplace and the slender French doors opening onto the moss-covered terrace. There isn’t an inch of her birthplace that she would willingly trade or change.

And now as she’s watching Mrs. Wang counting out the money for the porcelain vase—piling wrinkled, neatly stacked bills onto a table near the front door—the sight of it is making AnnaLee sick.

“Your husband should be ashamed.” Mrs. Wang’s voice is harsh and annoyed. “I don’t care it is now brave new world. I don’t care there are equal rights. To me…no honor in a man who look at a woman for his support.”

AnnaLee’s face is burning with embarrassment.

There have been a number of these transactions in recent months; she and Mrs. Wang have never discussed the reason for them. It hasn’t occurred to AnnaLee, until now, that Mrs. Wang is fully aware of why AnnaLee has begun to sell off irreplaceable pieces of her history and inheritance.

AnnaLee’s embarrassment is coming not only from the bluntness of what Mrs. Wang has said but also from the fact that, in a way, AnnaLee agrees with it. As much as she loves her husband, in some small chamber of her heart AnnaLee is furiously angry with him.
I
hate
Jack’s quietness,
she’s thinking,
and
the
way
he
runs
from
any
kind
of
confrontation—how he lets those things keep him from building a decent career.

But to AnnaLee’s surprise it’s not her anger, it’s her most tender feelings toward her husband that answer Mrs. Wang. “Jack is a good man,” she says, “a good father. He loves me, and our baby, very much.”

Mrs. Wang stays quiet until she has put the porcelain vase into an excelsior-lined box and closed the lid. Then she tells AnnaLee: “Soon maybe your husband make more money. In meantime I can take painting too. Give you top dollar.”

The painting, a landscape by an artist called Roger Medearis, is worth a good amount of money. In a single, sudden motion, AnnaLee takes it from the wall and gives it to Mrs. Wang. She does it with blinding speed, before she has any time for second thoughts.

***

When Mrs. Wang has left and AnnaLee is alone, there’s no weeping, no tears. But there is a lingering melancholy.

In addition to the vacant place on the mantle, where the blue-and-white porcelain vase had always been, there is now a new vacancy. The blank space marking AnnaLee’s most recent loss. The large rectangle in which the buttercup-colored paint is noticeably darker than the surrounding wall. A place that is painfully empty.

***

Several hours later, AnnaLee has remembered a gilt-framed canvas with dimensions almost identical to those of the Medearis, the painting she sold to Mrs. Wang.

AnnaLee is certain that this gilt-framed picture will make the perfect cover for the emptiness on the living room wall. And now she’s hurrying to find it. It’s upstairs, in a closet. A simple painting done in the 1920s, by an anonymous artist; something AnnaLee bought years ago, on an impulse, at a tag sale. The haunting portrait of a dark-haired woman in a shimmering silver gown and pearl-button shoes. A woman who—AnnaLee has always thought—looks like something out of a dream.

Livvi

Northern Dutchess County, New York ~ 2012

“Andrew!”

For a second Livvi isn’t sure if he’s real—actually at the top of the bookstore stairs—or if he is a dream.

All at once he’s coming closer, calling out again. “Olivia!”

Livvi seems to be the only thing Andrew is able to see. He isn’t acknowledging David, isn’t noticing that David is standing only a few inches away. Andrew is simply sweeping Livvi into his arms. And kissing her. With the same intensity he’d kissed her before—at the party, in Los Angeles. Settling his lips confidently against hers in a way that’s possessive, and deliberate, and full of desire.

Livvi is continuing to constantly replay this moment, the sight of Andrew at the top of the stairs and his kiss, even though it happened hours ago. In the bookstore, in upstate New York. And now she’s hundreds of miles away, in the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan.

She is in an extravagant bed. Under a canopy of silky fabric flowing from a crown-shaped fixture in the ceiling. Surrounded by walls the color of sugared sand and furnishings upholstered in biscuit-brown, the dappled color of seashells.

And she’s experiencing passion that’s almost beyond comprehension. She is having sex with Andrew for the first time and tumbling into the cashmere-gloved grip of an irresistible narcotic.