I got as far as the corner. Once my parents’ house was out of sight, I couldn’t drive any farther. Not my parents’ house. My aunt and uncle’s. I didn’t know where to go. To the airport to get the first flight back to Philadelphia? Across that familiar path to the east side? Or should I drive, no destination, just pick a highway, any highway, until I arrived somewhere that felt right? Could you disappear if you’d never really existed?
It took me a moment to register the buzzing as my phone. I was relieved when it wasn’t Mom, when it wasn’t Jay, either.
“If you don’t get here soon,” Sheila said, “I’ll have to order a third martini, and it will be all your fault.”
“Get where?” It seemed impossible that life had continued, that martinis existed, that plans were made.
“To Westwood. Please tell me you’re close. You know I hate drinking alone.”
Westwood. I checked the calendar on my phone.
“Joanie’s play.” I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten. Even with everything going on, this was Joanie’s big break, when she’d be praised or panned, or worse, ignored.
“It starts in twenty minutes,” Sheila said.
Sheila was expecting me. Joanie was, too. Joanie, who had slept at my house most weekends in high school. Joanie, who went to restaurants with my family and helped Mom whip egg whites until they peaked. Joanie, who laid across my bed with me as we talked about boys and avoided our homework. Joanie, my oldest friend. Joanie, who knew me better than I knew myself.
“I’m on my way,” I said, turning over the engine and pulling away from the curb.
* * *
Sheila was waiting for me outside the Geffen Playhouse, fidgeting like a nervous mother.
“Come on, come on.” She rushed me into the theater. We found our seats moments before the lights went down.
The curtain opened to the Prosorovs’ living room. Joanie played Irina, the youngest sister in The Three Sisters. As Olga and Masha busied themselves with reading and work, Irina was lost in thought. Joanie wore a simple white dress and stared vacantly at the audience. The first line of the play was Olga’s: Father died just a year ago, on this very day. The anniversary of his death was also Irina’s name-day. Olga continued to explain how in a year they’d healed from a death that had felt impossible to overcome. Already, they were dreaming of the future, dreaming of returning to Moscow. I tried to focus on Joanie—beautiful, young Irina, the only sister who was happy—as she rambled about the value of work. My mind drifted to my own dead father, trying to locate moments when I should have discovered the truth.
When Mom and Billy had fought on my twelfth birthday, my first instinct was that they were arguing over my party, and they were. Billy had promised he’d be there. As my father, he should have shown up. All those times Billy didn’t turn up, Mom never grew exasperated. Or perhaps she did. Perhaps she’d hid it from me, so I didn’t have to be disappointed, so I didn’t have to realize the truth. I thought about the afternoons when Billy took me to Prospero Books, how I always imagined the store was waiting for me, and it was. It was waiting for me so much more than I’d understood.
In the final scene of the play, the three sisters embraced, sharing their unfulfilled desires and misguided dreams of Moscow. Joanie hugged those two actresses. They seemed like real sisters. While I’d always considered Joanie a sister, she had blood sisters, a connection we’d never know no matter how close we were. She had a mother, too. A neglectful mother but one who was hers.
“I would have interpreted the ending differently,” Sheila said as the actresses took their final bow. “I’ve always found the end sad. Determined, not hopeful. Maybe we need the end to be hopeful. Maybe we need to believe that life will decide and life will choose right.” I laughed bitterly at this, and Sheila eyed me, suspiciously.
We walked outside where several people milled around a fountain, sipping wine as they waited to meet the cast.
“How was your trip?” Sheila grabbed a glass of white wine from a tray. She asked me if I wanted one. I shook my head.
“Did you know?” I searched Sheila’s calm demeanor for the sign of a lie.
“Did I know what?” Sheila exclaimed, eager for a bit of gossip.
“You told me you came to our house when I was a baby. Do you remember?” I stood at full attention, ready to pounce the moment she twitched or stammered or did anything that seemed off.
Sheila rested her hand on my shoulder. “Miranda, I know I’m old to you, but I’m not senile. Of course I remember.”
“You said my mom was breast-feeding me,” I said.
“And?”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so,” she said, not understanding.
“My mother couldn’t have breast-fed me.”
Sheila crossed her arms, considering this fact. I waited for her to ask why it mattered, not certain I was ready to tell her my family’s sordid tale, to put it out in the open, particularly to a writer who might see it as a story rather than a life.
She snapped her fingers. “You know what, I dated a man after Billy whose sister had also had a baby. She might have been the one who breast-fed. I can’t remember.”
I wanted to push Sheila on her memories of that evening at my parents’ house, to help her find something amiss, a look Billy gave me, something my mother said that had struck her as off. Before I could say anything, the patio erupted in applause. Joanie and the two television actresses walked through the crowd, arm in arm. Joanie beamed. She was radiant. I wanted to be excited for her, but it was difficult to fight through my emotions, especially since I knew I couldn’t pull her aside to talk about me. I couldn’t steal this moment from her.
Sheila rushed to get in line to greet Joanie. Joanie was gracious with her fans, shaking hands and posing for photographs. When Sheila reached the front of the line, she handed Joanie a program and asked Joanie to make it out to her favorite middle-aged woman.
Joanie hugged us both before she was pulled away by an older man in a suit who introduced her to a circle of older men in suits. Some guy recognized Sheila and begged her to join him for a drink. She asked if I minded before dashing off. Joanie reappeared at my side, and we watched Sheila and her new friend vanish onto Le Conte Avenue.
“I want to be like that when I’m her age,” Joanie said wistfully. I didn’t mention that Sheila’s husband had killed himself, that Sheila’s confidence was an act, a way to fight the grief.
“You were amazing,” I told Joanie.
“Thank you,” she said in the rehearsed way she’d been thanking everyone on the patio, then she laughed at herself for pretending with me. “I was so nervous I don’t remember a second of it. I don’t think I missed any of my lines.”
“If you did, no one noticed.” I grabbed her hand and she squealed. We scanned the patio. “So tell me who’s important.”
As Joanie started to explain that the man in the suit was a producer, someone stopped behind Joanie and put her hands over Joanie’s eyes. She had dyed blond hair and wore layers of makeup. Joanie grabbed her wrist and turned to hug her.
“Jacks.” It was Jackie, Joanie’s eldest sister. Her mother and her other sister, Jenny, were standing behind Jackie. They formed a huddle, a secret meeting between family that I watched from the outside.
Joanie’s mother petted her hair. I tried to remember the last time Joanie’s mom had shown up to support her daughter. She’d missed every school play, leading roles at the tiny theaters on Santa Monica Boulevard. She continued to stroke Joanie, saying, “talented” and “star” and “famous” and “amazing” and “my daughter.” My daughter. I wanted to tear her hand away and scream that you can’t just turn up when someone succeeds, you have to be there along the way, but Joanie was glowing under her mother’s praise. Those comments meant more to her than the accolades of the executives and directors who had been at the show, the ones who might make her career.
Joanie and her family were going to have a drink somewhere on Westwood. “You’ll come?” Joanie asked me, her arms linked with her sisters.
I told her I was tired.
“Let’s get lunch tomorrow before my curtain call? No, wait, Chris’s parents are coming. Then his brother’s going to be here with his family. What about next week? Shoot, Lonnie and Sarah are flying in for the show.” I didn’t know who Lonnie and Sarah were. “The play will be over after Labor Day. We can do a weekend getaway to Ojai or something?” Joanie frowned. “You’ll be gone by then.”
“Joanie, it’s fine.” It was fine. It had to be. I was going through something, but Joanie was, too. I couldn’t take this away from her, but I couldn’t be part of it, either.
“Joanie, we should really get going,” her mother said.
“You were wonderful tonight,” I told her.
“You really think so?” she said, the perfect ingenue.
“Just don’t forget about me when you’re rich and famous.” I did my best to sound chipper.
“I’ll take you anywhere in the world you want to go.” She blew me a kiss as her sisters guided her through the gate. I watched the four of them disappear across the street, arms linked, a force against the chilly night.
* * *
When I got back to Prospero Books, I looked up Lee Williams, ruling out several Lee Annes and Mary Lees, a college football star and a glassblower from Detroit. There were still thousands of Lee Williamses in America. The Lee Williams I was searching for didn’t have a Facebook page. He didn’t use Twitter or Instagram. His picture didn’t even come up in images. I Googled Mom instead. Her likeness filled the screen. Dad’s arm around Mom at a formal event, Mom’s pretty face flush with wine and the energy of the room. Mom’s professional photo from her website, hand on hip, hair straightened, no-nonsense gaze. Mom and one of her clients, whom I could tell was an actress from her extravagant clothing, from her comfort at being photographed. I scanned the pages of photographs of Mom. I didn’t find any pictures of her with me. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d been photographed together. My parents weren’t big picture takers. They weren’t the type to commemorate every moment, to share the details of their lives with everyone they knew. I’d assumed it was because they were private, but they must have not wanted something to become obvious in photographs that I hadn’t seen in life. Maybe everything they did was decided around keeping their secret.
* * *
In the morning, the store smelled of burned toast from a bagel Lucia had forgotten in the toaster. She stomped around the tables, slamming plates of food before customers. Dr. Howard clapped to the beat of her stampede until she scowled at him.
When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “You’re joking, right?” I followed her into the kitchen, watching as she smashed a slab of cream cheese between halves of a bagel. “Where the hell have you been?” Lucia glared impatiently at me, ready to attack.
“I can’t deal with this right now.” I started to walk out of the kitchen. Lucia blocked me, the plate with the bagel poking me in my rib cage. “Aren’t you supposed to toast that?”
“You’re suddenly the expert?” Lucia dropped the plate on the counter and started pacing. “You waltz in here and ask us to turn everything upside down, then you can’t even bother to show up.” She was like a peacock, sticking out her head, releasing exotic colors of emotion all around her. “Malcolm had to deal with the pipe by himself. Do you know what a pain in the ass that was? Then you miss my crochet circle not once but twice. You completely bailed on your turn to run the classics book club. Now, Alec’s canceled and, like, half the people who bought tickets for the gala want their money back.” When I gave her a look—Who’s Alec?—she widened her eyes disdainfully. “The DJ?”
“So we’ll get someone else to DJ.” I really didn’t care about DJs or books clubs or pipes.
“You know another world-class DJ who’s going to do our gala for free?”
“What does that even mean, a world-class DJ?”
She grabbed the plate with the untoasted bagel, the slab of cream cheese like a block of ice in the middle. “I know you’re only here temporarily, but we were counting on you.” She stormed out of the kitchen. Only temporary. That was me. Here and everywhere.
Malcolm was reviewing the literature section, clipboard in hand, jotting notes as he surveyed a shelf. It was nearing mid-August, and the store was empty. Other than Dr. Howard, Ray the screenwriter and some guy I didn’t recognize, unfortunate enough to have ordered a bagel, none of the regulars were camped out in the café, not even Sheila. Two girls with backpacks and long brown hair browsed the literary section, competing to see who had read more. I recognized in the way they pointed to books without pulling them from the shelves that they weren’t going to buy anything.
“Someone had sticky fingers with the Didion,” Malcolm said. He flipped the page and scanned the next list of books, scribbling checkmarks beside the titles. Lucia threw a chair into the table. Mugs clanked as she grabbed the bus tub. “Don’t pay attention to her,” Malcolm said. “It was, like, twenty tickets. She’s in the midst of her monthly fight with her boyfriend. She wants to feel like everyone’s let her down because he’s acting like an asshole. If she doesn’t cool down in a few minutes, I’ll tell her to take the day off.” Malcolm continued checking the books. “I’ve put in a few calls to musicians I know. I’ll find someone to play. Besides, we don’t really want to be saved by a bunch of EDM-loving millennials, anyway.” He flipped the page on his clipboard and began examining the next shelf.
“I’m sorry.” All the emotion I should have felt since Big Bear poured into me at once. My legs buckled and I leaned against the shelves so I wouldn’t fall. My headed pounded. I couldn’t see straight. My ears rang painfully. Malcolm peered over at me, the two of him that I saw, suddenly worried. He put the clipboard on the shelf and stepped closer to me, resting his hand on my shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked. I gasped for air but my lungs blocked it. “Hey now, you’re okay. Come on, let’s sit down.” He threw my arm across his shoulders and walked me to the desk.
I sat in the desk chair as Malcolm went to get me a glass of water. I leaned down, placing my head between my knees and breathed. Was I dying? Was this a panic attack? Malcolm returned and handed me the water. He rubbed my back as I took a few small sips. The water seemed to expand my throat; my breath returned. My head still pounded, only I could no longer hear it in my ears, and my vision focused until there was only one Malcolm standing beside me, still concerned. Suddenly, I wanted to say everything to him that I’d hoped to hear from Mom. “I’m so sorry for before. I know Billy was your friend. I haven’t really thought about what this must have been like for you. I’m sorry I haven’t been more understanding. I’m sorry—”
“Shh,” Malcolm said. His hand was still on my back. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” I continued to breathe as Malcolm studied me. He was so calm I started to feel embarrassed. But he looked at me like he’d seen it all before, like it was no big deal.
“I really am sorry,” I said.
Malcolm nodded. “It’s cool. I know it’s been hard for you, too, Billy’s death. I’m sorry, too.” He leaned against the desk, and I could tell he wanted to say something more to me. “Billy and I have season tickets to the Dodgers. There’s a game tomorrow. You’ll come?” His tone was so flat I wasn’t sure if he was asking or telling me to come.
“I’d like that,” I said, and he nodded like the matter was settled. I watched as he returned to the shelves, found his clipboard and continued to do the inventory check. I felt my heartbeat not quite race but pulse, and it gave me hope that if I could feel excited about something again, I’d be able to feel other normal emotions at some point, too.
I finished the water and walked to the café to put the glass in the bus tub. Malcolm smiled when I passed him, his gaze soothing, and I doubted I could ever get used to those eyes, that they could ever lose their hold on me.
The café was so silent I could hear Dr. Howard scribbling on his legal pad. I found my bag, which I’d abandoned at the back table when Lucia had started yelling at me. Bridge to Terabithia rested on top of my wallet. I put it on the table, twisting the bookmark in my hand. I stared at Lee Williams’s name. Lee was always in the store on the afternoons when Billy brought me to Prospero Books. I never remembered a closeness between him and Billy. Still, Lee must have known how I ended up being raised by my aunt and uncle. Billy must have told him something that would help me understand what I was supposed to do now that I had no mother or father, now that Billy had imploded my reality without creating a new one in its wake.
Lucia left without saying goodbye. She didn’t even say hi to Charlie when he traded places with her, just brushed past him. He rolled his eyes at me as she slammed the door on her way out. Her anger was misplaced. She was really angry at Prospero Books, that everything wasn’t working out so easily. That was a good anger. It was one that would drive our fight to save the store.
Charlie sat at my table, flipped through Bridge to Terabithia. “Poor Jess Aarons.”
“Poor Leslie,” I said.
Charlie carefully put the book on the table as though it were an antique, capable of breaking. “I don’t think we’re supposed to pity Leslie. She died, but it was a brave death. She taught Jess to be brave, too.”
“So then why do you pity Jess?”
Charlie considered my question. “Maybe not at the end, but watching him deny her death, the guilt he felt because he abandoned her that day. It’s so real.”
Charlie pet the book before hopping up to check the coffee thermoses. He ran until he was stumbling but he kept on, afraid to stop. Jess had tried to outrun Leslie’s death. He wasn’t faster than Leslie when they’d raced at school. He wasn’t faster than her death, either. And when he stopped running, he discovered how to memorialize his friend, how to keep the magic of Leslie alive, the magic of Terabithia, too.
* * *
Dodger Stadium was two and a half miles from the store, through Elysian Park, mostly uphill. Along the walk, I replayed Malcolm’s words in several tones. There’s a game tomorrow. You’ll come? he said hopefully. You’ll come? he ordered. You’ll come, he begged. You’ll come, he condescended. None of those tones felt right. I kept repeating his sentence with other inflections, distracting myself from the fact that I hadn’t found Lee Williams, that I hadn’t heard from Mom again, either.
Despite the brisk weather, I was perspiring by the time I reached the parking lot. My seat was on the reserve level, above home plate. I walked between rows of blue chairs toward a familiar mop of hair. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I exhaled. Even though I saw Malcolm nearly every day, we’d never been together outside the store before.
Malcolm jumped up when he saw me, spilling half his bag of peanuts. I sidled through the row of people, stopping when I arrived beside him. He hesitated, then hugged me, the embrace over as quickly as it had been initiated.
“You made it,” he said.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“Never know with you,” he said as if I were an enigma, some inscrutable puzzle he couldn’t solve. I sat in the seat beside him. Our knees touched as we watched the game.
Malcolm tossed peanuts into his mouth, cracking the shells with his teeth. The Dodgers’ pitcher threw the first strike. Malcolm clapped after the batter struck out. The second batter hit a single to center field. With the bases loaded, the batter hit a fly ball, and the Dodgers filed into the dugout.
Malcolm stood up. “Do you want a beer? I’ll get you a beer.”
I sat alone, watching the away team warm up for the second inning. I hadn’t been to a game since middle school, when Dad used to get us tickets to the studio’s box. Throughout the game, I’d sit in the front row, eyes peeled on the field, glove on my left hand, ready for a fly ball even though it would have been near-impossible for a foul ball to have reached the box. Dad would sit on the couches inside, chatting with his colleagues. Often, I was the only kid. Rather than feeling lonely, it made me proud. This was a business event, and still, Dad wanted to bring me. Every inning or so, he would sit beside me for a batter, pointing out the batter’s perfect form, the telltale signs that the pitcher was about to throw a fastball down the middle. When you step up to the plate, he said, make sure to look the pitcher in the eye. You see how the batter just did that? That lets the pitcher know you’re not afraid. Baseball is like the rest of life, he told me. You have to decide how you want to be.
Malcolm reappeared with two beers. We sipped from our plastic cups as we watched a Dodger stake out his position in the batter’s box. I kept thinking about Dad. Mom must have told him I’d stopped by the house. He hadn’t called me. He hadn’t sent me a commanding text to come home. I snuck furtive glances at Malcolm as he focused on the game. I still wasn’t sure why he’d asked me to come. Perhaps he’d put together an offer to buy me out or wanted to talk about the transition after I left. Malcolm didn’t mention Prospero Books, and the longer we watched the game, the more it felt like an outing between friends.
“You come to a lot of games?” I asked.
“Billy and I usually made it to a game a week when the Dodgers were home. Billy hated to go a series without a game. He said it gave him cold sweats.”
“I didn’t realize he was a sports fan.”
“Only baseball.” Malcolm stood as a ball soared into the outfield. “Go, go, go.” He twisted his body like a novice bowler hoping to steer the bowling ball from its natural trajectory toward the gutter. The baseball fell foul. “Damn.” Malcolm sat down and popped another peanut into his mouth. “This is the last home game we have tickets for. I don’t know if I can get season tickets next year without him.”
I began to put my hand on his back, then felt awkward about it. I took one of Malcolm’s peanuts and cracked it open with my fingers, digging the nut from the shell.
“That’s cheating. You have to crack it with your teeth and spit the shell.” He made a clicking sound as a tiny piece of shell arced out of his mouth.
The Dodgers were down 3-2. Malcolm chewed his nail. I sensed that this game mattered more to him than to the Dodgers’ record. The batter walked toward home plate like he’d already struck out.
I stood up and started clapping. “All right, batter, batter, batter.”
I motioned to Malcolm to join me and we screamed like it was the bottom of the ninth. Our energy was contagious. A man with a mullet stomped his feet. A blonde my mother’s age danced. The batter watched two strikes go by.
“Swing, dammit!” Malcolm shouted. The bat cracked and the batter hesitated before running to first.
“Thank you!” Malcolm slapped me a high five.
Everyone stood for the leadoff hitter. This was the Dodgers’ chance to break ahead. Cheers cocooned us, enclosing Malcolm and me into a small world of our own. He put his arm around me and swayed my body with his as we cheered. I felt the warmth of his chest, certain this was something more than a game with a friend or at least that I wanted it to be. Memories of Phillies games with Jay flashed through my mind. I quickly shook them off. It didn’t feel quite right, being here with Malcolm when things were still so uncertain with Jay, but it didn’t feel quite wrong, either. The leadoff hitter struck out. Malcolm muttered a string of nasty words as he sat back down.
The music got louder as the Dodgers tumbled out of the dugout. The screen above the scoreboard went black and the words Kiss Cam appeared inside a pink heart. An old couple’s faces materialized in the heart. When they caught their profiles on the jumbo screen, they leaned into each other. Malcolm and I watched the pitcher warm up on the mound, both pretending we weren’t monitoring the screen.
“When are you headed back to Philly?”
“In two weeks or so. School starts the first week of September.”
“You excited to head back to work?”
The old couple’s image disappeared, replaced by a mother and son. He squirmed as she tried to kiss him.
“I don’t know if anyone is ever excited to go to work.” My sarcasm surprised me. I’d never been flip about the start of the school year. By the time the summer was over, long days filled with reading and sleeping and a newfound, quickly abandoned exercise regimen, I’d itched to feel useful. Sure, the first morning my alarm went off at 5:15, I’d always asked myself, Can I really do this again? but I was never glib.
“I always am.” He smiled. The Kiss Cam continued to capture couples, startled, then passionate, and I felt a subtle disappointment each time Malcolm’s face and mine weren’t broadcast across the screen. Malcolm had plump lips. They looked like good kissing lips. A tinge of guilt as I recalled Jay’s lips, how a few months ago I’d hoped he’d be the last man I’d ever kiss.
“Once I’m back in the classroom, I’ll realize how much I missed it. For now, it doesn’t seem real that I’m leaving,” I said.
In the bottom of the ninth, the Dodgers hit two doubles and a home run to win the game, and we were in the mood to celebrate. We stopped at a bar that was once an old cop haunt now overrun by recent college graduates. With the arrival of the new patronage, the owner had repurposed the neighborhood bar into a nightclub, fashioned with a dance floor and photo booth. Tonight, it didn’t matter if you were old Echo Park or new, because everyone was a Dodgers fan. Even I had a Dodgers hat on. Malcolm bought it for me on one of his trips to the bathroom.
After a few beers Malcolm grabbed my hand and we danced to Michael Jackson beneath the glittering disco ball. The music’s beat was a call to action. While I wasn’t exactly comfortable, I was fluid, organic. Malcolm was a terrible dancer. That didn’t stop him from breaking out every move from his junior high days.
When the Dodgers bar got too crowded, we stumbled down Sunset toward Prospero Books. It was over two miles and our drunken banter fizzled out as the cold night sobered us up. We stopped at a red light.
“Should we get a car?” he asked.
“We’re more than halfway there at this point.”
“But you’re shivering.” He took off his coat. “At least take this.”
The light changed and I pulled his jacket tightly around my shoulders. It smelled like Malcolm. Cinnamon salted with sweat. I didn’t realize I knew his scent. I inhaled deeply, trying to lock it in as a sensory memory, something I could return to when I thought about Malcolm, something that from across the country would help me remember this night.
When we got back to Prospero Books, Malcolm guided me around the store like I’d never been there before, introducing me to the books he loved, others that were Billy’s favorites. I showed Malcolm the books I loved, biographies on Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. I told Malcolm that Thomas Jefferson loved books, that he spent weeks in seclusion, reading and rewriting sections he didn’t like. He even edited Shakespeare. Shakespeare.
“I bet he didn’t change Miranda,” Malcolm said. “‘But you, o you, so perfect and so peerless, are created of every creature’s best.’” I was surprised he knew the line. “It’s from The Tempest,” he explained, grinning ear to ear.
“I know what it’s from,” I said warily. His sincerity caught me off guard.
Malcolm consolidated Billy’s titles on the staff table to make room for mine. He wrote my name on a card and sketched a caricature of me. My eyes were bigger in the drawing than in life, my lips pouty. I took the most recent biography on Paul Revere—one that highlighted his role in the Revolution while debunking Longfellow’s myth of the man—and put it on an empty stand. Malcolm watched me. Soon, his face approached mine. He kissed me tentatively at first, expecting me to stop him. When I didn’t, his kiss deepened.
Malcolm’s mouth traveled toward my shoulder, grazing my clavicle. Jay flashed into my brain, but there was the pressure of Malcolm’s lips and it felt incredible. Besides, Jay and I hadn’t spoken in a month. Could you really feel guilty about cheating on someone you hadn’t spoken to in a month? Was it even cheating? Malcolm’s hands pulled my hips toward him until our stomachs touched, our inner thighs, our shoulders, and I forgot about Jay. I forgot about anything outside Malcolm, unsure how this was happening now, why it hadn’t happened before, in disbelief that it was happening at all. I remembered how calm he’d been that afternoon as he’d watched me unravel, how nonjudgmental. As he continued to kiss my neck, I thought of how beautifully he’d recited the line from The Tempest. But you, o you, so perfect and so peerless, are created of every creature’s best, his voice steady, like he’d been waiting to recite it to me from the moment he met me, and I realized, suddenly, that he had.
I pushed him away. “Billy told you I was named after The Tempest.”
“What?” He reached for me again. I pushed him away harder.
“You sent me the copy of The Tempest, in Philadelphia.” I’d thought Elijah had sent me the book, but he’d said letter not package. A letter after Billy died, which would have arrived after the news of Billy’s death, after I’d left Philadelphia. “You lied to me.”
Malcolm leaned against the cooking section and ran his hand through his hair. “I wanted to tell you.”
Those words were no better coming from Malcolm than they were coming from Mom.
“You said you were mourning,” I screamed.
“I was mourning!” he screamed back.
“You made me feel like an insensitive asshole even though you really were lying. Do you realize how fucked up that is?” I became a beast turning at full moon, a wild animal let loose. I had no idea what I was saying to him. It involved a lot of fucks, a lot of assholes, a lot of liars and manipulative pricks and every other word I could lash at him. That anger was the first thing that had felt good in a long time, the first thing besides Malcolm’s kiss, which paled in relation to the uncontrollable fury radiating out of me. “You think I’m an idiot? Dangling me along on your little leash. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Miranda, stop.” Malcolm grabbed me by the shoulders. “Just stop yelling.”
I caught my breath. “You told me you were mourning. You used my uncle’s death against me.”
“I know,” he said, “I know I did. And I was. I am. I am mourning.”
“But you were lying to me, too.”
“I was trying to help Billy.”
“By lying to me!” And then I said the words that really hit him, the words that drained all the color from his face and caused him to stop trying to get me to calm down. “You knew Billy was my dad.”
“He told me you were his niece,” Malcolm insisted.
“But you knew.”
Malcolm turned away. “You look just like him.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me? You didn’t think I had a right to know?”
There was a beast in Malcolm, too, one I’d poked and prodded until he’d had enough. “Tell you what?” he yelled. “What exactly could I have told you? Hello, I know we don’t really know each other, but you know that uncle of yours, the one who used to own this store? Surprise! He’s actually your dad. Explain to me how I could have told you that?”
“You could have told me about the scavenger hunt.” I ran my hand through my hair. “You could have admitted that you knew who I was at the funeral. You could have told me anything instead of making me feel like a complete shithead for asking you what you were hiding.”
“I didn’t like lying to you.” Malcolm reached for one of my curls.
“Well, I guess that makes you citizen of the year.”
His fingers felt like water as they tickled my scalp, and it would have been so easy to reach for his hand, to pull him to me and return to the part of the evening where we were learning how to please each other.
“You’re right to be angry with me. I get it.” His voice returned me to the room, out of the trance of his touch, back to his words, back to his lies.
“How noble of you. Jesus, you’re arrogant.” I yanked my hair away from his touch.
Malcolm folded his hands, not quite sure what to do with his restless energy. “I was trying to be a good friend to Billy.”
“By pretending not to know who I was?”
“What difference would it have made? If I’d told you about Evelyn—”
“You knew about Evelyn, too!” I felt like I might vomit.
“Billy wanted to tell you this way.” Malcolm watched me, his eyes doleful and even bluer. “I was trying to be a good friend. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
I wanted him to say he was sorry. To say that he’d wanted to kiss me from the moment he first saw me. To say I had no idea how hard this has been on him. I wanted him to say anything that might let me be comforted by him. Instead, he repeated the words I didn’t want to hear. “This was the way Billy wanted it.”
I slid to the floor and leaned against the cooking section. “You were the only person who could have encouraged Billy to know his daughter.” I was dizzy from the alcohol and the truth and the desire I still felt for Malcolm. He reached down to comfort me. I kept my face hidden from him, kept myself locked away where I hoped he couldn’t find me.
“I know it doesn’t mean much, but I really am sorry.” I could feel him towering over me, so I burrowed my face farther into my palms.
“I’ll go,” he said. When I didn’t fight him, I heard his feet shuffle toward the café. A chair scraped against the floor as he lifted his jacket off the back. “Sorry,” he whispered again. He quietly slipped out the back.
I stayed on the floor after Malcolm left, in no rush to get up. How many times had I asked Malcolm to tell me the truth? How many times had he lied to me, manipulated me? I felt foolish. Absurd. Naive. I believed Malcolm was sorry, that it was hard for him to keep a secret, that he thought he was helping Billy. He wasn’t helping, though. Malcolm should have pressed Billy to contact me sooner. And Billy should have reached out to me on his own. He should have wanted to have a relationship with me when I could have known him, when he still could have been my father.