My family’s bookstore, Sleigh By the Bay, is perched atop a hill in downtown Petoskey’s historic Gaslight District. We share a miniscule parking lot with the coffee shop next door to us—a place that has essentially leeched my IRA dry due to my love of and need for caffeine and sugar—but I’m not allowed to park here.
Want to talk about the perfect way to raise the blood pressure of any store owner or politician in the Bay?
Parking.
It’s tight in the winter, and a literal doomsday scenario in the summer. I’ve seen locals and resorters nearly come to fisticuffs over who spotted an open parking spot first.
All of Sleigh By the Bay’s staff park in a dirt lot behind the movie theater kitty-corner from the bookstore so our customers can use the limited spaces. Even on a winter Monday, the lot is packed. Today, since I have a delivery and my motivation is at nil without coffee in my system yet, I park in a fire zone in front of the store praying I don’t get a ticket.
It is snowing lightly. I turn to gaze at Little Traverse Bay. The Bay is Lake Michigan’s fourth largest bay, behind Green Bay, Grand Traverse Bay and Bay de Noc. It is packed in the summer with sailboats, motorboats and swimmers, but I’ve always believed it truly comes to life in the winter. There is nothing—not one thing—to obscure its beauty, and it stretches from shore to horizon, shimmering in the snow, thrilled to be on its own winter vacation.
Memories flood my mind. I can picture my mom teaching me to ice skate when the bay was frozen over completely. I remember my dad building sand castles with me. On this milestone year, my life’s birthday and anniversary cake is covered in flickering candles and moments from the past.
Why—when you try to push something out of your mind—does it only become more firmly entrenched? The good and the bad? Like when you watch a horror movie before bed, and you promise yourself you won’t think about the creepy killer once it’s over? Or, now when I eat pizza, I only see cheese and Cletus?
Or, with it snowing lightly as it is right now, why do I remember the brief encounter with a man who stood me up? I can still feel his hand on my back, his eyes, the way he felt like...
I look at the bay and the bookstore.
He felt like home.
Why do I miss that missed connection?
“Because you’re a glutton for punishment,” I mutter as I get out of the car.
I pop the trunk and pull out a handcart. I then stack ten boxes onto it, shut the trunk and give the cart a pull with a grandiose grunt.
If there’s one thing you need to know about a bookstore owner, it’s that we are pack mules. Everyone has this notion we sit around in nubby sweaters sipping tea and reading, or hosting famous authors at champagne-drenched dinners, but we’re mostly manual labor.
We haul, stack, box, unbox, ship, pack, unpack, lug, carry and then do it all over again the next day. We have strong minds, great imaginations and bad backs.
Today’s haul is the latest novel from literary lion Phillip Strauss. Strauss was a wunderkind in publishing a decade ago, with a novel written as though from a privileged little girl’s perspective about “raising” her own parents in Beverly Hills and trying to make them better people. It was an instant New York Times bestseller, shortlisted for the Booker and Pulitzer, and the media and readers expected the author to have the heart of his protagonist. Phillip has anything but. He showed up very drunk for our sold-out event for two hundred, read for five minutes, refused to answer questions or sign books, and then told the handler from his publishing house—a very young, junior publicity assistant fresh out of Smith—to get him, and I quote, “out of this Hemingway hellhole ASAP.”
I worked hard to kill his career. His next two books bombed.
But now he’s back with a new novel—one his new publisher reportedly paid a million dollars for—as well as a “new” image.
A kinder, gentler jackass.
Bookselling—like publishing—is a very small circle. Everyone knows everyone, we all run on the same track, and we talk. A lot. I’ve heard rumblings that Phillip is still the same when not in public, but his new publisher begged me to give him another chance after his recent flops. We agreed on a luncheon event tomorrow. I can help make or break this book. Phillip and his publisher need my indie sales for the bestseller lists as well as to bolster and round out their numbers for the Times list. I am not one who is great at giving someone second chances. You should get it right the first time—right, Cletus?—be a decent person from the moment you open your mouth to speak to a stranger.
I look up at the bookstore. My heart rises.
My parents didn’t get a second chance.
I glance back at the bay.
And I never got an apology from the man who...
I grunt lugging the cart toward the door.
I’ve been granted a few hundred hard covers of Phillip’s latest, Must Be Nice, whose “laydown” date is tomorrow. In publishing, new books are released every Tuesday. Books that are expecting a strong and immediate demand from a publisher—think Kristin Hannah or James Patterson—are given firm laydown dates, meaning no one can see them or buy them in a bookstore in advance of that moment. It builds anticipation.
Phillip’s new novel is a sweeping, family saga told from the perspectives of three generations of women who achieve great success but must play by the changing rules and expectations of society over the last hundred years. It’s also a heavy wink and nod to Phillip’s own past.
It’s well written but dense. And the female perspectives still feel very male-driven. I also hated the fact that Phillip’s novel is classified as “literature” while a female author whose work I greatly admire and whose new book which just published and I adored was classified as “contemporary women’s fiction.” It’s downright gross. And yet that’s another thing we bookstore owners battle: We must market the work to our readers, but we also must work hard not to diminish work by out-of-date categorization.
I pull the door open. A whoosh of warm air greets me. I hold the door with my rear and yank the cart inside. Noah and Leah come rushing over to help me.
“How was...” Noah starts.
“Don’t ask,” I reply.
“Diva, I know it’s only Monday, but you’re talking to me like Christina Applegate’s agent after she turned down the starring role in Legally Blonde that went to Reese. I will not stand for that.” He folds his arms dramatically.
“I’m sorry,” I start. “Is...?”
Leah nods and points upstairs. She mouths, Rita’s already here.
Rita Preston. My Monday mainstay. My mom’s friend turned my literary support system and weekly nuisance. Rita buys hundreds of dollars’ worth of books a week, but the purchase price is a piece of my soul every Monday morning.
“Is there any coffee?”
“This ain’t Mad Men, and I ain’t, Joan, oh-kay?” Noah says. He unfolds his arms very dramatically and puts them on his hips.
I laugh. I know Noah’s “attitude” is a way to obscure all of his deep-seated insecurities, ones from childhood that have never disappeared.
Noah and Leah are known as my “Ah-Team,” coined, of course, by Noah, who is fluent in obscure Hollywood facts, film and TV as well as Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker. Noah considers himself to be the Mr. T of the team, with Leah as the more polished George Peppard.
I hired Noah right out of college. He started for me the Monday after he graduated from the University of Michigan. It was his idea. I’ve known him since he was a boy, since he used to spend entire evenings and weekends in our bookstore. Noah came here to read, but he also came here to hide. Sleigh By the Bay was his refuge. He may be “fierce” and proudly out today, and he may joke that he knew he was gay in the womb, but he was a frightened, lost little boy who needed the love, support and encouragement his family had trouble providing. My grandma and grampa used to talk with him when he’d come in. At first, they suggested books for him to read—The Hardy Boys, then Nancy Drew, Where the Red Fern Grows before he became obsessed with Erma Bombeck (yes, you heard me)—then they gave him the chair in their office and allowed him to shut the door and read. Eventually, they invited him to read to kids, and Noah began not only to emerge but to become the beautiful butterfly God intended.
“It’s okay to be smart. It’s okay to be different. Our uniqueness is all we have that sets us apart in this world. Promise us you’ll never lose that just to fit in,” I heard my grandparents tell him.
“I promise,” he finally said.
When I asked Noah why he wanted to work here—knowing, as a U-M grad he could land a job anywhere and for significantly more money—he said simply, “Books save lives. They saved mine. I can’t imagine a more worthwhile career.” He looked at me. “But you’re gonna have to help pay down my student loans, diva.”
He is now our nonfiction buyer and special events manager. Leah is our accounts supervisor, accountant and children’s book buyer. Leah ran a successful CPA firm with her husband in Chicago. They had four children, and summered in Petoskey in a beautiful Victorian with a wraparound porch that overlooked the water. The home literally glowed in the light reflected off the bay. She named it MoonGlow. She came into the bookstore nearly every day when she was on vacation to buy books for herself or her kids. When their last child left for college, her husband left her for a twenty-two-year-old assistant in their office. She got divorced and left Chicago, retaining a stake in the business, getting half the estate as well as the cottage here. She came in one fall day to buy books, and I asked if she was on vacation. She told me her life story over coffee.
“I began to believe I was a cliché,” she told me. “Husband leaves fifty-year-old empty-nester for young assistant. I mean, come on, right? But you know what I never realized? He’s the cliché. So many authors write books about my life because it’s happened to them, and it will always happen. It happens every day despite the fact I did everything right.”
Leah came in the next week, saying she couldn’t sleep, that the moon’s reflection off the water was so bright, it kept her awake. She hadn’t realized that until then. So she bought a book about the moon. When she returned a few days later, she told me, “The moon doesn’t produce its own light. Moonlight is actually sunlight that shines on the moon and bounces off.” I looked at her, not understanding. “Women are moonlight. We reflect the light of those we love—our husbands, our children, our families, our friends. I think it’s time I’m the sunlight. Hire me.”
I did that day.
It would be a mammoth understatement to say I’ve surrounded myself with an eclectic team. I hear loud footsteps upstairs, like a marching band is blowing through the fiction section.
Leah points again and mouths, Your grandparents are here, too.
“How can they have more energy than me?” I ask. “I’m forty and exhausted. They’re in their eighties and still energetic.”
“I’ve had it wrong this whole time,” Noah says in a deadpan voice. “I thought you were in your eighties, and they were forty.”
“Ha ha,” I say. “Well, this is making for a wonderful start to the week. Your old humor. New Phillip Strauss. New Desiree Delmonico. I have to move my old car, and I need fresh coffee. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Hey, diva.”
I turn.
“Bring me one, too,” Noah says. “A triple vanilla latte. Oat milk. No whip for these hips.”
“This ain’t Mad Men, and I ain’t Joan,” I say.
“I’ve taught you way too well,” Noah says. He snaps his fingers up and down my body, grabs the cart, turns on his heel and says as he wheels it away, “Rita’s waiting. Don’t make her wait.”
I open the front door of Petoskey Scones. Fred Jr. begins to make my coffee—a skim, triple shot caramel white mocha—as soon as he sees me.
“How was the Windy City?” he asks.
As the heated air hits my skin, my mind flits back to my missed connection, the hot Santa who got on his sleigh and rode away without so much as a Ho! Ho! Ho! A shiver slides down my spine, and I feel cold again, inside and out.
Since the book of my life is an ironic tale, Fred Jr. looks exactly like Fred, the jock, from Scooby-Doo. Noah, of course, pointed this out to me, and now I can never get the image out of my mind. Fred Jr.’s wearing a Santa hat, and I think of this weekend.
“Cold,” I finally reply.
“Well,” he says, handing me my latte, “this should warm you up.”
“And a cinnamon scone, too, thanks.”
Fred is a personal trainer at the local gym in the afternoon and evening. He invited me to do P90X and CrossFit, but guys in their twenties forget that women in their forties don’t enjoy turning tractor tires over with their bare hands. We already spend enough time reshaping the world while also warding off its unachievable expectations.
All without scraping our nail polish.
Petoskey Scones makes the most incredible baked goods. Sarah, the owner, comes in at dawn to bake. We often see each other while the sun is still asleep, along with the entire town. The store’s name is a riff off the famed Petoskey Stone, Michigan’s official state stone, a rare beauty that draws rock hunters from all over the world to our shores to seek the elusive prehistoric fossil. The Petoskey stone is actually ancient coral, and the stone consists of tightly packed, six-sided corallites, the skeletons of once-living coral polyps. When the stone is wet, it is easier to find, and vacationers spend their days walking inches at a time along the beach to gather them.
Fred hands me my scone.
“Thank you,” I say. “Have a nice day.”
I start to head out the front door but stop, remembering.
“Oh, Fred, I forgot—I also need a triple vanilla latte with oat milk and no whip.”
“For Noah?” he asks.
I cock my head. “Yes? How did you know?”
“I try to remember every customer’s favorite,” he says. “And it’s kind of hard not to remember Noah.”
I swear his cheeks blush as he says this. He hands me the coffee, and I again head out the door and step onto Lake Street. I can’t avoid Rita—or my grandparents—forever.
And yet, I do. I decide to go for a quick stroll around the block.
I forget just how quant my beautiful little hometown is until I get a moment to be still and actually look.
I love winter in Petoskey. I have my resort town back again. I can walk right in and get a coffee. I can chat with customers. I can get a seat at a restaurant without a three-week wait.
Downtown Petoskey has been a shopping area for more than a hundred years. It bursts with independent shops, boutiques, galleries and restaurants, and was named one of the Best Small Towns in America by Smithsonian Magazine. The downtown sits on angled, sloping streets, akin to a miniature, snow globe version of San Francisco, and they’re lined with historic gaslights. At Christmas, fresh pine wreaths are placed on the lights, or the poles are wrapped in greenery, all with white lights and big, red bows.
I kick the snow with my boot, and I feel like a kid again. I sip my coffee and crunch down the street. There is nothing like Petoskey. It feels exhilarating to live in a wondrous little town whose independent streak matches not only my own but that of most locals.
Picturesque Petoskey was named for the Ottawa Indian Chief Pe-to-se-ga. The loose translation of Petosegay is “rising sun.” I think of Leah and smile.
If you own and run a bookstore, you have to know the history of the town. And the state. And, well, pretty much everything without acting like you know too much. Books on the history of a resort town as well as coffee table books filled with stunning photographs of the area are ever popular.
For our area, lumber was its lifeline for many decades, thanks to access to Lake Michigan that allowed Great Lakes freighters to ferry lumber to ports all over the Midwest. The area’s lumber was instrumental in helping rebuild Chicago after the Great Fire. The area began to become a summer resort destination starting in the late 1800s when rail lines brought urbanites looking to escape the heat of cities like Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago and Cincinnati. Steamships then began to bring passengers from ports across the Great Lakes for a reasonable rate. Once here, visitors could walk, bike, stagecoach or carriage anywhere.
Not much has changed, I think, looking around. Even the buildings.
Grandpa Shorter’s Gifts is iconic, NorthGoods showcases amazing local artisans and American Spoon truly makes the finest fruit preserves in the world with our Michigan fruit.
One of my favorite stores in town—and the world—is Symons General Store. It is akin to an old-fashioned apothecary, candy store, deli, grocery and restaurant all rolled into one. Symons features a candy counter with all my childhood favorites, a wine selection to rival any city, handmade sandwiches and, down an alley behind the general store and thriving under the street, is Chandler’s, one of Michigan’s finest eateries. Ironically, Symons was built in 1879 from brick, a first, used to safeguard against the destruction fires caused in other Michigan lumber towns, like Saugatuck. In fact, the Stafford’s Perry Hotel was Petoskey’s first brick hotel. At the turn of the century, the Perry was advertised as the only fireproof hotel in town and is the only original resort hotel still operating in Petoskey.
People just want to feel safe in this world.
Which is the reason many people buy books. To escape from their troubles. To fade into another world, if even for a little while.
I stop. Sleigh By the Bay greets me like a warm hug on this winter’s day. Sleigh is a five-thousand-square foot, two-story general bookstore that brings to mind an inviting cottage. The exterior is brick, but the windows are framed with ornate, forest green casings, the trim painted in shiny gold. A bright red awning, with fresh pine boughs, hangs over the entrance reading Sleigh By the Bay Booksellers in gold lettering.
The roofline of this building is unlike any other in town, as it was designed to mimic a wave off the bay. Over time, however, people began to think it resembled a sleigh. As a result, the former hardware store began to place a mammoth sleigh atop the roof at Christmastime as a way to excite holiday shoppers. The sleigh became a beloved site in town, and the hardware store kept it atop the building permanently. It seemed as if my grandparents were destined to buy the building. Who knew the name they gave it would stick forever and become so iconic?
Two red window boxes stand under the windows, and are festooned in fresh pine boughs and filled with red Shiny Brite ornaments and curly gold ting ting branches. Snow has dusted the pine as if a photo shoot for Midwest Living is about to take place.
The decor is the handiwork of Noah, but the window displays are all me and my grandparents. One window advertises the upcoming event with Desiree Delmonico. A huge poster of her book cover under a sign that reads “Christmas Is Going to Be Hot This Year!” is surrounded by stacks of her latest holiday book.
The other window—as it has since my grandparents bought this former hardware store some fifty years ago and turned it into a bookstore—has featured a “throne” for Mr. and Mrs. Claus every December. The high-back chair is upholstered in bright red, tufted velvet with ornate gold legs and sits at an angle on an heirloom rug of soft red and gold. A Christmas tree—decorated in multicolored lights, tinsel and book ornaments sent to us by beloved authors over the years—stands near the front. Every night in December, Santa and Mrs. Claus read to children, help families shop and then take photos. Even in the height of summer, we throw a huge “Christmas in July” party so that resorters can see my grandparents and take their holiday photos. Our longstanding customers would have it no other way.
“Santa needs a vacation, too!” my grampa tells kids when they ask why he’s not at the North Pole. “But he never takes a vacation from you! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
But the adults love it just as much or more than their children. They remember doing the same when they were their kids’ ages.
A gust of wind rushes up the hill from the bay, and I shiver.
How much longer can this tradition continue? I think.
I tug open the red Victorian door with my free hand.
I take a deep breath and inhale the scent of books.
I’m home.
The bookstore is all knotty pine paneling. The second floor—as you walk in off Lake Street—features our fiction, nonfiction, travel sections, and magazines and newspapers, while the ground floor features our children’s section, with a fireplace, cozy reading nook, book club meeting room and our offices.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!”
The bell on the door hasn’t even stopped jingling. Santa’s laugh booms through the bookstore.
“How-how-how was your weekend in the city?”
“Don’t ask,” Noah says, then turns to me and demands, “Where’s my coffee.”
I hand it to him.
“Made with love!”
He takes a sip.
“Made with ice. It’s cold, diva.”
“Maybe your demeanor is making it that way.”
“Touché!”
He returns to shelving books onto our “Featured in Our Newsletter!” display.
“Hi, Grampa!”
My life is defined by Santas. But this one’s always been there for me. He’s never stood me up.
“It was okay.”
He hugs me with all his might, managing—even at his age—to lift me off the ground.
“Okay is not okay,” he says.
He puts me down and holds me at arm’s length.
My grandfather—Nicholas Norcross—is no faux Santa. He’s the real deal. He looks exactly like Edmund Gwenn, the actor who won the Oscar for playing Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. And he sounds exactly like Burl Ives, who narrated the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special. In fact, his beard is real, his hair is white, his laugh booms, his eyes twinkle, but it’s what’s on the inside that truly makes him Kris Kringle: his heart is pure, his soul is good, and he radiates kindness, joy and empathy.
He is Santa.
My grampa has remained the epitome of goodness despite losing a son and a daughter-in-law and trading in his golden years to raise his granddaughter and not only gift her a bookstore but continue to help manage it. I would not be here without my grandparents.
“Let’s just say I’m not convinced there’s a Single Kringle out there for me,” I say.
“No!” he bellows, placing a Santa-gloved hand over my mouth. My grandparents are pretty much in costume through December 24/7 as much, I’ve come to believe, for themselves as the customers. “Shut your eyes.”
“Grampa...” I start.
“Shut your eyes.”
I do as instructed. He grabs my hands.
“My parents and grandparents told me, one day I would know,” he begins.
“Grampa,” I object again. “Not my silly poem again.”
He continues undeterred.
“Because I’ll meet a man whose beard, would be white as snow.”
He gives my hands a gentle shake, and I join him. We recite together:
“His eyes would twinkle, and his laugh would boom, he’d make me feel like, the only gift in the room. He will love me for me, be generous and kind, and always let me read my books and speak my mind. He may not have reindeer, nor live at the North Pole, but he’ll be filled with love, and have a good soul.”
As I say the words to the poem I wrote decades ago, I’m amazed at how this man can remember each and every line, despite the fact that at least once a week he leaves the bookstore coffeepot on until the entire place smells like burning tires and the fire department shows.
We finish, I open my eyes and my grampa’s blue eyes are sparkling.
“You wrote that poem for a reason. Because you believed. Children believe in magic. We lose that when life and loss come to call. But we can’t stop hoping and believing, can we? If we did, there would be no reason for Christmas.” He clears his throat. “We all know how difficult this year is for you, Susan...for all of us. It seems like yesterday still.” He stops again. “But try to focus on the happy and not dwell on the sad.”
“Grampa—” I start.
“Susan!” He emphasizes my name dramatically. “Remember why your parents named you that.”
My heart swells, but then I hear Noah call, “To curse her with a name that would forever repel men on Tinder?”
My grandfather shakes his head. He has no idea what Noah is saying half the time. “Tinder?” he asks.
“Never mind,” I say.
“It’s an online dating app, Mr. Norcross,” Noah says.
“Get her on that immediately,” Grampa says.
Noah gets the giggles, which my grampa catches, and laughter ricochets across the bookstore.
“Bookstores are meant to be quiet,” I say. “Where’s Grandma?”
“Charming Rita,” Noah says. “You can’t avoid her forever.”
I swill my coffee and follow Noah down the stairs to the reading nook by the fireplace.
“As the Bangles used to sing, it’s just another manic Monday,” Noah says. He looks at me and whispers, “Your safe word today is Bette Davis.”
Noah gives me and Leah safe words to utilize in stressful situations. I have never asked, for my own sanity, how this bizarre ritual began in his own life, but I must admit it’s saved all of us here at one time or another. There’s nothing like hearing me yell, “Lana Turner!” or hearing Leah say, “Danny Partridge!” when we’re at our wit’s end with a difficult customer or author.
“Good morning, Grandma! Morning, Rita!”
My voice comes out too high, like a songbird that’s being placed into a girdle.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Grandma says, standing. She gives me a big hug in her Mrs. Claus outfit. “How was your weekend in Chicago?”
“Don’t ask!” Noah bellows from the checkout counter.
“Let’s just say dressing like you for the Santa Run didn’t end with a medal.”
My grandma chuckles. “How’s Holly? When is she coming to see us again?”
“Soon,” I say. “She says hi.”
My grandma skews her eyes behind the tiny glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“Well,” she says, clapping her gloved hands together. “I’ll let you two chat. I have to get going anyway. Papers to serve!”
“Grandma, really?” I ask. “Don’t you think—”
She stops me cold. “The extra cash still helps keep this place afloat in the winter, and the pursuit makes my blood flow. Good for the health of me and the store. It’s a win-win.”
My octogenarian grandmother, Betty Norcross, is not simply a bookstore owner, but she’s also a part-time process server. Who serves papers while dressed as Mrs. Claus.
“Who is it today, Grandma?”
“Loose lips sink ships,” she says with a wink. “Don’t worry, though. It’s not you.”
“Got the sleigh warmed up, Santa?” she calls.
My grampa appears.
He was an attorney and my grandmother a paralegal when they bought this place. Their business background and legal acumen were actually a wonderful foundation for being bookstore owners. When the store fell on hard times, my grandma became a process server. She might be the most loved—and feared—woman in the county. I mean, who wouldn’t open a door, or take a package, from Mrs. Claus?
She has more stories than this store has novels.
“Rudolph’s ready to go!” my grampa calls. “Ho! Ho! Ho!”
I watch them head out the store. Noah slaps my grandma on the behind and says, “Someone’s still doing Pilates, am I right, Betty?”
“It’s a pillow,” she laughs.
I don’t work in a bookstore. I work in an asylum.
And now I have to go one-on-one with A Man Called Ove disguised as a kindly older woman with a wash-and-set perm and Northern Reflections sweater featuring a happy, glittered cardinal on a snowy branch.
“How was your weekend, Rita?” I ask, taking off my coat and tossing it over the chair across from her.
I squeeze my soul to exude excitement and empathy.
I already know the answer.
“Awful,” she says. “Two more dead. I had to pay my respects, of course.” She takes a sip of her coffee from one of the mugs we sell that, ironically, states, “That’s What I Do: I Read Books & Know Things!”
Rita knows everything.
About everyone.
“Remember Mrs. Demmings? That lovely woman who came in here and only bought books about Michigan?”
“I do,” I say. “She hasn’t been in for a while.”
“That’s because she had a stroke a few months back,” Rita says.
“Oh, no.”
“That’s the funeral I attended on Saturday, remember?”
“I was out of town,” I say. “Slipped my mind. I’m so sorry. How was it?”
“Poorly attended.” She looks around the store, leans in and whispers, “Probably because that daughter of hers turned her little orchard into that abomination of a winery. I mean, who drinks wine at eleven in the morning?”
I do, I want to say. In fact, I just did this weekend.
I shrug.
“And that poor, poor Della Adams,” Rita continues. “Lost her fourth husband. She has the worst luck. But I was there for her.”
Rita reaches out and touches my hand.
She looks me in the eye, and I can feel my heart twinge.
“You’re always there, Rita.”
“Thank you, Susan.”
Rita was one of my mother’s best friends growing up, albeit long distance. They met at summer camp; Rita was born and raised in Petoskey, and my mom in Columbus, Ohio. The two bunked in the same cabin, Pinewood, and helped put on all the camp plays and musicals. I’ve heard all the stories, from my mom and from the entire town. The most shocking part of Rita’s memoir? She used to be the wild child in town. She dated all the rich resort boys as a teenager. My mom used to spend summers with Rita and her family in Petoskey, working at a local resort. Both ended up being loyal to their home turf: Rita went to Michigan to study acting while my mom went to Ohio State to study acting and business. They were going to move to New York City and become Broadway stars together. But after my mom met my dad at a college party, largely thanks to Rita, and Rita’s father was diagnosed with cancer her last month in college, the two BFFs moved back to Petoskey. The two best friends were finally reunited in the same town, destined to be together forever. Forever summer. Forever friends. And yet, time and life—as they are wont to do—changed and separated them. Rita never married or had children.
When my parents were killed, Rita felt it was her obligation to become my surrogate mom. She baked casseroles and cleaned the house. She helped pay bills, she opened the bookstore for my grandparents, she took me to school activities.
Even though I sometimes find it hard to be around Rita, I don’t dislike her at all. I just hate looking in her eyes, because I can see myself—my past and my future—reflected. Rita has been defined by grief. She’s still grieving for her father and her best friend. It’s like we’re both reading books that have no end. We are unable to write a new chapter.
“Well,” Rita says. “Shall we get started?”
Rita puts down her coffee on the round table in front of the fireplace. She picks up her readers along with the weekly local paper, which comes out every Monday. She puts on her glasses, opens the paper—flicking it exactly five times—and smooths it on her lap. She turns the pages, licking her fingers every time she does. I have no idea why she doesn’t head directly to the obituary section, but this is all part of the ritual.
“Oh, no!” Rita says. “Dr. Jenkins died.”
She acts surprised, but I know she already knows this.
“I thought he retired early and moved to Florida in the early 2000s.”
“He did,” Rita says, scanning the paper. “But they’re having a memorial in town.” She looks at me. “This one’s going to be tough.” Rita flicks the paper in her lap and looks at me.
“Does it mention if he has grandchildren or great-grandchildren?” I ask.
“Two greats,” Rita says.
“I’ll be right back.”
I beeline to the children’s section across from the fireplace. I return a few seconds later. “Voilà!” I say.
Rita looks at the bright cover of the kid’s book entitled M Is for Mitten.
She cocks her head.
“It’s about Michigan, part of the Discover America State by State series,” I say, opening the book, which is filled with colorful illustrations. “Kids can fly on the back of a robin to the Mackinac Bridge, head to Detroit to drink Vernors and then to Battle Creek to eat Kellogg’s cereal, or go back in history to paddle through our state’s lakes and bays in a birch bark canoe with Native Americans. It will be a way for his youngest family members to understand why he loved this state and area so much. It will be a way they can stay connected to their history.”
Rita takes the book and thumbs through it. “Perfect! As always, Susan. Bravo.”
“Thank you.”
“Next!” Rita says, placing the book on the table next to her coffee. “Agnes Weaver.”
After my parents died, my grandparents said that Rita started coming in Sleigh By the Bay every Monday when the store opened to buy a local paper and scan the obits. That tradition has continued. Now it’s me who picks out the perfect book for her to take to the funeral or wake as a gift. And if no one in town has passed, I bring Rita the Traverse City paper or Detroit Free-Press, and she will pick out a person, I’ll pick out a book, and we will send a book to the funeral home for the living spouse, children or relative. It’s a rather morbid ritual I realize, but a necessary one, and an act I understand completely.
Rita needs to stay connected to me and to her past. She needs to feel in charge of a world that is too often filled with more mystery, gut-wrenching loss and unexplainable curveballs than a Gillian Flynn novel.
Mostly, Rita—just like me—is seeking to find an answer in a book that will never have closure.
“Weren’t Mrs. Weaver and her son big birders?” I ask.
“Oh, yes, you’re right. They were!”
I return with a book and hand it to Rita. She looks at me.
“H Is for Hawk is a memoir of the author’s year spent training a northern goshawk in the wake of her father’s unexpected death,” I say. “It’s really a book about the grieving process. I thought it might help and be just right.”
The edges of Rita’s lips actually turn up.
“Onto the next one,” Rita says. “Oh, poor Judge Wilson. Only seventy-eight.”