Love stories are only love stories if they go somewhere. Really, that’s true of all stories. They require a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rising action, climax, denouement. Conflicts sorted, strife overcome, or challenges succumbed to. Plot. Change. Lessons learned. That’s what makes a story. Otherwise it’s just a description. Otherwise it’s just conceit.
Maybe the point is that’s true of all stories, but it’s most true of love stories. Boy meets girl and all that. They meet, one of them resists the inevitable, then finally they fall in love. They meet, encounter barriers, love anyway. They meet, encounter barriers, love then lose, love then die. Die then love, sometimes. Love stories often end badly, but their bad ends are what make them good stories.
Unless nothing ever happens. They meet, but love was never really on the table. They meet but don’t imagine it will be requited or even expressed or even noticed. They meet and one of them loves and then nothing happens next. These are not stories.
But they’re all the story I’ve got at the moment. If it’s unsatisfying to hear, imagine how unsatisfying it is to tell, to live. But there’s precedent. Think of courtly love. Dante met Beatrice when they were nine, so requited wasn’t on the table for them either, and after that he loved her from afar. He loved her more because he could only love her from afar. The question is why. What did he love about her if they never spoke, never joked together over sunset-colored spritzes, never shared a gelato on an early summer evening, never got close enough to find out if they had sexual chemistry? Modern readers assume she was hot, but modern readers are shallower than Dante. He says she made him a better person; she made him wholer; she made him worthy. He says she brought him closer to the divine and the eternal. Tell me that’s not better than popcorn and a movie and a make-out session in the backseat of a car. Not that I wouldn’t like to make out in the backseat of a car.
If you look closer, if you go slowly, there can be story even without progress or plot, life in small change, like Dante and Beatrice, like fish swimming hard against the current just to stay where they are. They’re not getting anywhere, neither Dante nor the fish, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t effort, growth, triumph, and beautiful poetry. Trust me, stasis is challenging. And challenge is story.
So maybe these are my love stories: Girl meets boy, loves him, and makes her sister save him. Girl meets boy, loves him, and makes her sister make him save her family. There’s story there, at least a little. It’s tragic, yes, but the best love stories are. I think you know that.
And it’s not like I’m not in good company. I am surrounded by tragic love stories. In Bourne there are more than most, but it’s also probably true that anyone who sat in on as many therapy sessions as I do would conclude there are no happy endings.
Chris Wohl this week is about as good as it gets, and that’s what I mean—sometimes anticlimax is less satisfying but better than the alternative. Sometimes quiet is just like joy. If you squint, you could mistake Chris and his cup of urine and disinclination to chat as cause for jubilation.
“Leandra had an okay week so I had an okay week.” From the doorway, Chris sounds almost apologetic for not being an emotional wreck, but really he’s just sheepish about what he says next. “I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it.”
“That’s not how it works,” Nora says.
“I know.”
“Then sit down.”
“But just in case.”
“So talk about something else,” Nora suggests.
“Next week, maybe. Probably,” Chris says, then winks at me. “Bye, Miracle Mirabel.”
I wave and he leaves, and Nora smiles at me. “Speaking of miracles, looks like you and I have a whole unscheduled forty minutes to ourselves. What shall we do with it?” An unanswerable question—there is not a lot to do in Bourne, and anyway I have biochem homework (though it’s true I assigned it to myself)—so it is only luck, or maybe fate, that what happens next happens next.
A knock on the doorframe and on the other side a woman neither Nora nor I have ever seen before. Which means she can only be one person.
“Uh, hi. I’m not sure I’m in the right place.” She is little. Not just small. Slight. Winnowed. She has on vertiginous heels which somehow make her look shorter and a skirt straight as a drafting tool keeping her upright. Her face is so thin it’s concave in spots. She looks hungry and, with her movie-star makeup, like she’s overreacting—to this town and its empty afternoon and the weary week that yawns ahead. “I, um, I’d like to make an appointment?” A question at the end, that question being: Is this town so podunk your medical clinic is really just a house and doesn’t even have a receptionist? It is.
“Sure.” Nora sits behind her computer, pulls up the scheduling tool. “With me or Dr. Lilly?”
She blinks. “I wanted to make a”—her voice drops—“therapy appointment?”
Nora looks at her screen. “I’m pretty booked next week. There’s a hole the Friday after next.” Her gaze catches on the woman’s eyes, filled suddenly with tears. Nora looks at me. I nod. “Or, as it happens, I have some time right now—”
“Perfect,” the woman says, but without conviction, like at the grocery store when they ask if paper is okay and should they put your receipt in the bag, as if there being a virtually unheard-of opening the moment she seeks it is to be expected, as if the world is nothing but automatic doors that slide silently apart before her as she glides through.
“I usually take insurance information at the start of the first—” Nora begins, but is waved off before she can finish.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just pay out of pocket.”
“And, of course, if you would feel more comfortable, my daughter can wait outside.” Nora gestures in my direction, but the woman, who has been struggling to keep her cool eyes away from mine, flicks them over me and concludes it is as if Nora has asked if she’s comfortable being overheard by a lamp in the corner. “Nothing leaves this room,” Nora assures her. But needn’t.
The woman nods, unconcerned, at least about me. She comes into the room from the doorway and extends her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Apple Templeton.”
I almost laugh. It’s such an ill-fitting name now that I’ve seen her. There is nothing flushed or full or natural about her. Maybe she’s like a Granny Smith—tart, acerbic, hard, and pallid. Or maybe her parents imagined someone different than she turned out to be which, best I can tell, seems to be the trick of parenting.
“Nora Mitchell. Please, sit.”
“Thank you. My apologies for my unfamiliarity with the appointment system. I’m new to town.”
“I know,” Nora says.
“You do?”
“It’s a small town.”
“It really is.” Apple looks glad to have some corroboration on this point. “In fact, I believe I just came from your house.”
“You did?”
“I needed to look through some…” she begins, then trails off, then begins again. “I needed a library. And it seems, in different ways, we’re both living in one. It’s just yours has all the books.”
“Well,” Nora allows, “some of them.”
“I was hoping to help my son aspire to what comes next. Your daughter … made some interesting choices.”
“Which one?” Nora wonders, and it’s a good question actually.
But Apple looks taken aback. “The librarian?”
I exchange a smile with my mother. We can imagine exactly how interesting.
“I’m not sure the materials she selected will be much help,” Apple says, “but I can see you don’t have a wealth of options here.”
“That’s certainly true.” Entirely neutral. “Help with what?” Which was going to be my question as well, if probably not for the same reason.
“Parenting’s so exhausting, you know?” Apple sighs. “River did not want to come here. Me neither, I said. But he’s been moody, secretive, short with me and his father. I thought perhaps a reminder that we won’t be here long might help.”
“You’re leaving?” Not a flicker on her face of the jumping for joy she’d do now if she could.
“As soon as we possibly, possibly can,” Apple says.
“You’re not enjoying Bourne?” Nora asks gently.
“It’s … hard.”
“I bet. More so than you expected?”
“I guess, though I couldn’t tell you why. None of it’s a surprise. It’s not like I didn’t know you all were…” She looks embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as I think she should look.
“I understand,” Nora assures her.
“And of course, to grossly understate it, it was not my choice to come.”
“Why did you?”
Apple shrugs. “Family. You know.”
Nora smiles. She does know.
“I begged him to say no to this move, but he never says no to his father. I refused to go, said we were staying in Boston, me and our son, and he could visit on the weekends if he liked, but he said our coming was the whole point. If he didn’t bring us, there was no point in going at all.”
“Those feelings of anger and powerlessness can’t be helping ease the transition any,” Nora imagines.
“No. To say the least. I’m just supposed to be understanding when he puts the company before his own wife? When he puts that family before this family? I’m supposed to just overlook the fact that he’s willing to risk our lives to—” She cuts herself off. Takes a breath. “And then there’s my own father if I’m being honest, speaking of family.” She pauses, waves that half thought away. “Anyway, I’m here. I wish I weren’t. And neither my son nor my husband is helping matters.”
“If you told your husband how unhappy you are, what do you think he’d say?”
“I have told him. He says I haven’t given it a chance. But some things you know right away, you know?”
Nora nods. She knows. Then she says, “What if you just returned home? Took your son, left him a note, and went?”
“He’d go ballistic.”
“He might be angry at first,” Nora concedes, “but once he sees how much it means to you, don’t you think he might give in?”
“Nathan never gives in,” says his wife.
“If he knew how much his family was hurting,” Nora muses, “his wife and his son, I bet he’d nix his plans here and just go home.”
Apple opens her mouth to reply, but Nora is on her feet suddenly, palm up and out like she wants Apple to wait on a busy street corner. “Actually, before you answer that question”—Nora puts the hand to her mouth and frowns with her whole face—“Apple, I’m concerned I might not be the right therapist for you.”
River’s mother pales, which you wouldn’t imagine possible.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No, no, of course not. I’d be happy to work with you, but there’s something of a conflict of interest here.”
“Why?”
“Your business is Belsum Chemical, no?”
“His family business, yes.”
Nora takes a deep breath, then says gently, even apologetically, “There’s some awfully bad blood in this town between us and Belsum.”
River’s mother puffs out her sunken cheeks. “Which I have to tell you, I never understood until I saw you with my own eyes. Man, you all have some legit complaints.”
“We do.” Nora nods graciously.
“But I’m on your side,” Apple protests. “You guys got screwed. I’d want out if I were you. Hell, I want out because of you. Not you specifically, you understand, but…”
Nora nods again. No one looks at me.
“Besides, do I have another option?”
“It’s true I’m the only therapist in Bourne,” Nora admits, “and fifty percent of the medical professionals at this clinic, which is the only clinic in town, but there are a few folks I can recommend who see patients online. You’ll find wifi spotty in Bourne, but it may be better than the alternative.”
“Which is you?”
“Me and my conflict of interest, yes.”
She considers. “I don’t mind. You—all of you—must hate my husband even more than I do.” Apple’s voice is full of awe. “This might be the best therapy I’ve ever had.”
Meeting Apple Templeton at last, listening to her complain about her husband, worry about her son, wish she could ditch this town and the family business and all of Belsum’s plans for here and for us, this would have been enough for one day.
But on the way to the bar, Nora’s phone rings.
She glances at the screen and then, because she is driving, puts it on speaker.
“Russell?”
“Nora.”
A whole conversation right there. She already sounds panicked. He already sounds full. He has news—he’s never the one to call; it’s always her—he doesn’t want to tell her but must need her to know.
“You okay?” She’s a little breathless.
“Yeah. You?” Him too.
“Yeah. Just leaving work and going to work.”
“You driving?”
“Yeah. You’re on speaker. Say hi to Mirabel.”
“Hi, love,” he calls. I wave from the back, not that he can see, not that he expects me to answer otherwise. And then, “Hey Nora, do me a favor?”
“Anything.” She’s aiming for breezy.
“Pull over.”
She waits. She waits until everyone gets there. She says nothing as her guys file in. She takes their orders, which she needn’t because she knows them by heart, and serves them calm as ever. She waits until they’re into their second rounds. She does not let her face show fury or fear or even distraction. She does not weep or rend her robes, which are a stained button-down belonging to her dead husband over a pair of faded black leggings, or roll her eyes or raise her voice to either the heavens or the patrons themselves, her friends and compatriots and fellow survivors. She unearths great reserves of strength or, maybe, hunkers down for a long night coming and waits and eventually finally says, light as she’s able, “So. Russell called.”
Their heads all rise like the bubbles in their beers. They do not need to ask, “Russell who?” They do not need to ask why he called or what he said.
“Aww, Nora, honey,” Tom begins, but she raises a hand that says stop, that says she doesn’t want comforting or gentleness or her ass kissed, that she’ll cry or scream or probably both if they don’t just tell her quickly what they know they must.
“The suit isn’t going anywhere,” Hobart says quietly. If she notices he’s used the present tense, I can’t tell.
“These things take time.” She bites her lips. She interrupted, and she didn’t mean to. She is trying so hard to seem loose, cool.
“Twenty years?”
“It hasn’t been twenty years.”
“Sixteen.”
“Yeah. Sometimes,” she says. “Sometimes it takes sixteen years. We’re making progress.”
“We aren’t, honey.” Tom tries to match her calm, her pretend calm.
“How would you know?” she snaps.
“Forget gaining ground, we’re losing it.”
“We aren’t.”
“We are,” says Zach. “They’re back. They’re reopening the plant. That’s how not worried about this lawsuit they are.”
“It’s a ploy, Zach. It’s all for show. Tell me you don’t see that.”
“How do you figure?” Maybe he’s genuinely willing to hear what she has to say. Or maybe letting her lay out her case is the first step to poking holes in it.
“That’s why they’re back. Because they’re worried about the suit. So they can show they aren’t worried about the suit.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Zach sounds like he’s talking to a small child or a scared dog.
“Maybe you’re right,” Tom starts.
Nora snorts. “Then what’s your excuse?”
He shrugs, helpless, but raises his eyes again to hold hers while he answers her question. “They offered us jobs, Nora.”
“In exchange?” she demands, even though she knows, even though Russell warned her.
“Not in exchange.” Hobart winces. “But yeah, as a condition of employment, we had to take our names off the lawsuit.”
“It’s blood money.”
“Maybe,” Tom says, “but it’s still money.”
She opens her mouth, but Zach starts in before she can say anything. They’ve been waiting to have this conversation with her, dreading it no doubt, but ready now and eager to have it over with finally. “They’re good jobs, Nora. Full-time, good salary, benefits.” And when she still won’t look at him, “Health insurance. Life insurance.”
“You don’t need benefits.” Her eyes are wide, too much white. “Pastor Jeff—”
“Could stand to get paid more for his services,” Zach says. “You too. I mean Mirabel’s doing a great job with the books over there”—he smiles at me, my tray piled with Frank’s receipts, not that I’ve looked at so much as a single number this evening—“but it can’t be enough.”
“We’re fine,” Nora says, a statement so absurd, on so many fronts, Zach laughs.
“You’re underpaid. And you’re overworked. If more of us had insurance, more doctors would come. More services, specialists. Maybe we’d get a hospital close enough to make a difference. If we had a choice—”
“You have a choice,” she interrupts.
“We don’t.” Zach stands then. So she can take his measure, I guess. Maybe to remind her how many legs he has left to stand on. Maybe to remind her how much he’s lost as well. “We don’t. They took that—”
“Yes, they did. So why would you—”
“Because what else can I do, Nora? Buy more buckets and more blankets and stretch the roof through yet another winter? Stay home all the time because it hurts like hell even limping with this piece-of-shit prosthesis? No offense, man.” He turns to Tom who’s keeping Zach’s leg functional with will, plumber’s tape, and a bike wrench.
“None taken.”
“Make my career at the Greenborough 7-Eleven? Cross our fingers the suit finally goes to trial and we win and the award is big enough for everyone and they don’t appeal and the judge upholds the award and we live long enough to see it paid?”
“Yes.” She’s desperate.
And he steps all the way up to the bar and reaches across and takes both her hands in both of his. “We can’t anymore, Nora. We’ve tried. We’ve tried for so long. We talked about it.” He waves around at everyone staring guiltily into their beers. “The whole town’s talking about it. The only reason anyone’s come up with to turn down these jobs is to not make you angry.” He meets her eyes again, takes in her face. “More angry.”
That’s a good reason, I think. That, and we might finally be making some progress on the lawsuit. We have River getting us access to information we’ve never had before. We have proof that Duke and Nathan are up to something, even if we don’t know what yet. We have a sister pact and the resolve that comes with it. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing, and it makes everyone’s mass and sudden loss of faith that much more tragic. Nora doesn’t know any of that, but it doesn’t matter. For her, it’s tragic enough already.
“They’re. Evil.” Nora’s own eyes look witchy, black and bottomless.
“Maybe.” Zach steps back, away from her. “Maybe not. Maybe they’ve changed. Maybe Nathan is different from his father. Maybe mistakes were made, and it’s time to forgive and move on. What’s the worst that can happen?”
She flings her arms wide to enter into evidence all of them, all of us, all of it—Bourne-that-was versus Bourne-that-is and our whole world.
“Right,” says Tom. “The worst already happened. It can’t happen again.”
“Of course it can!” She didn’t mean to be so loud. I can see it in her face. “You think they’re chastened? You think they’re sorry? They’re triumphant. They learned they can fuck us over with not a single repercussion. They learned they can fuck us over, and not only won’t anyone out there notice”—she waves around at the rest of the world—“no one here will notice either. Or if we notice, we’ll move on soon enough. They should fuck us over because they make a shitpile of money doing it, and when they’re done, we bend over and beg them to go again.”
“They’re the answer to our prayers,” Hobart says, emboldened now because she’s yelling.
“You prayed for death, poison, and destitution?” Nora spits.
“We need jobs, Nora. We need money. We need something to do all day besides sit in here and drink. We can’t leave. We’re stuck here. Our property ain’t worth shit. Our houses. Our land. That ridiculous excuse for a school. What are my kids gonna do? Huh? Belsum is our last best shot. We have to give them another chance because they’re giving us another chance. If they come in and make good this time, it’ll be like they promised before. Growth. Opportunities. Our property values go up. Our town becomes less of a dead end. Our kids have a chance.”
“But at what cost?” Nora is shaking. Or maybe it’s me. Probably it’s both of us. “What about the principle here?”
“Well, now those are different questions.” Zach is making his voice sound reasonable. “We don’t know at what cost. Last time didn’t work out for them either. Must have cost ’em a fortune in lost revenue when they shut down. You figure they’d really rather not poison us if they could.” Weak smile. “They’ve worked out some kinks maybe. They’re less willing to take that kind of risk. They can’t afford to do it again. So probably no cost.”
“You can’t know that,” she interrupts.
But he keeps talking. “And we can’t afford to stand on principle, Nora. We literally can’t afford it. Only rich people get to stand on principle.”
“And besides,” Tom begins, then stops.
“Go ahead.” She knows what’s coming.
“You’re right.” He shrugs. “We’re already ruined. They can’t ruin us again. They’ve taken our livelihoods, our dreams, our confidence, our prospects. What the hell else is there? There’s nothing. We might as well let them come back and try. We’ve got nothing left to lose.”
She pauses, shakes her head, crosses her arms over her chest. “They’re not going to hire you.”
“They are, Nora.”
“They aren’t because you’re too fucking stupid. How are you going to work at a chemical plant when you’re this goddamn dumb? Frank wouldn’t hire you to mop the floors in this bar because you don’t have the brains for it. He wouldn’t hire you to carry rocks because the rocks are smarter than you are.”
“Frank,” Tom appeals to a higher authority. They’re cowed in her presence, and they’re sorry, but they’d still like not to be abused by their bartender.
“Don’t cry to Frank,” Nora says. “Frank’s the only one of you who’s not an idiot. Frank’s got sense and faith and isn’t about to let himself get fucked again by these assholes. Every goddamn one of you”—she’s calling out to the whole bar now—“dropped off the suit except me and Frank.”
“Nora.” Frank clears his throat. Everyone stops and looks at him, and he clears his throat again and then again. He’s been quiet, listening to all this. He owns the place after all, so it doesn’t seem so weird he’s observing but not saying anything.
She turns toward him, eyebrows raised, face open, completely unprepared.
“Nora, I took my name off too.”
“No you didn’t.” This is so impossible she doesn’t believe him.
“I had to.”
“What are you talking about? Why?”
His hands rise then fall back against his sides. “I couldn’t stand in their way.” He waves at his customers, the guys at the bar, the couples whispering at tables and trying to ignore us, takes them in, me too maybe. It’s my future more than anyone else’s here, after all.
“What about my way?” she hisses.
“You have a job. Two actually. I have a job. I can’t stand in the way of someone else having one too. I get it. These folks need the money, the bennies, the whole thing really.”
“And you get rich too,” she adds darkly.
“Not rich.” He laughs, mirthless, forced. “But yeah, Norma’s needs Belsum’s goodwill and patronage to stay afloat.”
“It hasn’t so far.”
“’Cause these guys never get off their stools.” That mirthless laugh again. “When they go back to work, think of the hit. And think of the business from execs just out of their last meeting, managers at the end of a long week, new wives in town, new families. I can’t just tell them they’re not welcome here.”
“They’re not,” says Nora.
“They’re not,” Frank agrees, “unless they’re coming anyway.”
“Russell said there were two names left on the suit. And one of them’s me.”
“I’m sorry,” Frank says.
“I just assumed—”
And then, out of the darkness by the door where the lights don’t reach, “It’s me. Okay? It’s me. I’m the other one. I’m sorry, guys.” This to the barflies. “You know—I hope you know—I’ll do whatever I can to support you. But I owe her. And I … believe her. It’s me.”
I didn’t see Omar come in. Nora obviously didn’t either. She looks not just stunned but like she might actually fall over. In fact, apparently no one noticed Omar’s entrance, everyone too busy arguing, stating their cases, standing up to Nora’s dressing-down. Now he’s standing behind me, behind all of us, and everyone’s turned to look at him.
“You can’t not have taken your name off the suit,” Nora sputters. “You were never on to begin with.”
That he understands this, which even I don’t follow at first, is saying something. “I signed on a couple weeks back. I told Russell not to tell you. Didn’t want to make a big deal. But it was time.”
There has been attrition over the years as people died or moved away. There have been abstainers, like Pastor Jeff, who believes in heavenly justice rather than the earthly variety. But it’s always been Omar’s holding out that’s most rankled her. He’s the one whose name and title seem like they would lend the whole thing weight and import. He’s as wronged as anyone. But he’s always refused, claimed he has to remain impartial, be available to appear as a witness instead should it ever come to that.
“Why?” She has actual tears in her eyes. “I mean, why now?”
He walks straight toward her like he honestly can’t help himself. Stops a few feet away and looks awkward and embarrassed. Smiles nervously around at everyone. Decides he doesn’t care and not only comes up to the bar but ducks under the flap and right over to her, inches away. Holds his hands out toward her then pulls them back in fists then tucks them in the back pockets of his jeans. “You were right. We can’t just let them back like nothing happened. Everything happened. They have to know we know it. They have to know we’re watching this time, paying attention.”
“What happened to ‘We have to be nice to them because it’s our best shot at being treated well’?”
“We tried that already. It didn’t work out that great. So I’m standing with you. We’ll try something else this time.”
“Tried that too,” Hobart grunts. “We’ve been suing them sixteen years now.”
“Omar has a job too, you know,” Tom says.
“You want it?” Omar’s standard response, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off Nora.
And I see why. She glows, like her face is lit up from inside. She stands looking at him for a while, letting him look back, letting him stand close, their eyes holding, but neither of them saying anything more. Then she points at a place on the other side of the bar with her chin, and he ducks back under and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes—never mind every single one is on him—and slumps onto the stool she picked for him, battered, like he’s swapped the weight of one world for another, but unbeaten as yet.
She brings him a beer and a bowl of pretzels, a meager offering maybe but an offering nonetheless.
“Thank you, Omar.”
“Anytime, Nora.”
She raises an eyebrow at him.
“Well,” he hedges, “at least this time.”