Chapter Thirty-Nine

“IN MY LINE of work, I see a lot of interrupted lives,” Sophia said.

They had been talking about how life threw curveballs, how people made plans and then had to duck and switch directions, how fast it could all happen. It was their second date; they were on a moonlight walk through the woods. Sophia knew a section where the owls hung out. If you were lucky, she said, you could hear a screech owl singing.

“Not hooting?”

“They sing too, in this funny way, like a horse whinny. And they make clacking and hissing sounds. It’s wild.”

Nan thought about Joe’s interrupted life, how he went for a walk in the moonlight and never came home again. Or was it interrupted? For a man terrified of hospitals, maybe dying instantly at the foot of a tree was the best possible death at the end of a long life.

“So I try not to think too far ahead.” Sophia stopped and put her finger to her lips. The owls were nearby.

What a perfect thing to say. Sophia didn’t even know about the bookstore, and she still managed to say the exact thing Nan needed to hear.

All Nan had to do was focus on her next step.

*

IT WAS DUSK when Nan opened the door to the apartment above the shoe repair shop for the first time.

The apartment was completely empty. She moved around in it and stood still in each room, turning on all the lights as she went. There was a slight motion in the air as if the rooms responded to her presence there. She loved the feeling of being perched over Main Street.

The wood floors were shiny and gorgeous in their imperfection. She noticed traces of the people who had lived there—dark circles where someone had dropped a lit cigarette or from a wood ember from the fireplace, scratches of a heavy old armoire being moved, a hollow spot (a tiny secret hiding place?) where she felt her foot sink down.

The doors were framed by beautifully carved wood, reminding Nan of a museum made from an old house, the kind where you spend as much time looking at the building as you do the contents. She ran her finger along the grooves for the pleasure of it. She hadn’t expected such beauty and grace above a worn old shop, but here it was.

She guessed the kitchen was straight out of the 1940s, with its painted yellow cabinets with red knobs and handles. She loved it exactly as it was. What did she care about the latest and greatest kitchen stuff, she who never cooked? All she would use in here was the refrigerator.

The windows were amazingly long and wide, taking up half the front wall. On the opposite corner—Main Street and First Avenue—was the showpiece building of the town. Painted in flashy gold accents, it resembled a plump society lady with a lot of jewelry on her bosom.

Nan had been walking by it for months, but from the street level, she’d never appreciated the elaborate pressed metal decorations in seashells and floral designs or the triangle cornice on the roof as ornate as a tiara. Now that she was on the same level, she was wowed by all the special touches.

Chuck had told her that, over the decades, the building had, in turn, housed a dry goods store, an ice cream parlor, and even an automobile showroom back when cars were newfangled inventions. Now, it was a massive antique and secondhand furniture store that people came from all over to visit.

If I live here, I will furnish this apartment from that store. I won’t rush, either. Each piece will be exactly right, even if it takes a long time to find it.

At fifty years old, she had never lived in a place that was wholly her own. She’d gone from her family home to college, then to a long series of rented and shared apartments. She had never owned a place of her own, never even thought it was possible.

This place could be my home.

Just then, she saw a woman in the apartment above the furniture store moving from room to room, turning on lights and closing her drapes to the night. The woman saw Nan and raised her hand in greeting, the surprise giving Nan a little warm jolt. She was holding something with one arm. Was that a baby? A doll? No, it was a hefty white-bellied cat. The woman raised the cat’s arm and made it wave at Nan too.

Oh, a cat. A longing to hold one barreled over Nan. She had loved cats ever since childhood; they’d always had one in their home. After her mom died, their last cat, Lydia, would sit on Nan’s lap and pat her with one paw when Nan cried. She’d never told anyone about that, thinking it sounded unbelievable that a cat could know the pain of a human and try to comfort with touch. It was true though. She could still remember how amazing the communication had felt flowing between them, with no words.

After she left home, Nan’s lifetime of renting and moving so often made it too hard for her to have a cat. And it was expensive to feed cats, take them to the vet, and buy litter. She could hardly keep herself; a cat was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

But if she owned this whole building, if this apartment were all hers, she could have a cat. Her favorite bookstores always had a cat perched on shelves or jumping down to surprise people browsing. Come to think of it, even her favorite hair salon had a cat that coolly eyed customers in the mirror during haircuts and, if you were lucky, would leap into your lap with a purr.

A cat of her own. A bookstore cat who came upstairs after work with her every day. The thought thrilled her. All she had to do was say yes to make it all happen.

Cat Lady was the ultimate cliché and frequent put-down directed toward older women, she acknowledged.

Guess what, world. I. JUST. DON’T. CARE.

I. WANT. CAT.

She’d rushed into things her whole life though. She was determined to give this time enough to be sure. Chuck would have to wait.

*

HOLDING HANDS WITH Sophia. The warm current pulsing between them. The pleasure of swinging along together around the farmers’ market. All decisions on hold. Nan couldn’t think about anything but this woman. Being with Sophia had the effect of pushing everything right out of Nan’s head. This was what it meant to stay right in the present moment. Because when the present moment was humming with joy running around in her body, where else would her mind go? Nowhere. She was staying with this fantastic feeling. She was plugged in.

“Hey, book woman.” T stood in front of them, grinning.

Two of my favorite words. Book. Woman. That’s my whole life, captured in those words.

Nan kind of loved T’s new nickname for her. She was relieved to find that she felt no residual lust; she had avoided T for months, just in case. After all, the body wanted what the body wanted. Plenty of book plots and real-life stories attested to that.

“Do you know Sophia?” Nan asked.

“Everyone knows Sophia,” T said, punching Sophia lightly in the shoulder.

Oh no, was there a history there? Nan shot a look at Sophia, who seemed to read her mind. She rolled her eyes at Nan.

I’ll take that as a no.

Sophia hated to talk about the past. It was one of the things Nan loved best about her. All she had said about her marriage was that she’d “fallen pregnant” while in college, jokily using the British term. It was funny, as if a baby was a random occurrence that had just landed on her, unbidden. Nan didn’t know if she was Sophia’s first female lover or her fiftieth, and that was absolutely fine with her.

In huge contrast, Nan remembered many awful first dates in her past, where the woman would immediately launch into a litany of her exes and why they broke up. When one date started imitating her ex’s predilection for babytalk in bed (EWWWW), Nan had excused herself, pretending to go to the bathroom, and exited the restaurant altogether. There had been no point in going on from there.

Later, when Sophia was off talking to a friend, T ran back up to Nan to whisper, “Hey, you owe me. You were wound up tight when you got to town. I loosened you up for her.”

So crude. So true.

Nan didn’t want to admit that out loud. She didn’t like the picture of herself it unspooled in her mind: T as a cowpoke who had lassoed her to the ground and tamed her for other riders.

*

WHAT WERE THOSE ghastly, unnerving sounds? Wildebeests mating. Monster truck rally. Howling banshees. Wolverines in heat. Big rigs racing. Trapped demons. Cyclones in an elevator. Death match of bulls. Wall-shaking giants’ brawl.

Sophia snores. My gorgeous, sexy woman snores.

It was 3:00 a.m. Nan raised herself on her elbow to look. Was it really true those sounds were coming out of that beautiful face?

She had to get out of this room immediately. There must be a couch she could crash on for a few hours and stop the throbbing in her ears. Then she could creep back into bed with Sophia as if she’d never left. She grabbed her backpack, tiptoed to the hall, and closed the bedroom door behind her.

Please let Sophia’s daughter still be out for the evening. Please don’t let her see me standing here naked in the hallway, fishing out a T-shirt and underpants.

It was her first time in Sophia’s rambling old house, so she didn’t even remember where the living room was exactly. Thankfully, she didn’t live above the funeral home itself or Nan would have nowhere to go to get away from the sounds, except to the dearly departed. Sophia’s cousin Sal lived above the funeral home as second-in-command of the family business.

All she wanted was a couch to collapse on so she could summon up all the wonderful memories of this first night together and shove the racket out of her brain. She found one and curled up under a warm throw. Her body felt quite wonderful. If only her ears would stop throbbing.

Just as her eyes finally closed, she heard the front door open across the hallway. When a whoosh of fresh air hit her face, she cracked open her eyes to see Rae, Sophia’s daughter, standing over her with a big toothy grin on her face.

The first time they met, Nan could not believe how little resemblance there was between mother and daughter. While Sophia moved with grace and calmness streaming out of her, Rae was a spinning top of wild energy and frenetic motion. Sophia’s face had the classic features of a 1940s movie star. Rae’s face was round as an acorn; she was a little nuthead with bright eyes.

The noise from above was far away but still audible. Rae covered her ears and fake-screamed. “The beast comes in the night to chase the magic sleep away. That’s how I think of her snoring—the beast is back.”

“Is it always this way?” Nan was afraid to hear the answer.

For the love of all that is holy, tell me this is a rare occurrence.

“Oh, yeah.” Rae grinned. “Can I tell you how incredibly happy I am to be leaving for college? If my roommate plays loud music all night, I won’t even care. If she has dramatic fights with her boyfriend or girlfriend at 3:00 a.m., I will roll right over. If a dance party erupts at midnight on the floor above mine, it won’t faze me a bit. Nothing could top this, am I right?”

“There’s no remedy? No fix?”

“She’s tried them all. Nothing works. Her nose is decorative only, a totally nonfunctional feature. I’m surprised she didn’t warn you. But she forgets. She honestly has no idea how bad it is for the rest of us.”

Rae opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of noise-cancelling earphones for Nan. “Because I like you, because I love my unbearable racket of a mother, I bequeath these to you with my very best wishes. I’ll be waving goodnight to you both soon, from my quiet college dorm far, far away.”

All these surprises in life kept barreling at Nan, bundled together. The thrill of discovering Sophia’s body tied up with the cacophony that was the price of actually sleeping with her. The humiliation of the Provincetown failure followed by the exhilaration of a job proposition she’d never envisioned.

This town seemed to bring newness her way constantly. She had read about geographic locations that served as a life nexus, connecting past and present, spirit and body. But they were always glamorous, exotic places like Sedona, a vortex for higher powers and ecstatic experiences. Where you could sit on a hill at dawn and connect to the universe in a rainbow haze. Where you could find peace and balance. Where healing from pain and losses flowed through you and transformed your life.

Vortexes were never set in places like New Jersey, which mean-spirited jesters called the Armpit of America. But why not? This vortex seemed to be whirling around Nan for a reason.