“Why is it so cold in here?” I asked Wendy.
“I cracked the windows to air out the room,” she answered. “It smelled bad.”
I stepped farther inside. “This is where…” I didn’t finish.
After a moment she said, “I stripped the sheets and washed them. They’re in the dryer.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Wendy walked past me and shut the window on the far side of the room. On top of a mahogany chest of drawers was another Lladró, one of a young girl holding a bouquet of butterflies. It was next to a postcard-sized, silver-framed photograph with the word Yellowstone. The picture was of my father and me in front of Old Faithful. I was probably four years old at the time, and I was sitting on his shoulders watching the spout. The picture, the closeness, felt foreign to me.
I took a deep breath and turned back. I’d seen enough. I walked out of the room and across the hall to my old bedroom. I opened the door and flipped on the light. The light switch was still encased in a whimsical, nursery-tale plate that had somehow survived my childhood: Mary and her little lamb.
My room was, as my father said, exactly as I’d left it. The memories were thickest here.
The bed was a wooden poster bed with a princess canopy. As a thirteen-year-old, I had crawled under the bed on that horrible night my mother had fled our house. I woke later in my bed, to tense, emotional voices. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, my father’s sister was there. She was talking in low tones with my father, who then left the house. I remember hearing the side door slam and the angry roar of the car engine as he drove away. Most of all, I remember the overwhelming fear I felt as I wondered if he or my mother would ever come back.
I woke the next morning and jumped out of bed to see if my parents were there. All I found was my aunt sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. She looked as solemn and gray as I felt.
“Where’s my dad?” I asked.
“He’s still sleeping, honey,” she said. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, as if she’d cried all night.
“I’m here,” my father said, walking in behind me. He looked worse than my aunt. He said to me, “Noel, I need to tell you something.” He exhaled slowly, then said, “Come to my room.”
I followed him into his bedroom, wondering where my mother was. We both sat on the side of the unmade bed, my feet dangling above the floor. I remember watching him, his eyes welling with tears, wondering what awful thing would come from his mouth. It was worse than I’d imagined. Worse, maybe, than I could have imagined. The nightmare I hoped was ending had only begun. My mother, he told me, was dead. Nothing would ever be the same.
My dresser, which was glossy white like my bed, was covered with photographs of me, most of them taken when I was younger. My father was a shutterbug back when people still took pictures with cameras. Most of the photos were of me dancing; I could trace the evolution of the costumes through the years, from a feathery yellow duck costume in my first dance class to a pink tutu and ballet slippers in my early teens. In one of the pictures I was wearing a middle school cap and gown with a gold honor-student stole.
I walked over to the closet and opened it. My high school clothes were still there. Even the stole was there. I once read that in Victorian etiquette, if a child were to die, the parents would persist with the daily routines of life as if the child were still there—even setting a plate at the dinner table for the deceased. That’s what my return felt like. My room was a mausoleum, a holding place for the dead remnants of my childhood and the beginning of the end of my family. The death of a home. I stepped out of the room, turning the light out as I went.
I found Wendy in the kitchen. She was crying again. When she could speak, she said, “He tried to hold on for you. His last words were ‘Tell Noel I’m sorry.’ ”
“Sorry for what?”
“Not being here for you.”
I leaned against the sink. “I never thought I’d make it back here.”
“Neither did your father.” At this the tone of her voice changed. “But he hoped. He always hoped.” She sighed loudly. “The man had a lot of misplaced hope.”
I couldn’t tell from her comment whether she was trying to shame me. There was a distance to her, but maybe it was just grief. She had just lost the person she’d spent more time with than anyone else. Someone she clearly cared about. In a way, the bookstore was their home.
“What will you do with the bookstore?” I asked Wendy.
“I’ll keep things running,” she said softly. “That’s what your father asked me to do until you decided what you wanted to do with it.”
I looked at her quizzically. “What I want to do with it?”
“I presume he meant he was leaving the bookstore to you.”
This was something I’d never considered. “He should have given it to you.”
“Blood is thicker than water.”
“Not always,” I said.
She frowned. “I’m going to go. I’ve got inventory in the morning.”
“You’re going in to work?”
“There’s a lot to be done.”
Her loyalty amazed me. “Thank you for picking me up tonight.”
“You’re welcome.” She paused slowly and looked around the room. There was something melancholy about her gaze, as if she were anticipating that she would never see this house again. I supposed there was a good chance she wouldn’t. Her gaze fell back on me. “Your father’s keys are in the drawer next to the refrigerator. The car keys, house keys, the back shed, everything.”
I wondered how she knew all this. “Thank you.”
“Also, I wrote down the Wi-Fi password. It’s that folded paper on top of the fridge.”
“Thank you,” I said again.
She turned and walked out. A minute after she left, her car still hadn’t started. I looked out the kitchen window to see her leaning against her steering wheel. It had started snowing, and thick flakes collected on her car. It was several more minutes before she started the engine, turned on the wipers, and backed out of the driveway. Welcome home.
I was startled by the cuckoo clock as it suddenly erupted in a fury of activity, the small cuckoo chirping twelve times while the butterflies’ wings flapped in unison.
“Hello, little bird,” I said. We had history, that bird and me. I used to stand beneath the clock and wait for its appearance.
Across from me was a framed quote on the wall:
Enjoy the little things in life for one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.
—Kurt Vonnegut
My father collected quotes, and he especially loved those from Vonnegut. I think his favorite Vonnegut quote was
To be is to do—Socrates
To do is to be—Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do—Sinatra
It was as if all the emotions I’d run from hadn’t really died but had existed in this timeless place, clinging to the joists and drywall, waiting for my return to resurface.
I went to my bedroom, lay back on the bed, and cried.
That night I had a dream. My father was standing by the side of my bed with my mother. They just stood there silently, holding hands, looking at me.