The Bookish Life of Nina Hill: The bookish read you need this summer!

by Abbi Waxman

  Lili appeared embarrassed. “Bel, I’m sure Nina has plenty to do this evening.”

  “Actually, no,” said Nina. “You live in the neighborhood, right? I don’t mind helping. I love all that crafty and organizey stuff.”

  “You do?” Lili looked almost comically grateful. “It’s not my game at all. Well, the crafty part is OK, but I keep freaking out that I’ll forget someone or something and it’s really important.”

  Nina laughed. “Well, let me put away the rest of the stuff and close up the store, and I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes?”

  “You’re a goddess in human form,” said Lili.

  “She’s not very good at flirting, though,” said Annabel, firmly. She looked at Nina. “My mom has a boyfriend. Maybe she can help you.”

  Lili looked at her daughter in mild horror. “We’re going to get ice cream. We’ll see you in a little bit.”

  As they walked out of the store, Nina watched them pause after a few steps and tried not to lip-read Lili telling her daughter not to comment on people’s personal lives. Good luck with that, she thought.

  Ten

  In which Nina is helpful.

  Lili lived fairly close to Larchmont, but nonetheless they drove, because it was Los Angeles. Besides, Lili had groceries, art supplies, and a giant bag of dog food to carry inside, so it was just as well Nina was there.

  “Oh, you have a dog!” said Nina, thrilled. She would love to have a dog, even though Phil the cat might not approve. She couldn’t stop herself from squatting down to greet Lili’s clearly ancient Labrador.

  “That’s Frank,” said Lili. “He’s a shameless food whore; yours for a single kibble.”

  Frank gazed into Nina’s eyes, trying to convince her to run away with him to a butcher’s shop. She smiled at him and rubbed his ears until he made grumbly noises at her.

  “Coffee?” asked Lili, putting away the groceries. Annabel had disappeared, presumably into her room. Another little girl appeared, younger than Annabel.

  “No, thanks,” replied Nina. “It’s too late for me.”

  “Too late for you because you’re dying or too late for you for some other reason?” asked the little girl, interestedly.

  “This is Clare,” said her mother. “Try and ignore her.”

  “Yes,” said Clare, smiling at Nina like an angel, “you can try.”

  “I meant it was too late for caffeine; it will keep me awake.”

  “Really? My mom drinks it all the time. But she’s much older than you, so maybe she’s more tired. People’s bodies wear out, you know.” She reminded Nina of Ramona Quimby, with her shiny little bob and big brown eyes. Not to mention her apparent lack of filter.

  Lili sighed. “I think they’re doing a biology project on decomposition or something; she’s all about death right now.”

  “Did you know,” said Clare, ignoring her mother, “that you have tiny insects living on your eyelashes, right now, eating your eyelash juice?”

  Nina raised her eyebrows. This kid had picked the wrong target. “Yes,” she said, “and not only on your eyelashes; the adult face has a thousand or so mites living on it at any one time. Did you also know,” she asked Clare, “that the entire world is covered in a microscopic layer of poop?”

  “Yes,” said Clare, “and did you know that tapeworms can grow eighty feet long?”

  “Yes, and did you know people produce a liter of snot every day?”

  “On a regular day!” said Clare, with relish. “And did you know the shiny coating on jelly beans is made from insect poop?” She paused. “Or it used to be. I don’t know if it still is.”

  Nina nodded, but Lili was done with this conversation. “That’s enough,” she said. “Honestly, you’re revolting, Clare.”

  “I’m not,” said Clare. “I’m learning.” She went closer to Nina. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Nina. I work at the bookstore where your sister does her book club.”

  Clare considered this. “Do you have a book club for littler kids?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Six.”

  “No, not yet. When you’re older you can join one.”

  Clare narrowed her eyes at Nina, as her older sister had done. “If we can read, we should be able to come.”

  “You might be bored.”

  Clare shrugged. “I’m willing to take that risk,” she said.

  Lili had finished putting away the groceries. “Time to get crafty,” she said, and led the way to the living room. Clare trailed after them.

  Lili spoke over her shoulder. “I have an office in the garage, but I’ve been doing this stuff in here so I can watch TV at the same time. Is that OK?”

  Nina nodded and Lili pulled out a basket containing a load of seed packets, each of which was different. They were all painted with flowers, and names had been worked into leaves and petals, vines and twigs. They were gorgeous.

  “Where did you get these? They’re great.” Nina turned them over in her hands.

  Lili smiled. “I made them. I’m an illustrator. These guests are confirmed, so now I need to thread this piece of ribbon here”—she demonstrated—“and then add an extra sealing sticker on the back flap here so the packets don’t burst open. The seeds are really, really small.”

  “Like poppy seeds?”

  “Exactly like. They’re California poppies.”

  “Cute.”

  “Inexpensive.” Lili grinned. “But also cute.”

  “Can I help, too?” asked Clare.

  “You’re supposed to be getting ready for bed.”

  “This looks more fun.”

  Lili considered her younger daughter for a moment, then smiled. “Sure, you can do the stickers.”

  They sat in a circle and started working.

  Nina asked, “So, who’s getting married?”

  “My aunty,” answered Clare, while her mother’s mouth was still opening. “She’s marrying a man she met in the street.”

  Nina looked at Lili, who was shaking her head. “My sister Rachel met her fiancé at the Grove, but for some reason Clare enjoys embroidering the truth.”

  “Maybe you’re a writer,” Nina said to the little girl. “They make up stuff for a living.”

  “Really? And it’s not lying?”

  Nina shook her head. “No, it’s called fiction.”

  “Huh.” Clare looked thoughtful. “Anyway, she’s marrying Richard, who’s very nice and tall.”

  “Do you mean nicely tall, like, he’s nice and tall, meaning really tall, or nice and also tall?”

  Clare looked at her and frowned.

  “Never mind,” said Nina.

  “He’s very tall,” Clare said slowly, “and he’s also nice. And he has a dog, too, and he makes my aunty laugh all the time, almost as much as my mom does.”

  Nina glanced at Lili, who was working on a blank seed packet with some watercolor pens. “You and your sister are close?”

  “Super close.” Lili was focused on her work, but continued. “She’s my best friend, which is why I don’t want to mess up her wedding by forgetting anyone. And she keeps randomly inviting more people.”

  “Well, that definitely makes it harder.”

  Lili sighed and waved the packet to dry it. “She’s very friendly. She’d be happy if total strangers came, honestly; she isn’t paying that much attention. I think if it had been up to her she would have eloped. She had a big wedding the first time she got married.” She turned her head and pretended to spit on the ground, which made Nina jump. “Sorry, family tradition; her first husband was a loser. Anyway, she had the big wedding, and the marriage was a disaster, every day of the five weeks it lasted. So she’s superstitious about it. She left it up to me.”

  “Did you have a fancy wedding?”

  There was a tiny pause, then Lili nodded. “Pretty fancy.”

  “My dad is dead,” piped up Clare.

  “Oh,” said Nina. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
r />   “No problem,” said the child. “I don’t think it matters anymore.”

  “It’s always going to matter, honey, but it’s been a long time.” Lili didn’t look up from her painting, but Nina could hear wistfulness in her voice.

  “Sam in my class has no dad, either.” Clare was clearly pursuing this topic.

  Lili raised her eyebrows at her daughter. “Sam has two moms.”

  “Bethany has no dad.”

  “She does; her parents aren’t together anymore, but she still has a dad. Totally different. Divorce is not the same as someone dying, honey.”

  “Why not? They’re still gone.” Nina realized Clare must have been very young when her dad died and didn’t have memories of him. She hoped Lili wasn’t finding this difficult to talk about. She busied herself with her ribbons.

  “Not really. Even if they aren’t very nice, they’re still around. Once someone has died, that’s it. All gone.”

  There was a pause while Clare considered this. Then, “Mom has a new boyfriend now, anyway. Edward. He’s even taller than Richard, and even nicer. He brought me a tiny house for the garden. Do you want to see?”

  “When we’re done, sure.” Nina grinned at Clare. “You seem very interested in how tall people are.” Nina was happy to change the subject.

  Clare looked at her in surprise. “Of course. I’m forty-three inches tall.”

  Then she suddenly got up and walked out of the room. “I’m going to go and write a book now,” she said. “Bye, Nina. See you at the wedding.”

  With a thump, Frank the dog jumped off the sofa where he had been sleeping and lazily followed Clare. Perhaps he was going to give notes.

  An hour later they were done. Lili had taken Nina’s suggestion and made half a dozen that said Favored Guest, in case her sister invited a few more guests at the last minute and still had twenty packets in her basket.

  “The wedding is a week from Saturday, so she’s still got time to add people, and she can’t be trusted.” Lili was leaning back against the sofa, holding a glass of wine. Nina had one, too, and they were feeling pretty full of themselves. The finished seed packets looked beautiful, a rainbow of ribbons and flowers.

  “Don’t they need you to lock numbers at some point?”

  “We overestimated, in case.”

  “What else are you doing for the wedding? Are there center-pieces?”

  Lili shook her head. “No, it’s a picnic wedding.”

  Nina raised her eyebrows. “What if it rains?”

  Lili turned up her hands, “We can go inside the conservatory, I guess, where the ceremony is happening, but it’s the end of May in Los Angeles. The Internet says the chance of rain is about one percent, and Rachel was happy with those odds. She said she wanted people to sprawl at her wedding, and sprawl they will.”

  “How will it work?” Nina enjoyed the concept of weddings, although she was getting seriously sick of going to other people’s.

  Lili stretched. “We rented a load of big rugs, all different kinds, from a prop house, and we’re going to lay them out on the grass and surround them with the few hundred assorted pillows we also rented.” She looked at Nina. “You really are interested in organization.”

  Nina shrugged. “I like pinning things down. I like to know in advance; I like to prepare.”

  Lili looked at the younger woman, and her smile was warm. “You know, you can’t always be ready. Life tends toward chaos, sadly. I thought I had my life all planned out nicely, and then my husband died in a car accident and everything changed completely. It’s all very well to have a plan—it’s a good idea—but you have to be able to walk away from it if you need to.”

  “And you walked away from yours?”

  Lili finished her wine. “I’m not sure ‘walk’ is the right verb, but I left it behind. That version of it, anyway. More wine?”

  She got up and went into the kitchen.

  When she came back, she was clearly ready to change the subject.

  “So, why does Annabel hold such a poor opinion of your flirting?” She handed Nina her refilled wineglass and sat back down on the floor.

  Nina blushed. “She and the other girls saw a friend of mine come to the store and decided we were flirting.”

  “You weren’t?”

  Nina sighed. “Not successfully.”

  “But this is someone you like?”

  “I don’t know him at all.” Nina paused. “But yes, he’s attractive. I’m not sure he’s very smart; he seems to know a lot about sports but nothing about books.”

  Lili frowned. “And that matters? Is book smart the only smart that counts?”

  Nina shrugged. “To me, I guess, which I realize isn’t very open-minded. I love books; they’re my job, my main interest . . . I’m not very sporty.”

  Lili looked skeptical. “So is the issue that he’s not bookish, or that you’re not sporty? Maybe there’s something you’re both interested in. Movies? Animals? Entomology?”

  Nina sighed and stretched out on the floor, gazing at the ceiling. There was a clump of something pink up there. “Is that Play-Doh?”

  Lili didn’t even look. “Probably. You’re going to have to go out with him, I guess, to find out whether or not you’re compatible.” She paused. “Do you young people actually date anymore, or do you run algorithms to see if it’s going to work?”

  Nina smiled. “Yeah, we have our phones talk to each other and see if our operating systems are compatible. Saves so much time and effort.” She added, “And why you’re calling me ‘you young people,’ when you’re probably all of three or four years older than me, I’m not sure.”

  Lili smiled. “Yeah but those are mom years; they’re like dog years, seven for every one. Chronologically, I’m thirty-four, but in mom years, I’m ninety-four.”

  “Well . . . then you look great for ninety-four.”

  “Thanks. Can’t you stalk him online? I thought you guys all did that.”

  “I guess. I don’t know his last name.”

  Lili laughed and dragged her laptop over. “Well, what do you know about him?”

  “I know he’s on a trivia team that beat my team the week before last. With a question on horse racing, for crying out loud. Did you know that all racehorses have the same birthday?”

  Lili nodded absently. “Yes, January first.”

  Nina threw up her hands. “Does everyone know this fact except me?”

  Lili ignored her. “Here we go. There’s a site that lists all the trivia teams in the East Los Angeles Pub League. Is that your league?”

  Nina nodded.

  “And what’s his team name?”

  “You’re a Quizzard, Harry.”

  Lili looked over at her and made a face. “Really? And you think he’s not bookish?”

  “Oh,” said Nina, “good point. Not sure that being a Potter fan makes you bookish, per se, but I suppose it does mean he can read.”

  “Are you criticizing Harry Potter?”

  “Never. I’m a Ravenclaw.”

  “A bookworm like you? What a surprise.” Lili was scrolling down a page of some kind, the screen hidden from view. “Here it is. Team members . . .” She paused and frowned suddenly. “Thomas Byrnes.”

  “Burns like Edward or Byrnes like David Byrne?”

  “The latter. With a Y.” Lili was still frowning. “That’s bizarre.”

  “Why?”

  Lili didn’t answer and then looked up and smiled suddenly. “Nothing, I got distracted.” She closed the computer. “So now that you know his name you can stalk him to your heart’s content.”

  “I don’t know if that’s really my scene.”

  “You’re lying.” Lili grabbed one of the blank seed packets and started working on it.

  “Yes, I’m lying,” Nina said. “But I’m not in the market for dating right now. Things are pretty tight, time wise, and I have my life together and organized, and I think a boyfriend might be too much.” She started babbling. “Besides,
I don’t know if I can manage the Instagram-worthy relationship, with its photo opportunities and matching sweaters and public declarations. I find it hard enough to relate to people in private; having to do that while also creating an effective online presence as a couple . . .”

  Lili looked at her, her hand still for a moment. “You do realize it isn’t mandatory to live your life online, right? For thousands of years we managed to be miserable or joyful in private. You can still do it.”

  Nina shrugged. “Sure. But even in private, being with someone else feels like . . .” She trailed off. “It feels intrusive.” She thought of something else. “Besides, I have this whole other thing going on.” She told Lili about her family, about her dad, while Lili drew and said, “Mm-hmm,” every so often. Eventually Nina said, “Besides, even if I didn’t have a new cast of thousands to deal with, what would that guy and I talk about once we’d finished discussing Harry Potter? He’s probably only seen the movies, anyway.”

  “You’re a snob; there’s nothing wrong with the movies, and I think that whole thing is an excuse to avoid dealing with it,” replied Lili, turning the seed packet over and looking at it. She held it up to Nina. “How’s this one?”

  The packet had the name Nina on it, written in vines, surrounded by amber poppies.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Good,” said Lili, “because it’s for you. You’re coming to the wedding.”

  “I’m not invited.”

  “You are now. Clare invited you. And she doesn’t like to be crossed.”

  “That’s true,” said a voice from the doorway. Clare was standing there, holding several sheets of paper, with her editor, Frank. “I finished my book and I’m ready for bed.” Then she looked at Nina. “You can come to the wedding, but you can’t sit with me until after the ceremony, because I am a flower girl, and that is a Series of Responsibilities.”

  Nina opened her mouth but closed it again.

  “Thanks very much,” she said.

  “You can thank me after,” said Lili, getting to her feet. “Assuming you have a good time.”

  Nina laughed, getting up, too, and dusting herself off. She seemed to have acquired a pretty thick layer of dog fur, lying on the floor. Oh well, it was a chilly night.