by Sarah Jio
“J.P.?” Lillian says.
“Yes. Do you remember anything from that time? Ruby’s son was born in 1970. Geppetto’s was here then, right?”
“Yes,” Bill says. He looks at Lillian and waits for her to speak.
“It was so long ago,” she says. “I do remember Ruby’s baby. . . .” Her voice trails off then, as if she’s remembering dropping by the bookstore for tea and seeing Ruby with little J.P. on her hip. “I know it was very hard for her to say good-bye to her child.” She’s silent for a moment, then finally says, “I’m sorry. I wish I could be of more help to you.”
“I understand,” I say, a little disappointed. “Well, I’ll keep searching on my own. He has to be out there.”
Lillian nods to herself. Her eyes search my face, and then she smiles warmly. “When you’re looking for something, you usually find that it’s right in front of you.”
“Wait,” I say. “Margaret Wise Brown said something like that, I think. I read a quote from her online. I think it was something like, ‘Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it.’”
“Such truth,” Lillian says with a smile.
“Well,” I say, nodding, “let’s hope. Good-bye, you two. It was so nice to see you again.”
“You as well, June,” Bill says.
The door creaks open and shut, and I walk back to the bookstore. As I slip my key into the door, an appetizing aroma drifts over from Antonio’s, and Lillian’s words echo in my ear: When you’re looking for something, you usually find that it’s right in front of you.
Chapter 20
The next day, the seamstress arrives to measure for the new curtains. I removed the tattered drapes the night before, and now the windows are bare. “Wow,” she says, stepping back to admire the large street-facing windows. “They’re going to look great in here.”
I show her the old curtains, lying in a heap on the floor. “They’re a bit sun-bleached, I’m afraid. I was hoping you could find a similar green and yellow print, just like these.”
She looks at the tattered fabric, then back at me again. “What does that remind me of?” she asks. “Wait, don’t tell me.” She walks to a bookshelf where a new copy of Goodnight Moon sits facing out. “It’s this book! The great green room!”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s the look we’re going for.”
“Why hasn’t any bookseller thought of that before? Everyone knows this story; everyone loves it. It’s brilliant.”
“If you come to our fund-raiser next month,” I say, “you’ll get to hear the whole history of the shop. I can’t give much away now, but if not for Bluebird Books, that book you’re holding in your hands may never have been published.”
“Really?” she asks, astounded. “So you’re having a fund-raiser? Why?”
“To keep the store in business,” I reply. “I inherited it from my great-aunt, and we’re going to need a cash infusion to keep it open.”
The woman sighs with a smile. “Well, you can count my services as your first donation,” she says. “I’ll make the curtains up free of charge.”
“Wow, that would be amazing. How can I thank you?”
“Don’t,” she says. “It’s my pleasure. I have two little kids, and they love bookstores. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t take them to a reading on a rainy day. I want to fight to save them just like you. And if these curtains can help, I will donate them.” She holds Goodnight Moon out to me. “Mind if I take this with me to look at while I make them?”
“It’s yours,” I say.
She nods. “Somehow we lost our copy. My girls are going to love it. I’ll have the curtains to you in a week.”
A few hours later, I look up when I hear Ruby’s jingle bells. Gavin pokes his head through the door. “Hi,” he says a little cautiously.
“Hi.”
“How did it go with J.P.?”
My eyes brighten. “You remembered?”
“Of course I remembered. I’ve been a little overworked at the restaurant. I’m sorry about that.”
I smile as he walks toward me. “As it turns out J.P. was not the J.P. But meeting him wasn’t a total loss. He runs events and programs at the main branch of the library, and he wants to get involved in the fund-raiser for the store.”
“That’s great,” Gavin says. “I’m sorry that he didn’t turn out to be Ruby’s son. I know you really hoped he’d be.”
“A minor setback,” I say with a shrug. “Our J.P. is out there, I know. I’ll find him. I’m not giving up that easily.”
I sit in one of the wingback chairs, and Gavin follows my lead.
“Adrianna was over yesterday morning,” he says.
My heart races in anticipation of his next words. “I know. I saw her car.”
“She brought over the paperwork for me to sign.”
“What paperwork?”
“You know, to sell her half of the restaurant to me.”
“Really? So it’s done?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I took a big hit to my bank account, but I’m now the sole owner.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“It was the right decision,” he says, “for each of us. But it was also a sad day. Antonio’s was hers as much as it is mine, and I know it’s hard for her to say good-bye.”
I nod. “You know, I never did ask you how you came to name the place Antonio’s. I guess I always assumed it was someone in Adrianna’s Italian family.”
Gavin shakes his head and smiles. “You mean, I never told you?”
“No.”
“Ruby helped us name it.”
“Ruby?”
“Yes,” he says. “We were just a few weeks from opening and Adrianna and I couldn’t come up with a name. We fought endlessly about it, which should have been our first clue that our relationship was doomed.” He laughs to himself. “I’ll never forget how your aunt came by to welcome us. ‘What will you call the place?’ she asked. We were embarrassed to admit that our restaurant was nameless. She immediately suggested Antonio’s. Adrianna and I just looked at each other and finally agreed.”
“Antonio’s, of course,” I say. “She wanted the business next door to be named after Anthony, the man she had loved all those years.”
“Wow,” Gavin says. “I would have never put that together.”
“My aunt had a lot of secrets.”
“Just like her niece,” he says with a wink.
“What do you mean, secrets?”
He shrugs playfully. “Just that there’s so much more to discover about you. I feel like I learn something new every day.” His brow furrows a little then, and his eyes show a flash of concern. He looks at his watch and shifts in his seat a little nervously. “June, I do need to speak to you about something. Something serious.”
“What?” I ask, caught a little off guard.
Before he can answer, Mom’s standing in the doorway. She’s wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt. Her hair is in a ponytail. She looks so young. When I was in high school, everyone always thought she was my big sister. Mom smiled at that, while I barely contained my annoyance. She was a young twenty when I was born. Even now, she’s barely aged, despite years of hard partying. She’d tell you that it’s her daily green juice regimen, now that she’s a self-proclaimed health nut after her stint in rehab fifteen years ago, but even with the promise of aging as beautifully as my mother has, I still don’t think I could manage to choke down a spinach-kale smoothie each morning.
“Sorry I’m late,” Mom says to Gavin. “I missed my bus. Didn’t we say three?”
I flash Gavin a confused look, then turn to Mom. “You already know each other?”
Gavin stands up, leaving room for Mom to sit beside me. I bite my lip, and look from one to the other. I have no idea what to expect. He won’t make
eye contact with me.
I can see that something’s troubling Mom. She looks nervous, and her eyebrows scrunch together to form a deep crease. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
Her eyes finally meet mine. “It’s your sister, June.”
I look away. How many times do I have to tell her? How many times must I insist that Amy and I will never reconcile?
But then Gavin opens his mouth and utters the words that prove me wrong: “Your sister’s sick. She tried reaching out to you. She tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t talk to her. So she called me.”
“How did she—”
“She figured out who I was,” he says. “One day she came to see you, but you were out. She stopped by the restaurant.”
“What do you mean, she’s sick?” She has a cold, I tell myself. The flu. That’s all. I remember taking care of her when Mom was gone on one of her benders. Amy had a fever, and I remembered how, in a picture book, the mama bear had brought her baby bear popsicles. So I tucked Amy under a blanket on the couch, cleaned out my piggy bank, then walked to the corner market and returned with a box of cherry popsicles. She liked that.
“She has metastatic breast cancer, June,” Mom says, looking me in the eye. “I only recently found out myself. She didn’t want to worry us. But she needs us to know now, before it’s too late.”
My knees feel weak then, and I feel a wave of nausea as I sink into my chair. “No,” I say. “No, this can’t be.”
“June, there’s something else,” Mom says. “Amy’s pregnant. She had the option to terminate early on, when they caught it, but she refused. She decided to carry her baby to term, even though it meant no chance of her survival. Now the cancer’s in her bones.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t understand. Can’t they save her? I mean, don’t they have chemo and surgery and radiation for things like this? What about the baby?”
“She’s having a little girl,” Mom says through tears. “The baby will be fine. But Amy won’t be. Her oncologists have scheduled a C-section for next week. After that, she won’t have much time.”
I bury my head in my hands and sob.
“She tried to tell you, June,” Mom says.
Gavin places his hand on my shoulder. “I went to see her in the hospital the other night,” he says. “The night I wasn’t at the restaurant. I thought if I could see her, I could relay the message back to you. June, she wants to see you so badly. She begged to see you.”
I stare straight ahead. “I didn’t read her letters. I was so angry. I still am. But now . . . now, I . . .”
“Maybe it’s time to forgive her, June,” Gavin whispers to me. They are his words, yes, but I hear Ruby’s voice. I hear Ruby pleading with me to forgive my sister when I still have the chance. “I mean, I don’t know what you two have faced, but you’re sisters.”
“I know,” I cry. “I know. I want to.” I wipe my eyes with my sleeve.
“Come to the hospital with me today, then,” Mom says. “And tell her yourself. Before it’s too late.”
Gavin pulls his keys from the pocket of his jeans. “My car’s out back. We can go right now.”
“Yes,” I say, squeezing his hand.
I lock up the store, and Mom and I follow Gavin to the back door. His Subaru Outback is parked in the alley behind the restaurant, and Mom and I climb into the car. On the drive to the hospital, I think back to the day my relationship with Amy changed forever.
Five years prior
“You’re leaving early today,” Arthur says, leaning into the doorway of my office.
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “It’s my sister’s birthday. I’m surprising her with her favorite dinner, a cake, the whole shebang.”
“Save me a slice of cake,” he says. He’s in a good mood. I count my blessings.
“I will.”
It’s four p.m., and if I’m fast, I can pick up the cake from the bakery—coconut, her favorite—and run to the store to get the ingredients for lasagna before she comes home at six. She’s always on the 5:40 train, which puts her at our apartment at roughly 6:15, give or take ten minutes.
I rush through the grocery aisles, filling my cart with mozzarella, Parmesan, tomato sauce, and noodles. I grab a pack of romaine lettuce because I know how much she loves Caesar salad. On a whim, I reach for two Mylar balloons at the checkout counter. One features Scooby Doo with a speech bubble that says, “Happy Birthday to Roo!”
As the checker scans the groceries, I think about Ryan, twisting the engagement ring around my finger. He’s been acting strange lately, which I attribute to wedding-planning stress. His parents want us to get married in New York, at the Plaza, and because there are no available dates until next summer, we’ll have to extend our engagement another year. I’d just as well tie the knot down at city hall and jump on a plane to Mexico for a week. I get that he wants to please his parents, but if he really wanted to marry me . . . I shake my head, and remind myself how much he loves me. When he proposed last year, he said, “You complete me.” OK, so it was a line from Jerry Maguire. I still found it romantic and meaningful. Ryan has commitment issues, always has. But he is committing to me. Forever.
I gather the paper bags in my arms, and decide to stop stressing. We’re getting married, eventually, and everything’s going to be fine. I race down Bleecker Street and stop in at Magnolia Bakery, where a clerk boxes up the prepaid coconut cake I ordered. I balance the box precariously in my arms with the grocery bags and balloons, and walk six more blocks to our apartment. On days like today, I’m grateful for an elevator. My last place involved lots and lots of stairs.
“Can I help you with those bags?” Glen, the doorman, asks.
“No, I’m fine, thanks,” I say, squeezing beside Mrs. Hornsby, the old woman who lives in the apartment next door.
“Throwing a party, are you?” she asks, eyeing me skeptically, the way the older generation regards the antics of the young.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s my sister’s twenty-sixth birthday. I’m surprising her with a dinner.”
She huffs. “I do hope you’re not having a hundred people over.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Just my fiancé and a few of her work friends. We’ll be quiet.”
She smiles, relieved. When I was traveling for work last weekend, Amy hosted a dinner party, and evidently things got a bit loud. Mrs. Hornsby took it upon herself to tell me about it in the lobby on Sunday when I returned. “I’m not judging,” she said. “You girls lead different lifestyles than I ever did. But if she’s going to entertain gentlemen friends, will you please ask her to keep it down a bit, if you know what I mean?”
Initially I laughed off Mrs. Hornsby’s comments. After all, her prudish ways once got a doorman fired for flipping through a Victoria’s Secret catalog on the job. But Amy didn’t have any “gentlemen friends,” at least that I knew of. But maybe she’d been dating someone and hadn’t told me. It would be strange, since we tell each other everything.
I asked Amy about Mrs. Hornsby’s comments that evening, and she acted embarrassed, and then said something about watching a movie and having the volume turned up too high, which I thought was strange, but I let it go.
I glance at my watch. I have a half hour to get the apartment decorated and the lasagna in the oven before Amy gets home. I insert my key in the door, with the balloons bobbing over my head, and walk inside. I set the bags down in the entryway and the cake on the side table, and when I go to slip off my heels, I notice a pair of men’s shoes lined up on the hardwood floor. They sort of look like Ryan’s shoes, the ones he bought in Italy. I peer around the corner. Is he here? How did he get in?
Still holding the balloons, I walk into the living room. Amy’s blue pencil skirt (the one she never lets me borrow) is wadded up on the floor not far from a pair of men’s pants. I hear voices, and laughter.
&nbs
p; My heart beats faster. Amy runs out, wearing nothing but a tie around her neck. It’s striped, navy blue and periwinkle. I bought it for Ryan the day he passed his LSATs five years prior. Her breasts, so much larger than mine, dangle like two perfect melons on either side of the silk tie. She gasps in horror when her eyes meet mine. “June! I thought you weren’t going to be home until . . . later!”
Ryan appears in a similar state of undress, wearing socks and nothing else. “June,” he says. “I can explain. I, I . . . June, please forgive us. We got carried away. We—”
Amy is crying, and Ryan is frantically getting dressed. I hear the door to the apartment close a moment later. I can’t move. I’m frozen. The Scooby Doo balloon hovers overhead, beside another featuring the words “You’re the BEST.”
“June, I don’t know what I was thinking,” Amy cries. “It just happened! I feel horrible. Will you ever forgive me? Please tell me you will. Please, it meant nothing to either of us.”
And that’s when I let go of the balloons.
“She’s in the oncology ward,” Mom says when we arrive at the hospital. “Fifth floor.”
I nod and walk ahead, even though my legs feel leaden. I don’t know if I’m ready to face Amy, but there isn’t time for more deliberation. In all likelihood, it’s now or never.
Gavin and I follow Mom into the elevator and then into the fifth-floor reception area. “We’re here to see Amy Andersen,” Mom says to a desk nurse.
“Oh good,” she says. “She could use some cheering up. It’s been a hard day.”
I wonder what that means. I wonder if she’s in pain, or if her baby’s in distress. My protective instincts kick in and I want to run to the nearest doctor and drag him by his coat to her room shouting, “That’s my baby sister in there. And she’s sick. Fix her! Please, make her better!” But I clutch’s Gavin’s arm as we walk down the long hall to Amy’s room. Somehow the pain of the past has been washed away, revealing the love for my sister that was always there. I keep thinking, She’s just a few steps away. My Amy.
